My personal favorite piece of advice is to build up a well diversified portfolio of a few ETF's that capture the market in it's entirety.
If you're afraid of buying ONE specific stock due to fears of one company crashing, why not buy ~7000-50,000 stocks? Over the long run (10-20 years) your bound to come out positive.
Check these links out:
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/fun...FundIntExt=INT
https://www.vanguardcanada.ca/indivi...tm?portId=9554
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/fun...FundIntExt=INT
Just by holding those 3 symbols in your portfolio will expose you to ~10,000 stocks
Removes risk of 100% failure (you're money going to zero).
The
worst that can
probably happen will probably be a 30% decline, followed by a rebound over a few months/years depending on circumstances.
Another piece of advice... don't try to time the market, it's just as bad an idea as picking a stock. Jump in when you can, otherwise you'll get priced out. Think back to 12 years ago when you started your RRSPs, don't you wish you had invested in
anything at all?