Stocks and Shares - Newbie - Anything I can read?

[garylythgoe]

I have a desire to learn a bit more about stocks and shares.

For two reasons I guess...

A) To understand it all a bit more, and get to grips with it as I'm drawn to it.
B) To see if I want to dip my toes in.

Is there anywhere or any kind of guides online, that I can read? Almost as a 'getting' started?

Thanks!

[walm]

Read Flash Boys by Michael Lewis and it will make you so angry that you will never want to put any cash through an exchange ever again.
This in itself will save you much $$.

/not completely serious but not completely not serious neither.

[Mr Noble]

This book is fantasic if you want to take control of your own pension and stop paying unnecessary fees to IFAs and fund managers. A very good read.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smarter-Investing-Simpler-...

[sealtt]

To gain some perspective on the world of finance, a great start would be The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism by John Bogle

walm said:

Read Flash Boys by Michael Lewis and it will make you so angry that you will never want to put any cash through an exchange ever again.
This in itself will save you much $$.

/not completely serious but not completely not serious neither.

Too true - a great read in any case!

[garylythgoe]

Thanks guys!

I am going to start with the Hargreaves Lansdown suggestion, and see where that takes me.

[AnimalMother]

Mr Noble said:

This book is fantasic if you want to take control of your own pension and stop paying unnecessary fees to IFAs and fund managers. A very good read.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smarter-Investing-Simpler-...

There is an updated version of the above, which on your recommendation I have ordered. Thanks

[eps]

I quite liked reading the Motley Fool books, very interesting reading

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Motley-Fool-Investment...

[CRB14]

One of the 'go to' books that is often recommended is The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. To be honest I found it incredibly boring and a bit old hat now. I tried to persist but gave up - just wasn't an enjoyable read.

There are other lifestyle / money type books though that I've also seen recommended being Rich Dad Poor Dad and the Millionaire Next Door.

I personally go for financial blogs such as Monevator and Under the Money Tree. Some of their articles should be taken with a pinch of salt but the Monevator is keen to highlight the benefits of passive investing rather than stock picking (as in reality people don't often win at that).

[walm]

CRB14 said:

Monevator is keen to highlight the benefits of passive investing rather than stock picking (as in reality people don't often win at that).

Can't stress my agreement with that enough.

If it was so easy to pick stocks and beat the market everyone would be doing it.

In fact they would all be running multi-billion dollar hedge funds.

But they aren't, so it isn't.

[Ozzie Osmond]

On the other hand it IS a market - if all the players in that market were "followers" there were no "leaders" and the market would never go anywhere. In fact it wouldn't be a market at all.

Tracking can be held back by two factors,

• Being late to the party, and
• Being slow to jump off a sinking ship.

However, much has been written on this subject and very often the cost of doing proper research and management can outweigh the additional returns earned by doing it!

[walm]

Ozzie Osmond said:

On the other hand it IS a market - if all the players in that market were "followers" there were no "leaders" and the market would never go anywhere. In fact it wouldn't be a market at all.

That's only true if there were no cross-asset reallocation.
If people suddenly think property and bonds are a rip-off while equities look better value then there will be a rush of capital into equities which will push up the prices.

[twinturboz]

There are a plethora of books out there, once you know the basics give these a go, I've found them useful along the way.


Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

How to make money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad

Trade like a stock market wizard - How to achieve super performance in stocks in any market.

Technical analysis of the financial markets

Trading in the Zone - (this one is more about phycology rather than actual trading details)

Come into my trading room

The New Trading for a Living: Psychology, Discipline, Trading Tools and Systems, Risk Control, Trade Management

Market Wizards - Interviews with top traders

Also theres a series of interviews on this site which may be helpful just to give you an insight. http://chatwithtraders.com/podcast/

Just remember it will take a long long time and hours and hours of screen time before you start to really get it.

The stats are:
40% of traders quit within a month
87% of traders quit within 3 years
93% of traders quit within 5 years

Edited by twinturboz on Thursday 10th March 12:39

[AnimalMother]

AnimalMother said:

Mr Noble said:

This book is fantasic if you want to take control of your own pension and stop paying unnecessary fees to IFAs and fund managers. A very good read.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smarter-Investing-Simpler-...

There is an updated version of the above, which on your recommendation I have ordered. Thanks

I'm 1/2 way through that book, so far he's spent a few hundred pages telling me I wont be able to beat the FTSE, I wont be able to pick active funds that will beat the FTSE and I should just invest in tracker/passive type funds. He makes a strong case for it, backed up by this:

Man vs machine: How Woodford was beaten by a computer
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance...

[Ozzie Osmond]

Imagine you are offered a choice of two rafts for an exciting ride down a fast-flowing river. One raft has paddles and the other doesn't but statistics show they both reach the end of the journey at about the same time.

Which raft would you choose?


I just can't get excited about passive investing.

[walm]

Ozzie Osmond said:

I just can't get excited about passive investing.

That's the whole point.
Craving that excitement costs retail punters £££.

Your analogy should include a part which explains that paddle hire costs 5-10% extra.

[Hoofy]

Ozzie Osmond said:

Imagine you are offered a choice of two rafts for an exciting ride down a fast-flowing river. One raft has paddles and the other doesn't but statistics show they both reach the end of the journey at about the same time.

Which raft would you choose?


I just can't get excited about passive investing.

Statistics actually show that you lose one paddle, panic and end up guiding your raft with the remaining paddle into the rocks, smash up your raft and have to swim to shore way before you reach the destination. You then buy another raft, and 3 paddles, but the same thing happens. Now you're 2 rafts and 5 paddles down. Meanwhile your wife is nagging at you to stop as you're browsing RaftPaddlingAcademy.com considering getting some live raft training. And then you learn about the current sea markets.

Edited by Hoofy on Monday 14th March 14:18

[Ozzie Osmond]

Statistics?



(....and apparently a moderately competent oarsman!)

OzOs

[AnimalMother]

Ozzie Osmond said:

Imagine you are offered a choice of two rafts for an exciting ride down a fast-flowing river. One raft has paddles and the other doesn't but statistics show they both reach the end of the journey at about the same time.

Which raft would you choose?


I just can't get excited about passive investing.

I struggling to be excited enough to finish reading it.

[Ozzie Osmond]

"The rise of the low fee index fund is fantastic. Index funds are a vast improvement over many of the high fee stock picking funds that are out there. But we need to understand index funds for what they actually are and not what they’re marketed as. Get informed on this debate as it’s one of the most important debates of our times as indexing grows in popularity."

Taken from "The Myth of Passive Investing". Full article on this link,
http://www.pragcap.com/the-myth-of-passive-investi...