https://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/
This link is the foundation of my "knowledge" in the market. The more I traded or invested the more the stuff in this series seemed correct. Briefly, this and all the following links will basically just support dollar cost averaging the index. I read through the entirety of that series but regarding retirement accounts the series goes through all the options. If you don't want to spend your time on ones that don’t pertain to you:
TSP is the option for government sector employed (ex: military).
403(b) is for public sector employed (ex: teachers).
401(k) is for private sector employed (ex: Chase Bank teller).
IRA is for any individual entity (ex: any given person).
I haven’t reread the series, nor do I plan to. The content regarding retirement account options were all written and catered to citizens of the United States when I read through it. The difference between roth and traditional accounts will be explained somewhere in there in depth but briefly a roth account puts in post-tax income and a traditional account takes pre-tax income. This means a traditional account’s distributions are subject to capital gains taxes.
I've been reading the following blog since around 2012: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
It is in the recommended section of this blog/website. The most important articles can be found in links he made on his website but the three articles that affected me the most are the following:
1/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/03/07/how-about-that-stock-market/
2/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/05/18/how-to-make-money-in-the-stock-market/
3/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/03/29/killing-your-1000-grocery-bill/
The following link is the fastest summary of why my main strategy is dollar cost averaging the index and why it should be everyone's. https://thepowerofthrift.com/thriftygals-money-strategy/
Some caveats:
It is very unlikely that an individual can beat the market year after year. I used to have the link to a statistic saved but I have since discarded it. It was something along the lines of less than 5 percent of retail investors beat the market consistently (any given total stock index will track the market) in a given year and less than one percent of those that do will succeed the next consecutive year. The accepted average return of the market for quick maths is about 10 percent a year. Those who can beat the average return of the market more than one year in a row, consecutively, are either privy to insider information or will have a success magnitude in the league of actively managed hedge funds.
The most important two principles that affected my investing are the following:
1/ If you believe in something you should invest in it because the odds are that other investors also believe in it.
2/ Time mitigates all risk given enough of it; that is to say time in the market is preferable to timing the market.
Both are paraphrased quotes generally attributed to Warren Buffet among others.
Regarding the first point and the statistic about retail investors beating the market average, I knew I would always have that burning curiosity in my life so in 2018 I made the decision to satisfy it by picking a handful of diversified stocks that I thought best sampled everything I mentioned so far but emphasizing strong fundamentals, diversification to represent the market, and growth. I decided ahead of time to buy a predetermined amount of shares and committed to seeing it through the end which I did circa early 2020. Poor timing, would have been nice to get it at the record lows of the pandemic but dollar cost averaging really is a strong strategy. At the bottom of the market I was still green if only slightly (.93 percent). I will be holding those stocks probably for the rest of my life but definitely at least the next decade. I also bought into several cryptocurrencies in the same vein. After I finished I went back to dollar cost averaging the index. All of the dividends from my “sample” selection of the market all go into VTSAX. By principal amount, dollar cost averaging the index is still my largest single position (by far). By return on investment it is cryptocurrency. I only bring this up for transparency. I have traded several options contracts over the course of my life and occasionally still do. While it is a very interesting investing tool, I am hesitant to call it investing. Learning "the greeks" and other metrics and jargon associated with the analysis of options and options trading was very interesting but ultimately I found it quickly reaching a point of diminishing returns due to the time commitment.
I liquidated all of my VSTAX to purchase SPUS (an allegedly sharia compliant index) at some point in my life and am now using the latter as my main investment. I don’t have an IRA, I generally prefer the freedom of being able to liquidate whenever I would like because I do not believe in credit and you never know when an emergency that requires the sum total of your life savings comes up.