The Cost of Stock Picking

"Out of 28,000 publicly-listed U.S. companies over past century, the 25 best stocks have accounted for 1/3 of all returns; put another way, just 0.1% of stocks have added over $17.6 trillion to investors’ wallets." Source: Visual Capitalist

I used to be a stock picker. LULU was my best performer. It was fun to buy companies I knew and loved. Little did I know that it was crippling the growth of my net worth.

In addition, research shows that we hang on to underperforming stocks longer when we have an emotional connection to the company.

We use broad based index funds that have low expenses and broad diversification. I learned the lesson of stock picking the hard way. You can learn from my mistakes.