I am going to briefly cover the top most widely used “investment” strategies for stocks. Technically not all of these methods are investing because a few of them involve short term trading.

1. Stock Index Mutual Funds

There are many types of indexes. Indexes are essentially a predetermined basket of stocks that are formulated using a set of rules. For example the most widely used index, the S&P 500, is an index that incorporates the 500 largest companies in the US and weighs them in the index accordingly. There are other indexes such as small-cap indexes or tech stock indexes. The bottom line is that with an index you are purchasing a tiny portion of a large basket of US stocks that is going to reflect your sector of choice.

2. Actively Managed Mutual Funds

Actively managed indexed funds are very similar to indexes except for 1 key difference: They aren’t bound by a predetermined set of guidelines. For example an active mutual fund might have a focus on large-cap stocks or international stocks, yet there aren’t any rules on how much of each of these have to be purchased. This is different from an index where the predetermined weight of each stock is set in stone. Out of this difference comes an increase in management fees because of the funds active, and therefore more costly management structure.

3. Value Investing

This is the method used by the smartest and most successful investors (in my opinion). Warren Buffet is the most famous example of this. Value investing involves determining a company’s value (regardless of current perceived value) by looking at a balance sheet and income statements using fundamental analysis. As the investor sees a price drop well below it’s determined real value the value investor can seize up good deals and hold on for the long-term.

4. Day Trading

This is a common strategy by short-term investors who use primarily technical analysis (looking at charts and trends) to make “investing” decisions about which stocks to buy and then sell quickly for a profit. The risky thing about this is that if you accidentally buy a stock or ETF that suddenly drops in price, you could get stuck with a plummeting investment that was truly overvalued.

5. Random Strategy

This strategy is specifically for people who don’t know what they’re doing and don’t even pretend to try to act like it. They randomly purchase stocks that “sound cool” and then hope that they rise in price. By far this is the stupidest strategy just behind day trading. You can lose your shirt much easier with mindless/random investing or day trading than you can with the other strategies I outlined above.

Conclusion:

Whatever you do, please don’t choose route 5, and preferably strategy 4 as well. Not only is day trading risky and the fees expensive, it has also be statistically been proven to outperform traditional investing methods over the long-term.