Stock investing the simple way

 There are many different ways to invest your money before you become comfortable with investing in individual stocks or if you do not have the time to devote to researching your investments. I'm sure that you have heard of the Dow Jones before. Well it is an index of thirty different stocks some of these companies include Intel, Wal-mart, and Bank of America. Personally I would recommend something called the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is compiled by a company called Standard and Poors, and the index contains the 500 largest companies on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ (a different exchange). With the S&P 500 you become extremely well diversified with names from Sam Adams Beer to Apple to GE. Many times fund managers use the S&P as a benchmark to see how their fund is performing. Another reason to use indexes instead of actively managed funds is because often times fund managers do not beat the S&P. So if you want to put your investments on cruise control index it.