The Stock Market Big Picture! By Gene W. Edwards. Posted 8/16/2024.

It’s a crapshoot, the average private investor’s approach to the “equity” markets! The gamble that any or all stocks will rise or fall at any particular time is, for amateurs, a study in greed, risk, and impermanency.

Here are two foundational principles from Warren Buffett, the most successful stock investor of all time!

· One: Buffett says, leave your stock market investments in the hands of full-time stock market professionals (such as Vanguard, Edward Jones Investments, or Franklin Templeton Investments). They tend to make 7% profit per year, on average, for you on your portfolio with them. My way of putting it: amateurs lose or go broke because of the whipsaw, wavering, vicissitudes of stock and market valuations and tracking. Today’s news is tomorrow’s loss. Either do that or, Buffett says, buy stock in the S&P 500 stock index and then “Leave it alone for about 100 years!” Find out what the S&P 500 is and how to buy stock in it. Routinely allocate a portion of your disposable income into always contributing to your stock portfolio in the S&P 500.

· Two: This one is huge! Don’t buy and hold stock according to your whims and alleged research. Instead, believe you are buying companies, portions (stock) in companies. You — YOU — are then a business owner. Those companies are your children! Buffett finds undervalued companies with winning prospects and then buys them and manages them, as an investor. He buys and sells these companies according…