index funds, top 20 stocks bleargh!I thought hotcopperites would...

index funds, top 20 stocks bleargh!

I thought hotcopperites would have been a bit more adventurous. IMO the best way to make money is to recognise market themes early and back them heavily. In the past few years we've had runs in oil, uranium, copper, zinc, nickel, iron ore, oil again, coal, coal seam gas, underground coal gasification. Then the theme switched to shorting financials, shorting everything else, buying gold. Recently we've gone through a theme of buying the most heavily oversold stocks (REITs/infrastructure/financials) for a bounce trade.

Buying (or shorting) just about any stock (or stocks) in accordance with one of these themes would have given you an easy 100% gain, or many times more in some instances - so long as your timing is right, you get in early enough and get out when the hysteria is at a maximum.

FWIW I think the resources and energy sectors are still the place to look, I especially like lithium, rare earths, platinum and renewable (or alternative) energy. These are themes that are being promoted strongly by government stimulus packages so should be fairly recession proof.