Hannah McQueen: Why random stock picking can be to the detriment of your investment strategy

Hannah McQueen has been running enable.me for more than 15 years, and in that time has seen a huge change in the number of people who own shares. The sharesies/hatch/DIY investor revolution means many people have a portfolio when previously it was only those who had significant wealth, or a personal passion, who did. 

The problem is there are more and more people randomly selecting shares, rather than investing strategically, or in a diversified way. FMA research shows a decent number of people invest due to FOMO or because someone said it was a good idea, without doing any research themselves – and our observations echo that. 

As a learning mechanism, or a bit of fun – great – but for most people the margin for error to land them where they need to be for retirement is too small to invest too much that way. 

It’s not a dig at investment platforms – just a warning that there are risks to directing too much of your investment funds in a scattergun approach. I liken it to picking the route before you’ve identified the destination – who knows where you’ll end up. 

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