vtsnowedin wrote: Of course if you never look for or consider a start up you will never find the next Microsoft or Apple until well after the market has out bid you on it.
Happy hunting.
Again, I guess my natural cowardice (borne of experience) comes into play.
I'm "adventurous" enough to do a considerable amount of investing globally / ex-US via things like the Vanguard International Stock Index Fund, just letting that grow over decades and in far higher proportion than Vanguard recommends for standard diversification. Same thing for efficient market and frontier market funds. Presumably a lot of good growth stocks will be part of such funds over time, without me having to figure out which specific ones.
Same thing by investing in things like the Vanguard Small Cap Growth Index fund. Some of those companies will do great, some will go bankrupt, and I don't have to try to figure out which ones.
And over the decades, I've done well enough picking companies doing well like MSFT, INTC, AAPL, IBM, etc. after they became well known to the market, that I certainly wouldn't knock that. Mainly there, I don't get greedy and let one position get too big, preferring to, for example, sell some on splits beyond some point.
At the end of the day, it's the RISK ADJUSTED returns over the long run that matter to your portfolio, and one can lose a significant amount of money trying to pick successful tiny company X, scores of times, and being mostly wrong. (I have, which is why I pretty much don't do that any more).
Each to their own. The stock market can produce serious returns over time, just with simple things like solid broad based indexes, if one is patient, sticks with it, and doesn't get too greedy. And that is a very high probability play, which is good enough for me as an old fart who doesn't like getting punched in the face any more.
I suppose it depends on if you're trying to be comfortable, resilient, and know you can pay the bills, or if you're hoping to strike it rich.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.