The most dangerous investment advice is often that which seems most sensible, which is why the worst investing counsel you will likely ever receive is that you should try to pick "good" stocks and sell "bad" ones. You will get this advice in one form or another from innumerable sources, including (some) investment advisers, friends, colleagues, Wall Street, and the investment media. You should ignore it.
Since the dawn of investment time, great stock pickers (there are some) have been revered, and even most novices can proudly recite picks that have produced mountainous returns. ("I bought Google at $85!") Unfortunately, what is smart (or lucky) on occasion often proves dumb over time, and, in the end, most stock pickers do worse than if they had never tried to pick stocks at all. Despite snagging the occasional ten bagger, for example, even professional mutual-fund stock pickers still have depressingly poor odds of beating the market once their losers and costs are taken into account (between 1-in-4 and 1-in-40, depending on how you measure performance). If you pursue a stock-picking strategy, you are almost certain to lag the market.

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