Investing is very simple,don't follow the crowd .An index fund will get you nowhere.
If you worry about money THEN follow the crowd,and end up in the same place as the crowd
You need to leverage up at whatever debt amount you are comfortable with.
The simple explanation is to use the richest man in the world at any time over the last 200 years as an example.
Today that is Jeff Bezos .His wealth is comprised of 55 million shares in Amazon,the company he started,each of those shares is worth approx$3100.Call it US$170 billion,unless I have got my mental arithmetic wrong.
Amazon as a company has debt of 75 billion the last time I looked( leverage).They have been leveraged from day 1 ,borrow money to get the company started .
As it is the start of a new decade then it is very simple to see what is going on.Then it depends how old you are.
Amazon started the year at a price of $1900 per share.Borrow 1900 then and buy 1 share.For the rest of your life you can now follow that share price and see what happens if you follow the example of the world's richest man.That share is now worth $3100.So you are up 63% year to date.
Leverage up more and say you borrowed $19000 and bought ten shares( £15000 approx) .They are now worth $31000 obviously.
You have the rest of your life to pay off that £15K.You will probably never have to spend anything else.Your fortunes are now tied to the fortune of the richest man in the world.
Over your life you will spend more than £15K buying cars and be very happy to do that,the crowd do that so it is OK.Those cars will end up as scrap Your guess will be as good as anybodies as to what Amazon shares will be worth in 20 or 30 years time, depending how old you are.
I can give you the history of Amazon shares.At the I P O price was $18 when it was floated in1997.They have had 3 splits since then two 2 for 1 and one 3 for one.So 1 share becomes 2 shares,then 4 shares then 12 shares ( 3 for 1 being the last split).Your $18 grows to $37,200 approx over 23 years.Using leverage then obviously $180 grows to $372,000 and $1800 grows to $3,720,000.Not hard to work out why the rich get richer is it.
There is a great piss take going on at the moment,Elon Musk taking the piss out of experts that have doubted for years that Tesla would ever be a going concern .Tesla share price has rocketed lately.The experts have advising short selling Tesla for a long time and Musk has made fools out of them.
As far as I know Tesla still runs at a loss but good on him for taking the piss while things are going his way .
Short selling is where you make money when stock prices fall.Borrow shares from a pension fund,say Amazon shares.Borrow 1000 shares from the pension fund,sell them for $3.1 million.You think that the price of Amazon shares is going to fall,they fall say $50 overnight. You buy them back at that reduced price and make $50K for 1 day,minus the cost of the option.An options broker will supply the price of the option for you.DO NOT go anywhere near options,leave that to people like me that have been doing this for a lot of decades.
To sum up,tomorrow you can buy 1 share in Amazon for $3100 and see how it goes over the next 23 years.For the next 23 years " the crowd" will tell you every day how you are wrong,you didn't follow them.
You don't even need to spend any money .Watch Amazon for the next 23 years and regret not spending $3100.If Amazon goes bad then sell that one share whenever you want.
Keep a note of the coming decades.The note is I did not spend $1900 on 2/1/2020 to buy 1 share in Amazon and put trust in Jefff Bezos to create wealth for you over the coming 23 years.Or,fuck me I'm glad I didn't buy that one share in Amazon,they went bust.
Bezos made a tidy sum last night,Amazon went up by $81,so $81 X 55million.
Depending how they go tonight ( for me) if they fall by $81 a share then he is back to square 1.These are the classes you have to bear.
Also own a dog.Treat that dog well and for the next 10 to 15 years no matter what happens,that dog is going to think you are the greatest thing that has ever existed.