1. Pick an index

1. You'll never beat the market. 
2. You don't have any loss protection.
3. You won't always own stocks you like.

Once you've chosen an index, you can generally find at least one index fund that tracks it. For popular indexes like the S&P 500, you might have a dozen or more choices all tracking the same index.

If you have more than one index fund option for your chosen index, you'll want to ask...

1. Minimize your time spent researching individual stocks. 
2. You can invest with less risk. 
3. Index funds are available for a wide variety of investments. You can buy stock index funds and bond index funds.
4. It's a lot 

An index fund is an investment that tracks a market index, typically made up of stocks or bonds.

Index funds typically invest in all the components that are included in the index they track, and they have fund managers whose job it is to make sure that the index fund performs the same as t...

1. Pick the index that you want to track.
2. Choose a fund that tracks your selected index.
3. Buy shares of that index fund.

To buy shares in your chosen index fund, you can typically open an account directly with the mutual fund company that offers the fund. Alternatively, you can open a brokerage account with a broker that allows you to buy and sell shares of the index fund you're interested in.

Again, in decid...

The three most widely followed indexes in the U.S. are the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq Composite.

• The Standard and Poor's 500 Index is an index of 500 large cap common stocks that represent all different sectors of the market.
• ...