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Ask HN: How to start learning about investments?

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Re: Ask HN: How to start learning about investments?

#101

You’ve got some good recommendations here. To them, I’ll add: don’t procrastinate endlessly. Find a plan that seems reasonable and start now . If you want to keep learning, feel free, but I’d set a date no later than Jan 31, 2022 to have made your first investment according to the plan.

But what if the next years will be different from the past years? What if we are reaching a point where the system breaks for good? My procrastinator brain likes to put some existential dread out there. Can I just answer it with "if it will break we will be fucked anyway"?

I think that in any scenario where society continues that owning shares of important companies will be economically valuable.

To that end, I think most people want a “get rich slowly” strategy where, rather than gamble on the next Dogecoin, you buy broad-based indexes (or other mutual fund make ups) regularly and sustained over a long period. “Time in the market beats timing the market.”

If that’s not enough, read up on the worst market timer: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market...

There’s no guarantee that we’ll continue to see low double-digit gains. I’m personally modeling my retirement on a 5% real return CAGR (close to half of the historical, long-run average) and any actual returns over that mean that I will work longer than I strictly had to and become a head-start to my kids.

Re: Ask HN: How to start learning about investments?

#102
post #19

Learning about it isn't hard. Assuming you are good with numbers and logics. Especially value investing. Read a few good books. A few will do. The Intelligent Investor or books from Peter Lynch and Warren Buffet if you want to keep it short. You can ignore all the others. Have a understanding of how business in different industries works. They all have some specialities, but from a high level overview they aren't all…

> Especially value investing. Value investing had a long stretch of lower returns than other strategies: * https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2018/01/24/whats-wrong-wit... If "99.999% of Investment is an exercise of patient and emotion", then I think most people would be hard pressed to see 'sub-optimal' results on a strategy for a decade and manage to stick with it.

>Unfortunately there was no definitive answer as to whether value is better than growth. I was not able to detect any clear trend; the results depended on the time period under analysis.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/1491372-value-versus-growth...

Re: Ask HN: How to start learning about investments?

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if the next years will be different from the past years? What if we are reaching a point where the system breaks for good? My procrastinator brain likes to put some existential dread out there. Can I just answer it with "if it will break we will be fucked anyway"?

I think that in any scenario where society continues that owning shares of important companies will be economically valuable. To that end, I think most people want a “get rich slowly” strategy where, rather than gamble on the next Dogecoin, you buy broad-based indexes (or other mutual fund make ups) regularly and sustained over a long period. “Time in the market beats timing the market.” If that’s not enough, read up…

Thank you

Re: Ask HN: How to start learning about investments?

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if the next years will be different from the past years? What if we are reaching a point where the system breaks for good? My procrastinator brain likes to put some existential dread out there. Can I just answer it with "if it will break we will be fucked anyway"?

I think that in any scenario where society continues that owning shares of important companies will be economically valuable. To that end, I think most people want a “get rich slowly” strategy where, rather than gamble on the next Dogecoin, you buy broad-based indexes (or other mutual fund make ups) regularly and sustained over a long period. “Time in the market beats timing the market.” If that’s not enough, read up…

But from that 5% you have to subtract the inflation rate.
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