Comment by lottin

This is not very good advice. An index investor is exposed to systemic risk, that is, risks that affect the market as a whole, but the problem is you can't escape systemic risk by investing in individual stocks, because individual stocks also have the same systemic risk... in addition to other risks which are collectively known as idiosyncratic risk. In short, stock-picking is always inherently more risky than index investing. Also Warren Buffet may or may have not beaten the market (depending on who you ask), but even if he has that doesn't mean that value investors, on average, tend to beat the market.