Is it smarter to invest in an S&P 500 index fund or pick individual stocks?

The guests consistently point toward an S&P 500 index fund rather than picking individual stocks. A former Wall Street bond trader told the Logan Paul interviewer that you buy the S&P 500 and that's all you need to know, and he described holding a single ETF or fund. A Boston interviewee who ran a hedge fund advised putting money in an index fund and keeping things simple instead of investing in one small idea after another, so wealth compounds over time. A Philadelphia guest pointed to putting money into Vanguard index funds for decades as the path to wealth. The one guest who described picking individual tech stocks early on, a Monaco investor, said it was not easy and that he had sold his Microsoft position a couple of times.