But are mutual funds or ETS funds not always best suited for smaller individual investors?

Sometimes yes. Its a more lazy way to invest.  But in SE Asia, restrictive factors have created a distorted local stock market and progressively so for over the decades. The hard-working mutual fund investor/clients, mistakenly believe they are getting an ownership in hard-working and industrious SE Asia.  Instead, due to severe fund investment restrictions on liquidity, fund clients/investors are buying indirectly only large capitalized firms too often ignored faster smaller companies. Hence to many it pays to be more investor pro-active and through Thaistocks.com, you can find and learn about many value stocks in leading industries which pay dividends all along.  But you got to go beyond the brokers, the funds and most biz news!  Realize some 70% of the entire Thai economy (GDP) is generated by smaller/mid sized firms.   (January 2 2022).