"Love 'em to pieces but don't buy 'em by alone" is my conclusion.

Stocks, shares, companies, businesses, equities - whichever word you want to use you are really saying the same thing.  A stock market is simply a conduit for buying or selling little pieces of businesses. 

The shares of businesses represent a direct investment in the source of all wealth creation: people working to produce value which can be exchanged for currency.  Gold in the soil, lumber from the forest and pearls from the sea are worth nothing if another person is unwilling to pay for it.  By definition things only have value with respect to people.  Other forms of investment such as bonds are derived from people at work, but only after part of the value has been removed.

The problem is that the shares of individual companies usually have a price range of 50% in any given year and this causes endless headaches for investors who constantly worry about their investment and seek to diversify by owning companies from around the world.

A single investment in a mutual fund can offer you the opportunity to delegate:
a) the stock selection & trading to a professional manager
b) the administrative part of investing to a fund company
c) personal financial planning to a trusted advisor.

How many investors do you think became overexcited about Nortel's prospects in 1999 and then spoiled their diversification and went against the recommendations of their financial advisor?  Not a few I think.

My own portfolio is 100% invested in stocks: the source of wealth creation, but it is through professionally managed mutual funds and not a short list of self-selected or broker-selected individual stocks.  Why would I try to duplicate the work of a few very smart and successful money managers?

If your investments are concentrated in just a few stocks contact us to improve your portfolio's resilience.