Investing 101?

Question

What are some good books for investing and learning the stock markets?

Answer 1

I think "Investing for Dummies" is a pretty good beginning book. It will get you started and does not cost too much. I think there is also a "Stocks for Dummies" or something like that but I have not reviewed that one. I have reviewed "Investing". It is pretty well written.

Answer 2

Some good answers here. I would recommend the books by Jim Cramer, "Sane Investing in and Insane World" and Mad Money. Both give you some basic and straightforward info on how the game is played. Also look at Bill Oneils book "How to Make Money in Stocks". He is the founder of Investors Business Daily.

Answer 3

I usually recomend the following three in order.

First of all, take the Index Fund Advisors online 12 step program:

http://www.ifa.com/12steps/

Then, read the classic Burton Malkiel book "A Random Walk Down Wall Street".

Finally, William Bernstein's book "The Intelligent Asset Allocator".

Bernstein's book was a play off of the title of the book "The Intelligent Investor", by Benjamin Graham. Benjamin Graham, if you don't know, was the mentor of Warren Buffet, and a believer of value investing.

I've studied investing for awhile, both in graduate school and on my own. These books will really open your eyes. Both in a good way and a bad way.

They will show you how you can make a large amount of money in the market, but how it will not come fast nor easy, nor will it come without showing a lot of fortitude (i.e. no panic) during the tough times.

Also, a good book, less on investment philosophy but more on disciplining yourself to push the necessary funds into investing to make yourself wealthy is David Bach's book "The Automatic Millionaire", I like his strategies to save money, but not on how to invest it.

These books represent reality. They can be disappointing in a way, in that you realize you're not going to be rich in six months, but they do show how there is always a trade off between risk and return (higher returns always require higher risk), and they do show you the obvious mistakes people make everyday. They do show you a long term path to wealth.

The recommended path will require extreme patience, very hard for most people, especially men. Sticking to a strategy while ignoring short term results (short term means years), going years without making any moves, is extremely difficult for most people. Keeping your money in good funds when things turn temporarily against you is hard, as is staying away from runaway optimism driven bubbles (i.e. the tech run-up before the crash). But patient intelligent investors (such as Warren Buffet) do it. Buffet was not invested whatsoever in tech stocks on the way up or the way down, the entire affair was mostly invisible to him.

Good luck.

Answer 4

To begin with....The Visual Investor By John Murphy. When you become a little more proficient with the vocabulary, Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets also By John Murphy. I absolutely agree with learning a lot of things on the website investopedia.com. You can even set up a papertrading (fake money) account to try out and see how you do at trading. Better to learn your mistakes on fake money than real. : )

Answer 5

Fidelity or Vanguard or Motley Fool all have tremendous information on their websites. There are many more also, but if you get all the information from those three sites you will know all you need to know.

Answer 6

www.investopedia.com it is a learning website. morningstar.com also has tutorial pages for the newbie. BY ALL MEANS EDUCATE YOUR SELF BEFORE DIVING IN AND YOU WILL SAVE A LOT OF GRIEF FOR YOUR SELF