"If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock, not selling advice."
Diversification
A good way to keep things nice and boring! It is NOT easy to consistently beat the S&P 500 index. The main reason for this is the mechanism of Central Bank manipulation and algorithmic trading by financial institutions. Broader market indices are simply traded at much higher volumes and have institutional backing.
When the going gets tough the Fed buys Apple and a handful of other stocks to bring up the rest of the market. 99% of financial advisors recommend a long term hold of a stock market index along with an equal weighted portfolio of bonds as this is the safest option. However, this recommendation has proven to be dangerous in the current environment.
Thus, I keep an extremely diversified portfolio of highly speculative cryptocurrencies and small capitalization stocks; a healthy dose of risk averse large cap dividend paying stocks and critical geopolitical powerhouses (War/Oil); and of course the majority is made up of commodity focused mining and royalty stocks as a long term hold. This has allowed me to reliably beat the market in every quarter for 4 years.
