Campbell's is in the soup

[DC Al Fine]

Do you really think there's a strong case (other than whatever the fun of it justifies) for buying and selling individual stocks?

Ding ding ding we have a winner.

Ernest, why don't you just buy index funds and avoid all the work and likely lower returns of stock picking?

[DC Al Fine]

Almost all of my liquid assets are in mutual funds, the bulk being in Vanguard index funds. It has been that way for decades. I started looking for index funds for my Dad before they even existed, after learning about modern portfolio theory at the University of Chicago Business School. When Vanguard set up its first mutual fund in 1976 or so, I was right there to invest for my Dad, and soon after myself with a few bucks. And then I got deflected by real estate, and most of my money went there, until about the late 1980's, when I started to invest elsewhere again. Now my life is quite complicated financially, and it takes quite a bit of time sad to say.

That's cool. How did you even hear about Vanguard back then? They certainly wouldn't have had a financial advisor network.

[DC Al Fine]

As someone interested in not being poor my entire life, how would the Atlas trading community advise I go about entering this world of "investing"?

I would definitely recommend index funds. That is, instead of picking stocks like Apple or Ford, you buy the entire market. This allows you to avoid the work of picking stocks and the issues associated with picking bad ones. The biggest community for indexing is Bogleheads which Torie used to be quite involved in.

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads®_investing_start-up_kit