I enjoy researching individual companies and deciding which ASX shares I want to own.
But stock picking is not for everyone.
For an investor who wants a simpler way to build wealth over the long term, I think there is another option worth considering.
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Building a portfolio takes work
Owning one or two ASX shares leaves a portfolio heavily dependent on what happens to a very small number of businesses.
To build reasonable diversification with individual stocks, I would be looking at roughly 20 companies spread across several industries.
That is certainly possible, but it also creates work.
I would want to understand why I owned every company, follow its results, keep an eye on management decisions, and decide whether anything had changed enough to reconsider the investment.
Some investors enjoy doing that. Others may have little interest in spending their spare time reading annual reports and company announcements.
For those investors, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) can make the process considerably easier.
Vanguard MSCI Index International Shares ETF (ASX: VGS)
The VGS ETF would be one of my preferred choices.
With a single investment, the fund provides exposure to more than 1,000 stocks across developed share markets around the world.
That immediately spreads an investment across many more businesses than I could realistically research and own individually.
It also takes me well beyond the opportunities available on the ASX.
Australia has plenty of excellent listed companies, but there are enormous global industries where the biggest businesses are based overseas.
Through this Vanguard ETF, investors can gain exposure to companies operating across technology, healthcare, industrials, consumer products, financial services, and many other parts of the global economy.
The portfolio also stretches across countries including the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and major European markets.
I don't need to find every winner
This is probably the part I like most for someone who does not want to pick stocks.
Individual investing requires making choices. I could buy an ASX share that looks promising today only to discover several years later that a competitor executed better or an industry developed differently from what I expected.
With the VGS ETF, I do not need to work out which individual global companies will eventually become the biggest winners.
Successful businesses can grow into larger positions within the underlying index, while companies that lose ground become less important over time.
There will still be periods when the ETF falls. It owns shares, so investors should expect market volatility.
But company-specific disappointments have far less ability to derail the overall investment when the money is spread across such a large portfolio.
It could make investing easier to stick with
I think there is also something to be said for simplicity.
An investor could regularly add money to the VGS ETF without needing to find a new stock idea every time cash becomes available.
That could make it easier to remain consistent through both strong and weak markets.
Foolish takeaway
I still enjoy choosing individual ASX shares, and I think stock picking can produce excellent results for investors prepared to put in the work.
But it is not a requirement for building long-term wealth.
Rather than selecting and following around 20 individual ASX shares, I think the Vanguard MSCI Index International Shares ETF provides a simple way to own a large collection of businesses around the world with a single investment.
For someone who wants to spend less time researching stocks and more time simply staying invested, I think that is a compelling proposition.
