In my latest livestream I talked about a hot button topic among the retail investing crowd:

Why focusing on dividend investing is a mistake for many people

When people are young (18-30 especially) that's 100% the phase of life when they should take on more risk for the big capital appreciation. Similarly, when you're 5-10 years out from retiring, or are already retired, you absolutely should reduce your risk exposure. This isn't MY advice, this is just how you're supposed to do it. Any CFP or CFA will tell you the same thing.

If you want to dividend invest, in my opinion the appropriate time to do so is when you're getting close to retirement so you can live off of the dividends in perpetuity without eating into the principle via the 4% rule.

The problem is with the advent of M1 Finance and Robinhood we've seen a flood of people getting into investing for the first time who don't know any better and are just following the crowd doing what is popular, such as channels like Andrei Jihk and Joseph Carlson. It might be right for those two, but for most people dividend investing is what you do on the back-end of your investing career, not at the start.

It's good that they're getting people into investing, but many people are going to discover the hard way there are some serious pitfalls and opportunity costs if they try to follow Jihk or Carlson's lead. Two of the biggies are the tax implications and opportunity costs discussed in the video.

Lastly, only 2% of retail investors who pick their own stocks beat the market, so be sure you keep that in mind. It's absolutely possible to do it, and to continue doing it over the long term, but it takes a bit of education and work to make that happen.

As always talk to a professional and figure out what's best for your particular situation.