When first starting out, the main goal is education. Educating yourself deeply about the conditions of prospect companies. Especially if you plan on investing in individual stocks. Individual stocks is a skill on it's own and very time-consuming to master. The reason why it involves such high dedication is because you have to map out management decisions, future candidates and of course, your earnings. KEY. The goal is to separate the useless stocks from the profitable ones as an investor. It is important to be aware of the risks, what the company does, how they make their money, their competitors and future candidates. Depending on how dedicated you are, you need to decide if you will invest in stocks, funds or maybe both? With an attentive and solid choice between mutual and index funds you are knocking out the havoc part. All that is left is picking the stocks which your fund manager usually does. Due to the way the move, index funds are the most preferred because they move by the type of industry, company and market.