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"A Random Walk Down Wall Street" is THE book I recommend for accessible framework on the different strategies people approach the stock market and investing. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393352242 Edit: WSJ Review: “Talk to 10 money experts and you’re likely to hear 10 recommendations for Burton Malkiel’s classic investing book.”
One thing I have learned is that most of the other people talking about the market are full of shit. There is so much misinformation and red herrings that it feels like seasoned investors WANT newbs getting lost in the spiderwebs.
Peter Lynch ran Fidelity's Magellan fund from 1977 to 1990. He avergaed a return of 29.2%, increasing the value of the fund from $18M in 1977 to $14B in 1990.
His philosophy is to invest in what you know, and that the market misses things that everyday people can notice just from going about their life. I think his advice worked a little better before the age of the internet, but it's still a very solid and easy to read book.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/One-Up-On-Wall-Street/dp/0743200403
The #1 takeaway from the book is "Before you buy the stock, give an elevator speech with facts(data-driven) and reasons as to why this stock is going to be a good buy."
Turns out a lot of my investments don't stand this test!
If you're interested in learning about the stock market, it's also helpful to get a good primer on financial accounting. You don't have to be good enough to actually do a public company's financial statements, but it's helpful to have enough of an understanding that you can look at a company's quarterly report, compare it to past periods and get a good sense of how things are going.
I can't think of an accounting primer that is good for this, but I studied accounting in University so I may be biased. So, if I were you, I'd:
- pick five or six public companies you are interested in.
- read their annual reports.
- Google terms you don't understand.
Not a joke: I communicated 60 minutes each way for a year and thought about all the ways you could know which lane would travel faster than the other, and when. For information to input into that way of thinking, I got in the habit of reading primary sources (Fed PDFs, company announcements, etc.) as much as possible. At the time I had a subscription to a service that aggregated primary sources in the sectors that in…
https://theinvestmentsociety.com/finance-resources/
It includes links to websites (news, blogs, data sources, etc.) and recommended books (classics, modern finance, randomness, risk, psychology).
I was a total novice, I got a copy of The Naked Trader, read it on the bus and now have made quite a lot of profit using the easy to understand tips. https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Naked-Trader-Anyone-Trading/dp/...
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Market-Wizards-Conversations/d... http://www.amazon.com/Market-Wizards-Interviews-Weinstein-Hi...