One of the great benefits of writing for this newsletter is the feedback I receive from you.

A recent standout: Your overwhelming response to an article I wrote in late August, addressing why I combine index investing – which entails tracking entire indexes with mutual funds or exchange-traded funds – with individual stock picking.

Turns out, what I thought was an eccentricity is an approach that many of you also follow, and for similar reasons.

While indexing offers an inexpensive way to beat most professionally managed funds over time and delivers instant diversification, picking stocks is fun.

It also offers a way to focus on a key strategy, such as buying stocks with big dividends that might get watered down in a broadly diversified index fund.

“Couldn’t agree with you more,” one reader told me in an e-mail. “I own both index funds such as the S&P 500 index and individual stocks such as Enbridge, and have done well over the years following this approach.”

Another reader prefers indexing for one part of his portfolio, and stock picking for another.

“For Canadian equity, I’m 100 per cent individual stocks for the reasons you list. Can’t talk about ETFs with friends! For U.S. and international equity, I’m 100 per cent ETFs for convenience and simplicity,” the reader said.

Not everyone embraces indexing, where an investor holds all the stocks in an index and therefore matches the performance of, say, the S&P 500 or the S&P/TSX 60 Index, to name two examples that are popular with Canadian investors.