One of the first things always said to me when I bring up the topic of investing is “I don’t make enough money and I don’t really know much about it”. All I can do is agree, because if you knew more about investing you would know that it doesn’t take much money to start. When I began to educate myself on investing, I only asked myself one simple question ‘how can I turn this one dollar into two?’ Youtube.com was, of course, my first destination because sometimes I like to see someone explain the information visually. During my search I was most intrigued by a video in which Warren Buffett described his investing strategy and the strategy he recommends for new investors in the stock market. Click: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkH-vR2IR_E
There are several different types of investors and several different types of investment vehicles. Upon Buffett’s recommendation, the first book that gave me a lot of insight was The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham[i]. This book can be purchased for a few bucks on Amazon.com or you can read it on your device for free by downloading the .pdf.
Click: http://www.fxf1.com/english-books/The%20Intelligent%20Investor%20-%20BENJAMIN%20GRAHAM.pdf (Let me know if link is broken)
See: https://missniao.wordpress.com/ for more info about this book.
Another book that I find enlightening is Rich Habits by Thomas Corley. This book is focuses more on how you should invest your time rather than how you should invest your money. It describes the habits that are common among several hundred of the world’s wealthiest people. I have yet to find a pdf link to this one but it can be purchased online for now. If you happen to find a free pdf link let me know and I’ll update this post.
My personal preference is to invest in common stock shares of publicly traded companies. I like to call myself a “value investor”. Most people who buy stock are just looking at numbers and not treating the action like buying a piece of a company. The idea of value investing is to find a great company whose stock price is much less than the actual value of the company, because eventually that price will reach the value and maybe even surpass it bringing it to an overvalued stock price. For example, in 2005 Google’s stock price was about $88.99 per share[ii]. Today the Google stock price is at $906.88 per share. [iii]Being able to evaluate a company is a big part of learning to invest in the stock market. Currently I am reading Valuation by McKinsey & Company which educates individuals on the best way to measure the value of a company. I opted to purchase this book online; you can also purchase the workbook separately in order to put what you think you’ve learned into action. But luckily for you I found a pdf link to the 5th edition. There is a sixth edition but I can’t imagine it’d be much different.
Click: http://www.gsm.pku.edu.cn/resource/uploadfiles/docs/20120710/2012071001255625564651.pdf (Let me know if this link is broken)
This book is a bit more advanced, for those with little to no financial background or experience I do recommend getting Financial Accounting for Dummies prior to tackling Valuation.
I have named just a few of the books that I have encountered throughout my research on the road to financial freedom. Expect me to name more books in the future and attach links to get them for free where I can. I’m sure 99% percent of us will not read all this material in a day but start reading about 10-30 daily and see how much knowledge you begin to accumulate.
[i] http://www.warrenbuffett.com/warren-buffetts-list-of-14-must-read-books/
[ii] https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/30/google-stock-history-where-has-it-been-where-is-it.aspx
[iii] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/