But it has already been suggested on page 8 that the investor may find a half-way house in which he may enjoy the advantages of ownership while minimizing the risks that are attached to it when he pursues it with the assistance of no better guide than his own knowledge and judgment. These risks are chiefly due first to the mistakes that he is likely to make in the selection of ordinary shares and stocks to be bought, and secondly to the narrow field of distribution to which individual holdings are necessarily subject.
These risks can be avoided by choosing investments in the ordinary shares of concerns whose business it is to select investments over a wide field. By so doing the investor at once secures the services of a body of professionals specially trained in the art and science of selection, and participation in ownership of a mass of assets distributed over a much wider field than he could possibly hope to cover even if he went on investing all his life and split his investments up to the point of inconyenient minuteness.
Such concerns are banks and discount houses, insurance companies and trust companies. It may be objected that banks hold a small proportion of their assets in investments of the kind that are usually described by the
