Investor fella here, saying hi from San Diego
August 25th 2025
This week’s newsletter is taking us back to the basics of stock investing: index funds. So, you want to get rich quick with stocks? Chances are, by the time you hear a tip about a “hot stock,” the time to buy was long before you decided to press that buy button.
How do I know? I’ve done it throughout my investing journey, and let me tell you, it mostly ends with me in the red! Fear not, there is another way to succeed in the stock market. Not only can you succeed, but you can also surpass Wall Street’s “pumpers” and fee-heavy, actively managed hedge funds! So what’s the secret sauce for building a strong foundation in stock investing? It’s pretty darn simple: just buy an index fund and hold it forever—or until you need to use the money to purchase another asset.
Instead of trying to pick individual stocks, you can buy them all through an index fund. Index funds aren’t actively managed, which means they have lower fees and low expense ratios. There’s no guesswork here; you just own a portion of every company in the index.
Over the last ten years, if you had owned an S&P 500 index fund, you would have made an average of 11.3% annually, for a cumulative rate of return of 245%. Holy crap! 🤑
The index fund I recommend is Vanguard’s VTSAX or its ETF version, VTI. Purchase shares every month forever and let dollar-cost averaging do all the heavy lifting.
Until next time,
Jorge