To be a good investor you have to ignore the noise and focus on the trends. Some trends are easier then others to spot.
Apple is the largest company in the world by market cap. Apple grew for many reasons but the overall trend is that as cell phone signals are spreading all over the world and are able to transfer more and more data every year. As more people around the world own cell phones, social media companies like snapchat, twitter, and Facebook will only continue to grow. Yes there are risks and companies fail all the time but the trend is still there, if one social media drives itself into the ground another will be there to replace it and gain market share.
As more countries come online e-commerce will continue to grow. Companies like Mercadolibre in brazil, Sea Limited, and many more.
Another trend based off this assumption is cybersecurity, Crowdstrike, Zscaler, OKTA, and more will benefit.
Cryptocurrency is evolving and becoming more mainstream every day. If you have followed Elon Musk over the past year, he has done more for cryptocurrency then just about any person alive. Musk has 58 million followers on twitter. He has caused bitcoin and dodge coin to spike unbelievably with a few posts.
Speaking of trends, the advertising power Musk and Tesla has on Twitter alone is not to be underestimated. Tesla is well positioned to continue to gain market share.
Due to the volatile nature of cryptocurrency, my personal investing preference in it is Coinbase. Ticker symbol COIN. The stone is not written on the wall as to which cryptocurrency will be the ultimate winner long term. I am willing to bet that Coinbase will benefit from the overall trend of cryptocurrency becoming mainstream.
My personal philosophy is to add to positions slowly over time. Only add to positions until they are 3% of my overall net worth. After that the company has to do the heavy lifting. My reasoning for only adding to a stock until reaches 3% is that if thing go south fast, A 3% drop in my account is irrelevant. It will not hurt my retirement plans significantly. 3% drops or gains happen every week.