The first thing I would ask them is questions about their risk commitments. In other words, every individual has been made up differently and has different abilities to handle risks; and by risks I am talking about what the stock market can do and how stressed out they get when they see their money go up and down in value. Some people cannot sleep nights when that's happening. It doesn't bother others a bit. So the stock market is not right for everybody. Back in the late 90s, for instance, everybody was in the technology stocks and people were talking left and right about how they made 30%, 35% more money last year. Everybody thought it was great to be in stocks and that all changed when the stock market started dropping like a rock in 2000. All of a sudden people were losing 20, 30, 40 even 50% of their money. Then you found out who liked the stock market and who did not. Obviously nobody really was enjoying that, but some people should have never been in there in the first place because whenever there is an upside potential there is always a downside potential, too. You have to find out if the people are comfortable with seeing their money fluctuate in values as much as it can in the stock market. If they say "yes, that it doesn't bother me, I've got a long time horizon and I am not going to need this money until I am 55 or whenever I plan on retiring," then that person might be a good candidate for stocks. But some of them are 63 and they plan on retiring in a couple of years and couldn't handle seeing their NASDAQ value dropping by 20% because they wouldn't have time to recover it later from waiting for the stock market to come back up. They probably would not be ready for stock. So you have to really talk to people about what their financial goals are and how they feel about risks. For a lot of people, like day traders or the people that get in and out of the market very fast, they are buying and selling stocks within the same day, it looks like gambling casino. Investors are different from that; these take a long term horizon, like 10 to 20 years. History has shown that the market is averaged around 9-10% a return for the last 100 years. That doesn't guarantee that is what's going to happen in the future, but that's basically the way you should be looking at the market - in long term. When the market is dropping, you should be adding more money to what is called the income average and buying shares at lower prices. So in short term it could be gambling and in the long term it has been a very good investment for people.
