http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smhk3chokSI

I found this talk on starting a business. Seemed like good advice to me.

Amazing thread. These books are best for beginners. It will help them to learn investing do's and donts

Guys, I just finish the intelligent investor and I am starting security analysis but its suggest to have an accounting base, I was thinking reading the interpretations of financial statement by Graham. What you guys think or would read it something else?
Thank you
Jm

Fund or club? Many books on Amazon on investment clubs.

recommendations for a book on learning about dividends pls. theres too many to choose from on amazon. most of the books out there seem to be about investing strategies with dividends where as i just want a book that explains the nuts and bolts of how dividends work.

From wikipedia:
A dividend is a payment made by a corporation to its shareholders, usually as a distribution of profits.[1] When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, it can either re-invest it in the business (called retained earnings), or it can distribute it to shareholders. A corporation may retain a portion of its earnings and pay the remainder as a dividend. Distribution to shareholders can be in cash (usually a deposit into a bank account) or, if the corporation has a dividend reinvestment plan, the amount can be paid by the issue of further shares or share repurchase.[2][3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend

What else do you need to know?

new to this thread. I have done some investing in my life, pry not very good though. I had a sharebuilder account and started throwing money in funds that were rated high and picked up some more conservative funds like ETFs. pry ended up paying way more in fees than i should of. Anyway, i withdrew everything from my SB account to downpay my home. I still have a nice chunk in a Prudential account (SEP IRA, Roth, and standard IRA accounts), a good amount for a person my age of 27. I need to start planning much better as I start a family, in terms of investing and budgeting better.

I have started my first real study into investing, starting with the Boglehead's guide to investing, my first book. I wanted to pursue finance in college but poker lead me to dropping out after ~2.5 years, only which some of that time I was efficient. All good, poker has been good and I am enjoying it and I am currently pretty optimistic, even while living in the US and A(Indiana).

I am writing because I am going to use this thread for knowledge and where to seek that knowledge. My first move I think should be looking to reduce my investing expenses/fees, I think it would be wise to forgo Prudential and my "financial professional." I am not even aware of what I pay in fees or expenses but I know it is pry much worse than it should be. I want to get my IRA accounts into something more cost efficient like ETF's. Is this hard to do? Are there penalties I would pay if i moved from Prudential funds to ETFs through an online broker? Is that wisest or would it be smarter to go through something like Vanguard directly? I want this money to stay allocated toward retirement, so keep it all in my SEP, Roth, traditional accounts, but just in different funds with lower expenses. Is this the definition of rolling it over?

I was aware of the above before I started reading the Bogleheads book but that seems to be the general theme of the book, keep costs low and let that "expense money" compund for me, rather than watch it go to someone else's Benz

This is true, a 1% difference over 40 or 50 years makes a huge difference.

I don't know much about Prudential, but unless the funds you are in are back end load funds then you shouldn't have any penalties. Since all of these accounts are tax deferred you should be able to sell them, and then transfer the money to a new account of the same type.

You can open an IRA at many different institutions. Where you open it is up to what you want to invest in. If you want low cost Vanguard funds, then open it at Vanguard. If you want to trade stocks, then find a discount broker.
I'm sure Vanguard or Fidelity would help walk you through the process.
You might want to try the Boglehead forum:
http://www.bogleheads.org/

I believe strongly in passive investing, which is what you are leaning towards. It doesn't really matter if you do it in ETF's or low cost mutual funds. Figure out what asset allocation you need and then pick the funds or etfs that get you there. Here is the Boglehead Wiki, they have a 3 fund portfolio and a 4 fund portfolio that give you a good starting point.
http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page

Good luck

i am very thankful for your time and answers. going to check out the link now, you guys rule.

Hey guys I'm an eager entrepreneur. Which books regarding business would you guys recommend?

It sounds like it's very hard to make any decent money without a huge bankroll (100k+ ?) and many years of experience.

For a complete newbie (and student) who wants to learn about trading, what is a good minimum starting bankroll for playing about with?

I have picked up a few books and have started to read them but I am not sure if I am wasting my time or not.
From reading a bit on here it sounds like its near impossible to make any money by yourself.

I am more interesting in how it all works as I had absolutely no idea (until I started reading a book a few days ago) but I would also like to learn about the bankroll side of it, expectations, etc for newbies.

Has anyone read:

The Map and the Territory: Risk, Human Nature, and the Future of Forecasting by Alan Greenspan?

trying to spend an amazon gift card on books regarding probability/forecasting/etc, trying to decide between maybe this and "Predictive Analysis" by Eric Seigal.

any other thoughts/suggestions?

2 books in the top 5 are:

Stocks for the Long Run - Seigel
100 to 1 in the Stock Market - Phelps

I wish this thread would be taken down as there are political overtones in the original message. Keynesism is not economics, it is a crime.

Anything by Nassim Taleb is the best stuff on prediction/forecasting. I also enjoyed The Signal and The Noise by Nate Silver.

Greenspan releasing a book on forecasting is like Bush releasing a book on pacifism. I wouldn't read it if you paid me.

Q: I'm looking for blogs that are by poker players that took an interest in trading (or alternative 'business'-related/non-poker moneymaking adventures), and have outlined their progress in these fields over a period of time. eg. Ljjones (Masterlj) at cardrunners discussed trading a lot. And then post-Black Friday he kind of disappeared from 2p2 and cr so I assume he took the trading much more serious.

Q2: eg. cardrunners. If you had a guarantee that poker (either online or live) was profitable and a beatable game for the next 100 years, you could use the tools found at cr to give you a firm basis for an income for the rest of your life.

So what i'm looking for is something similar but for a different industry. Is there an online training site for let's say trading, or coding, or x? You know, I'd like to know if there were a list of sites (no matter what the industry) that could turn me from a beginner into an intermediate level person at that skill/job. And from this level, it's up to me where I want to take it.

Thanks

I don't know about anything finance or investing. I was wondering if anybody could please reccomend me some free online resources that are begginer-friendly?

http://www.morningstar.com/cover/Classroom.html

Thanks for the link, it's really been helping me a lot and is easy for a beginner such as myself to understand.

Thoughts on Jim Cramer's new book get rich carefully?

He's an idiot, so I wouldn't waste my time. That's my thought on it.

Just started reading Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products on my Kindle app and I find it pretty interesting 1/3 in (also have consumer behaviour this year in school). Will finish it this weekend when my schedule opens up and give my opinion on it.

Nir Eyal also runs a blog at www.nirandfar.com

I'm currently reading Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin. It doesn't go very in depth on the technical side but it gives a great overview of the major players involved with and the conditions that lead to the demise of Lehman Brothers.

Lehman brothers was a mistake. They should have never let it fail.

Almost through Soros on Soros and loved the history aspect of the markets throughout the book.

Can anyone recommend other books that walk through economic history of different countries and the rise and fall of their markets ?

why not?