Warren Buffett Has Endorsed the Same Investment for Decades. History Backs Him Up.

Warren Buffett became one of the wealthiest people in the world by picking individual stocks and holding them for years. But he doesn't think retail investors should do the same. Instead, he's spent the past several decades advocating for a much simpler strategy. Buffett, the retired CEO of investing conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, thinks most people should just buy an index fund tracking the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) and hold it indefinitely. In 1993, Warren Buffett wrote that an investor without the sophistication to evaluate individual companies could outperform most investment professionals by simply investing in an index fund.