Hey there, My first real post.
Some help in starting up would be appreciated.
A bit about myself:
- I am a very balanced well rounded person. I am pretty good at poker (i.e could make 10-15$ / hr easily). I think there is some correlation to stocks and poker, as far as the statistics go, or the feelings... You can never be based off feelings ever in both
- Started investing with my brother and mine common money. He is an account manager in some bank, finished economics. He wanted to get in stocks, I did too. He just invested our money in a random stock, cuz the balance sheet looked good and someone had told him it will rise in the summer.... I knew this was not the right way, that is like gambling. When I would ask him why he put our money in this company and not another one, he had no answer. Ending - 40% losses and ~$4k down the drain.
My questions:
- I know from my poker history, the best way I learned was from the books, classics usually, that taught you easy strong fundamentals. Right now I started reading "The Intelligent Investor" and "The Warren Buffet Essays". I saw stock book listings in numerous sites, but there are so many books and I am not sure. Any simple fundamental advices?
- Is there a way to know you have made a good investment? In poker whether you win or lose, you know approximately (using the rules you know), if you ve made a good decision or not. Can such thing happen in investing?
- Is there money to be made? Again in poker there are a lot of people there "just to lose money", i.e they do not care about rules, mathematics, statistics. They care about their hunch, their ego and feelings. That is where the possibility to make money comes from. Now I am assuming for one to be able to successfully invest "over the average", then someone else has to make a "below the average" investment. Long story short, how smart and knowledgeable is the average investor. Is the market full of sharks?
Thanks to anyone who ll end up reading this...
And off to read the stickies I go :)
