Investing in the US? Individual shares or ETFs and Investment Trusts (for UK investors).

I use all of the above. I tend to buy individual shares if I'm trading shorter term (a few days to a few weeks) and for a small number of companies I want to own long term. I use ETFs or ITs for a base portfolio for following long term trends. We're spoiled for choice now with passive ETFs such as QQQ covering the entire Nas 100, sector focused ETFs such as SMGB (for semi conductor stocks), LOCK (cyber security), RBTX (for AI) etc. If you're brave you can turbo charge your performance with leveraged ETFs such as QLD but get the timing wrong and you'll lose money very quickly. ITs have a role to play if you want to play the US. For example Scottish Mortgage Trust, Alliance Technology Trust and Polar Capital Technology Trust are all mainly invested in the Nas 100.