Stock-Picking Tips for Your IRA

As a special feature for April, TheStreet.com is offering a seven-part series on maximizing your IRA. This installment is Part 6. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 7.

For most people, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are probably the best options for IRAs. However, I must admit it is a bit discouraging to embrace a strategy that simply performs in line with the overall market.

Sure, a stock portfolio invested in an index fund will participate fully in the growth of the economy over time. But it seems positively un-American to accept mediocrity in investment results. Isn't there a way to obtain better-than-average results given the amount of risk taken? And can't those good results be achieved without spending an inordinate amount of time working on investments? ...