If you understand what the catalysts of a stock are (both long term and short term), buying individual stocks isn&#x27;t a bad idea. And it&#x27;s still possible to beat the market. But yes, most of your money should be invested in low fee index funds.<p>As an example: a few years back, I owned some yelp stock. At the time, it was a growth stock driven by usage numbers. The quarter before, iOS6 (or 7? cant&#x27;t remember) was launched, which included yelp support in every iPhone. A few days before yelp&#x27;s quarterly earnings, Apple announced they sold 15% more iPhones than expected. Guess what? Yelp&#x27;s numbers for the quarter were up significantly. I made 20% on my money the next day (and sold my shares). If I didn&#x27;t have subject matter expertise, I might not have seen that.