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Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?

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Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?

#41

Post by utefan001 »

Like many of you, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the best investing approach is. My advice is to not spend any money on investing books. I am not saying not to read them, just don't spend ANY money on them.

I think the future of investing is here, and it is covestor.com. This site helps anyone stand on the shoulders of giants. Covestor shows who really knows how to trade in a verified way. Some users on Covestor are professionals, others are simply individual traders.

For me, I don't have the time to spare to try and beat the S&P. Thru Covestor I have found a CFA/CFP that knows how to beat the S&P waaaay better than I do. His name is Sean Hannon. In case you are wondering, Sean didn't pay me to write this.

www.epicadvisorsllc.com

http://www.covestor.com/rankings/popularity (see #2 on list / user "epicadv")

Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?

#44

Post by jon_dahl »

keven wrote: post #42

Highly recommend Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. also http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm

Agreed. Just take Taleb with a grain of salt - he's a polemical writer, and swings to an extreme. (He's seen the excesses of hedge funds, and so puts most of his money in treasuries.)

Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?

#45

Post by jon_dahl »

lowkey wrote: post #30
ideas101 wrote: post #21

you 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…

This may be true. Or it may not be true - there's always a crisis looming, and often when things look bad, the market has already factored that in. Personally, I'd rather stay invested in index funds through good and bad rather than trying to dodge the crises and hit the booms.

That said, I'm doing a few things to try to hedge against inflation, energy costs, and the US deficit. These are long-term plays, and I'll stay in them for 10+ years.

-- invest globally, not just in the US stock market -- invest a small amount in an energy index fund (Vanguard Energy ETF) to hedge against energy price increases -- invest in inflation-protected bonds (TIPS/I-Bonds)

Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?

#46

Post by utefan001 »

utefan001 wrote: post #41

Like many of you, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the best investing approach is. My advice is to not spend any money on investing books. I am not saying not to read them, just don't spend ANY money on them. I think the future of investing is here, and it is covestor.com. This site helps anyone stand on the shoulders of giants. Covestor shows who really knows how to trade in a verified way. Some…

I forgot to mention that I think a site like Covestor scares the big investment advisor companies. If a CFA/CFP is extremely talented, beating the S&P consistently, Covestor gives him/her a way to prove this. Why would I use Goldman Sachs over a super lean / small investment advisory company when the small company achieves better verified returns, has much lower fees, and doesn't require that I have at least 100k+ to invest with?

Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?

#47

Post by nickb »

simplyauser wrote: post #16

I 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 one of the dumbest financial advice books I have ever read. It contains many factual errors and numerous extremely unlikely accounts of events that supposedly occurred.

Kiyosaki is a salesman and a motivational speaker. He has no financial expertise and won’t disclose his supposed real estate or other investment success.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad contains much wrong advice, much bad advice, some dangerous advice, and virtually no good advice."

John T. Reed, Harvard MBA, successful real estate investor http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html

"However much money Kiyosaki did or didn't make in the past, he's making a fortune by selling the idea that he holds the key to your financial future. In one of the many logically creative passages late in the book, he raises the astonishing idea that Americans don't spend enough time trying to emulate the successful—there's just not enough hero worship out there. "It's one of the most powerful ways we learn that we often lose as adults," he writes. "We lose our heroes. We lose our naivete." If there's better proof of how wrong this is than the success of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I can't think of it."

http://www.slate.com/?id=2067175

Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?

#48

Post by keven »

jon_dahl wrote: post #7

The first and best book on investing that you should read: A Random Walk Down Wall Street ( http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/039306... ). This book has great investing advice; is funny, interesting, and well-written; and clearly explains what's going on behind different investment approaches. In other words, it doesn't just answer the "what" question, it answers "why" and "how". As for specific a…

Index fund is the way to go for many people. In fact, it is the suggestion William Sharpe gave to (pre-IPO) Google employees.

http://www.sanfranmag.com/print/node/3368

Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?

#49

Post by brianlash »

jon_dahl wrote: post #7

The first and best book on investing that you should read: A Random Walk Down Wall Street ( http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/039306... ). This book has great investing advice; is funny, interesting, and well-written; and clearly explains what's going on behind different investment approaches. In other words, it doesn't just answer the "what" question, it answers "why" and "how". As for specific a…

jon_dahl is dead on. Understand Malkiel's Random Walk and the rest is details.

But for a really thorough discussion of those details check Investments by Bodie, Kane and Marcus (http://www.amazon.com/Investments-Zvi-Bodie/dp/007293414X/re...). My corporate finance prof encouraged me to look into it, then it was required reading for an economics course I took later. I understand it's the standard-bearer in most finance departments, so there's no going wrong if you're willing to work through the technical parts.

Re: Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing?

#50

Post by nazgulnarsil »

breck wrote: post #34
lowkey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 te…

commodity index, alternative energy index. stick to indexes, just not mutual fund or stock indexes.

commodities go up when the stock market goes down and vice-versa. if the recession gets worse, commodities will soar. wait until stock prices are bottoming out (timing is luck) and then switcharoo, get out of commodities and into stocks. this is what the smart money did in the 70's and 80's and this time around it is our turn.

http://www.zealllc.com/2007/longwave3.htm

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