It was a quiet night. The insects were shrieking outside while he lay in bed under the blankets, engrossed in phone addiction. Lit only by the soft glow of the screen, he was perpetually learning new things. Scrolling through the internet taught him all sorts of neat tricks, only for him to forget them moments later.

He hadn’t yet internalized vague lessons about “index funds” and “bubbles.” To be clear, he was aware of both concepts. He knew that index funds were good and that he should be putting money into them. And he recognized that asset bubbles were bad, and he should absolutely not put his money into them. Echoes of Dave Ramsey’s condescending rambles were still fresh in his mind.

Back then, Reddit was still usable, albeit a bit of a pain in the ass, since the site had taken quite a few steps towards hating their users. It was a source for him to learn about hundreds of forgettable things every day.

But one thing was really sticking out now…

Wall Street Bets.

“Ah, this is a fun group. They have memes!” he thought, conveniently forgetting that the Donald Trump subreddit also had some really funny memes, and they were dicks.

The next day

This attraction to Wall Street Bets wasn’t something that happened overnight. He had been on a significant self-improvement kick. He’d started running again, doing a couple of short jogs per week. Not because he loved running at the time, but because he wanted to be healthy.

He was just starting to make his first financial goals, but it was pretty obvious that he didn’t have much money to work with at this point. Maybe there was a way that he could jump ahead. Maybe he should listen to all of these sophisticated investors on Reddit. Gamestop had gone up by so much since he started following the subreddit, at least fivefold since he had first started watching.

“I think it’s the right time,” he said. “I’m a little late, but this is peanuts compared to what it’ll be in the future!” Gamestop had already surged, but he was convinced that this was just the beginning.

App store search: “Robinhood.” Install. Sign up. Connect bank account. Transfer money. Buy GME.

Here we go!

Some time later

Ok. So this story isn’t fictional, nor is it unique. I’m still relatively new to the whole saving/investing process, but it’s become easier to buy-and-hold, excluding the Gamestop fail. Since then, I’ve truly never bought another individual stock.

However, the last couple of years have been a wildly bumpy ride in the stock market. Tech companies have soared, while others have made modest gains, if any.

The magic is this – I’ve made money on stocks now. Not by picking tech stocks two years ago, but by investing in an index containing the top 500 U.S. public companies (the S&P 500). Despite turbulence and recession chatter, more companies have done well than poorly in recent years, leading to profit overall.

On average, sticking with an index fund outperforms picking individual stocks. It can yield substantial returns by simply letting the companies battle it out, fueling the economy’s innovation engine. Sure, you’ll own stocks that perform poorly, but even more that excel.

And the biggest lesson: don’t listen to a bunch of internet goobers just because of their memes.