Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input.

For young (lower-mid class) investors what percentage should be in individual stocks?
You should only invest in individual stocks if you truly understand the company's business model and follow its financial reports closely.  Even then, individual stocks should represent only the tiniest, most "adventurous" part of your portfolio, as they are a huge risk. A basic investing principle is diversification.  If you invest in a variety of financial instruments, then: (a) when some components of your portfolio are doing poorly, others will be doing well.  Even in the case of significant economic downturns, when it seems like everything is doing poorly, there will be some investment sectors that are doing relatively better (such as bonds, physical real estate, precious metals). (b) over time, some components of your portfolio will gain more money than others, so every 6 or 12 months you can "rebalance" such that all components once again have the same % of money invested in them as when you began.  You can do this either by selling off some of your well-performing assets to purchase more of your poorly-performing assets or (if you don't want to incur a taxable event) by introducing additional money from outside your portfolio.  This essentially forces you to "buy (relatively) low, sell (relatively) high". Now, if you accept the above argument for diversification, then you should recognize that owning a handful (or even several handfuls) of individual stocks will not help you achieve diversification.  Even if you buy one stock in the energy sector, one in consumer discretionary, one in financials, etc., then you're still massively exposed to the day-to-day fates of those individual companies.  And if you invest solely in the US stock market, then when the US has a decline, your whole portfolio will decline.  And if you don't buy any bonds, then again when the world has a downturn, your portfolio will decline.  And so on ... That's why index mutual funds are so helpful.  Someone else has already gone to the trouble of grouping together all the stocks or bonds of a certain "type" (small-cap/large-cap, domestic/foreign, value/growth) so all you have to do is pick the types you want until you feel you have the diversity you need.  No more worrying about whether you've picked the "right" company to represent a particular sector.  The fewer knobs there are to turn in your portfolio, the less chance there is for mistakes!