Stop Trading Individual Shares If You're Not Beating The Market

Every share investor enjoys hunting out profitable companies they can invest in, and hopefully finding a potential ten-bagger that will make them rich, but there comes a time when you have to analyze your portfolio and make harsh decisions if you're not beating the overall market.After all what is the point in spending hours and hours researching different companies if the end result is that you are underperforming the overall market. You may as well just invest in a tracker fund that tracks the market or a top performing mutual fund and spend your time doing more worthwhile things.I know it can be quite exciting doing your own research and investing in the companies of your choice, but professionals are paid to do the same job and will generally have access to more information than you do, and can make better informed decisions.So take a look at your share portfolio over the years and see how it's performed in percentage terms. Then compare this to the performance of the FTSE 100, for example (or the Dow Jones if investing in US shares) and see how you compare.If you find that the overall index has seriously outperformed your own efforts then something is seriously wrong here, and it might be an idea to seriously rethink your investment strategy.For instance, taking the FTSE 100 as an example, this index has