Ask HN: How can I learn macroeconomics properly?

0. Don't try to make your money investing, learn a skill and develop it to get paid.

1. Find an undervalued company. Calculate the value of a company using DCF and be conservative. Try to buy at a high discount rate-- a dollar for $0.50

2. Just dollar cost average into your value picks and index funds. Don't try to time the market ever. All of your holdings should have a large enough time horizon that a 3-year bear market is a blip on your radar.

I think anything regarding an understanding of macro econ is going to be speculative, i.e. not actually based on the intrinsic value of a security, but trying to chase inflows and outflows of capital, which is the opposite of investing.

I am a baby in the world of money but the two books that I thought were amazing at de-mistifying investing were the Intelligent Investor and the Little Book of Valuation. Also Martin Shkreli's series of livestream videos on valuation are very entertaining and free on Youtube.

Your central premise is flawed -- in particular

> Last 3 years has shown that to be a good investor you need to know macroeconomics

This is not true. It is true that 'macro' events (central bank actions, supply/demand shocks, wars, pandemics) affect prices, but it's not true that you need to be a macroeconomic expert to be a good investor:

1. Any understanding of macro you get from reading in your spare time is unlikely to be good enough to use as the basis for an investment strategy (although you may think it is -- but this will just lead to you making bad, or at best random, market timing decisions)

2. Even if you could become an expert, there isn't a clear mapping from macroeconomic outcomes to asset prices. So you not only need to be right about the macro picture, you need to be right about the effect it will have on asset prices (including the second- and third-order effects, e.g. central bank and other investor reactions to the macro outcomes)

3. Even if you do become a macro expert, and you have the correct mapping from macro outcomes to asset prices, it's not enough. You don't only need to be right about the macro outcomes, you need to be more right than the market. The market is made up of a huge number of diverse actors, many of whom have access to vast resources and spent literally all of their waking time trying to use macro data to predict asset prices. Are you better than them?

4. Even if the above can all be overcome -- is this really the highest return use of your time (compared to e.g. getting better at your day job and increasing your income, or starting a company in your area of expertise and getting rich that way)

That all sounds daunting, but fortunately there's a solution! Simply buy a diversified set of investments in a tax-efficient wrapper for a total cost of < 10 basis points annually, and add capital to the pot regularly, and you will get great investment results over any 25-30 year time horizon, with essentially zero effort.

If you wouldn't mind letting me know when you figure this out, let us all know. :)

In all seriousness, I think learning complexity science is a good step to learning macroeconomics.

What are you planning on doing with this? Investing?

You've got an opportunity cost here. You can either spend a lot of your surplus effort on learning macroëconomics in the hopes that it'll enable you to spend a lot of time in the future making investment decisions that might let you time the market a little better. Alternatively, you could just put your money in index funds and spend that effort on improving your standing in your current profession so as to make more money which you could then invest in those index funds.

Which one is going to give you the biggest return by the time you're old and ready to retire? What kind of life do you want to lead?