Books on Investing?

[exalted512]

Anyone know of any good reads on investing? I'm 22 and would like to start building a portfolio and was wondering if anyone knew of books that'll help me get started making some good, informed decisions. I've been playing around with the stock market since the beginning of the year and was up about $800 up until the last 2 weeks, now I'm only up around $100 :( with only $3800 invested.

Thanks!
-Cody

[shack]

There are as many books out there as there are writers who THINK they know what they are talking about. Some have clue...most don't. Subscribe to Barron's (either on paper or online). It is a great resource to understand the market. Avoid like the plague anything Money Magagzine recommend as it is mostly fluff. It it much more important to understand the basic and fundimentals of the market itself than some "investment strategy". I am a big believer in investing in what you know.

If I had to suggest only one book it would be one first published in 1949 by an author who died in 1976. "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham. Graham pioneered security analysis and propounded the notion that a stock's price should have some connection to the underlying company's actual worth and seek to buy a stock at a price that is well below the company's intrinsic value. Obviously this is well before mutual funds, but the fundimentals are the same (and I'm not a huge fan of mutuals anyway).

[exalted512]

I'm not looking as much as I should invest in this, but more along the lines of here's your options, the good and bad about them, and what numbers to look at when investing in these options.
-Cody

[shack]

Before you consider what your options are...I think you need to know what they mean. The resources I mentioned will lead you in that direction. Ask, bid, put, call, short, long, option, P/E, split, arbitrage, ex-date, stop-limit, beta, etc...etc.. are all things you need understand to invest. If not, you are better off finding someone to recommend a good mutual fund and be done with it. If you learn the basics, you will learn what your options are and the pros and cons of each.

[eeagle]

Hi Cody,

Jim Cramer's (http://www.cramers-mad-money.com/) Mad Money....better yet just watch his show on CNBC 6 & 11 EST and you'll get everything he puts in his books....really obnoxious guy when you first tune in, but his insight and advice are right on IMHO.

The first thing he will tell you though, is to go with indexed funds or ETFs till you get 10K of Mad Money, then venture out into individual stocks or other investments. One major rule to make money grow is to stay diversified which you just can't do under 10K.

[shack]

Cramer is a hack. His track record is horrible.

[Ackaroth]

Leet hacks? Seriously though, hate to post, since I dont have experience, but he reminds me of Carlos Mencia. Anyone who yells at the audience for ratings annoys me. Which of course then would make me wary of his stuff. But I have seen the show, he does too much suggesting of actual stocks, which means if everyone watches, you dont have the edge over any of those people. These guys above saying learn the skills, not whats the flavor of the month stock, and that is better. Sort of a teach a man to fish concept.

[exalted512]

Before you consider what your options are...I think you need to know what they mean. The resources I mentioned will lead you in that direction. Ask, bid, put, call, short, long, option, P/E, split, arbitrage, ex-date, stop-limit, beta, etc...etc.. are all things you need understand to invest. If not, you are better off finding someone to recommend a good mutual fund and be done with it. If you learn the basics, you will learn what your options are and the pros and cons of each.
Thats what I'm looking for. Explanations of everything, not really, "invest in this stock this year" type stuff.
-Cody

[petrym]

I always thought the Motley Fool laid it out for the common folk till they started their own "buy this and that." After you learn the basics and are ready for the real deal, a subscription to The Value Line Investment Survey (print version) (https://www.ec-server.valueline.com/products/print1.html) will help guide the way. It's relatively expensive ($598 a year) but there's a lot of company financial info to help guide you to successful investing; it's definitely designed for the long-term investor.

Good luck!

[joeparaski]

You should probably read "The Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey before getting into all this.

Joe

[shack]

You should probably read "The Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey before getting into all this.

Joe

You mean overly simiplistic, one size fits all, Ramsey? He KNOWS NOTHING about investing. His only investment advice is to buy a good mutual fund.

Don't get me wrong. He is good for the person who can't manage money or budget and has no financial acumen at all. He has some good points...but no one will acumulate much true wealth following his mantra.

[deep bass]

Here is a pretty good book that i finished reading.
http://www.amazon.com/Investments-S-P-bind-card/dp/007331465X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211779153&sr=1-1

[polktiger]

I think Peter Lynch's "One up on Wall Street" is a good starter book. It is good for getting the feet wet without getting bogged down in the technical stuff yet.

And I agree with Shack on Dave Ramsey - he is great for a large segment of america that can't manage finances. His goal is generally "financial peace" as he puts it, and all he really teaches you to do is use a budget and pay off all your debt. I actually find his crusade aginst credit card usage funny.

[AsSiMiLaTeD]

Has anyone ever read Rule # 1 Investing by Phil Town?

Shack, you know anything about that one?

Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Rule-Strategy-Successful-Investing-Minutes/dp/0307336840/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211910041&sr=8-1

[shack]

No I've never heard of the guy. The title alone would preclude it from my reading list.

"Rule #1: The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week!"

15 minutes? Forget it.

After reading the description from Amazon and some of the "expert" reviews, I would conclude that it does have some good basic information. However, as one reviewer stated...."What I don't like about the book is the presumption that you can just sit down, at any given time, and with a little research, quickly find a company that's on fire sale and that will safely reap 15% a year or more, for many years out. It takes special circumstances to find companies in such positions."

Read it for the information and take it with a grain of salt...BUT...avoid the hype.

[PhantomOG]

I found this free download link. It's a book mainly on being a savvy investor and taking risks, in life also. I'm about a 1/3 of the way through this book and it's awesome! I've ran across alot of things I was always told to do, yet make perfect sense in terms of why NOT to do them. There are other things that I figured out years back and have paid off. Great read so far!

http://neif.org/Zurich_axioms.pdf


John

This was a good read IMO. And its free.