bogleheads guide to investing
I second Bogleheads. Also second the "Intelligent Investor," but that one might be a little too much depth for what you're after.
Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?
31–40 of 71 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?
#32Invest all of it in my startup. :)
Now for real advice:
First, consider getting an online savings account from ING Direct(3%), or putting your money into PayPal(2.5%)...Better than less than 1%.
Second, jon_dahl's advice is spot on. The 2 tricks are to diversify and to dollar cost average(invest your money each month instead of dumping it into the market all at once)....Index funds are the way to go. Vanguard's are great...You might also want to read "Fooled by Randomness" which will make you feel confident that this is the right investment approach, and anything else is pretty much gambling.
Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?
#33Investments by Bodie, Kane and Marcus (BKM) is one classic that still has value in this climate.
Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?
#34you must read "The Dollar Crisis" before you invest in anything - trust me this will help for the rest of your life !!!
I completely agree. The conventional wisdom of buy and hold a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds or index funds is simply bad advise right now. While stocks do tend to out-perform over the "long-term" there have been multiple 10 year periods when stocks lost big in terms of real inflation adjusted returns. (e.g. 1929-1960, 1971-1983, 2000-present) As a primer on the current financial crisis, I recommend firing…
I agree that the next 12 months will be an education in itself. I wasn't old enough to remember the 91-92 recession so this will be my first. Things don't look good.
But, I'm curious, why would you not recommend investing in stocks/bonds/funds, even if the economy was going down? I mean, where else would you put your money besides 3% savings accounts? Sure, if your investments return 5% and inflation is 7% you are technically losing money, but it's better than the full -7% you would earn if you stayed out of the market.
Maybe I have to read the book, but I'm curious what you have to say.
Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?
#35I have read many of the recommend books. Here are my two pence. Books on Wealth 1. "Rich Dad Poor Dad" and find out exactly why someone becomes rich. (if you like this one, at some point you may also want to quickly scan through "Cashflow Quadrant Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Freedom".) 2. Also "chapter 6 - How to make wealth" from "Hackers and Painters's chapter 6 - " 3. "The Way to Wealth by Benjamin Franklin" Inv…
Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a truly terrible book full of mostly questionable advice, platitudes, and poor writing.
Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?
#36Fooled by Randomness is a great book to keep things in perspective.
Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?
#37you must read "The Dollar Crisis" before you invest in anything - trust me this will help for the rest of your life !!!
I completely agree. The conventional wisdom of buy and hold a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds or index funds is simply bad advise right now. While stocks do tend to out-perform over the "long-term" there have been multiple 10 year periods when stocks lost big in terms of real inflation adjusted returns. (e.g. 1929-1960, 1971-1983, 2000-present) As a primer on the current financial crisis, I recommend firing…
The statement that stocks out-perform over the long run indicates that now is exactly the right time to be starting your index fund investment. What better way to ensure gains than to be buying when stocks are low. Even if they continue to go down over the next few years as you continue to invest, if you believe they are a good long-term bet then you will be far head 40 years from now exactly because you invested in stocks.
Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?
#38Here is a good list: http://www.bogleheads.org/readbooks.htm General Investing # The Four Pillars of Investing - by William ("Bill") Bernstein. # Wise Investing Made Simple or The Only Guide to a Winning Investment Strategy You'll Ever Need - by Larry Swedroe # The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing - by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, and Michael LeBoeuf # All About Asset Allocation - by Rick Ferri # The Informed Investo…
+1 for Bill Bernstein. An excellent book.
Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?
#39try investing with imaginary money. the only way to learn about the market is to be in it, even with imaginary investments. what was written about the market in the past is based on the market of the past. its not all bad or outdated, but a some of it is. for example, buy-and-hold only makes sense in a secular bull. in a secular bear, you need to learn a new strategy.
learn by doing. simulate real investing. you will learn a lot.
Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?
#40#1 for me would be The Intelligent Investor, by Benjamin Graham. Also read all of Warren Buffett's Letters from the Chairman - they're all up on the Berkshire Hathaway website. Peter Lynch's books are good too.
I see a lot of people here recommending A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which is a good book, but you're going to finish it and say "This investing stuff is too complicated for me. I think I'll just put my money in index funds." Which is perfectly sensible investment advice, but if that's all you want, I can tell you "Go invest in index funds" right now and save you a couple hours of reading. ;-)
Jeremy Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run is like Random Walk - it's decent, but the conclusion is basically "go invest in a stock index fund and don't worry about it". I'm not even sure that's great advice right now - he bases a lot of his argument on historical performance, but when an asset class has done well over the recent past, that usually means it'll do poorly in the near future. Read neither or both - Random Walk gives you good perspective for understanding Stocks for the Long Run.
Finally, if you do get into investing, make sure you start small. I've made some wonderful investment decisions and some truly terrible ones. The wonderful ones more than compensated, but they looked very similar at the time, and if I'd put all my money into the terrible one there wouldn't be any capital available for the wonderful one.
Actually, I'd recommend doing some dry-runs: pretend that you're putting money in a stock, and then track how well you'd have done over time if it were real. Read all the 10-Ks for the stock (they're up in the EDGAR database at the SEC's website), research all the fundamentals, and listen to the analyst conference calls (Yahoo Finance webcasts them live whenever earnings come out). That'll give you a sense of what questions to ask and what events affect the stock price.
I did some of those dry runs and lost hypothetical money on a lot of them, which makes me very glad that they're just dry runs. ;-)