instead of letting your $ sit in the bank account with little interest.... buy gold:ifyouknow:

the argument against gold is that
1. pays no dividends
2. no intrinsic value. it wont grow like a business / economy

although, countries do flock to gold in bearish times i believe.

Buddy, how's that VRX trade working out for you? How's Bernie Sanders doing? Did you read The Onion this week before you trade? How does it feel being wrong most of the time and refusing to learn?

You and this bozo m4kv4li something something are like most newbies, don't want to learn the hard way (the only way in investing) and you want to look down on people who have gone through that phase. You want people to spoon feed you some stock tips and hope to make a quick buck. Why don't you go to Vegas there are free buffet. Speaking of buffett, you are like flock of bozos copying investors like Buffett, Icahn or Ackman (at his peak). Like a bozo explosion.

You think doing some math will make you a good investor? It will not. Your PE calculation doesn't mean dick by itself. You know why? Market discounts the future. For example, ff the market feel a bright future for company A, it will support A to PE 1000. Read that sentence again and google AMZN. Lots of human emotion involves in investing ,it's one of the greatest psychology games along with politics. While doing due diligence is necessary and involves TA, it's only a small and easy part to master. Heck, I spend every Sunday doing DD scan for following week. It's like taking a shit: takes time and it stinks but you gotta do it.

For newbie to start, trancehead mentioned a strategy with low risk low cost ETF are a very good way to start to put the majority of your money in. I started the same way and 3/4 of my stock market ports to this day are ETF funds. Besides that, put aside 2k-5k educational fund to learn the market (knowing that there's a good chance you will lose it all). StockTwits is a good platform to learn, observe guys that are suggested by the StockTwits admin themselves. Watch and learn. Do not copy their trades. Do not buy and chat room memberships, the free materials are plenty. Make your own trade when you are ready.

I'd just tune guys that go on no basis for their remarks out. My strategy doesn't earn a lot fast but it's steady and compounding. Some days I can kill it, some days I can't and I gotta scalp. I'm happy if my day trade can pay my month's bills and food. Problem with Stocktwits is that it's no better than a public forum. Stock market sometimes is driven so heavily by sentiment that fundamentals are ignored almost completely.

Whether you chart or not, sometimes a headfake drops and then you are SOL. Who knew Microsoft was gonna purchase linkedin? No retail would have saw that coming with any degree of certainty. That day shorts got messed up big time. Doing the math will definitely help but it's no guarantee. Even big funds like Sequoia fund was completely devastated with VRX losses after some serious accounting issues and scandals with philador.

Remember that you not only compete with other people in trades, you gotta compete with machines that may buy and sell within milliseconds. Algos will be algoing and you gotta sit there and twiddle your thumbs waiting for price targets to hit which may never happen. Every single investment is susceptible to emotion. There is not one that doesn't involve some human emotion in trading. You can do all the right things, chart all you want, learn everything there is to learn but some times even that's not enough.

http://booksquotes66.com/img/2016/01...uc-Picard-.jpg

Good luck to all those willing to take a dip into the stock market cesspool.

I'm no Warren Buffet, but these are rules I usually follow:
1) Buy stocks you know
2) Buy stocks $10 and above
3) Buy stocks that pays you to wait (dividends)
4) Buy stocks you think you can own forever (and not based off spikes)
5) When your stock falls 20% or above, average down (unless the fundamentals have changed drastically)

I'm sure there's plenty of holes you can find. But they work for me. :)

thats my approach.

*HI FIVE* Spoon! :fullofwin:

eureka, and here I thought that "doing maths" was the secret

the secret is to watch and learn from the pros like Nikko

lose a bunch of $ until you have gained the psychic wisdom to predict the markets

Started this account a few years ago at 75k. This is my progress for the last few months only as I recently switched banks (not showing two of my other holdings because hey, why would I share my research/rewards with someone who already knows it all). Dumped VRX at approximately 50c/share loss with 10k investment over a month ago.

I'm sharing my info, why don't you share yours to amaze us with your genius?

Just some friendly advice. That ego will get you in trouble in a bear market.

Great results though.

Bumping up an old thread.

Is there any course/book that I can turn to for a complete newbie to personal investment?

Background:
I've never taken interest in finance/economics when I was in school, and the only thing I know is to be frugal and save. I've been working for 8+ years, and what I have been doing with my savings is passing it to a financial advisor and let them invest it for me. Now that I am working a full time job, I want to be more aware of what is happening to my money, and have more control/be more responsible as to what's happening to it.

Goal:
I'll be lying if I'm satisfied as long as my savings is able to keep up with inflation, because I think my FA is doing fine with my savings so far. However, I know I'm not super smart, so I'm not looking into making big money from investing.

I'm fortunate enough, that my family is doing quite well, and they are planning to help me out with monetary (to start a family), so I want to have some knowledge as to decide what I should invest into. Real estate? Stocks? etc. etc.

I tried reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham and got lost/bored within the first few pages because of how little I know about finance.

robert kiyosaki - cashflow quadrant.

Not only does it about personal investments, it talks about how you as a person need to change to get there. Alot of books are dull and boring to read, there are real life examples, and humor included free of charge in this book.

Ontop of that, it talks about leaving the 9-5 job, using other peoples time and money to your advantage, control of your expenses, an overall amazing read.

Theres alot of garbage out there, i dont reccomend books because they are mostly good for firepaper, this is an exception.

Uh, richdad poor dad had some good points, but it lacked actual depth and insight. And 1/8 of the book was self promoting his follow up book Cashflow quadrant.

To me, that 1/8 means he is smarter than the rest of book writers.

When a car mechanic is asked to replace an alternator, 1/8 of the time, he is also looking for something else to recommend be replaced, or maintained.
When an accountant does your taxes, he asks if you have any friends that need theirs done.

They can both just do what they were asked, but how you incorporate future work (talking about promoting other books) is what keep your income moving forward. Kappa