My father used to buy some stocks here and there, and he has kept some of the stocks for 20 years as well. Now he has not invested a lot of money, but whatever he has invested helped him when he needed it. Now, the thing is, he might have invested in 10 to 15 companies. But only 3 to 4 companies have given him good returns in the last 20 years.
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Now think about it, someone invested Rs 10000 in 10 different companies and thus only 2 of them became Rs 1 Lakh out of Rs 10000, then it's not a good deal. What if that 1 Lakh is invested somewhere which has given around Rs 10 lakh in approx. Yes, this is why ETF is a better option in the long term. You don't know which company will stay for 20 years or if the company you have invested in is a multibagger. But we know that the underlying index is not going anywhere.
I am not saying don't invest in stocks; we all should invest, but we also should know when to come out. Have an exit strategy for the stocks and don't invest it for the long term as such but at the same time, for the long term, ETF works well. And that's why I love ETFs more than stocks. Now a lot of people don't have a demat account, for them they can go with a passive mutual fun,d which again does the same thing.
Being in a professional setup, if you are not following a strategy, then the best is passive income. For example, I know someone who is investing in that trading. But he has kept it simple, take 10% profit or 5% loss and that's his exit strategy. Now we all want the multibagger, but again, it's very hard to find one. And to find one, we have to burn a lot of cash, which I feel is not for me.
