How to start learning about investments?

Some books that I read and found useful. These are mostly older books that have withstood numerous market cycles. Even if you decide to branch out, these are a good base to start from.

1. “Random Walk Down Wall Street” to understand index funds and why they generally outperform.

2. “Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits” for a general understanding of how to choose stocks (and companies) for the long-term

3. “The Intelligent Investor” for understanding the some of the human challenges of investing.

If you’re short on time and don’t want to make this a hobby, read #1.

The Bogleheads' Guide To Investing is the best book to understanding investing, too. https://archive.org/details/the-bogleheads-guide-to-investin...

Put spare money every now and then into VOO or VT or similar and forget. No knowledge needed and time investment is like a few minutes of your time a month/quarter/year. Squeezing more alpha than that and not losing it, properly done (i.e. not gambling), is at least a part-time job. Chances are you'll do better putting that time into your own career.

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 that different. And you will soon realise 95% of the internet have no clue how business works.

And that's it. Then 99.999% of Investment is an exercise of patient and emotion. Which experience in life suggest to me is something that can not be taught. You will have to go through your own emotional rollercoaster to learn it.

Oh. Ignore all mainstream media report, much like the internet 99% of them are junk, and by the time they reach mainstream media they are already late. ( Look at Lumber pricing in the past 12 months and mainstream media on Lumber reports to get an idea )

Finally nearly all comment and opinion on investment are rubbish. Even Warren Buffett could be wrong. That is including this comment you are reading. Make your own investment path and judgement.

Go to Bogleheads https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started. There is an active forum https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php . Bogleheads is named after Jack Bogle, the late founder of the Vanguard family of funds and a champion of stock index funds. Bogleheads is not the place to learn about crypto or FX trading. They generally advise against non-traditional investments.

> There are sites like investopedia but they seem generic and articles aren't well connected with each other.

You'll see this theme repeated throughout your investment learning. Investing is a huge space with hundreds of different 'instruments', the thing that has gotten me the most comfortable is just time and exposure to all of the different aspects.

I think in the beginning you need a choose a path and deep dive into it. I would start with your immediate goals, which sounds like to find somewhere relatively safe to park your money till you're ready for more active investing. In addition to BogleHeads I would explore Vanguards ETF offerings here https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/list#/etf/asset-c... .

Periodicals are also a fun way to learn , Barrons is good, WSJ. I'd read these cover to cover the first few months.

Good luck have fun!

Through your journey, try to find meaning in these quotes.

When I first heard them, they sounded reasonable, but I didn’t know if they were just folksy wisdom or hard truths. I tried to resolve which is what. They are all hard truths.

1. You can’t stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you’re smarter than he is and he’s doing these things and he’s getting rich

2. The stock market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent

3. I recommend the S&P 500 index fund (from a money manager)

4. The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect

5. I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only 20 slots in it so that you had 20 punches—representing all the investments that you got to make in a lifetime. And once you’d punched through the card, you couldn’t make any more investments at all.

6. If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, the question becomes: When?

> I want to start investing some money and before doing it I want to learn how to do it.

Start with reading two books:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Index_Card (more US specific)

* Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School (Second Edition) by Andrew Hallam (author is a Canadian ex-pat, but the advice is general/international)

For reasons why you should (probably) not invest in individual stocks see:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street

It was originally written in 1973 and still relevant (new editions cover fads that have come and gone since the original publication).

The first thing to understand is that in your first 5-10 years of investing, you will do worse, probably much worse, than simply investing in a broad index.

Investing, seen as a skill, is pretty unique in being in that you need to become better than most of the others for it to even make sense. You don't need to be better than the median plumber to make good money as a plumber for example.

So if you just want to "learn about investing" in order to make money, I would not bother, unless you want to make this your full time job for the next decade or so.

But every one should learn about economics and the financial system, regardless. I would recommend introductory courses from The Teaching Company/Great Courses. Or indeed a mooc like Coursera, they have some excellent material, not sure why you want to avoid that.

Stay away from active investing. I run a fintech investing app and the only investments I have are whatever my 401k is doing. I don't know and don't care about anything else the market is doing.

Why? It consumes you. When you're actively investing you become a slave to CNBC, futures charts, and 1 minute tickers. You'll start waking up at 4am to watch the premarket. You'll spend an inordinate amount of time chasing returns that, in all likelihood, will end up less than tracking the market, to the detriment of your family, health, and career.

Keep this in mind as you are learning:

- people trying to sell you stuff will say things like “if you believe X has the potential to become the next dominant investment trend…”, because they make money on selling you speculative advice that is essentially worthless

- when people say “the market”, they generally mean broadly diversified indexes like the S&P 500

- no one can beat the market over time with any continued success, and anyone claiming to be able to do that for you wouldn’t need your money to make gains for themselves

- whatever you invest in, pay super close attention to the fees, because the higher the fees, the lower your returns will be

- internalize the phrase “time in the market beats timing the market”, and learn what it really means

- If the only thing you ever did was invest in a total market index fund with low fees, you’ll probably be pretty happy with the results over time

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.

Buy some VOO every month. Keep doing it. Don’t look at prices for the next few decades.

Depends on your goals really.

If you want to become proficient in personal asset management, read Bogleheads.

Personally, my goal is to earn a CPA and CFA. Yes it’s credentialism, but it can’t hurt to have other than the time it takes to get the work experience.

Read any of William Bernstein's books. The Investor's Manifesto is a good one.

If you don't want to engage in the emotional rollercoaster of price, it's a good idea to set your investments on autopilot--have your broker automatically buy a certain amount each month without having to think about it. Don't touch it! (Except for rebalancing)

Study the teachings of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.

There is a Reddit community for that: r/brkb

https://old.reddit.com/r/brkb/

Understand the concept of intrinsic value (versus market price).

Think of shares as "part of a business".

Watch the professionals at Berkshire Hathaway: what are they doing today?

You can start by subscribing to newsletters that can give you some exposure to all these topics and you can learn at your own pace. WSJ newsletters are pretty good. I run a stock market newsletter targeted for casual and beginner investors https://bullish.email

I'd start with a couple of great books you should be able to get from the library:

   * The Four Pillars of Investing: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio-ebook/dp/B0041842TW
   * Are You a Stock or a Bond: https://www.amazon.com/Are-You-Stock-Bond-Financial/dp/0133115291
   * A Random Walk Down Wall Street: https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/0393358380

All of these point to fundamentals about investing:

   * The first step is to identify your risk tolerance and goals. That's way more important that the specific vehicles of investing.
   * Unless you are a professional investor, it is highly unlikely you'll beat the professionals (and not likely even then) so broad diversification is a good idea.

I’ve read all of the popular books. Rich Dad Poor Dad. The Intelligent Investor. Books about Buffett. But what stick in my mind is 1) The Little Book of Behavioral Investing and 2) Zero To One. The latter is not an investing book per se, but the ideas in it have been worth seven figures to me so far.

first learn from the GOATs: Warren Buffet, Peter Thiel, and my personal favorite Peter Lynch. (feel free to extend this list in the comments)

then for technical, how-to details, you just need to read & apply. for most people (ie. not someone who plans doing finance for a living, as a job) you don't need to learn a whole lot about every financial instrument. learn some info about what is out there, make your choice and let your investments sit as long as possible.

most no-brainer investment strategy is roughly 30% S&P 500, 30% in FAANG, 20% your choice (e.g. higher risk such as crypto, business, etc), <10% living expanses, remaining 10% - have fun. (house, car, vacation...)

What are you trying to get money for? If it’s retirement, you could do a lot worse than a low-fee target retirement date fund.

As others have mentioned, Boggleheads.

Personally I would recommend the following, especially if you're more concerned with retirement than investments:

1. The Simple Path to Wealth (or just listen to the author get interviewed on the following podcasts):

A. Afford Anything

B. Bigger Pockets Money Podcast

C. Radical Personal Finance

2. Mr. Money Mustache

I wrote a post about this that you should find useful:

https://ivans.io/investing-starter-kit/

Thanks for all comments, it's helpful.

Is there a sort of a digital playground for financial instruments?

I would like to simulate some strategies, construct some virtual portfolios of stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and observe after one year how well each strategy did.

The general advice is to buy an index fund because over a long period of time the market will rise.

But what if I buy before a bear period? I will be stuck there 10 years just to recover my money and another 10 years to make some returns.

John Oliver had a great bit on retirement plans [1] if you're interested in passive investing. I've pretty much only followed this advice since 2016, with minor changes accounting for my personal situation. My Vanguard portfolio has tracked the market, which means my annualized rate of return is about 12%, at an expense ratio of .1% (how much I pay in fees of that original 12%.) Of course that won't last forever, but it's a good balance of risk and return. A bank account usually pays around .25-1% a year.

Active investors, on average, do as well as passive investors, but incur greater costs. [2] I only "actively invest" for fun, and as a way of connecting with my friends and family who also enjoy the stock market casino.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvZSpET11ZY

[2] Warren Buffett's side of https://longbets.org/362/

Besides learning about "investing", I would also recommend you take a step back and look at your relationship with money generally. I recommend The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel as a good start:

> Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. How to manage money, invest it, and make business decisions are typically considered to involve a lot of mathematical calculations, where data and formulae tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world, people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In the psychology of money, the author shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important matters.

* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41881472-the-psycholo...

Money is a 'tool' that you should use in your life to accomplish particular goals. Interview with the author:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSaRb-iFwPA

* https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/128

Another good book on "non-financial investing":

> From why we should place more value on social and human capital, we look into why financial planning has a profound impact on how you manage your investments. We touch on direct indexing, the relationship between money and happiness, and the unexpected yet incredible perspectives that came from giving advisors a license to tell their stories.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wxTVjHLqwM

* https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/126

* https://www.amazon.com/How-Invest-My-Money-Finance/dp/085719...

You think you are diversified, but how much do you have on RED.

There are a lot of junk resources that just want to sell you things and are a waste of time. It takes a certain level of expertise just to find competent teachers. But I'll try to briefly summarize what I wish I had known when I started.

~80% of this game is showing up. (Pareto Principle.) Wealthfront, Betterment, or a target-date mutual fund is way better for growth than a bank account. Start there if you don't have a better idea.

If you want to be more aggressive, averaging 15-30% growth per year is not unrealistic. E.g. PSLDX alone has averaged 17.39% since inception in 2007, but it also had a 50% drawdown in that time. Some years are better, some worse. But that's one fund. You can do even better than this if you know what you are doing (e.g. https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&t...). See also, Nassim Taleb’s Barbell.

To play this game well, you need an edge. See Expected Returns (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10982323-expected-return...), a classic. The easy edge is "risk premium", but there are others. Edges are not that secret. Search https://ssrn.com for more ideas. When analyzing, beware that any monkey can optimize a backtest. The idea is to find a persistent edge, not overfit to past noise.

You also need risk management so you don't lose money too fast. You have to tolerate some volatility, but control risks. You can lose money by

1. oversizing bets (see "Kelly Criterion", also borrowing costs),

2. trading too frequently (bid-ask spread, commissions, fees, especially for mutual funds),

3. being on the wrong side of an actual edge, usually by buying too much insurance / fighting the risk premium,

4. and paying taxes and penalties (retirement accounts, beware insider trading, etc.).

If you can limit these, the remaining market noise is as likely to work for you as against you. It washes out. See my LessWrong series for more detail, starting with https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rPe6b7MCxaK8ZzYdC/you-need-m... Also, stop-loss orders suck; puts are better.

At 15-30%, you can double your money every four years or so. Paying the 10% penalty for early withdrawal from a traditional IRA is worth it for tax-free growth if you can compound for even a few years, so put as much in as you possibly can as soon as you possibly can. You can and should contribute some directly, but most will come from rolling a 401(k). The annual limit there is currently $58k if under age 50 and your plan allows after-tax contributions. If retiring early, don't contribute to Roth (you don't get to keep as much up front), but do convert to them after you stop earning and are in a lower bracket. I can't know your exact financial situation, please talk to a professional about this stuff.

Skin in the game is the start. Don’t read, don’t research first. This will give you about a year of procrastination being an intellectual and probably textbook overthinker.

But some stock, start there then answer your own questions.

Don’t start backward. Don’t even read or “follow the legend”. How many who have read Buffet and have become rich like him? None. Forge your own path.

Or join wallstreetbet, superstonk, etc. Don’t look down on them. They probably teach you more than a finance college degree does. Don’t want cnbc, bloomberg tv. Skip all that.

I think I will be mostly downvoted but it’s important to skip the extra steps that end up being a strap. Then you waste 5 years of your life while some kid getting rich in a year because they reject dogmas and all the unnecessary talking.

Long story short, just start investing.