Learning About Finance??

[GWestphal]

I'm wanting to learn about finance, stocks, bonds, t-bills, credit default swaps, derivatives. Can anyone recommend me a good book or website that can turn me into a savvy hedge fund manager?

 

[Exterous]

I'm wanting to learn about finance, stocks, bonds, t-bills, credit default swaps, derivatives. Can anyone recommend me a good book or website that can turn me into a savvy hedge fund manager?

http://www.bogleheads.org has a ton of information, a very helpful forum and a link to recommended reading. A lot of good advice for beginners all they way up to (it seems to me) more in depth investoring and theory

I just recently started but I have read and found helpful: Common sense on Mutual funds, The millionaire next door, the little book on common sense investing

From what I've been told this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Winning-...2903799&sr=8-8
has an excellent description of r2, beta and standard deviation although I have not had a chance to read it yet*

Edit: Actually now that I think about it I don't remember for sure. I do know that it was recommended to cover an area I wanted more information but I don't know if it covers those areas for sure

 

[FoBoT]

http://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/thirteen-steps/index.aspx?source=ifltnvsnv0000001

We as a community are building a Foolish storehouse of knowledge of all things investing! We're calling it Foolsaurus, Fooling around a bit with the word "thesaurus" (whose Latin root means "treasure"). Come enjoy the treasure, and add to the treasure.

Oh, and if Foolsaurus sounds a bit like a raging new thunderlizard of a creature on our Web site, that's not unintentional!

http://wiki.fool.com/Foolsaurus?source=ifltnvsnv0000001

 

[halik]

I'm wanting to learn about finance, stocks, bonds, t-bills, credit default swaps, derivatives. Can anyone recommend me a good book or website that can turn me into a savvy hedge fund manager?

Are you looking to learn about the above, or looking for "how to make money in the stock market" bs scam?

For the former:
http://www.amazon.com/Stocks-Bonds-O.../dp/0735201757

 

[DaWhim]

investopedia?

 

[Zebo]

Darts

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Anyone interested in 3 can PM me and I'll be happy to help

Let's talk options.

1) read all the pop-crap you can find on it and you'll be up to par with the other lemmings (BS will get you there, but so will personal pop reading)

******

2) get to know the math behind the money and you'll be market-efficient (Masters in finance or a LOT of very directed study, you have to be a real autodidact)

******

3) do a Ph.D. in finance, get paid X00k to start running into God-only-knows if you're good?


3a) First you need an under-grad with atleast a 3.0* but preferable a 3.5 in a heavy quant degree, or at least math up through real-analysis.


3b) You then need to score in the top 10%** but preferably 5% on the quantitative section of the GMAT or GRE,

3bi) Get the manhattan prep

3bii) Work through it and do every problem in the official guide

3biii) Take lots of practice tests until your in the top 5%


3c) Get admission to a Ph.D. program.

3ci) Get the professor you did some UG/Masters research work with to write a strong letter of recommendation

3cii) Get two other professors on the hook to write good letters of recommendation

3ciii) Write a statement of purpose that estoles your LOVE of research (and nothing else)

3civ) Apply widely, Ph.D. programs accept between 3% - 1% of applicants (usualy 3 people a year)


3d) Get through your program by working 70 hour weeks for four to five years while being "paid" to go to school through a tuition waver and a "generous" stipend/assistantship of 2k a month.


* True dead-minimum is 2.75¥
** True dead-minimum is about the 60th percentile¥

¥Schools that you get into at this level will only have you making about 100K-120K a year as a professor.

 

[JS80]

I know you said "savvy" but the most important skill in being a successful fund manager is sales.

 

[Crusty]

Sounds like most of the materials covered in the Series 7 exam, it would be a starting point at least.

 

[GWestphal]

Just wanting to get up to snuff on the topic so when I start to invest in the next few years, I'll know what the hell all the jargon means and be able to make a quasi-educated decision. Math isn't an issue, I'm finishing a PhD in Engineer/Computational Neuroscience.

 

[Nerva]

Just wanting to get up to snuff on the topic so when I start to invest in the next few years, I'll know what the hell all the jargon means and be able to make a quasi-educated decision. Math isn't an issue, I'm finishing a PhD in Engineer/Computational Neuroscience.

if you are in your 30s, go to b-school. a good one: cbs, hbs, wharton, nyu. learn accounting, learn financial analysis. do investment banking for 2-3 years as an associate. go to hedge fund. be an analyst there for 10 years. build track record. raise money. charge 2/20 and return 15-20% a year. very hard to pretty much at every step.

 

[Nerva]

Sounds like most of the materials covered in the Series 7 exam, it would be a starting point at least.

series 7 is useless.

 

[KB]

If you are interested in podcasts this guy has some good insights into market behavior.

http://www.thedisciplinedinvestor.com/blog/

 

[kranky]

Just wanting to get up to snuff on the topic so when I start to invest in the next few years, I'll know what the hell all the jargon means and be able to make a quasi-educated decision. Math isn't an issue, I'm finishing a PhD in Engineer/Computational Neuroscience.

Maybe I can save you a lot of time. Some years back I wanted to know the same things you asked about in your OP. My assumption was that more knowledge = better chance of investing success. So I learned all that, on my own, as a hobby. And what I found out was that none of it made me a better investor or improved my results. That was because I did not live and breathe the markets all day, every day. I didn't work in a field that exposed me to that 24/7.

What made me a better investor was the Bogleheads' books and website. I could have saved myself a lot of work by adopting their investing principles - asset allocation, keep expenses low, rebalancing - and leaving it at that. It reduces your risk and improves your returns vs. using actively managed funds. Set aside a portion of your investing fund for individual stocks if you want, but you would have to be one of the luckiest people in the world to consistently outperform indexes over time. The killer is that a wrong bet that costs you 20% means you have to gain 25% just to get back to where you started. Then you start thinking if you just had better timing, you'd do better. But no one can do that consistently.

I believe that unless you can spend an incredible amount of time studying and reading, the Bogleheads approach is superior. It might seem contradictory to think a simple approach to investing will perform better than a complex one, but it's true. Hedge funds and all those complex investments are real moneymakers but only for the people who run them.