FWIW, one of my kids is a Wall Street stock analyst but doesn’t buy individual stocks (or even sector funds) for their own account. Strictly broad market index funds.
We don’t manage our money and only look at the portfolio twice a year. Times of heavy fluctuation are not the time to make knee-jerk decisions. The market goes up and down regularly, but the historic trend inches upward. We’re in it for the long haul and don’t pay any attention to the day-to-day. We did nothing in 2008 and came out unscathed, and our financial plan accounts for 20% pullbacks about every eight years. The market WILL go down, sometimes precipitously. You just have to pour yourself another martini and consider it charming. Time to pull up a stool at Sinner’s Alley Happy Hour. Cheers! 
Many who make their living in the investment world operate that way because they are covered by many regulations limiting their investing, like pre-clearances before buying and selling and such.
In general, I’m not a market timer. I will however dip in on corrections for myself or family members, as I did during the Brexit drop in the market. Good times to invest Roth or IRA contributions opportunistically. Overall, I don’t market time and invest for the long term.
Ditto. 
Vanguard all the way except the biotechs we like.
I do own individual stocks. I also have mutual funds and index funds. My stock portfolio has consistently outperformed my index funds by a little every year over the past decade, due to a few holdings that have done very well. Plus, I have a fairly strong tolerance for market fluctuations so I don’t get stressed out much about it.
wrong thread.
Most people won’t beat the market on their own. Many money managers aren’t able to do so.
It is interesting to me that I have a few friends who are totally in love with their financial planner because of how well their portfolios over the past 10 years. But none of them have done better than the market. Over the past 10 years you did well if you tossed darts at the WSJ stock page.
March 2020 Kiplinger’s Personal Finance (p 17) has a chart “a Bang-up End to the Decade” – US Stocks (including dividends), 2019 return 31.5%, 10 year annualized return 13.6%, highest return of decade was 2019. Chart also spells out these other markets: foreign stocks (developed markets), emerging-market stocks, bonds, gold and Bitcoin. I look at the ‘long ride’ on the investment choices we make and feel pretty good about continuing that.
The hoops we would have to jump through would deter anyone without insider information ?
Even selling our restricted stock units (RSUs given as part of compensation) require pre-approval, and there are blackout periods.
Options and futures are pretty much forbidden. Shorting is seldom allowed.
We are glad that vanilla investing in indices, and our sole remaining individual stock (Berkshire Hathaway), have done well. Goo enough for me ?
Berkshire has become something of an index itself at this point.
This is a classic:
My avatars periodically sit on the keyboard of Mr.'s computer. Maybe that’s why he had that crazy return in his trading IRA. (No, those were not Tesla trades lol). We know that was a gamble of sorts, and now will roll with the market. And no, my avatars are not looking for any more clients to advise. They have plenty of stuff in our house to sit on. 
I netted $415.72 today! Nice to see green.
btw: a market dip is a good time for Roth Conversions. Yes, the dollar amount is the dollar amount. But teh point is the market dip means more shares transfer for the same amount of $. When the market goes back up, more shares grow tax free.
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What is your level of concern/worry about the stock market right now? When it recovers (and it will, it’s just a matter of when), do you think it will go back to pre COVID?
My husband doesn’t seem to worry at all. This is bonus time for us, in addition hubby’s new job gives him a huge sign-on bonus, so we have a lot of cash. He thinks this is a time to buy stock but I told him just to hold on to the cash for now. So we haven’t done anything yet…
Isn’t it always about wondering whether the current x% off sale is a good time to buy, versus waiting to see if the sale gets even better (but it may go away instead)?
Wait for the third circuit breaker.
@Nhatrang , nobody knows nothing ?
The past weeks have been painful, and this morning even more so, but we are sticking to our plan. I’m not usually a dollar cost average (DCA) nvestor, and we have bonuses coming also, but I think we might well DCA whatever we aren’t spending on renovations.
Good time for tIRA to Roth conversions.