Today the individual investor has huge advantages over the professional compared to 30 years ago.
- It is very easy to open a brokerage account at one of the online brokerages services and trade for a small fee.
- The internet provides a large amount of information for you, including the company websites, to make investing decisions.
- You can make the decision to not invest in Energy companies at all if you so choose(some fund companies would have a fixed investment mandate that would make that difficult), or to use ETF’s to buy a basket of stocks with one purchase.
- Individuals can buy and sell small quantities of stock without moving the stock price(except for the companies with few outstanding shares.
Of course you have many 1000’s of professionals and companies in the market when you are buying and selling trying to make a living as well but that is the challenge that we all enjoy.