There are several important considerations involved here. A stock can go from whatever you paid for it to zero. A group of stocks can go to zero (say Enron+Global crossing+...).
Any investment needs to be diversified across companies, and across industries. So one bad choice does not sink the battleship. You tell the broker what risk you are willing to take or pick a fund which earned some return in the past. If it earned a vastly better return than the market, it did it by being in the right place at the right time by hitting what was hot.
Make sure your broker knows what your plans are. The right choices for a 30 yo professional athlete's portfolio and a 30 yo dentist's portfolio are different as night and day. Because the dentist has an opportunity to recover from mistakes and make up for it later, the athlete's earning profile may be zero tomorrow if he slips and falls down.
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