Investment funds, ETFs or stocks?

In 99% cases it is better to buy shares directly, rather than trading them via an investment fund or ETF. The reason is simple, when you purchase a fund, you have to pay the manager(s) who take care of it and especially the financial institution that is behind it all. And that can cost you up to 10% per year! With figures like that, the fund has to generate a lot of profitability to generate capital gains, which involves risk-taking and active management, which is necessarily very expensive in transaction fees. Not to mention the enormous amount of time spent by the fund manager.

By doing this work yourself, you buy securities that match your risk profile, you cost nothing and you can do passive management, with few movements, and therefore few costs.

Okay, but then what are the 1% cases where it is worth buying funds? Luckily, there are investment funds and ETFs that cost almost nothing, less than 0.5% per year. This is the case for passively managed funds and trackers. Of course, in theory, you could buy all the components of the fund yourself and update them once a year. But to do this, you would have to mobilize a significant amount of capital and pay transaction fees that ultimately still have every chance of costing more than the management fees. In addition, some of these funds allow you to have indirect access to more exotic securities, which are not necessarily negotiable via your broker. Finally, with just one of these funds, you own dozens or even hundreds of securities simultaneously, which is always appreciable in terms of diversification, volatility and risk management.

You will find some of these trackers, in the members section, here (cf. Market = PCX). We also talk about it on the forum, here.