Investment Club anyone?

I'm relatively new to investing and have been immersing myself in it recently, I would participate if others want to discuss investing and personal finance.

Good, and welcome. I hope we get enough participants to make this forum interesting and educational.

Here's my first suggestion on top rated investment institutions because of their low fees. After doing much research early in my working career, I found that Fidelity and Vanguard both had the lowest fees. There were several analysis that shows how much more one can expect to earn from low fee investments; it makes a big difference in the long term.
As with any investment, growth of funds is not guaranteed. Based on that scenario, it behooves any investor to really investigate the long term performance of any fund. Morningstar.com is a good place to start.
When I look at the ten year performance of our funds, I am very pleased with the results. Our balance before the 2008 debacle has not impacted our funds for ten years since 2007, and I've withdrawn a goodly amount. I have withdrawn 40% from our funds, but my current balance is about the same from ten years ago.

I second the Fidelity and Vanguard recommendations. I signed up for nearly every broker I could find to try them all in the last few years. I'm pretty much going to stick to Vanguard though.

For trading without fees, I recommend Robinhood (only works by a phone app, not website though). When I'm playing around and speculating I do it there, and otherwise put all my investment money in Vanguard mutual funds.

There are many Vanguard funds. One of our funds was the Index Fund. I chose that one, because professionals manage that fund. I didn't have the time or inclination to manage the funds on my own.

What funds of theirs do you think are not managed by professionals?

Looks like I don't know what i'm talking about. I had thought, wrongly, that they also sold individual stock funds.

I have been very forgetful at my age, and my short term memory is all but gone. I can't even remember where our car is parked, so my wife has the habit of asking me in which direction in the shopping mall parking garage our car is located. I get that right, so far, 100% of the time, even though I know I guess some times.