Should you go for stocks or mutual funds?

Now that my previous pieces have (hopefully) convinced you that most of your your long-term money must be in equity, the question to be tackled is how one should do this. Let's look at this problem step by step. If you have just realised the inevitability of equity, you are immediately confronted with the arguably difficult task of actually investing in equity. For those who have never done this, it's hard to know how to make a beginning. However, anyone knows there are two distinct ways of investing in equity. One is to choose stocks and buy and sell them yourself. And the other is to invest through equity funds. The final goal is the same, to benefit from the superior returns that equity investing offers. However, in terms of what you do, the two routes are completely different. Unless you are an expert investor, or are able to put in the (considerable) time and effort in becoming an exper