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Ask HN: Best resources to learn about stock trading and investing?

71 points by vkbm ↗ HN
When you search for courses on how to learn software development, there are tons of resources, meanwhile when you search for courses on how to stock trade and invest, only investopedia comes up.

What are some good resources (preferably video) which are not books, to learn these subjects?

61 comments

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NicoJuicy
Start with it after November.

If you think you can miss eg. 5k. Only buy 2.5 k. In stock, the rest is spare money for drops.

Only buy the ones that you have a good guess for ( happens once in a year).

If you get to 20 k. Congratulations. Now change tactics. Buy stocks that are undervalued and don't buy too much. If it drops pretty hard, buy again. The goal is to reduce your average purchase price.

Hold till you think it's appropriate to sell.

The more money you have, the more you can diversify your portfolio.

Don't use your savings, only what you will never need.

Be prepared to lose it all at the start. And lose up to 75% every 8 years when you begin to slowly diversify your portfolio.

If you don't know what you're doing. Buy an index when it's low/drops. I'm a big fan of the Netherlands.

Ps. Crisis ain't over yet.

brockwhittaker
You’re being downvoted because you’re mentioning a strategy. This is not educational. Furthermore, as someone who does a lot of quantitative research on the market I’m not convinced at all that your strategy will beat the market when adjusting for risk.

You also say things that are unintelligible to someone who knows nothing about the market. Buy undervalued stocks? What does that mean? Most people think stocks with lower share prices are cheaper — let alone something that’s not dead wrong like evaluating based off P/E ratio, which is still incredibly wrong.

So I’d recommend against giving trading advice to someone asking for how to educate themselves.

NicoJuicy
Ok, seems fair.

I was just giving 2 cents on practical learnings, which is indeed not an answer to his posed question. But perhaps useful in the idea behind the question ( starting with trading stocks).

Most important take-away from it: you can lose a lot.

Additionally, I always asses for risk. Eg. I lost 0€ because of Covid, because I had no stocks when the markets dropped.

I didn't mention how to pick stocks though, which is the most important thing. Since there are multiple reasons why you would pick a certain stock.

Eg. Markets re-open worldwide => I bought WTI on 29/04, endresult was 40%.

I'm positioning myselve right now to multiple market scenarios with an expected (gamble) vaccine in December 2020 ( which is pretty early, I know) and where the vaccine test results come in at the end of the summer. I'm also taken into account the pumped up market by the US government and potential geopolitical issues.

These things can't be done by a AI/ML right now. There is literally no precedent for it.

--

Just a question, what would your general strategy be? I did check out technical indicators in the past, but I have a hard time believing in it.

In the end, I believe the stock market is about emotions in a numbers "game". It's not that quantitive as most people think.

What's your take on that statement?

sys_64738
Movie Wall Street with Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas.
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jacobedawson
I'd recommend Khan Academy - the videos there are always succinct and clear, and it's free, an incredible resource imo.

Introduction to Financial Accounting on Coursera is also great, will help to understand business valuation, read a balance sheet, etc.

The Plain Bagel on Youtube is a good investment channel, no bs.

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hbcondo714
Try reading company annual and quarterly reports to help decide if you want to invest in their stock or not. These reports contain a wealth of information including candid management discussions, financial sheets, disclosures and much more. These are long documents that do take time to read but my side project (shameless plug) https://www.Last10K.com aims to help investors read these documents more efficiently.

You can also google study materials for the Securities Industry Essentials (SIE) exam which covers basic securities information that can be applied to investing.

https://www.finra.org/registration-exams-ce/qualification-ex...

brockwhittaker
I don’t think diving into reports is the right step for someone who’s asking where to start.

You need a lot of context for what you’re seeing in your average quarterly. Perhaps start with reading something like The Intelligent Investor to understand fundamental analysis, then read them.

pesfandiar
Stock trading and investing, while not mutually exclusive, are not the same thing. Please be aware of the difference before starting to trade.

That said, I don't have a good resource on trading, but when I looked into it many years ago, most of them were either selling a platform/brokerage that promoted frequent trading (hence earning commission fees) or trying to sell information products by "gurus" that somehow decided to teach the ways of trading instead of becoming a trader themselves.

elamje
I’ve been investing for a long time. Biggest key: open an account, add money, and buy something. You will rapidly learn what works, what doesn’t, what drives price etc.

Reading financial statements is a good exercise and certainly important if you are investing at the institutional level, but you’ll find that price has a lot more to do with supply and demand of investors who want the stock than anything else.

This supply and demand principle in economics is oft lost in investing principle books that try to teach theory of valuation, etc.

Assuming you are into tech, since you’re here, you will find that tech stocks will barely reflect what an investing value book would teach. Possibly even teach valuations that are off by orders of magnitude due to the money being thrown at tech growth stocks.

Price doesn’t equal valuation until you are trying to sell.

elamje
If you are still looking for books, Margin of Safety is good. Intelligent Investor (though very outdated) is good. Jack Bogle stuff is good . Read annual LP memos from hedge funds and institutions like endowments and pension funds. They are throwing around big money and it’s fun to see what they think about.

Some good memos - Baupost Group, Berkshire Hathaway, Howard Marks. Email me if you want any more info.

nerdyworm
https://www.twitch.tv/thestockguy - I can personally recommend this channel for your daily dose of stock related entertainment. It's not a yolo on options channel, it's just a guy that wants to see other people grow their hard earned money into something meaningful.

The discord associated with this twitch channel has an amazing help section, search and you'll find some remarkably well written answers. Just avoid the degenerate-chat topic though.

Closi
If you are wanting to learn because you find it interesting or are looking to work in the industry - follow the advice in this thread!

If you are looking to do some personal finance - in general it’s not a good idea to pick your own stocks. You are going against massive analysis teams in Goldman Sachs, and they are probably going to win. Instead look into index funds or similar!

marcusverus
This is sage advice.

Warren Buffet is such a firm believer in this principle that he bet a hedge fund manager $1 million that he couldn't beat the S&P over a decade[0]. Buffet won. The S&P beat the manager by 5% ANNUAL return.

Hedge fund managers pick stocks all day, every day. If these guys with Ivy League finance bona-fides aren't able to consistently beat the S&P, you should really think about whether you'll be able to beat it in your spare time.

[0]https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/306846

mandeepj
> he couldn't beat the S&P

if someone has bought FAANG + MS + TSLA 10 years ago - would s/he beat S&P ?

pheug
yes, but he wouldn't find a lot of clients interested in paying him 2 & 20 for such a simple strategy

Also, just so little companies is very risky. E.g. if Tesla flopped you'd probably underperform

verylittlemeat
If someone bought FAANG + MS + TSLA today and compared it to 10 years from now would they beat the S&P?

That's basically the point. It's easy to beat the S&P with knowledge in retrospect.

maest
For an example where betting on tech (tech startups, at least, which is considered a hot sector) hasn't played out, cnsider the Vision Fund.
mandeepj
Vision Fund had no vision fund. Their portfolio companies were useless right off the bat
Closi
Easy to say in hindsight, eg companies like WeWork while obviously shit now definitely looked like it would revolutionise an industry at the time.
mandeepj
Vision Fund had vision. Their portfolio companies were useless right off the bat
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brewdad
Sure, in hindsight. I would argue that all of those stocks had their negatives in 2010 that could easily cause investors to look elsewhere though. The real question is what stocks are you going to buy today to beat the S&P over the next 10 years? It probably won't be that same bundle as in 2010.
loco5niner
That's like betting on the Patriots for the 2019 Super Bowl.

It already happened and we know the outcome. Hindsight is 20/20.

divbzero
If you want to learn because you are looking to work in the industry, I would recommend checking out Wall Street Oasis [1], a community of current and future finance professionals.

[1]: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/

jlarocco
MIT OCW has videos of their Finance Theory class online, and it's fantastic. The professor, Andrew Lo, is a great lecturer, and explains everything really well. Doesn't cover everything you're looking for, but it'd be hard to beat as a general introduction to the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP63B2lDhyKOs...

Not only is it interesting in its own right, but it was coincidentally recorded as the 2008/2009 financial crises was unfolding, and many of the lectures open with a few minutes of discussion about what was going on in the economy at the time. Neat to hear an econ PhD give a play-by-play on an economic meltdown.

person_of_color
Is there something like this but fast forwarded to now?
gnicholas
I also noticed this was from 2007/8, just as the financial crisis was getting started. I'm looking forward to watching this series and then finding some sort of update for the last decade or so. To the extent that finance professionals and investors would have taken courses like this one and learned things like this, it will be useful to have a similar foundation.
voisin
The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham.
opportune
I think the best way is to learn how to read and understand financials, like a 10-Q, and other basic concepts and then get going on either a real account (with say 5% of what you intend to invest down the line) or paper trading. However a real account will be much more educational because with paper trading/investing you’ll be inclined to ignore losses or make money taking much greater risks than you’d want to make with actual money. Just do a ton of googling, most financial books I read have not been super helpful, if you are only doing stocks there are frankly not a lot of concepts to learn.

Personally I would not recommend “trading” as an amateur at all. If you are investing over months/years that’s one thing, but making money long term over <1 week time spans on stocks is quite hard. I think the appeal of amateur “trading” is that it’s job-like but the reality is that you’re not going to make significant money with a smallish account, retail tools, and no professional experience.

In general I would never advise joining a course or “paid discord” or on stock trading. Those are pretty much all scams. There are some real, formerly successful traders that do these but the one I’m familiar with basically went broke several times because he opened himself up to too much risk (which is why you don’t see a lot of successful traders selling courses, they are too busy making money trading). Some of these courses also sell straight up misinformation like Technical Analysis

marketgod
Technical Analysis is not misinformation. Research it. A lot of people think so but if you know what you are doing it's way better than fundamental analysis, depending on what you are doing. I.e. doing TA for long-term stock holding is probably not ideal but trading options with TA is definitely profitable.
HuShifang
I like "Unconventional Success" by David Swensen, who was Yale's endowment manager for a while (and his apprentices now run several Ivy endowments). Very Bogle-esque
nilram
I like AAII, American Association of Individual Investors. It's a independent, non-profit organization with resources and publications to learn about investing without bias to any particular company or product. https://www.aaii.com/

I see they have on-demand webinars, too. https://www.aaii.com/webinars

Local chapters have meetups with presentations and discussion. Now online, of course. There's a page on their website about local chapters and their activities. Presenters at chapter meetings are supposed to be educational and without a sales pitch. In practice they're 98% educational and may have a slide or a handout on the company they work for. Here's the YouTube page for past presentations from one chapter. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnxl8fQH-F4ooXb-U8IO6zQ

Ameritrade has videos on learning about investing, trading, and their platform features, including most basic "this is a stock, this is a bond" type videos. I thought E*Trade had a bunch of similar videos, but I'm not finding them now. Both E-Trade and Charles Schwaub have both live and on-demand webinars. Probably other brokers do also. https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/investing-basics (more textual) https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/events#events_tab2 (on-demand webinars) https://www.tdameritrade.com/education/investment-videos.pag...

Trying to look at it with the eye of a beginner, it seems to get pretty specialized pretty quickly. Hope you can find something in there that fits what you're looking for.

jason_slack
QuantInsti offers a course that is really in-depth. It’s like 4 months. All video based with live instructors, practice and tests. It’s worth the money IMHO.

Ernest Chan has written several books. He also offers live courses. He is one cool dude.

Learning to read candlestick charts and recognize patterns.

Backtesting your strategies is crucial.

Try to use data sources that haven’t introduced survivorship bias.