For some absolutely insane reason I sometimes get the feeling that I can outpick a fund with individual stocks, because "Hey, I follow this whole tech world really closely! Surely I can pick some big winners!"

It has been a somewhat expensive lesson that I have absolutely no clue what's going on, but every once in a while I just can't help but try. I keep a little fun money in individual equities, and the rest now sits safely in funds. My aggregate individual funds always lose out to what has been relatively steady fund performance.