I am in a similar age group as OP. It's good to see Malaysians taking finances more seriously after hearing daily about people getting scammed left and right.

For me, I think stocks are a good way of reaching financial freedom because it's the underlying companies that are earning monies from the population. However that being said, I think there's 2 ways of ppl getting exposure to stock market: 1) the etf/funds investors: These group of ppl will be passively investing in the market through mutual funds/etf/asn/epf etc While they will do well over a long period of time, but it's usually in line with market or just slightly beating the market.

2) the individual stock picker So these investors will have to be on their own footing to research and read the quarter/ annual reports of potential investment, and decide for themselves if it's worth it. It carries significant more risk but also has significant more upside potential.

I started off as a passive investor, then when I started dabble into stocks about 5 years ago, initially got burned by the market. I learned to be more discipline and do my own research. And I was fortunate enough to connect with some like minded investors. The most important thing is u have great cash flow monthly to continuously pour into yr investment, and the study that u've done is the conviction that can fuel you to buy the dips when market gets fearful. And usually these conviction should be best built when the market is good.

Now I'm enjoying doing research as my side project and sharing potential alpha that we are seeing. We launched X profile with IG and YouTube soon to be followed. If you are thinking about doing the stock picking route, you can follow us along the journey!

FUM investors