Stocks

As noted in my brother's recent post , Jim Cramer has come under a lot of criticism lately. I don't watch his show but to the extent that Cramer advocates short term trading of individual stocks this criticism is justified. However the main problem is the high turnover not the ownership of individual stocks. Index funds are fine if you want to invest in stocks with minimal effort but if you enjoy following the market there is nothing much wrong with buying individual stocks as long as you intend to hold them for a reasonable length of time. You won't be quite as well diversified but you get the entertainment value of rooting for your stocks.

And while short term stock trading isn't particularly smart it has little to do with the current crisis.