Looking to start investing but don't know where to begin

So I've come upon a few thousand dollars recently after taking care of loans and debts, and I'm looking to start investing so that some years down the line I might have made something on it. The Internet just has so many articles and websites on investing that it's daunting to go through and even find where to start reading!

Anyone have any websites or books that they recommend to learn how to begin investing that have been of help to them?

Seriously. Also look to a mutual fund that has averaged 8% or better over the last 10-20 years.

Here's one introduction:
http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/begfinstmtguide.htm

If you sit back and receive information about a specific investment opportunity, the odds are that it's not good.

You have to look, and you have to interpret the information. To interpret the information, you should become comfortable reading financial statements.

Ignore sizzle and focus on steak.

Those who manage them will provide info about them; check out several 'brands' and compare, and ask them any questions you have.

Fairly stable, not the most aggressive but not particularly risky. It took the Bush tumble like everything else, but it has recovered rather well.

They've got a lot of information about it on their site.

It is the best stable choice.

:thumbsup:

And if you're employed, have you studied what plan(s) your employer offers?

so I might have lost my shirt no matter what investment club I belonged to.

YMMV.

Oh, and in that club was a bunch of I've-got-mine-sucks-to-be-you Republicans.

the major reason why women are shown to have better long term stock investment outcomes than men is because women trade less often than men, hence, less of their investment is eaten away by fees

investment clubs feed a frenzy of trading, with a bunch of people who know FUCK ALL about the inside of the industry you're investing in giving all kinds of "logical" reasons why you should buy this and sell that, you get caught up in the bullshit, you believe it, it sounds good, and you lose a ton

yeah, i fell for it too, i think EVERYONE did at some point

you cannot predict stock prices/investment prices based on logic or all the smart people would be rich already, it's a random walk, but we still keep trying to out-guess randomness, we all think we're smarter than the mathematicians who've made their life's work of studying this...and it costs us all a lot of money, ego is expensive!!!

i'm bitter all right, i freely admit it

investment clubs suck, tips from friends suck, the only advice that's worth anything predictive is INSIDER knowledge which is illegal -- i don't know why it's illegal to actually KNOW something about your investment that other people don't know, but it is -- so if you have genuine inside advice, you're committing a crime

in other words, investing is SUPPOSED to be gambling and just giving all your money, fee by fee, to billionaire financial services CEOs

capitalism sucks and then you die

"you cannot predict stock prices/investment prices based on logic or all the smart people would be rich already, it's a random walk, but we still keep trying to out-guess randomness, we all think we're smarter than the mathematicians who've made their life's work of studying this..."

find a good performing Index Fund through them. They'll let you invest for free (if you fund with minimum of $2,000) and they have a bunch of good funds to choose from. I prefer a mid-cap or small-cap fund but they have a little more risk.

There is a famous investor/financial guy John Bogle and he's written a good book, "The Little Book Of Common Sense Investing" that you should check out from your local library. Here is a link to in on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1308630923&sr=8-2

He is all about the Index Funds and why they're the best thing for you without all of the fees of Mutual Funds. There is also an online forum for people discussing Index Funds by his rabid fans called "Bogleheads" and you can find that forum here:

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php

I'm more interested in individual stocks but I read the Bogleheads forum occasionally for general investment advice and knowledge. Let me know if you ARE interested in investing in individual companies and I'll give you a few more books you should read. Very few people can pick stocks better than Index Funds will perform, so unless you're really good at it or if you like the excitement that goes along with it and can handle the good and bad days, then stick with an Index Fund through Vanguard.

Good Luck!

most of them you can find at public libraries. I like how she acknowledges that money issues are almost always emotional issues, too. If you want to save money for retirement, a Roth-IRA is a great option. You fund it with pre-tax money, but withdrawals later at retirement are tax-free!

paying taxes now so that you won't have to pay taxes in 40 years when you're retired and presumably in a lower income bracket is pretty stupid-ass if you're employed

a regular IRA where you do not pay taxes NOW is the way to go

the roth-IRA appeals to the idiots living in the dreamworld who think they're going to be millionaires when they retire so they need a tax shelter decades down the line

it's a pretty good bet if you're not a millionaire now, and your parents are not millionaires, you're not going to be a millionaire in 30 years as there is very little class mobility in america, save paying on your taxes NOW and let your IRA investments grow untaxed UNTIL you withdraw them -- i really can't see how a roth-IRA can stack up to a traditional IRA, it's simply a scheme to get people moving their money around some more so some hustler at a financial services company can pick up some of your money

nothing against suze but she's hustling bullshit like all the rest of them -- the argument that a roth is better than a traditional IRA looks very shaky to me if you're considering what real people earn and save (roths are good for upper middle class earners)

we've all read investment books at the public library, on teevee, at the investment club, and so on...and you know what? we're all fucking broke! if that stuff worked, we'd know it by now

there aren't any good investments right now, really, for my money my best investment was paying off my house so i have a place to stay even though i haven't had work in ages, now that was an investment that paid off, if i had it to do over, i would stick with index funds, since bankruptcy has become a management tool for corporations, investing in individual stock means that you end up eating lots of losses...GM may have made a comeback but the individual stockholders don't get a comeback, they lose their entire investment every time their co. declares bankruptcy

does suze or the angry man on teevee or anybody else bother to point THAT out? no, because you would have nothing to talk about on your high paid bullshit teevee show if you didn't hawk individual stocks and bullshit investment books

for a few thousand dollars, the best investment is to pay off all of one's debts and set up an emergency fund, but CDs and other liquid investments are paying crap right now, so it isn't much of an "investment," more of a way to keep one's options open

A "load" is a fee that you pay for the privilege of investing with the fund charging it. Some are front load, others back. A typical front load would be five percent of yur principal right off the top. For example, you think you invested $10,000 but with the front load, you're actually at $9,500. Backend loans would be a graduated system. For example, if you cash out the first year, you'd have to pay 5%. The second year, 4%. The third year 3%, and so on. If you go into your bank and ask their "investment banker" to help you pick out a fund, they will invariably direct you to load funds for which the salesman (that so-called "investment banker") will derive a commission.

Vanguard and Fidelity are two fund families that are "no-load," which is what you want, and can be looked into by sending away for the prospectus. They are funds with low expense fees, which is also what you want. If a fund has an expense fee of more than 1%, stay away.

In our current economy, you might want to look into "conservative allocation" funds. Below is a link that explains a little more about one of them with links to others and why this class of fund be a good fit for you.

http://money.usnews.com/funds/permanent-portfolio-permanent-portfolio/prpfx

Hope this helps.

is an "A" share, front loaded fund?

American Funds, Growth Fund of America (AGTHX)
In fact, American Funds has 8 majority equity funds - all "A" shares in the top 25 list linked below.
Fidelity has ONE and Vanguard has 3. (The other Fidelity and Vanguard funds on the list are either institutional shares, Bond funds or money market funds.)
American Funds must be doing something right.

With no load funds you get exactly what you pay for.


http://www.marketwatch.com/tools/mutual-fund/top25largest

No one said there aren't load funds that bring in good returns. In any given year, there are always some. But between good returns from a load fund and the same good returns from a no load fund, you will make more money over time with the no load fund, because your principal won't have been eaten into by fees and commissions and advertising. This link below can briefly explain the math to you.

http://finance.yahoo.com/funds/how_to_choose/article/100601/Load_vs__No-Load_Funds

Even the list of top 25 performers in the link you cite in your post doesn't help you make whatever point it is you're trying to make. Of that top 25, the first 4 are no load funds. A load fund doesn't show up until the fifth spot. Furthermore, of the top ten from that list, EIGHT are no load funds, with only two load funds. Of the top 20 of the 25, 14 are no load, only six are load. From down around the 20th to 25th spots the load funds start representing a little more, but the top 25 is still 15 no load, 10 load.

And frankly, index funds are nothing to sneeze at. In a booming economy, they would probably be the way to go. Getting an index that is simply tied to the S&P500 will almost always bring more money over the long haul than the comparable "managed" fund because (1) the index won't eat your principal with commissions and turnover and other management fees, and (2) the overwhelming majority of managed funds do NOT outperform the indexes over any statistically significant period of time. The link below explains a little about just how badly the managed funds perform against indexes:

http://mutualfunds.about.com/od/activevspassivefunds/a/indexvsactive.htm

If you want to buy a load fund, or have already bought one and are trying to justify the big sale's commission to yourself, that's fine, but don't go around handing out bad advice to other people. They may have families, and what you say will cost them less of a return on investment than they might have gotten. The first funds I bought were loaded ones, so I've learned enough from my mistakes to be able to tell people to avoid load funds and look for high performing no load funds. Now, once you have ruled out the load funds on principle, picking out the no load funds that will make it into next year's top 25 (or even the load funds that will make it onto that list) is a whole other issue; if I knew how to see into the future like that, I'd be on an island somewhere "managing" a cold drink rather than typing on some message board.

Thanks.

A couple of things;

The long term performance of AGTHX beats the shit out of the top performing no-load funds on that list.

If you knew the real difference between "A", "B", "C", Institutional shares and the other share classes, and the difference between a Money Market fund and an equity fund you might be able to speak with with some authority. Clearly you don't.

I'm not "giving advice" - YOU ARE. I merely took issue with your statement to avoid loaded funds merely because they have a fee structure. It doesn't matter if you pay no fees for crappy returns. They're still crappy returns.

Of the first 4 funds on that list, the first is an institutional share of a PIMCO bond fund and the rest are money market funds. That point is moot.

Of the top ten on that list that are equity funds, a retail investor is only able to buy 3 of them, as the rest are institutional shares, not available to someone like the OP. And of those 3, 2 of them are American Funds "A" shares.
Or don't you understand the difference between an institutional share and an A share? Or the difference between a Money Market fund and an Equity Fund? As far as the rest of the top 25 on that list, 7 are institutional shares and 4 are Money Market.

American funds does NO national advertising. Ever seen an ad on TV for them? No, you haven't and you won't. Again, they must be doing something right to have so many funds at the top of almost every metric you care to look at, including long term returns as well as AUM.

Silly and obnoxious or not, I stand by what I said. You get EXACTLY what you pay for with no-load funds, including limited or no advice and crappy returns compared to other managed funds. Are all loaded funds better than a select group of no loads? Of course not. But your blanket statement is demonstrably untrue.

I've got no dog in this hunt and I certainly do not work for American funds, so the OP is free to invest in any way he/she sees fit. However, taking advice from the likes of people like you on a public message board would be a disservice.

The list in the link I provided isn't the "top 25 performers". It is a list of the top 25 largest mutual funds by assets under management (AUM)

THAT'S why several of them are money market funds and several of them are Institutional shares - shares that can only be purchased through 401(k) plans or by investors willing to purchase shares in blocks of $5 million or more, for example.

I used to work for a lieutenant named Dave DeMassey, who we called Big Dave because he was a Big Guy.

Big Dave came from a family where your high school graduation gift was a paid-for Harvard education...except for Big Dave, who went to West Point. So they gave him a block of instruction on how to invest and gave him the money to do that with. He learned well.

These are Big Dave's Investing Rules.

1. Pick one industry and learn everything there is to know about it before you invest a nickel. (Big Dave invested only in food companies.)

2. Make sure you're invested in no less than 12 companies within that industry.

3. Buy and hold.

He's been writing about investing and personal finance for at least forty years.

He advocates long term investments in low cost index funds. (You diversify as you have more money to invest.)

He calls it the "Couch Potato" approach because it's easy.

http://assetbuilder.com/blogs/scott_burns/archive/1991/10/01/Exactly-How-To-Be-A-Couch-Potato-Portfolio-Manager.aspx


http://assetbuilder.com/couch_potato/couch_potato_cookbook.aspx

I had a bunch of money tied up in tech stocks before it burst. Most of my money is in Mutual Funds but I do have some Apple and Ford stock. Good luck.

Better yet--wait three years, then see if you still want your money in any markets.

and put it in my saving account. The thought of investing it scares me. I'm like you - don't know what to do with it.