I believe it's actually true that a person who invests a few thousand dollars in, say, blue chip stocks, will, if they just retain those investments, be very wealthy in forty years or so.
It's true, it might not be true, but the plan has the virtue of only risking a few thousand dollars.
Investing in the stock market is certainly an easy way to try to make money. Open a brokerage account, funding it with a few hundred dollars, and you can buy and sell stocks from your bedroom, just by clicking around in your account on your laptop computer.
I believe it is true that some people make lots of money just this way. True, the only way to absolutely prove, to yourself, that it's true, would be to achieve it yourself.
Again, the risk appears to be quite controlled, as long as you observe in particular one rule: not buying on margin. If you don't know what margin is, this rule can't help you. Basically it means if you buy using your own money, all you can lose is that money. Margin basically means borrowed money. If you use borrowed money to buy shares, or if you sell borrowed shares (called short selling), then your risk becomes some measure of the value of what you borrowed. In fact it's my understanding that short selling carries infinite risk. You could end up owing someone millions of dollars even though you only put some small amount of your own money in. But if you just buy shares with your own money, your risk is limited to what you paid for the shares.
Note that it is quite easy to lose all the money you paid for shares. Shares become worthless all the time, and when they do, you, the investor, will not get your money back.
