Financial advice from the nation’s top grads
Yet even business students say it's risky to buy individual stocks, unless you have time to dig into a company's earnings and do plenty of research.
Alan Rich, 29, will graduate with an MBA from Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business next month. He says most Americans should look to low-cost mutual funds that track a broad market index such as the S&P 500.
Those funds may seem boring, but they carry less risk than buying shares of individual companies.
"It takes a lot of work to understand how to pick stocks," said Ian Sexsmith, who graduated with an MBA from University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business about a week ago. "That's a full-time job for a mutual fund manager."