Can I beat the SP 500 with a buy and hold strategy of say four or five stocks? Or am I better off with index funds?

Sure you can. And I hope you do. No offense, but if I were a betting man, I would bet against you over the long haul. There are some really smart people on Wall Street who eat, sleep, and breath this stuff and not too many of them do it with any regularity.

Since you are just talking about a recently opened IRA, my guess is we are not talking about a substantial sums of money. Therefore, not much capital to set up a diversified mix of individual stocks. My vote would be to keep it in some very diversified indexed mutual fund. Then later, you can add an individual stock or two.

A rhetorical question: what makes you think the stocks you selected will beat the market over say the next 50 years? If you have a very good answer to this question (i.e., something other than I use Windows, drink Starbucks and Coke, and subscribe to Sirius radio) then you could conceivably continue on the path you've laid out.

Otherwise, you were better off in TR 2045. If it were my money, that's where I'd be.

Jared