I'm serious about this. I've kept away from the stock market because 1. I did not understand it very well and 2. I thought it was way too risky - just another form of gambling. Then, RT3 introduced me to market cap, book value, debt/equity, dividends, share price, returns, growth and strategic investments. Once interested, I began to check out books about the stock market and about low risk ways to invest in it. So far, I've read about 20 different books.
So,.. here's my investment strategy - which may bore you to tears..
I'll always be a small investor (meaning investing less than $5K at a time), but I am a gradual, regular investor of $50 per month, sometimes $100/mo if I can afford it. I plan to keep 40% of all my investments in US gov't TIPS bonds, which are no-risk bonds that, at least, match inflation, usually do 1-2% better than inflation. The remaining 60% goes into a DRIP. DRIP mean dividend re-investment program and most large cap companies offer this (
http://www.dripinvestor.com). An investor can send the company the monthy investment ($50) without having to go through a costly broker - so your return is already up 2-3%. The monthly investment buys shares in the company and the dividends are used to buy even more shares. And I plan to hold the shares for at least 10 yrs, hopefully much longer than that. I only choose solid, mature companies which have a history of making profits in rain or shine and their dividends have increased for at least the last 10 years in a row - like Procter and Gamble and utility companies. I also choose companies which do not charge any fees for DRIP. I know I'm not going to become a very wealthy man this way (because I'm starting late in life), but whatever wealth I accumulate will be protected from inflation. AND, I have my kids doing this as well and time in their side to build a nice nest egg in the stocks market. All this because of RT3 !