Well this seems like a good opportunity to post a few of the lessons I learned in my 20s.

To my former self:

If you're depressed, here's how to turn it around

• Stop drinking, this is the main cause.
  
  
• Lift weights. This alone could also stop depression. It's likely related to low testosterone levels
  
  
• Fapping too much makes the depression worse
  
  Fap less, and never to porn
  
  
• Ejaculating too often removed your motivation to take actions and start tasks. You can consider porn like a poison for the mind. Pleasurable but it desensitizes you to all other pleasures, making life seem bland and boring. Until the only thing you want is porn. It perpetuates itself.
  
  
  Gratitude
  
  
• Whatever you are grateful for will grow
  
  
• Gratitude is the only way to be happy. If you think about what happiness is, it's appreciating what you have. When you think of something that would make you happy, you are imagining yourself appreciating it when you get it.
  
  Wealth
  
  
• You can have anything you want, as long as you create enough value for others first.
  
  
• To be wealthy, don't try and do tomorrow's work today, just have a successful day each day. If you have more successful days than unsuccessful days, your wealth will grow. As you have successful and productive days, opportunities will be attracted to you.
  
  Theories
  
  
• The key to success in any area is having the right theory. A small amount of work, or a massive amount of work, with the wrong theory, won't lead to success.
  
  
• With the right theory, success will be relatively straight forward. When you do the thing, it will basically work every time. Anything that has been done many times before, can be done yourself with the correct theory
  
  
• When most people speak of the 'years of hard work' they put in before they 'cracked the game', usually means they were laboring under the wrong theory, and then one day they found the correct theory, and when they applied it, it worked. (excluding world class athletes, talking about common things like starting a business or growing muscles)
  
  
• Theories can be gathered by spending tens of thousands of dollars on seminars or tens of dollars on books. Both can contain theories that work and theories that don't work. Higher cost definitely does not mean they have the right theory
  
  
• Some theories can seem like they are guaranteed to work, but on testing, actually don't. When someone says they have the right theory, it will seem worth any price. Often they actually don't. Beware. If possible buy their book and test it for yourself, it's just as good in book form.
  
  
• This whole list is a list of theories, as you can see, they are usually quite simple and easy to understand. Complexity is usually a sign the person doesn't really know how things work
  
  
  Girls
  
  
• You cannot make a girl like you, you can however find a girl who likes you
  
  
• They key to getting girls is to get in excellent shape (lift weights), dress well, and talk to girls until you find one that likes you
  
  
• If a girl is unsure if she you likes you, won't go on a date with you, or doesn't let you touch her in anyway. She doesn't like you. Find one that wants all those things. Don't be fooled by girls who seem to REALLY like you but doesn't have time to meet, or won't let you touch her. They do not like you like that.
  
  
• Hot girls are just as likely to like you as not hot girls
  
  
• If you like a girl more than she likes you, and she doesn't want to meet up/hang out/have sex. Let her go and move on
  
  
  Career
  
  
• It's very easy to get ahead if you just try, most people don’t
  
  
• You career will naturally progress just through normal learning, don't worry about it
  
  
  Flow
  
  
• If you want things to happen without effort and struggle, live a life with gratitude and presence. Things will seem to happen easily and naturally.
  
  
  Meditation
  
  
• Mediation gives you the ability to be your best. Very handy for improving at anything, particularly gaming, as you see more and learn more. It gives you access to creativity in solving problems and improving your performance
  
  
• Mediation allows you to 'stop the mind'. Do this if you're stuck in over-analysis
  
  
• To meditate, set a time on your phone for 20 minutes, sit still and don't move a muscle, and focus on your breath as often as you can. Your mind will try to stray, just focus on your breath as much as able. This is how you quiet the mind
  
  *****
  Edit:
  
  To answer some requests, here's my list of resources.
  
  Wealth/Metaphysics
  
  
• http://www.audible.com.au/pd/Health-Personal-Development/The-Science-of-Getting-Rich-Audiobook/B00FMUQVSI
  This audiobook has the best summary I've found of how wealth works
  
  Lifting
  
  
• https://stronglifts.com/5x5/
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-Basic-Barbell-Training/dp/0982522738
  
  
• http://startingstrength.com/
  
  
• http://www.leangains.com/2011/09/fuckarounditis.html
  
  How Procrastination works:
  
  
• https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html
  
  
• https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.html
  
  How Business works
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572
  
  What innovation actually is and how to do it:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Entrepreneurship-Peter-F-Drucker/dp/0060851139
  
  How economics works:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X
  
  How to get things done:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280
  
  Task Management tool:
  
  
• https://todoist.com/
  
  Spiritual Books
  
  
• Spiritual books won't make sense unless you've had an awakening, and you can't make this happen, it happens by chance/grace. If you have, anything by Eckhart Tolle will be amazing.
  
  How to be a man:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Way-Superior-Man-Spiritual-Challenges/dp/1591792576
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Truth-Spiritual-Guide-Death/dp/1591792592
  
  Audiobooks (most of these can be found on audiobook):
  
  
• Audible.com
  
  Frame Control (Anytime you feel like you're trying too hard or begging for something, you lost the frame)
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-Persuading/dp/1501211811
  
  This is my favourite book of all. They talk about the new type of conscousness which is really really interesting to me. May not apply to all people.
  If anyone find this book interesting I'd love to talk about it:
  
  How the world works:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Spiral-Dynamics-Mastering-Values-Leadership/dp/1405133562
  
  
• https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Spiral-Dynamics-Integral-Audiobook/B00FO5660E
  
  

Oh boy, this shall be fun, it's a little disappointing that people are downvoting this, as I think it's a fairly reasonable question given the idea's spat out about economics from politicians and journalists.

Edit (this paragraph is the edit, not the huge wall of text, that was always there): Also I think one of the other problems seen is often it's not actually the economists who even get to make the important decisions in the end, time after time I have seen politicians implement policies that economists will repeatedly facepalm over. My biggest issue with modern day politics is that it is a popularity contest, rather than vote between the most qualified people of who we think could do the right job, we vote mostly on unqualified people who we think would do the least bad job, or for most people, who they think appeals the best to their self interests. I don't have a perfect solution, but fuck, there must be a better way.

(also part of edit) I guess you also have the problem of the agenda of the economist, are they trying to optimise social welfare, their own interests, or the interests of someone providing for them by other means.

I myself am still only an undergraduate, I graduate at the end of this year with majors in analytical economics, computer science and pure mathematics. Next year I am doing an honours year in just mathematics, followed possibly by a 2 year masters in the same three area's my undergrad is in, then I'm not really sure what I will do my PhD in yet, other than the topic will most probably be on game theory. I also work as a research assistant for a somewhat well known macroeconomist at my uni who also has a research position at Cambridge (they're actually over there for a month at the moment).

What I will say I have come to find holds across all fields of science, only in the social sciences there seems to be a greater number of pseudoscientists (my personal branding of them). Basically, any of the topics termed a science, whether they be a natural or social science, are really complex. Most of the mathematics scientists find useful can be used across any of these fields, and one can't necessarily say that a physicist is smarter than say a political scientist, or that the work the physicist is doing is harder than that of the political scientist.

One can however, obviously, point out that the average (take any measure of that you want) person that studies physics is generally smarter, knows a lot more maths etc. than the average political science or economics student (hell, I even think the average economics student learns a lot more than the average political science student). I think this is sad, I don't necessarily expect quite the same level, but people are given economics degree's these days without even taking a multivariable calc course, that should be illegal! (only half /s).

Okay, now to kind of move onto what you were asking. If you want resources that debunk economic models, then you merely need to find an economic model you have a problem with and search for criticisms of that, I expect it works much the same for any other science.

If you as a mathematician were interested in actually learning a bit about how real economists model different aspects of the economy, here is a bit about some of the main subject areas (there are a lot of sub-areas to these and somewhat large area's that fit into multiple or none of the areas well), any of the texts linked you could acquire off rapidlibrary for a look if you want, or should be in the library of any uni you are at.

One must remember that economics deals with a subject that has a lot of randomness (much like biology, giving a natural science counterpart), so a lot of the models don't give an exact answer, or even model anything that you can assign good specific numbers to, a lot of the time you are just trying to model as many of the effects of different things as you can, then trying to see what happens when you control certain things like interest rates, or how consumers can optimally make decisions etc.

Microeconomics tends to deal with the economic decisions faced by individual entities, whether it be people/consumers or firms/producers etc. This is where game theory is probably used more than any other area of economics, but it certainly isn't the only area.

Consumer theory is basically built up on the idea of utility, which is basically defined as someone's "enjoyment" of consuming something (one can have negative utility for something, sometimes referred to as a bad rather than a good for obvious reasons). Utility is only defined to be ordinal, so one can say someone strictly prefers one good to another for example, but not that they like it twice as much or anything like that.

Utility also has to satisfy a few assumptions (which is where it is mostly criticized) for the theory that gets developed to mostly hold, but on the most part they aren't too bad if the person is actually trying to make an optimal decision, they are things like preferences should be complete, transitive, consistent etc.

One of the simple first models one would be taught in microeconomics is that of a simplified world where there is one consumer trying to pick a consumption bundle out of 2 existing goods that will maximise their level of utility (very straight forward constrained maximisation problem). If you ever hear someone say that microeconomics is just one simple constrained optimisation problem, it's because they are under the impression that "microeconomics == n-good utility maximisation problem", which it is not.

A lot of the main theory for micro now works with general equilibrium models, which has n-consumers and n-producers. The maths for this gets rather messy, and I wont try to explain it here, if you want to learn more about microeconomics with a background in mathematics I would suggest you pick up Microeconomic Theory. This is essentially the text used by most post grad micro courses at the better universities.

Macroeconomics tends to deal with the aggregate effects in economy. What's going on with the interest rate/price level, what is the aggregate level of income inside the economy, what is the average level of welfare for a person. For example a model I did in my third year macro unit was the central banks problem of setting the interest rate to help optimise an objective of the bank. Basically the bank has a target interest rate and target level of output, then it models the effects in the economy (which direction the forces are on inflation and output, given any output gaps and the interest rate) and sets the interest rate to minimise the weighted sum of difference from target inflation and target output. Looking back it was very much an optimal control problem in disguise.

From what I have been able to gather (I have managed a postgrad micro unit during undegrad but not macro) most of modern day macro models are built up using dynamic programming methods (I just took a course on calculus of variations with a large chunk on optimal control theory which was awesome, I love it). If you want to learn more about that go look at Recursive Macroeconomics.

Game Theory (which you might have actually learnt something about) is also vital for modern economic theories, as essentially it is the study of agents optimal decisions when interacting with other self thinking agents. This is where my main interest is along with micro, if you wanted to learn about this I would suggest Myerson's Analysis of Conflict book, or possibly Fudenberg or Tiroles, as it covers more, but I don't think it's as good for an introduction, and trust me, game theory takes a bit of work to learn properly.

There are many different kinds of games, strategic deals with situations where all players make their move (surprise) simultaneously, extensive form will allow turn based games. Then you have a whole array of others, Bayesian games deals with players having multiple possible types, differential games is basically multiplayer optimal control theory (set of state variables and control varaibles, each player tries to find optimal control function given others will be doing the same to maximise their utility of the terminal state), stochastic games is similarly pretty much multiplayer dynamic programming I think.

Like I previously mentioned, game theory is my main love, I am currently working on a fairly large game theory library in c++ which I'm hoping may end up being the standard tool for research in game theory, and economics certainly isn't the only area currently interested in game theory, there are biologists, computer scientists, mathematicians, political scientists etc. that are doing research with it as well. (<3 Von-Neumann!).

*edit, I hit save thinking it would save a draft, this post is still in progress Done finally

To be as helpful as possible I'm going to break out of ELIF mode:

Since this post got much larger than I expected, I'm going to cover 4 things in detail in this post, in order of importance IMO:

• Costs
  
• Aggressiveness: Value vs. growth
  
• Diversification
  
• Active vs index funds
  
  The biggest drag on any long term investment investment is costs. If you're buying individual stocks it's the trading fee, if you're buying a mutual fund it's the investment fee. Either way over a long period of time, large fees can break a portfolio. If you're buying your own stocks you're paying a ~$5 fee every time you buy or sell a stock. With $1000 in the market buying a stock will cost .5% of your entire nest egg, and selling the stock again will cost you the same. This means that your stock will have to go up by %1 just to break even. If you had $10000, the stock would only need to go up by %.1 to break even. With how much money you have with a mutual fund the fund often charges fees based on a percentage of the money you have in here. According to vanguard full disclosure I have an IRA with them. The industry average is 1.15% This means for every $1000 you keep in a mutual fund for a year, the fund manager/owner will take $11.15, with vanguard the average expense ratio is .21%, you're looking at paying ~$4/year with them. that's about as much as it would cost to buy or sell one stock at the $5 price I assumed, and it seems that $5 for a trade is a bit low even.
  
  One of the major risk categories in terms of investing is categorized as value vs growth investment. wiki. As a general rule, value investment is buying something you know to be a good value: say McDonalds, or burger king. These two companies have been around forever, and their sales, market penetration etc. are fairly stable so you know they're going to generate a profit. Because everyone and their brother knows they're going to generate a profit, they're low risk but low reward. Compare this to growth stocks, continuing the fast food analogy you would be investing in an up and comer. Take someone like chipotle, or jack in the box. They've proven themselves in their regional markets, and they hope to go national. There is a lot of potential for them to make a lot of money, but at the same time they could fall flat on their face. They might not turn a profit, but they're still growing. At today you are buying a fraction of 50 stores, but next year it could be 200 stores, or maybe the company will fall into bankruptcy. Because of these uncertainties growth stocks tend to be riskier, but provide greater rewards. As a younger investor you're much more open to growth stocks and funds than someone who is older.
  
  Another major component to long term goals is diversification: While it is easy to associate this with risk, it really has little to do with 'risk' in the investment sense. What diversification aims to do is to make sure you're exposed to lots of major parts of the economy. This allows you to hopefully do well no matter what part of the business or market cycle you are in. In some times tech is doing better, in others manufacturing, real-estate, etc. Additionally you can diversify in terms of risk levels, extremely risky, to strong value stocks. What diversification does is makes sure you've got your fingers in different investment types. You can be well diversified and still be as growth or value oriented as you want. I can't easily find any hard and fast studies about diversification, but here's a good theoretical that supports other studies I've seen linky
  
  Another thing to consider is active portfolio management vs. index funds. About.com has a very good read on it, that links to studies etc. but here's the quick and dirty. An active fund is a fund managed in the end by a person, and what they believe the market will do. A index fund is a fund managed by a set of rules, with a pretty fixed breakdown of what types of stocks and bonds it will hold. Time and time again, index funds tend to do slightly better than average, while active management tends to yield better than average or worse than average results (well duh.) Long story short is when looking at active management of funds, it's often hard to tell if the fund is truly better than average, or just getting lucky. Sometimes this is true over a large time frame an active fund can be getting lucky for 5-10 years just to pretty much completely crash unexpectedly. Here's the major point, if you're buying your own stocks you're pretty much your own active portfolio manager, going up against people that do this for a living. You have the advantage of not having to pay their salary, but they spend a lot more time studying than you, however generally the costs associated can be much higher if you're going on your own.
  
  In conclusion: (whew! finally) In your situation I would offer an index based mutual fund. First, because you aren't investing a lot of money by wall street terms, your goal should be to keep your costs low. Mutual funds offer a good way to do that. For the cost of one trade or two a year, you can own a fund with exposure to many stocks. It's good to be aggressive at your age, and you can find mutual funds that cater to those aggressive tastes. Diversification, is always a good idea, and buying an individual stock wouldn't provide that. Again you can be diversified in many areas and still be aggressive. At your risk tolerance I would focus more on diversifying across industry rather than across value and growth options. Lastly in terms of active vs. passive or index portfolio management, index seems to be the slow and steady. If you go with an active manager, it's hard to tell if they're lucky or good. If they're lucky it will eventually come back to bite you, and chances are they're lucky, although this point is definately a distant fourth to the other three.
  
  **I am not a financial adviser, this is not investment advice etc. etc. etc. seriously the best thing you can do is go out and read on your own. I found the book The Boglehead's Guide to investing Very valuable, but you can get a lot of same information from their forum

Yeah, I was atheist for ~ 4-5 years during college. I'm 23 now and consider myself a nonaffiliated theist.

I grew up vaguely Christian. My father and mother had, respectively, been raised in Protestant and Catholic churches and had had issues with their practices. My brother and I were never raised in any church, but were told that God exists.

I also had a number of "spooky" experiences growing up. Ghosts. A dead great-aunt maybe visiting me before family deaths. These mainly occurred during my high school years. They make me strongly believe in some sort of afterlife. I describe them here.

In college, I grew skeptical of God -- Problem of Evil, the incompatibility of free will and "a divine plan", and whatnot. I adopted a materialistic worldview, and my spooky past experiences were essentially ignored because they couldn't be reconciled. But they humbled me and made me a bit skeptical of my own worldview.

I graduated this year in March with a BA in philosophy. I needed some sort of direction/purpose, but, after reading Change of Heart and Predictably Irrational I grew skeptical of human reasoning. And of course our senses and memories are flawed. Of all the animals in the world, from worms to cows, with all their limited perceptions of the world, why do we humans assume that we have a correct perception of the world?

I concluded that we can't have a firm, certain grasp on anything. And so my endeavor to live the best life was impossible. And my reliance on science and reasoning were shattered because humans and their reasoning are flawed.

• Note that science is built upon theories/principles of knowledge founded in empiricism, a school of metaphysics. Science uses metaphysical and epistemological principles and applies them to the world. But science isn't capable of looking at its foundational principles. That's a job for philosophers.
  
  
• And science makes only objective observations, not normative ones. Science can't make moral claims. It can inform morality, but it can't arrive at moral conclusions alone.
  
  
• On top of that, we have no fucking clue what consciousness is or how it arises. The Problem of Other Minds reminds us that we can't be sure of who or what is also conscious. We just do our best to make sense of how something acts and how much its anatomy resembles ours (because I know that at least I'm conscious.)
  
  On top of that, as a graduate, I no longer had college professors telling me what to do. I had no clear goals in life to work towards. And so now, post-college, all the responsibility was on my shoulders to choose what to do and pursue with my life. That's a big responsibility. But how do I make decisions if I have no certain grasp on anything? I spiraled into depression.
  
  So I sought wisdom.
  
  I talked to friends and family about wisdom. I looked at the Greek philosophers who spoke of wisdom and virtue.
  
  I looked at all the major religions to see what wisdom they might hold. I looked for patterns between them in hopes of finding something universal that they all described.
  
  I also became increasingly focused on immediate sensory and intuitive knowledge as opposed to the theory and abstract nature of science and philosophy. I started reading from NDERF's archives of self-reported near-death experiences to look for patterns.
  
  -----
  
  ....
  
  Anywho, I've arrived at the conclusion that everyone does their best to make sense of the world. I try not to judge others. Even if they're Mormons or Scientologists or Wiccans. I have my spooky history. I've come to believe that an afterlife exists. I see what others think about the supernatural, and I see if it appeals to me. I think Sikhism is pretty reasonable and beautiful, and I think my attachment to the afterlife belief almost obligates me to believe in a higher power. Sikhs seek to create and maintain chardi kala, a happiness in life by being content and thankful, which greatly appeals to me. But Sikhism does have a fair bit of ritual (albeit with legitimate purpose) and some guru praise which, given my history, seems a bit too much of a commitment.
  
  What I can say with some certainty is that it's good to live a life of virtue. It is good and feels good to help others. It's good to enjoy life and not take it for granted. Everyday, I consciously make an effort to be virtuous and to be thankful for my blessings. Veganism and activism are obvious applications of virtue and helping others. If God exists, I thank It everyday for all the good I experience. I thank it for the beauty in the world. As flawed as the world is, it's certainly more wonderful than horrible.

Before I begin, let me say this: in asking this question at your age, you are several spots away from the bottom of the totem pole.

This is not to say "oh don't worry about out, you're still young." You need to be serious about becoming competent, but very few people are competent at anything meaningful at your age, and very, very few fields require that you be already competent by age 19 (most of the fields that do require this are things like sports or music, which are so competitive that you basically have to grow up with it). So you're not behind. I think the above comments have been useful, but incomplete. Yes, your mentality is of the upmost importance here, but you do need things to do. Especially if you have interest in trades.

I'll tell you a little bit about myself. When I was 19, I was finishing a degree in automotive technology. I was working as an entry level technician and a cook, and I had plans to attend the University of Northwestern Ohio for a Bachelors in High-Performance Motorsports, which would have put me among the most elite technicians in the country, where I would have been able to get into just about any kind of motorsports I wanted.

Now I'm 23. I have a Bachelors, but not from UNOH. I completely switched fields. When I was 20, I found myself drawn toward Philosophy and Literature, and so I completely dropped motorsports as a career path. I'd spent 2 years getting my associates, I'd spent tons of money on tools, I'd studied to pass ASE certifications test, but I dropped it all, went back to school and got my Bachelors with a double major in English and Philosophy. I'm now working for a while, and I'll be going back to graduate school next year to get my PhD. I'll probably be 27-28 years old before I have real, meaningful competency. This time frame has been a real challenge, since I'm impatient, and don't want to waste my 20's. Here's how I handle it: I love what I'm doing in the academic world (I'm starting a podcast soon just because I can't get enough of philosophy), and so hypothetically, I would be okay with doing it even if it never paid off financially (and it's a humanities PhD, so that's not unlikely).

Your goal, at least for the next couple of years, should be to figure out what you either already love, or what you are likely to come to love if you tried it. Very, very, very few people do this, and so they end up being moderately competent in something that they don't hate, and require all kinds of other things to make their life meaningful. Let me emphasize that this is absolutely, not a bad thing, and if you really think that creative pursuits are your thing, you may want to find an additional career to pay for your creative work.

In any case, you can almost certainly find things that you love without college (though you may need it once you get started). In fact, college often gives a distorted view of what the field is really like. Take psychology, for example. The world of acutally practicing psychologists is radically different than psych-academia, and if you used college classes with postmodern profs to gauge whether you'd like psychology, you might falsely assume that your practice will consist of talking to transgendered sexually abused black handicapped gay attack helicopters rather than the real client base. If you find you want to be an academic, then...sorry fo ya.

What I would do is expose yourself to as much as possible. Try something as simple as youtube. If, for example, you find that you like watching youtube videos of motorcycles, maybe you should try going to a race or a bike show, or reading a book about it. Keep in mind though, that it takes real engagement (more than just youtube) to see if it's something you could learn to love.

Notice I said "learn to love." The reason for this is that its perfectly likely that you won't absolutely love anything. Most people are like that. It's maybe 1/1000 people that naturally know instantly that they love something that they end up doing for the rest of their lives. Let's go back to motorcycles. Maybe you know nothing about them, but you know that you're analytical, so you might like diagnosing them, and you have an adrenaline-junkie streak, so you might like riding them, but right now you know so little about them that you don't really feel any particular way toward them. You need to have the self-awareness to know what kinds of things you might like. If you're analytical but don't have the adrenaline junkie in you, then maybe you need to try being a boat mechanic, because of how much you've enjoyed time on the river, and the people you've met who are also into boats.

One last thing. You may have noticed that I have a soft spot for mechanical things. I noticed that you said you may be interested in the trades. If what I've been saying resonates with you, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend reading at least one of the following books by Matthew Crawford: either Shop Class as Soulcraft or The World Beyond Your Head. They're truly unconventional ways of thinking, and unlike what your high school counselor or typical self-help are likely to teach you.

Milton Friedman speaks fairly eloquently on the topic of trade and tariffs. I'll post a mixture of his statements on the issue of free-trade and the promotion of it, as well as his thoughts on tariffs as a matter of protecting industries to allow it to gain a temporary advantage over other countries, thus creating employment in the process.

> Today, as always, there is much support for tariffs–euphemistically labeled “protection,” a good label for a bad cause. Producers of steel and steelworkers' unions press for restrictions on steel imports from Japan. Producers of TV sets and their workers lobby for “voluntary agreements” to limit imports of TV sets or components from Japan, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. Producers of textiles, shoes, cattle, sugar–they and myriad others complain about “unfair” competition from abroad and demand that government do something to “protect” them. Of course, no group makes its claims on the basis of naked self-interest. Every group speaks of the “general interest,” of the need to preserve jobs or to promote national security. The need to strengthen the dollar vis-à-vis the deutsche mark or the yen has more recently joined the traditional rationalizations for restrictions on imports.

As stated, trade tariffs which are often lobbied for and advocated by certain groups of people commonly make the argument that it is in the self-interest of the general population. The contrary is true: it is in the interest of a select group of people to have tariffs raised or implemented or have subsidies granted under the guise of competitiveness and efficiency. If a U.S. manufacturer is 2x less effective than a Japanese manufacturer at creating a certain good, is it the right decision to subsidize this manufacturer in order to raise its level of competitiveness versus the Japanese one? I would say no. As will be discussed later, jobs lost in export industry are gained in import industry, which is a point often forgotten. Americans will still desire cars or televisions even if there are no American manufacturers to produce said products. New jobs and business in import will appear to fill this employment gap and to provide for the consumer what they desire.

> One voice that is hardly ever raised is the consumer’s. That voice is drowned out in the cacophony of the “interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers” and their employees. The result is a serious distortion of the issue. For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number–for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs–jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.

Countries should produce goods of which they have the comparative advantage in producing. This is low hanging fruit but a good example of this. Why should Canada outsource the production of postage boxes to Belgium when we could readily manufacture them in Canada? If it is inefficient for us to do so then we should not do so, if we can get the good for cheaper elsewhere then we should strive to do that and to produce goods at which we are more effective. If a lawyer is 10x more efficient than practicing law than his secretary and also 2x a faster typist, should the lawyer do both jobs? No, of course not. The lawyer should practice law as comparatively he has the advantage in doing so, and let his secretary do the typing. The argument should not be surrounding the "creation of jobs", but the creation of jobs that are meaningful and more productive and beneficial for our population to be employed in.

> Another fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad. We eat bananas from Central America, wear Italian shoes, drive German automobiles, and enjoy programs we see on our Japanese TV sets. Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports or, equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports.

Imports are not bad, and trade deficits are not (necessarily) bad. Nation A trades with Nation B, but Nation B also trades with Nation C, Nation C also trades with Nation A and thus Nation A's currency will return back to their country. Because of markets for foreign currency, it is desirable that we import goods and do not necessarily need large trade surpluses as an indicator of a strong performing economy. The worst case scenario in this example of three countries trading is that if Nation A's currency never returns back into the country. If you were to think of a country as a household, you would certainly wish to pay less to receive more than the other way around.

In fact, Friedman describes almost perfectly why people who believe that the reduction of tariffs will in fact hurt domestic industry are misguided:

> The fallacy in this argument is the loose use of the terms “high” wage and “low” wage. What do high and low wages mean? American workers are paid in dollars; Japanese workers are paid in yen. How do we compare wages in dollars with wages in yen? How many yen equal a dollar? What determines the exchange rate? Consider an extreme case. Suppose that, to begin with, 360 yen equal a dollar. At this exchange rate, the actual rate of exchange for many years, suppose that the Japanese can produce and sell everything for fewer dollars than we can in the United States–TV sets, automobiles, steel, and even soybeans, wheat, milk, and ice cream. If we had free international trade, we would try to buy all our goods from Japan. This would seem to be the extreme horror story of the kind depicted by the defenders of tariffs–we would be flooded with Japanese goods and could sell them nothing.

> Before throwing up your hands in horror, carry the analysis one step further. How would we pay the Japanese? We would offer them dollar bills. What would they do with the dollar bills? We have assumed that at 360 yen to the dollar everything is cheaper in Japan, so there is nothing in the U.S. market that they would want to buy. If the Japanese exporters were willing to burn or bury the dollar bills, that would be wonderful for us. We would get all kinds of goods for green pieces of paper that we can produce in great abundance and very cheaply. We would have the most marvelous export industry conceivable.

> Of course, the Japanese would not in fact sell us useful goods in order to get useless pieces of paper to bury or burn. Like us, they want to get something real in return for their work. If all goods were cheaper in Japan than in the United States at 360 yen to the dollar, the exporters would try to get rid of their dollars, would try to sell them for 360 yen to the dollar in order to buy the cheaper Japanese goods. But who would be willing to buy the dollars? What is true for the Japanese exporter is true for everyone in Japan. No one will be willing to give 360 yen in exchange for one dollar if 360 yen will buy more of everything in Japan than one dollar will buy in the United States. The exporters, on discovering that no one will buy their dollars at 360 yen, will offer to take fewer yen for a dollar. The price of the dollar in terms of the yen will go down–to 300 yen for a dollar or 250 yen or 200 yen. Put the other way around, it will take more and more dollars to buy a given number of Japanese yen. Japanese goods are priced in yen, so their price in dollars will go up. Conversely, U.S. goods are priced in dollars, so the more dollars the Japanese get for a given number of yen, the cheaper U.S. goods become to the Japanese in terms of yen.

> The price of the dollar in terms of yen would fall, until, on the average, the dollar value of goods that the Japanese buy from the United States roughly equaled the dollar value of goods that the United States buys from Japan. At that price everybody who wanted to buy yen for dollars would find someone who was willing to sell him yen for dollars.

The actual situation is much more complex than this overly simplified answer, but it gives a good explanation as to why free-trade and a reduction in tariffs is beneficial. We often ignore the presence and importance of currency exchange markets when it comes to trade.

Hey eggshellmoudling! I'm at work so I can't pull up many references, but I'll see if I can help with some of your questions here.

First, the question of income inequality being a threat, and how it relates to redistribution. I definitely agree with your assessment of the last answer. It was more of a condonement of wealth redistribution than an explanation of the problem we (saying that as a libertarian, but I don't speak for all of us) have with calling income inequality a threat. In and of itself, wealth inequality is simply a consequence of how society is working. I think that a good argument could be made that inequality IS a threat in a system like we find ourselves in now, because money is so closely tied with power and rich people can use their money to influence the government and get richer. However, a small percentage of a population being incredibly rich isn't inherently bad. As long as they have come across their money in a fair (loaded word) way, as in without coercing or tricking people, they have given enough to society to merit having that amount of wealth. The only potential threat, which is a pretty minor one really, is that they don't spend their money responsibly. If, for example, they use their money to pay every person in the world to stop working, they would disrupt every market and people would starve to death. A more realistic example might be hoarding it in a place where it isn't effectively invested. If they are using the money to invest in other industries or employ people for tasks that add wealth to the system, which almost every rich person does, they aren't hurting anyone by simply being rich.
As far as redistribution goes, we believe that the current amount of inequality is heavily aided by things like redistribution of wealth and government regulations. For an example of that, say a really poor person finds out that they have a knack for orthodontics (not sure how they found that out :p) and that they could help a lot of people and make a ton of money practicing it. It wouldn't matter at all in today's system because they would be restricted by the barriers of entry to that field established by the government. Like I said before, you can argue that wealth inequality is bad right now, IMO, because the rich are so easily able to use their wealth to keep the poor poor through government coersion, which is unfair to the poor.


Second, how do we address the problem of a tiny minority controlling the wealth and allow people like you to thrive? I don't think you'll like my answer to this one, but please understand that I'm trying to be respectful and if anything comes off as rude or condescending I apologize. One way to think of wealth is as a big pool. Production adds wealth to the pool, and by adding to the pool people are allocated a certain portion of the pool. It might help to say this simple truth: there is only as much wealth in the world as is produced. That sounds simple but has huge implications. Mainly, it means that if everyone is doing the thing that they do most effectively, society as a whole benefits from a bigger pool. Now, back to your question. I have addressed the first part already, but when it comes to people that are trying hard but aren't getting a big enough portion of the pool, the fundamental reason (in a market society) is that they aren't contributing enough to earn a bigger portion. They are contributing less to the wealth of the world so they don't get as much wealth themselves. The ways to fix that are to either (1) grow the entire pool or (2) find a new way to gain more of the pool, thereby contributing to (1). That being said, I would be willing to bet that your situation is entirely different from that. For example, I highly doubt that you would feel maxed out on effort, talent, and luck if there weren't so many boundaries set up in society today.

I rambled a bit there but hopefully it was helpful. Let me know if you have questions about anything. If you are interested in why we (or at least I) believe that our system would be the best for every individual on average, I would highly recommend reading Economics In One Lesson or Capitalism and Freedom (this one is a little more difficult). They lay everything out very logically and had a huge impact on my belief system.

I'm trying to be more on the SEO/IM side of things for my own personal affiliate sites so in my opinion, the best way to learn is trial and error. I put a bunch of things online and see how they do and then test and adjust. That being said, I do use a fair few other things to try and boost my knowledge.

YouTube

Steven Bartlett
24 year old owner of a successful social media marketing company in the UK, vlogs his daily life and shares a few nuggets now and then.

Valuetainment
Based on an Iranian immigrant to the USA, not 100% on his back history but the way he talks about the immigrant fire to earn money I am pretty sure he went there with little to nothing in his pocket. Judging by his house, cars and life style he has did very well. He has kind of diluted the channel recently in my opinion though by letting other people make videos for him.

Gary Vaynerchuk
Pretty much owns the entrepreneur vlogging space right now. He seems the type of guy where you either love him or hate him. Personally, I like his no BS approach of giving people reality checks on what it really takes to be an entrepreneur rather than posting photos on Instagram of a nice life.

Podcasts

How I Built This
He basically interviews a bunch of CEO/MD types of massive successful businesses. It's not really a how to type of thing but I enjoy listening to how people got their projects off the ground and I have picked up a fair few things from it.

Indie Hackers
Only recently found thing one but so far so good.

Black Hearted
I'm a bit of a fan boy when it comes to these guys to be honest, they are US military vets who now own a number of successful businesses and they get other vets on the podcast who also own their own businesses and talk about them. Its not just focused on business though but I love the military humor and get it done attitude of them.

Reading

I update this post with all of the books I have read but here are my top picks.

Zero To One
The first book that I couldn't put down until I completed it. Picked a fair few things up from it as well as a bunch of things I hope to move forward with in the future with startups.

The 33 Strategies of War
Not a business book but definitely my style if you take the examples and strategies and turn them into business. This is the second book I have not been able to put down once picking it up.

The E-Myth Revisited
Although I had a decent understanding of how to allocate duties to people depending on their job role this helped me better understand it as well as the importance of doing it.

ReWork
Another book I loved, just introduced me to a bunch of new concepts with a fair few I hope to use in the future.

Black Box Thinking
Coming from and engineering background I was already used to being ok with my failures provided I was learning from them but this book is based around how different industries treat failure and how it is important to accept it and grow from it.

The 50th Law
Currently reading it but so far i'm loving it. Never realized how much crap 50 cent had to go through and I love Robert Greene's work so I can see my classing this as a tier one book.

Rich Dad Poor Dad catches a lot of flak, but it's actually really good at teaching the absolute basics in an easy-to-follow manner. Like, learn what a Cash Flow Statement is, increase your asset column, learn basic accounting language, separate emotions and money, minimize taxes. Just glean the overall principles he's teaching and don't blindly follow his specific strategies.

The Richest Man in Babylon is another great, easy to read, investing 101 book.

And The Millionaire Next Door is a research-based book on Millionaires in America and what kind of habits and mindsets got them to their current wealth. It's a wonderfully refreshing read after being brainwashed by tv and movies saying that millionaires won it or stole it and live lavish lives. Most actual millionaires are pretty frugal and hard working with modest lives.

---
And here are some resources to help you learn all the new words and concepts:

• Investopedia
  
• Bogleheads
  
• Khan Academy
  -- Microeconomics
  -- Macroeconomics
  -- Finance
  
• Personal Finance subreddit
  
• Investing subreddit
  
• Finance subreddit
  
• Accounting subreddit
  
• Financial Independence subreddit
  
• Business subreddit
  
• Economics subreddit
  
  ---
  And when you get pretty familiar with the basics and want to start messing with stuff, I've enjoyed the Think or Swim paper money route. They give you $200,000 in fake money to play around with and invest and practice your strategies. It helps you get acquainted with the research and the interface and the fees for investing. It's a wonderful tool.
  
  And then The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is supposed to be a pretty good comprehensive guide the advanced basics (is that a term?) of investing.
  
  ---
  Or if you want to skip alllll of this and just hire someone, I've read in those subreddits that you want to find a fee based financial adviser. Which you can do here.
  
  .
  
  
  I hope I've helped man! It's a lot of fun to learn about. I wish you all the best.

You own shares of mutual funds. A mutual fund is a group pool for owning stocks and bonds. The number of shares you own of the funds does not grow other than (the number might change, technically, but this is not a means of making money, but just an accounting detail), you but the value of each share you own goes up. Obviously, you get more shares when you contribute to your 401(k).

Stocks are pieces of companies. They make money by becoming more valuable over time and lose money by becoming less valuable over time. (They also sometimes distribute some of their profits directly, though not all companies do this.) The value is established by the market--what people are willing to pay. They go up and down constantly. Although you can think of the growth like interest in a lot of ways, it's not like an interest-bearing account where the value goes only up with time.

Bonds are essentially IOUs. Someone gives a bond issuer (a national or local government or a company) some money, and the issuer agrees to pay it back at a certain rate of interest over a certain amount of time. There is a chance they will default--not be able to pay back everything they agreed to. If they are trustworthy, the interest rate is very low. If they are not trustworthy, it's higher (but there's a better chance they will default). The value of a bond goes up and down as the assessment of their trustworthiness changes and as the world changes.

Within the mutual fund, the reason you get growth is either that they own more valuable assets or they own assets of similar value but more of them, depending on what the fund does with their gains. Each mutual fund you own shares in has a dedicated staff to do whatever it is you do. Traditional funds employ people who try to make smart decisions and charge you more. Increasingly popular are index funds, which try to diversify over an entire market and have much lower fees.

It is very much worth learning about investing, as it is what will enable you not to have to have a job to get by. http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101 is a book many people recommend.


^Pedants ^of ^reddit: ^you ^can ^own ^things ^other ^than ^mutual ^funds ^in ^a ^401(k), ^mutual ^funds ^can ^own ^a ^small ^number ^of ^cash-equivalent ^securities ^that ^aren't ^stocks ^or ^bonds, ^and ^some, ^rare ^mutual ^funds ^pay ^dividends ^(which would probably be used to purchase more shares) ^. ^I ^decided ^for ^simplicity ^to ^assume ^(reasonably) ^that ^OP's ^401(k) ^was ^in ^absolute-return ^stock/bond ^mutual ^funds.

Just my 2 cents, but I would try to refinance that mortgage given today's rates. Almost six percent seems really high, you can get 3-4% depending on if it is a 10, 15, or 30 yr mortgage. The thing you would have to keep in mind is to get it lowers you would probably need the LTV to go to at least 80% maybe 75% to get the best rates (don't know the structure of what the marginal benefit is, don't work in loan mod/refinancing). So you would have to put an add'l 5-10% down which could be 4.5-9K down.

I also noticed that you didn't mention a roth/traditional ira. I would put the max (5K for 2011 and 5K for 2012) into these avenues. The roth / traditional ira debate is whether or not you believe that when you take out the contributions if you will be in a higher or lower tax bracket.

Also definitely take the employer match to the max. I do not know what you have to choose from in your 403(b), but definitely choose the route of indexing. Active funds have too much performance chasing involved and 2/3s of actively managed funds are beating by index funds each year. The ones that beat the index funds over a 10yr period shrinks even further

If higher then do the Roth IRA, if lower then do the traditional IRA. If you choose the traditional IRA make sure that you include it on your taxes. If you already filed your taxes file an amendment to your taxes to reap the benefits.

My personal choice for choosing an IRA is Vanguard, but it depends what you will be using the IRA for. If you do not wish to invest in Vanguard funds it might be better to shop around for a better IRA. I personally have an IRA with Vanguard and think they are a great co.

Make sure that when you open the IRA to take advantage of the tax advantaged space. Meaning the Bonds and Real Estate portion of your investment portfolio that you want to invest is in this location. REITs/Bonds are not great for tax advantaged space because you have to pay for the distributions.

When you say the 15% gtd do you mean like I-Bonds/savings EE bonds. These can be purchased through the Treasurydirect.gov website. They have the full faith and credit of the US gov't so they are as close as gtd as you are going to get in investing.

The 64% equities is a little vague. If you want to be simple you can simply invest in X% of your equity portion in vanguard total stock market index (VTSMX) and X% of your equity portion in vanguard total international market index (VGTSX). Misnamed helped me out when setting up my portfolio and is a very useful asset to this forum.

He led me on the path that since you are tilted currently towards the U.S. (ie your job, house, car, etc) you should not be so heavily concentrated on domestic stocks. An even 50% domestic, 50% int'l breakdown of equities will help to protect you from the downside of the U.S. markets.

Since Real estate acts more like a stock your overall allocation above would be more like 73% stock 27% fixed income imo (and that's giving you the benefit that the 15% gtd portion is fixed income, could be labelled as cash depending on how you invest it). Generally a decent rule of thumb is are you willing to lose 50% of your equity value in a year. If not you are too much invested in stocks. This is not a conservative/moderate conservative approach to be honest. I am currently 75/25 and consider my portfolio very aggressive.

A good book to read is The Boglehead's Guide to Investing if you want to learn more about asset allocation etc.

TL;DR Refinance mortgage, contribute to IRA, do employer match to the match with your 403(b), make sure to use tax advantaged space correctly, and possibly modify your allocation.

The infographic, frame by frame

I'm a data analyst by profession, and this book would help anyone understand what is going on here.

Not because mormons are all liars, far from it, they are some of the most honest people, but the newsroom likes to juggle statistics. Every piece of information individually is true, but when placed next to each other they build a picture that is deceptive.

Frame 1: Sacrament meeting attendance "100%"

This is straight out deceptive

The Numerator here is "Active mormons" and the Denominator here is "Active Mormons". Now my wife is an active mormon, and she misses every once in a while so on top of measuring the same number on the top and on the bottom, they've also rounded up.

Frame 2: 1.3 million worship services: Straight forward, take the number of chapels in service x the number of weeks in the year. Somehow I think it will still fall short of 1.3 million. Let's check: 21,335 church units x 52 = 1,109,420. I'm not sure how they get 1.3 million, but it's > 1 million Close enough.

Members believe

They do believe in the bible as well as the book of Mormon, and Christ is mentioned that frequently, which is fascinating because 2/3's of the book occurs before Jesus is born. In fact, Mary is given by name hundreds of years before she was born, and John the baptist's exact phrases are quoted hundreds of years this should give one pause.

9 out of 10 members pray daily This is taken from active temple-recommend holders, or the most faithful of the members, certainly out of that "regular attendence" number above, these people are probably only half. Denominator units matter.

4th largest church here is where the deception begins. Because those "member" numbers above were only for active people, but to get the "Largest in the U.S." status they claim here, they include anyone who was ever a member. i.e. babies who never went to church, individuals who died until they are 110 years old, people who have resigned from the church. census records indicate that only 5 million members are active

According to the study

Mormon's placed 3rd, which is impressive, right after atheists and agnostics. Interesting tidbit

77% of members attend weekly again, one must ignore the 2/3rd of members who no longer self-identify as members, who were included in the 4th largest calculation. Members who self identify attend church more regularly. Imagine if catholics could remove from their denominator everyone who doesn't attend regularly from their attendance calculations!

73% listed marriage

Again, we're looking at the top of the top members. These members hold recommends and were probably already married. We're not asking kids if they are going to get married, we're asking already married people if marriage was a top goal. The idea that 27% of them do not have it as a goal should be telling.

96% donate These donations are required to be counted as an active member. They don't donate free-willing, they give money because it is required, like a tax, for membership.

80% donate to non-religious causes The Boy Scouts of America is closely tied (most would say owned) to the LDS church. Most of the "Non-religious" donations go to the Boy Scouts, which are allowed to use the church buildings for fundraisers, and to request funds twice a year in church. This year, my local authority (The Bishop) gave a talk in Sunday about the importance in donating to the friends of scouting program.

70% participate in religious volunteering again, most active members, but yes, they are excellent at volunteering. I have to wonder if they include volunteering at church run facilities (Such as the welfare farms) in this number.

Fasting this is true that they fast once a month, and donate the value of two meals (Usually much more) to the church (not to any charity, to the church). The church then puts this money into an interest bearing account for 3 years, and finally allows it to be spent at the end of those three years, when a bishop makes a request. This money is used for things such as reformation of gays at private company camps. Interest spun off the money is used in for profit ventures such as the mall. Most members do no know how their fast offering money is used.

More members live outside the U.S.

It was just discovered that almost 1 million members in Brazille do not exist. I would suggest that this is using global numbers including inactives to get this total, but if we are to use the "Active membership" numbers from above, we'd find that most members are not only in the U.S., but in Utah.

I don't know where they get the 28,000 congregation number, as I took my 21,000 congregation number directly from the 2012 conference report. Unless we built 7,000 ward houses in the last few months, I am suspicious of this number.

Total Church Membership as mentioned before, this includes anyone who was ever baptized whether they left, died until 110, etc. This is not the denominator for most the statistics on this infographic.

185 countries this is an accurate number by everything I could find.

This sort of thing is like getting hit by lightning.

Imagine this: if you were around in the early 1900's, which car company would you have invested in? There were hundreds of them. Most of them looked pretty good. Even as late as the 1950's Studebaker, Nash, and American Motors would have looked pretty great. You would have no way of knowing Ford, GM, and Chrysler would have been the survivors and good investments.

Moreover, you don't remember it, but in the late 90's Apple was totally on life support. I think it was either Microsoft or Bill Gates tossed them some help, it was so bad. Steve Jobs came back and turned the whole mess around. If your dad had invested in them in 1986, he'd have sold it within 10 years and been happy to have walked away with more than $0.

Moreover #2, the late 90's was the tech boom. Look up some info on Pets.com. Yahoo was the internet titan. AOL was everywhere and bought Time Warner. Dell Computers were huge. Compuserve. The 90's was the same thing as cars in the early 1900's. You had no way of knowing out of all the tech companies that Amazon and Google were going to be the survivors.

You know how Amazon basically used the internet to eat Sears' lunch? That means smart and connected people fully immersed in the retail industry running the biggest retail business in the world and able to afford all the consultants and research they could want couldn't even comprehend what technology was going to do within a decade or two or spot what was going to be their downfall and you think you could have managed to pick Amazon out of all the tech companies at the same time?

Moreover #3, the places where there are spectacular opportunities, they occur to people around the founder and early employees and people in the venture capital industry. You'd had to have known Mark Zuckerberg in college or his parents and been able to lend a nerd with a computer $50k, or been an early employee of a "shaky" at best company. That's the risk you run if you go to work for a startup. If you have claim to a percent or two, if the company takes off, that's huge. But way more likely the company probably flops or gets bought out for a modest amount. Are you friends with college tech nerds? Are they working on stuff that you think giving them $10k's wouldn't be throwing money away? Do your relatives know their relatives? Are you in an area where you'd come into contact with those people?

Additionally, I'm 32. Part of getting older is realizing you've made choices and decisions and they create opportunities and paths and take away other opportunities and paths, and learning how to cope with seeing that you should have done something differently. We're all doing the best we can at the time. If any of our parents had bought $10k or 20k worth of Apple or Microsoft in the 90's they'd be millionaires by now. If my parents had bought a different house on a lake in the same town for a slightly higher price 30 years ago, they'd be in significantly different financial position too. If only my grandfather had bought large amounts of land near where he lived Washington DC during the Great Depression! You made the best decisions at the time, don't live life looking in the rear view mirror and second guessing yourself.

Looking at my situation, I could buy a flashy car that I like and would enjoy a lot or I could take that few hundred per month and invest it. What happens when I'm 60 and have an account with a big number in it? Then I buy the car I'd enjoy having and go on a lot of vacations, except I'll be old. And I don't expect suddenly when I'm older, my feelings will switch around and I'd suddenly start to enjoy spending money and seeing the number go down rather than saving it. And I've talked to my coworkers, a decade ago there was a person in the office where I work now was mid-50's and came down with brain cancer and was rapidly gone. We have other coworkers who die right after retiring, or aren't healthy enough to get much enjoyment. Think about that--you or me could spend our whole working lives saving money for retirement and then die in our 50's or right after retiring and not being able to get any enjoyment from it. And it's not just dying, but coming down with an illness or having a lot of pain. That isn't a very enjoyable life.

And yet I'd rather save money and push that problem out of what to do with it. This is what I think about when I think about whether to get rid of my cheap, working, boring car and consider getting something fun.

I think autonomous vehicles will be a large source of growth in the coming decade. So which company do you think will do it first? Ford, GM, Chrysler, or Tesla? What if Apple or Google or Uber or Yahoo or some company you haven't heard of right now swoops in and does it first? Surprise! You chose wrong. You could redeem yourself if you invested in a car company the tech company chooses to partner with because they know how to tech but not to make cars. Which car company would they partner with? Is it the one you chose?

Healthcare is big. It's 17% of our economy. How do you invest in that for 10 years for now? What if the people start electing progressives and they completely rearrange the healthcare system and do something like eliminate the need for insurance companies or sharply reduce the profitability of pharmaceutical companies?

Don't dwell on hindsighting yourself. If you look at any graph of a stock or anything it is sooooo obvious to spot the times to buy or sell and pick an optimum path through different investments but when you have to do it live you never know what is going to happen. If you had $10k now, do you think you'd invest it right now or do you think we're on the cusp of a recession where if you hang on to that sum for part of a year or more, you can get a much larger return? What do you think, hmm? It'll be so easy to be able to see what you should have done when you're 32 in 2029 and pull up a graph of stocks and what they did in 2019-20.

I don't want to be rude but stop it with the crypto. You know how gambling works because it exploits people who have the inclination in them to say 'just one more for sure!' even with games where the odds are actually pretty low to ever come out ahead. The fear of missing out is what compels people to get involved with it. People who say "If I had put $100 into bitcoin in 2011, I'd have $10 billion now!" like, no. It's exploiting the people like you who want to look at the graph of Apple's stock price and say "if I had bought in '86...". Also last week the Fed announced it's working on developing a peer to peer live payment system--you know one that will use real actual money so actual real people will be able to use it. That is going to diminish the real world use crypto claims to have. Canada already has a system like this and I don't know if European countries do as well.

Read this book, pup.

Basically monthly I buy the S&P 500 index. It's a trade off between how much return I want and how much effort I want to put in. I doubt I'll beat skyscrapers of people with PhD's who are experts in this, know accounting, read boring reports and do all sorts of research, and actually talk directly to the people running companies so I buy the index and won't ever be worse than the market as a whole--which the skyscrapers of people can't consistently beat. I own some other company's stocks separately, like a railroad, an industrial conglomerate, and Google and all three of those have done great. In that book I linked to, a section talks about how you can approximate the market performance with like owning any 25-30 random companies' stocks--because he's from a time before there were actual market indexes you can hold. Lately I've been starting to think that you can probably beat the market if you avoid the obvious loser or stagnant companies that are big enough to be part of the S&P 500. Like just buying and holding blue chips like McDonald's or Coke or IBM or Disney for multiple years will probably beat the S&P 500. You won't get rich enough to be able to retire at 35 that way, something like what Apple did, but you'll come out pretty solid in the long run. At the same time, so like I own say $10k of Google. If the company doubles, now I have $20k. Big whoop. Now I can retire. If the company 10x, I'll have $100k. That's even better but I still can't retire from that. The big companies can't grow so much--how would Google or Apple double in size from where they are now? Apple would have to completely invent a whole new industry again (and it'd have to be like actual AI or something nutty like teleportation). And if any one knew what that was going to be, they'd have done it already. We have RFID tags now and have had them for over 10 years yet stores still would rather pay cashiers than have customers simply walk through an RFID detector.

The next stuff to come is going to be connected with faster internet and reducing labor. Drones and getting rid of human drivers? E-doctor video visits?

>I have a general theory that ~95% of the people recommending this book either did not read it or did not understand it when they did.

Ahh, but let us seperate the difference between a good theory and speculation.

A good theory is one which, upon thorough analysis promises a high probability of being proven true. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculation.

Does your theory rest on the merits, facts and content contained within the pages therein? Can your theory be falsified or is it speculation?

Let us analyze your conjecture and see if it holds any water.

• Amazon says The intelligent investor has an average rating of 4.6 on 242 reviews and is the #1 best seller in its category: https://www.amazon.ca/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Value-Investing/dp/0060555661 Could it be that all these reviewers have not read the book? Well it seems almost all the reviews have verified purchased and offer specific quotes in their review. The evidence does seem to support the speculative assertion that 95% of people did not read the intelligent investor.
  
• Let's go to investopedia.com where The intelligent investor ranks #1 as the undisputed best investment book of all time: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/03/050803.asp Could it be that the Investopedia editorial team reviewed all investment books but forgot to read the Intelligent Investor? I would find that to be a highly speculative theory.
  
• What if we look to see what books other professional investors have recommended: https://www.thewaystowealth.com/investing/best-investing-books/ By far and away the Intelligent investor reigns supreme. Is it more likely that these investment gurus chose not to read the Intelligent investor and yet recommend it, in some sort of cabal conspiracy?
  
  Instead of speculating that no one has read the Intelligent Investor, let us borrow some principles from Ben Graham. It seems overwhelmingly based on all the available evidence and after sound and rational observation and analysis that the Intelligent Investor could be a good book! Now in order to justify reading this book, I would need a margin of safety that the book offered value beyond the cost of reading it and the time to complete it. Well at $10 for a paperback copy and an estimated 3-4 day read I have to say I think those criteria have been met! The intelligent investor is a buy!

Homework can be found in the "Recommended Reading" section of our FAQ. I've pasted it at the end of this comment for your convenience.

If there was one book most worth reading I would argue it's Smarter Investing by Tim Hale. It gives you all the basic grounding that you need to know in an easy-to-digest manner.

Another good source for information is www.monevator.com, though the writers are very opinionated and not great fans of people in my profession.

You could potentially seek financial advice, and pay a fixed fee for some recommendations, or even pay Hargreaves Lansdown directly for advice (they offer telephone-based advice for a fee), but at your level of savings the costs may be disproportionally high.

Recommended Reading

Books about investing

Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham

This book was written by the father of "value investing", and the mentor of Warren Buffett, who is widely accepted to be the world's most successful investor.

It was originally published in 1948, but Ben Graham updated it periodically over the years, and it stands as true today as it ever has.

Beating the Street - Peter Lynch

Published in 1994, this is arguably showing its age more than Intelligent Investor. Either way, valuable reading from one of the best managers of money in the past few decades.

Naked Trader - Robbie Burns

Subtitled "How anyone can make money trading shares", this is an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek account of one financial journalist's attempt to quit his job and make £1,000,000 using a short-to-medium term trading strategy. Not very scientific, but an interesting counterpoint to the previous recommendations.

Smarter Investing - Tim Hale

The ultimate counterpoint to attempting to "beat the markets" - after spending 15 years working in active fund manager, Tim Hale concluded that the best outcomes for most investors in most situations would be a simple portfolio of "passive" investments (that is, funds which attempt to track a market, rather than outperform it). This style is favoured by the likes of Monevator, and many of the subscribers here.

Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder letters - Warren Buffett

Not a book, but a series of essays over the years from the world's most successful investor. Makes interesting reading! Notably, the 2014 letter (not published in the above link but published here in abridged form) implies that he now feels most investors would be best served by low-cost trackers.

The Financial Times guide to investing - Glen Arnold

A great starter guide, going from the very basics (why businesses need shareholders) to more in-depth explanations of different types of investment, and step-by-step guides on how to execute trades.

This is what I tell all beginning investors, also being told this myself as a beginner, but before you find any sort of apps to trade on or taking stock recommendations, you need to figure out what kind of investor you are and develop an investing technique that fits you. What kinds of stock you invest in are mainly determined by how long you want to wait before selling the stock and how urgently you need the money.

Most investors are typically classified as either Defensive or Speculative. Defensive investors are ones who buy stocks in companies that have a long history of slow growth, and are not likely to make big gains quick. These kinds or stocks are the kinds people would invest in for their retirement or educational plans and are either classified as Defensive stocks (slow steady growth) or Income Stocks (stocks that pay out high dividends above the national inflation rate).Stocks like these would belong to companies that sell products that are classified as Essentials such as food, water, or energy.

Speculative investors invest in stocks that they believe are going to grow quick, and are willing to take on major risk in order to potentially see those large gains. These kinds of stocks are classified as Speculative (high growth and risk), Growth Stock (small or start up companies with high risk), or Cyclical (performance fluctuates with the economy in major losses or gains). These kinds of stocks would belong to companies that sell luxury products that may not sell well if demand is not high enough.

What you need to know is what kind of investor you are, and what kinds of returns you want, and how quickly you want them. Once you know that, you can find the right stocks for you. But now is the best time for people like you to be learning about investing, gaining experience, and investing in companies.

Once you know how quickly you want returns, and how much risk you want to take, you can begin to develop an investing technique that suits your comfort zone. This will ensure that you don't get ahead of yourself, and lose all your money in blind foolishness.

If you want an app to practice investing before you do the real thing, Investopedia.com has a great simulator that lets you invest fake money and get accurate feedback of the market. The website also has a wealth of information about every subject you could learn about in regards to the stock market and trading.

Yahoo Finance is one of the best websites I've found for easily accessing the data you need on each stock and getting the best feedback of the current state of the market. You can also easily find stocks with the Yahoo Stock Screener.

If you want a book recomendation, The Intelligent Investor is considered an essential read for anyone who wants to have success, large or small, within the trading market. Warren Buffet, the most successful stock trader in history, said that it is "By far the best book on investing ever written." Here's the amazon page to buy it.

There are handful standard theories of labor market value that are relevant to this conversation

1. Negotiating power, outside options, and surplus. The classic example is 100 farms that each need only one worker. If there are 99 workers, the workers have all the power, and can negotiate all the surplus value from the farm so they will be well paid because they can hold the farmers 'hostage' in the negotiations. This is the debate between wage takers vs wage setters.
   
   
2. Marginal revenue product of labor - workers earn in real terms the marginal value of their production. Effectively, the amount of revenue earned from the marginal worker.
   
   
3. Contract theory and incentives - Management is paid to optimize effort and appropriate risk taking. Because of the unique way managers operate, incentives are developed to encourage desired behavior. They still are assumed to not be worth more than the marginal revenue product of their labor, but as that is less clear than for other workers, there are incentive structures to align their pay along with profits, finding generally show management should and is paid in accordance with what is believed to be their marginal contribution to profits.
   
   We add on top of these theories of search, learning, risk and expectations, stickiness, and such but the two above are the key drivers of wage. CEO pay is more complicated because they're generally not seen as interchangeable marginal producers of value like most labor - they are different
   
   As the fortune 500's profits are on average only 7% of sales, I thought I was playing the part safe just keeping the discussion to profits but for what it's worth, CEO salaries are 0.04% of revenue on average in the fortune 500. Surely it's reasonable that CEOs marginal product of labor is at least .04% of total revenue and incentive alignment can expect them to be compensated up to 1% of profits? Do you really disagree with that?
   
   As for other labor, that becomes harder. There really isn't much theory tying their pay in to profit. Is the first, negotiating wage market a reasonable way to look at it? I don't really think so, especially in dynamic economies firms and labor is so constantly adjusting that bargaining power has to be at best temporary. If that was the case, immigration and other increases in the labor supply would probably be met with greater evidence of bringing down wages. We'd also not see as much movement between jobs as we do as it depends on a much more static wage formulation. I think firms learn over time what marginal value workers bring, there is probably bargaining power problems in the lowest wage occupations, but the average worker spends time searching for a good fit - somewhere where their marginal value is best.
   
   ----
   I got most of the numbers from this article and quick googling skills. The economic concepts come from grad school but can be found in detail in this grad school bibl and in this undegrad text.

The purpose of frugality is to save money in some areas of your life so that you can live the life you want. What are your goals in life? If you want to travel, travel. If you want an iPhone, get an iPhone. If you want to learn to fly, learn to fly. If you want to buy a house in 5 years, save! I want to retire pretty early and build a house, so I am saving/investing a large portion of my income like you.

It sounds like you've got this Frugality thing down pretty well, so here are some Personal Finance basics:

1. Start an emergency fund in a new savings account with 3-12 months of expenses. Don't touch this unless there is an emergency (job loss, car repairs, etc.). This will keep you from acquiring any debt and allows you to be bold with your savings/investment and other life goals.
   
   
2. Take advantage of any/all tax-advantaged investment vehicles that Australia offers. (American equivalents would be 401Ks, Roth IRAs, etc.)
   
   
3. If you've made it this far, all you have left to do is live your life. You're making all the right decisions, so do what you want. Save for a house or a car, start a family, give to charity, take time off from work, travel, etc.
   
   
4. If you don't know what you want, continue to save, save, save so when you DO find out you can do what you want. If you can max your retirement accounts every year, you'll be well on your way to financial security. But those are your retirement savings, and you won't be able to utilize them for a while. So your best bet is to save and invest a large portion of your remaining income - this will ensure that you will not have to take on any additional debt and can save thousands if not hundreds of thousands along the way (think paying cash for a house vs. a 30 year mortgage)
   
   I would also start reading some about personal finance. It sounds like you might benefit by reading Your Money or Your Life - it's a good philosophical read for those that are thinking about a money/life balance. For a little motivation to keep up your frugality, try The Millionaire Next Door - It's pretty eye-opening and I recommend that to everyone regardless of their personal finance goals. For starters in investing, The Boglehead's Guide to Investing is great, and a lot of the information can be found free at the wiki.
   
   Good luck!

Read Tim Hale's Smarter Investing and then The Intelligent Investor.

Yours isn't the worst active strategy I've seen, but it seems like guesswork that their "longterm promise" means they're currently below intrinsic value. Likewise, selling them after 15% or 20% seems quite arbitrary.

The investors I respect look at the fundamental value of the company, based on historic earnings and growth. Some dismiss the term "value investing" but nevertheless their work is built on the foundations of Benjamin Graham's principles.

If you find a company which sells for £1 a share and it has been paying dividends of 10p a share the last several years then you can have some confidence that buying that share is going give you a 10% annual return. That is the fundamental value of the company.

Obviously you can't look solely at dividends for a number of reasons. They have become unfashionable, and share buybacks are more tax-efficient in the USA. A growth company will reinvest its earnings, so your stock holding is more valuable if it opens more stores or factories but pays no dividends - hence earnings-per-share is a more accurate representation of how well the company is doing. To be any good at this kind of thing - and I certainly am not - you must consider things like cash-flow, margins and debt (in the event of crisis all debt will be paid before shareholders).

I believe you should read Smarter Investing first, as it's a very clear explanation of the current state of evidence-based investing knowledge. The majority of retail investors are best off in index funds, as the majority of professional fund managers don't beat that [1, 2, 3] - I think I know why that is, but do you have a theory? IMO you should fully understand passive investing because it's the methodology that you, as an active investor, have to beat or disprove.

Then Benjamin Graham's books will set you down the path to valuing companies.

If you paid off your mortgage yourself by the age of 36 then you're on the right track.

There are some excellent videos on YouTube. IMO the Fundsmith AGMs are worth watching; my current favourites are of Paul Lountzis speaking at the Ivey business school.

To address the title of your post as to whether or not this is a reliable and safe way to get into the stock market I'd advise against it.

 

I can't speak to whether or not this guy is 'reliable' (though I share fcb98292's misgivings about him), but trading on signals (while simple to understand) is somewhat of an advanced level of investing. You still need to decide when to trade. You could blindly follow the advice and do exactly as they say when they say it, but you may run out of money before your performance meets what they claim are their average returns (if ever). It might seem reliable and safe following the advice of an (maybe) expert, but the experience of signal trading can feel very different. There are plenty of ways to appear wealthy and many more ways to make money telling people what to invest in (with little risk to yourself). I can't say that this particular guy is not legitimate, but I've seen my fair share of folks that look like investing gurus but that get their money from those they advise and not the market itself.

 

If you're interested in getting into investing in a safe and reliable way, I'd recommend starting simple with an index or mutual fund and branching out from those once you feel more comfortable. The Bogglehead's Guide to Investing is a great resource if you're looking to start (though given your links, there may be better resources if you live in the UK). I'd also suggest you visit r/personalfinance for advice when it comes to getting into investing. r/investing may be better if you're more interested in doing more than sitting and holding stocks and bonds. I hope this helps. No matter what you choose to do, best of luck with your adventures in investing.

Yes but the question is why investor 1's should be significantly different than investor 2's in regards to their covariates. If you have issues with the methodology of the paper, you have an issue with every single pharmaceutical study ever run.

In addition, the issue isn't really whether investor 1's and investor 2's balance (though they should and do), it is whether there is a significant difference within investor 2's. Category B and C are being compared to the category A baseline, which captures the possible prior-networking effects you mention.

>The follow up survey relies on honesty

To a degree yes. When the vast majority of your responses are weighted 90%+ in one direction or the other? Probably no issues there.

>something that people with some experinece and some sense already know

Yes, but there's the question of quantifying it. It doesn't strike you as interesting that knowing a friend owns an asset vs. knowing they want to buy it vs. knowing they bought it and currently own it have 3 very different levels of influence on your purchase decision?

EDIT: Since I think we're rapidly approaching the point of intransigence, I will just say this: I think you need to give the field as a whole a bit more credit. I know that's a tough ask considering your opinion that the field as a whole is bunk. I'd ask you to consider that most of the economists that I've met are seriously intelligent, with a great grasp of graduate level mathematics, statistics and of course, economics. Many share your views about basic fallacies in the field, others don't. The long and short of it is: they spend months of their lives thinking about these topics. Don't get me wrong, there are bad papers and there are bad economists. That said, most papers published in top journals are actually pretty good, and are actually pretty interesting. They're not out to get you, they're not out to get anyone. They're just searching for causal relationships in an environment which makes causal relationships very difficult to find.

If you're interested in reading more about how economics works, I'd suggest reading Mostly Harmless Econometrics. I find it a lot better than the more popular Freakonomics in explaining the basic (modern) tenents of applied economic research. Anyway, have a good day, I hope this discussion wasn't a complete waste of your time!

This is where other schools of economics really fall short of the Austrians: spending does not grow an economy. Saving, reinvestment, and increasing production grow an economy. Simply having more exchanges means nothing if the number of things available doesn’t change. Macroeconomists love to focus on spending b/c it's something they can measure and it's a number they can push up or down, but it completely misses the big picture. You can certainly look at spending as a sort of measurement of the size of the economy, but it's a rough tool at best, and it's certainly not the driving force of economic growth by any means. I mean, Keynes was so myopic on this that he actually suggested that having the gov't pay people to dig holes and fill them back in would help the economy. How could that possibly make us richer? Who gains from that other than the diggers? You're just taking money away from the people producing the goods that improve our lives and giving it to those who are uselessly spinning their wheels. This is also why these same people think WWII got us out of the Great Depression, and if you just look at it with any sort of realistic view, there's no way that constructing tanks and planes and ships and sending them off to get blown up and take lives improves the lives of anyone. But creating labor-saving devices or more efficient ways to create food? That's the shit that actually matters. Everyone alive today that was born in the US has lived in a wealthier society than kings of the past could ever dream of, and we've lost sight of how we got here and what the mechanics were that created the wealth.

You got $13? Read this simple book, and it will put it all in perspective. Then if you want heavier stuff, you can get into Hazlitt or Rothbard.

https://smile.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X

Or you can start here for free: https://mises.org/library/one-lesson

Here are all the books with amazon links, Alphabetical order :)

---

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1591396190
  
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh et al. Link: http://amzn.com/160941280X
  
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown Link: http://amzn.com/0804137382
  
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston Link: http://amzn.com/1590597141
  
• How Google Works by Eric Schmidt et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1455582344
  
• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk Link: http://amzn.com/006227306X
  
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson Link: http://amzn.com/0307720748
  
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1400064287
  
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck Link: http://amzn.com/0345472322
  
• Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0385346654
  
• Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable by Tim S. Grover et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1476714207
  
• Rework by Jason Fried et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0307463745
  
• Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin Link: http://amzn.com/1591842948
  
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss Link: http://amzn.com/0307465357
  
• The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth by James Altucher Link: http://amzn.com/150100994X
  
• The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson Link: http://amzn.com/0060008768
  
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Link: http://amzn.com/0062273205
  
• The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen Link: http://amzn.com/0062060244
  
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Link: http://amzn.com/0307887898
  
• The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by MJ DeMarco Link: http://amzn.com/B004BDOUAI
  
• The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday Link: http://amzn.com/1591846358
  
• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1885167776
  
• The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0984999302
  
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell Link: http://amzn.com/0316346624
  
• Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1591848369
  
• Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out by Marc Ecko Link: http://amzn.com/1451685319
  
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0804139296

i was a renter a long time, i know the argument well and supported being a renter for those reasons and tried that approach. its really hard to get a consistent good return on your capital. interest account? forget it, govt just taxes it as income. that pretty much leaves equities and bonds. i did it myself at first buying shares with all sorts of strategies (built trading bots as well), but realised index funds were a much better alternative exception to this is unless you really know what youre doing trading wise. also forget managed funds, fees eat into your profit big time and some studies say that they dont beat indexes over time on average.

the best alternative i found were index funds (they are low cost) but specifically a blend of bonds and equities indexes. best product are from the vanguard index funds having read boggleheads book (highly recommended on the finance sub) https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365 I got the growth fund from vanguard 30% debt based income 70% equities

basic idea is you have your bonds in your age, equities in the rest with a mix of international and local shares. the idea of this strategy is when the market goes pair shaped people buy bonds for saftely and vice versa when things are good people buy shares but bonds are safe to hold to maturity. so this balances out your portfolio.

the above strategy is prob the best possible chance to get a good return on your money but its a long term strategy, 5 years min but ideally its a lifetime thing. but it did help me save for a deposit.

I am not a financial advisor or anything of the sort and this is all my opinion.

Before you do anything... READ.

This will take awhile to get comfortable with and organized but it will benefit you more then you can imagine. Being as young as you are and starting now is hugely beneficial. Please do this as it will benefit you for the rest of your life if your serious about it now.


I would recommend either (get it at your library)
Bogleheads Guide To Investing or Common Sense on Mutual Funds as an easy book to get started with. However, there are many others that can be just as good.

If you are serious you should not see an advisor. This is something you and almost everyone can do yourself.

Investing in index funds is the simplest and arguably the best way to save money. The books above explain this very well. Don't worry about stock picking or anything stressful as that is often a fools errand. Good investing is highly automated and only requires patience and persistence.

As for your questions.
Compound interest is not a type of account. It is the idea of earning interest on the interest you have already earned in the previous years.

What you should do is read, starting with the book mentioned above (get it at your library).

A Roth IRA is an investment vehicle for retirement, not any specific type of investment.
A Roth IRA is very practical and until you have a 401k(another type of investment vehicle) you should be putting all your money that you intent to save, up to $5,000 a year into it.
While as soon as you read retirement you may thing its not for you, starting to save now will put you incredibly far ahead of your peers during all parts of life.

Sorry to be so vague but the books I mention above will explain everything far better then I can here. As I said if you are at all serious PLEASE read one.

I'm going to give you the pathway that I read that has me where I am today, its mostly going to steer you towards dollar cost averaging and passive management, but the easing of exposure to alternative strategies was invaluable and eventually brought me to value investing. Dollar cost averaging in low cost index funds is the training wheels of investing and should be the way every novice investor starts IMO.

1. The Wealthy Barber - this is the sesame street book on investing and everyone should read it when they're starting. It'll expose you to the ideas of dollar cost averaging, low fee index funds, and the importance of using TIME as your biggest asset in slow growing your net worth. Its like $6 and 100 pages, you can read it in afternoon. http://www.amazon.com/The-Wealthy-Barber-Updated-Edition/dp/0761513116
   
   
2. The Little Book Of Common Sense Investing - if you want to skip the previous book and go straight to this one that would make sense, they cover much of the same info but this one is written by John Bogle (founder of Vanguard) and very much pushes the idea of low cost indexed mutual funds as the only way the casual investor has a chance. If you read the wealthy barber, you'll be a little bored with this book, so take your pick. http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425572242&sr=1-1&keywords=John+boggle
   
   
3. A Random Walk Down Wall Street - its been recommended several other times in the thread and I recommend it too, but not as a starter book, read one of the two books above first. The ideas presented in Random Walk are a bit more advanced and will begin to expose you to the ideas and methods of identifying risk and diversity in a portfolio, such as alpha, beta, mordern portfolio theory, and discounting. In the end the book is going to push the novice towards low cost passively managed index funds, as it should IMHO. Absolutely worth reading once you have built a small nest egg.
   
   At this point if you've taken a year or two or more to invest using what you learned in the above books you'll have a better idea of what you really want to start doing with you're money. Perhaps its value investing, and now it starts to get more technical.
   
   
4. The Little Book of Valuation - Good intro to valuing companies that begins getting into the technicalities of analyzing balance sheets. If you think this is the route you want to go then give it a read, but not until you've read the books above and cut your teeth for a year or two managing your money and exercising good decision making and patience with dollar cost averaging. http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Valuation-Company-Profit/dp/1118004779/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425572657&sr=1-1&keywords=The+little+book+of+valuation
   
   
5. The Intelligent Investor - now you're really ready to dive into the details of a companies financials to determine its worth in 5-10 years. This book by Benjamin Graham (warren Buffet's mentor) is the go to book on value investing, and I take this review seriously: "“By far the best book on investing ever written.” (Warren Buffett)". Do NOT start here, you'll just be confused, bored and frustrated. http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661/ref=la_B000APZXBQ_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425575056&sr=1-1
   
   By this point you'll no longer be an investment padawan and be well on your way to a master of the force. Do not be tempted by the dark side of day trading and penny stocks. Much fear there. There is no need for level 2 quotes with value investing because you're relying on your due dilligence from the previous years and quarters to take your portfolio higher, without worrying about the road bumps in the market today. You'll be able to happily live your life until the next quarter or two when its time to reevaluate and rebalance your portfolio.
   
   Good luck.

Wow, I'm seriously explaining this to someone on a debate forum.

> So, they move money from one rich person to another?

No, this applies to everyone with credit, loans, savings/checking accounts, and investments.

What do you think interest is?

Say you open up a Merril Edge account with BOA, they are able to store your money and give you some percentage atop of it depending on how much risk you take.

At no point are you forced to invest. You merely do so because you value future gains over access to that money immediately.

The bank, then lends your money as well as the money of many others in big lump sums to certain corporations and individuals. They promise to pay that money back with interest.

Additionally, depending on how much risk you wish to take on, the bank also buys stock in aggregate, using part of your money and the money of others.

> Yeah, so you are going to start a corporation by borrowing money from a corporation thru another corporation (a bank) so then you can lend money to another guy who wants to start another corporation in order to make more money? Where is any of this benefitting society?

I think I understand what you're saying. A corporation creates profit by providing immense amounts of value to people - which is how it makes money. For one reason or another, the corporation invests in securities(stocks/bonds).

So, without that initial startup investment from the bank/investors, the corporation likely wouldn't exist. By investing, the corporation allows other corporations to come into existence and provide value for many others.

Simply put, it's an equation of valuing money now vs valuing more money in the future(with some risk).

> So they make decisions to protect their own wealth like literally everyone else, how does that make them useful to society?

I addressed this. They allow efficient allocation of societal capital.

> By "overly confine" you mean bail them out and give them "free" money when they fucked up?

What are you talking about? The banks didn't have the wacky regional restrictions we did in the US.

> Yeah, so if you have money you give someone money and make money? Again, how is society being benefitted?

I addressed this repeatedly. At its most simplest, if I'm paying you to give me $50,000 immediately, it means that you're immensely valuable to me. You are benefiting society by giving my something I value. If I am able to pay you back, it means I've used your investment, earned it back, and with the interest I promised. The only way I can pay it back is to provide some service and benefit to others. That's why people paid me.

> Link one

Possibly the best and most succinct option

Read. All the famous investors started reading at a young age and read ferociously (ok maybe not all but most).

Go to the library if you can, they generally will have all the quality investing tomes, without some of the "get rich quick manuals" which only benefit the authors.

Here is a few books to start with:

• The Four Pillars of Investing
  
• The Intelligent Investor
  
• The Bogleheads Guide to Investing You could start here. Pretty good introduction.
  
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street
  
• The Richest Man in Babylon (PDF) This is a quick read, and more a story than anything. Still worth it.
  
• [The Little Book of Common Sense Investing] (http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=16QN03Q9GFZ6NG5PPJ6P)
  
  Most of this stuff is investment theory. To be a successful investor as an average American, without a job in the finance industry, you probably don't have to read all of those books. If you really want to get into investing, that's a good place to start.
  
  Also, the Bogleheads book is a great one to start with because you can decide if you really are interested in investing. If not, that book is good personal financial advice regardless who you're getting paid. It will benefit the regular American.
  

Funny, I just had a conversation with a buddy about this. From 2005-2015 I spent a TON of time in researching and trading FX. Similar to most traders, I blew up a a couple small accounts (~5k total losses) and then spent a few years looking for a holy grail trading strategy. I really enjoyed the challenge of FX because it forces you to be in tune with world economies and interest rates but, even after a decade, I had trouble being consistently profitable (granted I did have some severe periods of trading ADD) During that time however, I did study a lot of technical analysis and became pretty good at very short term price action scalping. My problem was that I could just never reach the point in FX where I felt confident enough to throw money down the gauntlet again, no matter how well I did in paper/demo accounts.

In 2015, after watching some friends making easy money in stocks while I was doing brain surgery on the EUR/USD, I decided I would start spending more time studying stocks and doing some stock demo/paper trading. Turns out it was MUCH easier for me to look at a company's earnings/filings for fundamentals and then read the price action day to day. Maybe also because with FX there are SO many things influencing the direction of the dollar on any given day. For me, it made trading a micro/small cap much easier to read in terms of straight price action/volume. IMO FX is the perfect training ground to build solid TA skills.

It wasn't until May 2018 that I decided I would start trading stocks seriously. Of course, that turned out to be not the best time to start trading stocks! BUT, I think the years I spent in FX helped prevent me from getting into any really bad/overvalued positions. So far I've built up an initial 8.5k into ~103k. A long ways to go toward being a 'pro' but showing consistent profitability (for now at least).

EDIT: Point of clarification regarding my balance, I should note that once I showed some profitability, I began making additional deposits to my account (which now account for an additional 16.5k). I’ve posted screenshots and deposit history here

I consider myself a 'trader' not an 'investor' and I think you can do that with stocks just as easily as you can with FX. You just need to know more about the fundamentals/drivers of price on whichever company you're trading at vs the economic implications on currency. Really just adapting what you know to a different market. Same thing goes for switching to futures/options. When I switched over to stocks, I started with a lot of the value investing classics like The Intelligent Investor and others in the Grahm/Buffet realm, just to get an idea for valuation and long term strategies that have worked for the most successful. Depending on your trading/investing style you can drill down from there.

​

​

I'll answer very briefly, but /u/NoraTC covered a lot of really important things, the biggest being the variation in work. I'm answering as a line cook in what most would consider a good, upscale restaurant.

Working as a cook is both a tremendously rewarding and challenging proposition. The hours and schedule and pay aren't good. Many of your co-workers will be derelicts. It is hard, repetitive, stressful work. On the average day, you'll get there a couple hours before service (whether that means 4:00 am or 2:00 pm) and you'll get your station set. If your restaurant has lunch and dinner, you'll hope the person working the opposite shift didn't screw you over by using all your mise en place (abbreviated to meez generally). If so, hope you're good at what we'll call dispute resolution techniques. You need to make sure you're set for that day and you're staying ahead for the next few days too. Are there parties coming up? Better make sure you have what you need. If you have to rely on a sous chef to help you get set, it's bad news. The whole time, you'll be working quickly.

You eventually get to the point where your hands know what to do and your mind can wander a little. But you'll get done at whatever time and then go home exhausted. Usually, the managerial style is brusque. People get fired; practical jokes are played. The best source is Bill Buford's Heat, which is also an excellent read.

But despite its less great qualities, working in a kitchen can be really rewarding. It's satisfying to make stuff with your hands. See e.g. Shop Class as Soulcraft for more on this topic. The folks you'll work with form a real sense of camaraderie. It teaches you a lot about life. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely. I'm probably even happier I'm done with it.

Edit: One of the things that's really rewarding, but I didn't touch on above, is knowing you can do it. There's a lot in life where you get a participation award. In a kitchen, it's not like that. If you're good, you survive, then you thrive, then you move to a new station and figure shit out all over again. If you can't cut it, you're out.

> I think you have trouble understanding that I know that Capitalism is a very effective way to drive innovation as long as it may generate profit.

Great, so now we agree on something... it's not much, but it's something.

> It is however a very bad driver for innovation when there is not much profit behind it.

I never said it was perfect! What I am saying is that overall, it's the most efficient way to drive innovation across the board. That is, overall, it will produce more innovative ideas than any other model out there.

> But even if it would be the most awesome innovation driver ever and have no downsides in that department, it is fatally flawed in its core. Now I could give you the work of Dr. Murray Low to read as well (https://www.amazon.com/Seventeen-Contradictions-Capitalism-David-Harvey/dp/1781251606/280-4905634-3720005)

If you're done trying to make the logical case for your position, then I'll start throwing books and videos your way too!

The fact is that good ideas stand on their own merits. I don't need to watch a 90 minute video from somebody with whom I can't have a discussion. If I don't agree with any of the premises he proposes, then I have no way to rebut them and get an answer.

> When a system is as flawed as Capitalism we must look out for alternatives. And that may be Communism (or for Marxists rather Socialism because that is the transition before Communism).

We already know which systems provides us with the fundamentals to consistently and efficiently produce the most good ideas and eliminate the bad ones:

• In science, it's the scientific method.
  
• In politics, it's democracy.
  
• In economics, it's capitalism.
  
  Are all of these system perfect? Far from it, but they're the most efficient ones we have available. Now, I'm all for the proposal and adoption of better ideas, but we've already tried the bad ones (religion, dictatorship, communism, etc.), so we don't need to try them again.
  
  > Also I am really interested in what "pure" Socialism is? There are multiple Socialist Systems: Anarchism, Market Socialism, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Planned Economy Socialism, and so on and on...
  
  We start with a fundamental concept: effort and reward. When I place my effort into something, which system will allow for the most efficient and largest yield of reward? If any of those forms of socialism do, and they do so more efficiently than capitalism, then let's adopt them. And if you're claiming that they do, then please bring forth the evidence that demonstrates it.

Depends on how old you are.

• Middle school: I really enjoyed this, this, and this, but I don't think I can read those books now (29) without cringing a little bit. Especially, Getting Things Done because I already know how to make to do list, but I still flip through all 3 books occastionally.
  
  
• High school: I really enjoyed this, this, and this, but if you're a well adjusted human and responsible adult, then I don't think you'll find a lot of helpful advice from these 6 books so far because it'll be pretty basic information.
  
  
• College: I really enjoyed this, this, and started doing Malcolm Gladwell books. The checklist book helped me get more organized and So Good They Can't Ignore You was helpful starting my career path.
  
• Graduate School: I really enjoyed this, this, and this. I already stopped with most "self help" books and reading more about how to manage my money or books that looked interesting like Stiff.
  
  
• Currently: I'm working on this, this, and this. Now I'm reading mostly for fun, but all three of these books are way out of my league and I have no idea what their talking about, but they're areas of my interest. History and AI.

>LMAO where have I heard this before??

I have attempted to explain how each author has presented a false understanding of Marxian value or the nature of social production. I have given in Marx's own words and my own attempts to explain these concepts. If you are struggling I am happy to try again. Dusty's essay in particular is just mind-boggling in terms of how closely it mirrors Marx and then seems to ascribe to him all of this 'intrinsic axiologist' stuff that is literally contradictory to the Marxist conception of the human species.

>Except there is no real difference in the real world.

Yes there is. Water may have a multitude of use values. It may have a multitude of exchange values in relation to any given object. It may be present in such a material condition as to hold no value whatsoever, it may be present in such a material condition as to be the most valuable thing an individual could possibly want. A man dying of dehydration in the desert does not care for water's utility as a solvent or cleaning agent. A man drowning in the sea is not currently looking for a refreshing spigot to drink from. No one object holds some singular intrinsic or objective use value, this is a socially and subjectively derived phenomena. No one object holds some kind of set exchange ratio with another object outside of a given relational context which ultimately stems back to the material conditions within which the exchange takes place. My knowing how much a bottle of water sells for in central London relative to a bottle of Diet Coke does not tell me how much water I am going to need to turn an area of dirt into mud for the making of bricks. These values are distinct and separate.

>This didn't clarify anything.

Well again, see above. You have an appallingly bad understanding of the Marxian conception of society, which is why you are repeatedly presenting these quite shoddy arguments and then pretending like no one is giving you any kind of answers. The answer lies deeper than you want to look because you have not challenged some very basic presuppositions about our understanding of the material world around us. Like I said, I did not want to address what you said so much as critique the places you are clearly getting these ideas from. If you want to raise where you are struggling to understand or feel I am not making sense, I am more than happy to make another attempt in a more specific and detailed manner.

>We hate Mondays because we don't like working.

Except people will spend hundreds of hours working on whatever hobby satisfies them? Labour is not simply the act of going to work for your employer or engaging in market activity. As per Dusty's essay that you shared to support your position -

>Value-judgements and actions on them do not spring from a vacuum and can not float away and apart from the axiological lattice binding all values as instruments to a standard or ultimate value...It is the constant conditionality of the form of life that gives rise to the need of values and to the need of acting to secure and keep things instrumental to an organism’s preservation.

So when we say forced to work, as the video makes clear, we are talking about being forced to work in a manner in which we are unfree to determine how to allocate our own labour, rather than simply the need to labour in and of itself. In fact the need to labour freely is, again as mentioned in the video, part of Man's intrinsic nature without which we become alienated from both ourself and the society in which we exist. We hate Monday's during the work-week because it signals a resumption in which the majority of our time is spent working in a manner in which we have little to no control over.

>No one is forced to work for a capitalist.

Yes, you are free to go to the woods and build a mud-hut and die of starvation a few months down the line. Well, not really because most land is privately owned, but in principle. The reality is of course that we are social beings and we are talking about social labour. Your ability to engage in social labour under Capitalism without engaging with the market is... not really possible. Hence you are always going to be reliant on some form of Capitalist or Capital in order for your labour to actually meet your basic needs for survival, let alone the needs required to enjoy a social existence.

>Capital also does not concentrate or accumulate into fewer hands.

There's a big door-stopper book published on just this not that long ago. It is worth a read, but it can be a bit exhausting! The accumulation of Capital historically since the 18th century has only been curtailed by an anomalous period of political restraint on the activity of Capital during the mid-20th Century.

>They are not "deprived" of anything to not get paid.

I mean... Yes you are? Time? Freedom to be doing things with that time? The money assuming you have signed a contract judging your labour-time to hold a certain agreed value between yourself and your employer and are not some slave-labouring illegal immigrant?

>Your life is not owned by someone else.

Well, yeah it is. Again back to the last example. Yes theoretically I can go out and make myself a farmstead and live off the wheat I grow. In reality there isn't the public land to be doing that, and realistically you're not going to get those materials to even do that without first exchanging your labour-time for money.

>Bosses are not unaccountable. Bosses do not control more of your life than dictators.

I would have preferred he used Capitalist or Employer over bosses. I chalk it down to English as a second/third language. But where was he incorrect? What dictator on the planet could hope to have 8 to 12 hours a day in the lives of each of their subjects in which they control the minutiae of their actions, dictate when they are free to take breaks for essential biological functions? What do you mean bosses cannot force you to work for free, you've never done unpaid overtime?

>I'm 3 minutes in...

Good to know one side can sit through three long-form essays of absolute trash and come out with 10,000+ words of argument, while t'other feels more knowledgeable despite being unable to sit through 3 minutes of a video before getting too emotional to continue :) If its trash then you can put together the same kind of argument against on a point-by-point basis as I have tried to do and we can discuss onwards from there.

>I don’t regret having one, just extremely ashamed of being sexual and communicating it to girls and also showing it to the world. Attracting girls’ attention and whatnot isn’t very hard but progressing things to dating, holding hands and eventually sex is impossible. I can’t even call them or message them on Facebook or Whatsapp because I just feel like an idiot for doing so. Making a move in clubs and bars is also difficult although I once got close to leaving with a girl but she didn't want to. I got made fun of a lot growing up for not having a girlfriend and this made me feel like i do not deserve one. It doesn't matter if I've got the green light to go ahead I just feel really ashamed do it. Even something like looking at a fit girl wearing a short skirt makes me feel bad for checking her out and that I shouldn’t be doing it.


I know what you mean. I've been there myself, but even when I was there I was entirely self-aware of my shame and I was skeptical of the validity of my emotional reactions; I realized they were ingrained. Being aware of your emotional reactions allows you to be emotionally proactive. Your sex-negative problem is mostly an emotional issue, and not much else, right? I've been there. I wouldn't doubt that you are also decent looking and have both latent and actualized social skills. Most intelligent introverts have a lot of potential to be who they want to be because they know themselves more deeply than others. You must use your introverted nature to your advantage and recognize the differences in others and yourself. In all honesty, there are an infinite number of unwritten rules; everyone's abstract/emotional logic is different. Many of them are foundational and predictable, however; including yours and mine. Like anything else, being emotionally predictable is not a black/white issue. It is a grey area, and you have to balance your reliability with creativity.


Being made fun of for not having a girlfriend is just as sexist as being made fun of for not having a boyfriend; gender equal too. Were you ever shamed for not having a boyfriend? It's clearly a matter of groupthink and extroverted style; not for everyone. Dating relationships, for extroverts especially, are often attention-getting and showy. They wear their relationships like trophies won. Usually introverts prefer a more private relationship because they have less social desire and are often shamed because of it. Introverts are “themselves” more often in private. Extroverts are “themselves” more often in public. There is no shame deserved either way, regardless of popular opinion. Both styles have their strengths and weaknesses, and you should try to introject some of the traits that you enjoy in others; regardless of type. That is how you become balanced.


>I’m receiving counselling from a pastor who advocates the whole “no sex before marriage” thing and believes that people should only date to get married and sex is only for making kids which is stupid IMO because I do not plan on getting married anytime soon.


Counseling from a Catholic pastor? Watch out, that is one of the most notorious sex-negative societies out there. They own the abstinence-only charade while they parade horribles. Marriage is not the answer to anything; it is an institution of the state. Anything else attached is sentimental.


If you haven't already, I recommend doing an in-depth study of animal sexual behaviors; especially the most intelligent animals. All animals have sex for pleasure, but some animals are only driven to have sex at certain times of the year; humans are on a 24/7 system.


>I’ve tried the no fap route and gotten very high days counts but that hasn’t really helped me at all.


Sexual frustration doesn't help anyone. If you are mindful, then you can use your libido to further your goals, but it is not an all-cure.


>Got any sources to help overcome sex-negative perspectives? I’m interested in recreational sex not baby making sex.


Absolutely. I recommend starting with actual sex science and learning about male and female psychology and neurology. Then work your way into reading about sex culture. You should also study developmental psychology as you will probably need the clinical context in order to objectively self-evaluate your childhood influences; it is necessary for self-therapy. The best therapy will always be self-therapy; no one will ever know you better than yourself.


Evolutionary Science and Morals Philosophy:

The Selfish Gene

The Moral Landscape

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?


Sex Psychology, Science, and Neurology:

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

The Female Brain

The Male Brain

Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love

What Do Women Want

Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between)

Sex: The world's favorite pastime fully revealed


Behavioral Psychology and Abstract Economics:

How Pleasure Works

Freakonomics

Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking

Thinking Fast And Slow

We Are All Weird


Developmental Psychology:

Nurture Shock

Hauntings: Dispelling The Ghosts That Run Our Lives


Empathy Building:


Half The Sky

The House On Mango Street

Me Before You

The Fault In Our Stars

Also check out James Hollis' Understanding The Psychology of Men lecture if you can find it.



Movies: XXY, Tom Boy, Dogtooth, Shame, Secretary, Nymphomaniac, Juno, Beautiful Creatures, and The Man From Earth.



All of these things are related, but it is up to you to make the connections; pick and choose which material suits your interests best. These are the things that came to mind first, and they have all influenced my perspectives.

my company, cymbal, is trying to answer this question directly.

trends largely suggest listeners are transitioning from mp3s to streaming services. streaming services have partly competed by attempting to differentiate their catalogs, but it's hard to imagine these differences persisting over time. sure, kanye is holding TLOP on tidal for now, but eventually even the beatles broke.

peter thiel, in "zero to one", used card readers like square to illustrate the challenges of entering a market where it's hard to differentiate from competition, and streaming services know their goals will have to orient around platform-specific offerings, rather than differences in libraries. i think there's reason to believe that because the simple proposition of $10/month for the entire recorded history of music has been replicated, the challenge will need to be about helping users navigate that vastness.

speaking specifically to the future of the music business, it's important to remember that streaming music is still a very new phenomenon, and on-demand services have yet to penetrate their market. growth, across demographics and nationalities, could scale these services' revenue models many times over. changes in how we listen – in our cars, for example – are just as important to this discussion as how we get the music itself delivered to us.

if i had to predict, i'd expect streaming to become increasingly dominant now that smartphones have proliferated, and the most-dominant software providers to these devices (android and ios) have built streaming services (google music / youtube red / youtube music and apple music) that come pre-loaded on devices. i'd also expect a consolidation of streaming apps, which the fall of rdio and songza already suggest.

which brings me back to why i believe the future of the music business has less to do with libraries or delivery, and more with recommendation and navigating those services' tens of millions of songs. music creation, dissemination, and promotion that is almost entirely digital needs a very different staffing model than the compound structure that now exists and serves physical and digital sales, distributed over myriad channels from radio to streaming playlists. that's tough, though, because streaming services weren't built for sharing, and can only ever speak to their segment of the market. alternatively, a focus on the promotional models that have worked in other realms of celebrity – viral and social marketing, using instagram, twitter, snapchat – might really work. but those platforms weren't made for listening to music.

our idea is that the best recommendations come from the people – friends, artists – who matter to you. we want to let our users show up from any streaming service (right now we support soundcloud and spotify) and find their friends, regardless of how those friends listen, to discover the songs they love. and since every play on cymbal counts on spotify and soundcloud, premium users on our app are driving revenue to the artists they like.

i think we're in as volatile a period of change the music industry's ever seen, but streaming services are proving successful in price and product in their battle against piracy. the next frontier is figuring out how to get everybody listening to the right stuff on them.

Well, I just read a bunch of stuff. So regarding the marginal cost supply curve debate going on, I googled decreasing marginal cost and came up with this, where the second answer says:

> Again, there's nothing significant, necessary, or truthful about a U-shaped MC curve. It's just a common element in the exposition at the introductory level. More advanced texts (e.g., Mas-Colell) examine other "shapes".

So this is the textbook in question I'm pretty sure. According to this it's "the textbook almost every first year grad micro class uses, regardless of rank." Which seems to be true looking at syllabi on google. Also something by someone named Kreps maybe.

If you google "mas-colell pdf", you can get a pdf of the book. So I did, because I obviously have nothing better to do. Chapter 5, "Production," is about supply stuff. I didn't look at any other chapters. I can't copy and paste from the pdf, and summarizing it is kind of hard and boring, especially because some of it relies on theorems from previous chapters. But here's a couple of points:

If you're looking for an objection to the shape of the supply curve, free disposal seems more important than increasing marginal cost. On page 138 it lists a set of theorems that follow from free disposal and the existence of a production set. These theorems imply the direct relationship between supply and price, but they don't mention increasing marginal cost. This is on page 138 by the way, and it seems like you need some stuff from chapter 3 to get it all.

Second, further down on page 144-146 it shows a bunch of graphs of marginal cost under various situations. Marginal cost is sometimes horizontal, sometimes upward sloping, sometimes U shaped. There isn't one of it just sloping down, it always slopes back up after, and this is consistent with other graphs I've seen. Which honestly makes sense, why wouldn't a firm keep producing until its marginal costs are increasing? When your marginal costs are falling, then what you receive from each sale needs to be falling even faster to deter you from producing more to sell, right?

So I don't know, but I feel like if you want to say economists are ignoring falling marginal costs, or however you want to put it, you need to grapple with economics on the level of rigor of this textbook. This book is a major step up from something like this.

(I feel like a rationalist principle for these kinds of debates is that the conversation should go something like this: "I think X." "Well I think Y." "Hold on, are you a random guy on the Internet?" "I'm a random zuy, but yes." "Oh, right - sorry. Anyway, I don't know a whole lot about this." "Me neither." "Hey, /r/badeconomics is right over there. Let's pop into their open thread and ask them." "$@#! you, Nazi." "Back at you, cuck." It would save me having to do any work ever.)

A reading group for this economics textbook would be really fun, by the way. It was interesting trying to read it, probably even more so if you start at chapter one. It has a lot of math but nothing nerdy STEM types shouldn't be able to handle. It could be a great way to understand economics on a level higher than blogs and Wikipedia can give you, which is honestly kind of interesting. Think of the "well, actually" opportunities for your next Internet debate! We could do a chapter a week or something and focus on comprehension and interpretation. Anyone want to try it?

OP I have a degree in finance and I'd like to provide the counterweight to this sub. Please take the time to read my comments, despite the inevitable unpopularity of my advice:

• Try to think of the initiatives of the average investor here. Chances are they are a 20-something guy with a computer science degree, who's following the circle-jerk strategy of 'put all in S&P 500' because of fear of taking responsibility for their financial decisions. That helps them sleep at night. The easiest thing to do to just keep throwing your money at S&P, but seldom the easiest solution is the best one. I don't know of anyone with a understanding of economics or finance who follows this strategy, as nicely put as the only book this sub reads.
  
  
• Don't read pop-economics/investing books. While doing your degree, try to read more books like international finance and less books targeted at pop-culture like the intelligent investor. The former gives you an understanding of the economy, the later gives you some feel-good advice to parrot.
  
  
• There are signs of drop in the market. I'd advise you to read opinions of renowned economics like Shiller, Krugman and the like. Subscribe to the financial times and the economist and with time you'd get a pretty good picture. But in order to asses your risk properly you will have to know the theory and hit the books. From the top of my head, Shiller P/E has something like 60% correlation with future market returns. Given the current valuations of S&P the current historical 10-y return is 1-2%, not 7% like the /r/investing-ors are hoping. Since people expect 7%, but the fundamentals predict 1-2%, that difference has to come in the form of a stagnation or a crash.
  
  
• Now long term: Is 1-2% better then cash? Yeah. Is it better then just dumping your money in Poland instead? No. The point is not to choose between "in S&P, out cash" and "out S&P, in cash" the point to choose between the 1000s of options and find the one that gets you the best return.
  
  
• why am I writing a comment that will have negative karma return, you may ask? Because I once got a guy in the right way through my rants, and he wrote me later to thank me. That felt good. So I guess I'm hoping to hammer some more common sense into someone else.

If you don't want to make a career out of trading, a helpful rule of thumb is a 90 / 10 principle popularized by Andrew Hallam in his text Millionaire Teacher: Stick 90% of your capital in tax sheltered, virtually passive forms of investment like index mutual funds or ETFs with an IRA wrapper and stick the other 10% in whatever investment vehicle you want to learn.

For example, I put 90% of my capital in a batch of index funds and ETFs predicated on John Bogle's suggestion of "your age in bonds, the rest in common stock" index funds and ETFs by way of an account with Vanguard for my IRA and my company's 403(b) program. Vanguard makes this really easy through their target retirement funds, which automatically adjust the ratio of stock / bonds over time. I'm really interested in value investing; so, I take long positions in individual stock that meets the criteria Benjamin Graham identified in Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor with the other 10% of my capital via a brokerage account with TD Ameritrade--this isn't tax sheltered like my retirement accounts but it's basically an ongoing education in investing since TD Ameritrade offers a ton of instructional materials on topics like options, commodities, etc. and I want to see my money grow.

Let's take a look at what this could look like for your situation. Starting with $5k and doing something like what I'm doing, you would:

1. Open an account with Vanguard or whomever else you want to deal with for your IRA and invest $4500 there. If you follow that same rule of thumb I mentioned from Bogle, you could stick 18% of that in a bond ETF like BND, i.e. $810. Of course, you'll have to purchase in units equivalent to the going rate of the ETF shares, which $83.22 at present. So, you'd have to go with 10 shares for a total of $832.20 invested. Then, you could stick the rest in a total stock market ETF like VTI, whose going rate is $103.50 at present. To invest 82% of your available $4500, or $3690, you would need to buy 35 shares for a total of $3685.50 invested. But maybe all this seems way too complex to keep track of year after year; so, you could instead just invest all $4500 in a one-stop-shop composite index fund like Vanguard's Target Retirement 2035, which currently features a ratio pretty close to what you want between bonds and stock and will automatically adjust for you over time.
   
   
2. Open an account with pretty much any other decent brokerage, study up, and invest your remaining cash in whatever you want to learn how to do. $500 is not going to buy you much stock, but you could pull off a few options plays with that amount of cash. The key here is to provide a context where you basically force yourself to learn how to invest by having an actual stake in the game. A lot of people advocate paper trading, i.e. executing trades with fake money but real stock market numbers, as a way to learn how to invest; however, we all behave differently when our actual money is at stake. It's better to learn with actual money, even if it's not much. As I mentioned before, I personally like TD Ameritrade because they provide a lot of instructional content; however, your mileage may vary.
   
   Any follow up questions?

The answer, as usual is: it depends.

If you want to invest your money, then there's no better time than now. However, the implication is that when you invest that money you have to leave it sit long enough to do it's work.

At 19 and wanting to invest, you have time on your side. You need to be able to stomach volatility in the market and not get excited when your stocks rally for 30%, nor should you despair when the stocks plummet by 40%.

Traditionally speaking, the stock market averages between 6%~8% a year, which is much better than any savings account you're going to find. However, you shouldn't treat it as a savings account because volatility will almost certainly put you in a bad position to sell whenever you need the money most.

If you feel like you can stomach that volatility and turn a blind eye to both the rallies and collapses, then the stock market may certainly be for you. If you are NOT looking to place your money in good companies for a long period of time (10+ years), then it's my opinion that you are simply speculating... in which case you may as well go to the casino.

If at this point you have decided that you would like to invest in the stock market, you now need to figure out the degree of involvement you would like to dedicate.

If you're looking for a simple hands off investment, then you should just invest in an index fund such as VFINX, SWPPX, or QQQ.

Index funds closely track the performance of the market and charge minimal fees. They are pretty much totally hands off on your part, and are the Ronco of stock investing. Just set it and forget it, and enjoy your ride on the market.

A step above that are mutual funds. They actively try to beat indexes, but charge a fee to do so. There are mutual funds for any style of investing, and people tend to choose mutual funds that coincide with where they think success will lie. That means choosing foreign or domestic, stocks or bonds, and even individual sectors like technology, retail, energy, etc.

The world of mutual funds is vast, and provide an opportunity to beat the market, but it comes with a price. I'll leave the rest up to you to do your research.

Finally comes individual stock picking. Picking individual stocks is the highest risk, but also have the potential for the highest returns. Also, there are no fees except for the fee for purchasing your shares.

There is also a lot to this world, as I'm sure you know, but if this route interests you, then I would suggest you pick up a few books, beginning with The Intelligent Investor.

This book is, in my opinion, the best introduction out there to investing for long term wealth.

Finally, since you're so young and you seem to have an eye out for your personal finances, I absolutely recommend you read The Millionaire Next Door.

Good luck!

Since you are from the UK I'm going to recommend /r/UKPersonalFinance's bible of Tim Hale's Smarter Investing. That basically explains passive investing, investing aims and timelines, portfolio strategies, etc and also inoculates you against trying to be too clever.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Smarter-Investing-3rd-edn-Decisions/dp/0273785370

You can also read the more general The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham but unless you are going to really dedicate a shed load of time to it Tim Hale's book is precisely what you need. Graham is basically the standard text on the matter but it goes into a lot of detail that isn't really relevant anymore whereas Smarter Investing is primed for modern investing and particularly deals with the UK environment more.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Practical/dp/0060555661

If you are going to invest you absolutely want to use the right platform for it. The UK has a good number of tax efficient platforms for investment. Specifically:

1. Stocks and Shares ISA - Standard tax free investment account. You can put in £20k annually and will never pay capital gains taxes on the earnings. The new tax year starts on the 5th of April so if you have money to invest now you can put money in without using the limit for 2018-2019.
   
   
2. Lifetime ISA - Similar to a S&S ISA except there is a £4k limit (this counts to your £20k limit but you can only put £4k in a LISA). The big win with a LISA is the government puts in 25% of whatever you put in. The downside is you cannot withdraw money penalty free unless buying your first house or when you are 55. Withdrawing otherwise means you pay a 25% penalty on withdrawal (and because -25% is bigger than +25% you actually lose money). Again a LISA opened now can take £4k before the tax year ends on the 5th. Then you could put in another £4k from the 6th. One other detail is you cannot use a LISA towards a house within 12 months of opening it.
   
   
3. SIPP - A tax free investment pension. You never pay CGT like an ISA and you can put in however much you want. The government will give you back your income tax on up to £40k (that is the amount put in + the returned income tax caps at £40k) though you'll have to self assess to reclaim tax on higher rates (basically the government will put up your tax free limit for next year, the bonus is only directly 25%). You cannot withdraw until you are 55, penalties on early withdrawal are absurd (60%+). At 55 you can immediately take out 25% tax free. Any further withdrawals are taxable income.
   
   Basically it boils down to SIPP for retirement, LISA for buying a house (and to diversify against potential changes to the SIPP in law), S&S ISA for everything else. The one upside of an ISA over a SIPP is withdrawals from ISAs are never taxable. So using the £4k LISA limit each year makes sense once you are below the upper bands on income tax. As you'll effectively be able to withdraw from your LISA at will from 55.
   
   //edit - List of platform providers and fees below.
   
   http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

The best place to start if you really want to get into investing is the classic, "The Intelligent Investor", by Ben Graham (he has another book called "Security Analysis", but it's very dense and some of the info in it is pretty dated, even though it has been updated a bunch of times). Graham was the mentor for Warren Buffett, who, if you don't know who he is, is widely regarded to be one of the greatest investors ever. The book has been around for a long time and has gone through a number of editions, but the principles have stood the test of time. Also, there was an edition that was updated by Jason Zweig, a financial writer: http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451140254&sr=1-1&keywords=the+intelligent+investor

A caveat though: if you want to be very successful at investing, it requires fairly serious commitment, with regularly staying current on the state of your portfolio, going through financial statements, (not as hard as it sounds, but it requires learning and discipline), and understanding the economic environment the companies you're investing in are facing. And maybe more important than any of that is discipline; it takes a lot of guts to make decisions when your money is involved and you're sometimes going against the crowd.

The other two resources I would check out are, The Motley Fool, who generally put a lighthearted and fun spin on investing, but also take a value based approach (not strict value investing, but they are focused on company fundamentals more than typical Wall Street chatter). And Index Funds: If it turns out that you don't want to spend time every week reading financial statements or, at the bare minimum, Value Line reports, Index Fund investing is a great way to get into the market in a highly diversified way that doesn't require the same rigor that individual stock investing does. (Also, look at ETFs with regard to Index Funds, as they tend to be lower cost than investing in the fund itself -- Exchange Traded Funds are basically mutual funds you can buy like a stock, as opposed to traditional mutual funds, which you invest in by opening an account with the mutual fund company itself).

This is definitely the right sub. A few notes:

1. You can approach applied economics papers with just a semester of economic statistics / econometrics and a semester of intermediate theory. Applied papers can be either micro or macro. For example, at this point you should be able to comfortably read Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992).
   
   Most applied economics paper boil down to I ran a regression of Y on X. The key question you have to ask yourself is, "Do I buy their identification?" To assess such claims, you don't need much more than a semester or two of econometrics and critical thinking. Sure, some of the more obscure estimators might be beyond your ability, but the broad swath of applied papers boil down to some kind of instrumental variables regression.
   
   A somewhat more advanced paper that should still be readable to you is Gali and Gertler (1999).
   
   The game here is: write down your model to be estimated; argue that you have a good identification strategy; show us the tables of coefficients; argue that your results are robust; tell me why I should care. The trick is clean identification and economically & statistically significant results.
   
   Resources: your companion here should be Mostly Harmless Econometrics.
   
   
2. Then there are theory papers, which can be micro or macro. These will generally set up an economic model and prove some results analytically. The limiting factor in reading them will be your mathematical maturity: here is where the real analysis and topology come into play. A typical theory paper (that you cannot probably read comfortably) might look like Mas-Colell (1975).
   
   The game here is: write down a model; derive some mathematical results (typically about certain partial derivatives, cross-elasticities, or existence of equilibria); tell me why I should care. The trick is to write down a model that makes sense and bring results that are applicable, either to other theoretical problems or that can be applied to practical problems.
   
   Resources: MWG is probably good preparation for these papers, at least in form.
   
   
3. Third, there are computational papers. These tend to be macro, and within macro tend to be oriented around business cycle analysis. Here there is a lot of assumed background knowledge: macroeconomists expect to see models written down in particular ways and have certain preconceived expectations of what your "results" should look like. Again, I don't think these are approachable right out of the undergrad curriculum. I certainly could not follow the arguments of Ireland (2004) when I was an undergrad. I could barely work through the first few pages of Clarida, Gali and Gertler (1999).
   
   The game here is: write down a model; solve it approximately near the steady-state; simulate the model; show me some dynamics around the steady-state; show me how the model reacts to shocks; tell me why I should care. The trick is: write down a sensible model that captures the phenomena of interest, and show how the economy reacts to the shocks that you hit the economy with. Sometimes you want to show how policy can counteract those shocks.
   
   Resources: while reading a few chapters of Sargent & Ljungqvist is nice, there is still a lot of assumed background when reading macro that makes these papers a bit forbidding if you haven't had graduate training in the subject. Yes, I find it deplorable, but that's how the profession has evolved.
   
   A fantastic place to start in macro is Models of Business Cycles. You can probably read it if you know a little calculus and have taken a course in intermediate macro.
   
   By the way, all of the papers I've linked to are "classics" and are worth perusing, even if you don't fully grasp what's going on in them. I'm biased, so you've gotten a sampling of macro papers. Let me know if you want details/context on any of the papers I linked to.
   
   My deepest apologies if, in these summaries, I have offended the sensibilities of my applied and theoretical brethren. I'm stepping a bit out of the bounds of my field (money & macro). :)
   
   (Anyone know of good "classics" in applied micro that are readable? Card-Krueger (1994) is probably readable, as is Angrist (1990). But I'm not familiar with the classics in labor and IO.)

Read these books, in this order:

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist
https://www.amazon.com/Buffett-American-Capitalist-Roger-Lowenstein/dp/0812979273/

The Little Book That Still Beats the Market
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Still-Beats-Market/dp/0470624159/

Margin of Safety (only available in free PDF now, out of print)
https://files.leopolds.com/books/Margin.of.Safety.1st.Edition.1991.Klarman.pdf

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
https://www.amazon.com/Common-Stocks-Uncommon-Profits-Writings/dp/0471445509/

The Intelligent Investor
https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

They'll teach you what's called value investing. As a system it was approximately originated by Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett's mentor. It's the only system of investing that has been shown to consistently work over an extremely long period of time (nearly a century at this point) and anybody can learn to utilize it.

The first book will give you a close-up walk-through of value investing by following Buffett from his earliest days forward, including how he thought about investing (the most important aspect). That'll prime you to more easily be able to understand and digest the next value investing books. Once you have digested enough about value investing, you'll be able to adapt its ways to the things you're particularly good at (there are various styles or approaches to value investing; the best at it all use slightly different custom techniques in how they find stocks, what kind of levels of value they require before they invest, when they prefer to sell or not, risk tolerance, etc). As a system it's fundamentally built around logic / reason as the primary tools of appraising investments and making decisions, it encourages you to push emotion out of the equation of investing as much as possible (and in doing so, you automatically acquire a dramatic leg up over most investors big and small).

Of critical importance: value investing is not about producing small conservative returns. The best value investors have smashed the market's average returns over extremely long periods of time and they have tended to beat all other types of investors. Value investing is about: 1) not destroying capital, so that you can retain and compound it, taking maximum advantage of the extreme power of compounding returns; 2) picking investments that have an appropriate margin of safety (they've been significantly mispriced by the market), that protects your downside, while exposing you to a very large potential upside.

Ok, that's basically what I did when I started out. Let me just say, there is a learning curve- and LOTS to learn. However, if investing turns out to be something you enjoy, and you always continue learning, you open the door to higher returns in general (and a very interesting hobby :D ).

At the start, you don't need to know much more than the general facts. Equity, bonds, the market. What the lingo means, and where the resources are. The original book I got for an overview was the following, and I would recommend it: The
The FT Investing Guide - not a cheap book, but will go over the foundational knowledge you need.

I would then follow with The Intelligent Investor, which is THE great value-investment book. It will tell you about how to logically approach investing in companies, and give you a framework for choosing better companies to invest in, and not overpaying for the equity you invest in.

Knowledge of macro economics is also a plus, imo. I started off by reading Economics for Dummies (yes, really).

The basics of accounting is somewhat essential, but it's covered in the FT guide. If you can get to the point where you can understand a typical income statement, balance sheet or statement of cash flows, it should be enough to be a competent investor. It allows you to understand the underlying financial health of a business, which is very important.

Your aim is to find strong companies, with good future prospects, which are undervalued by the market, and invest for the long-term. This will allow you to maximise your returns.

..I was all set to continue writing this wall of text, but I think I'll leave it here for now. If you have any further questions, or would like more clarification on any points, I'd be happy to help. So just let me know.

This is the first book I read - Basic Economics By Thomas Sowell. The author is quite libertarian (which I am not) but I don't remember the book being particularly radical. I read the book 10 yrs ago but it stood out, definitely piqued my interest, and really helped things 'click' for me regarding basic economic theory. Diving directly into a micro 101 textbook or just reading 100 econ blogs would not be advised as you don't learn the basics and traditions. Give yourself a reason to be interested and the rest will follow.

Free to Choose is pretty valuable, though it can be more a work of political-economy. Freakonomics is also great because its easy/fun to read and gives you a good understand of just how super valuable numbers are.

These are all on the light side and not 'textbook' quality; however, I'm sure they'll pique your interest, give you a good foundation, and the rest will follow.

Psychology (studied, but never practiced)

Here are a selection of interesting books:

• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Easy introduction into behavioural psychology and decision making. I am pretty sure Dan did an AMA relatively recently. He's a champ.
  
  
• Quiet - The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. This is a great book for those of us whose tendency is to listen more than talk.
  
  
• Tell Me I'm Here: One Family's Experience of Schizophrenia by Ann Deveson. Ann is a very well respected journalist in Australia. Her description of raising her son who had schizophrenia is well worth reading.
  
  
• Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robinson - lesser-known brother of Augusten Burroughs. I did my research on higher-functioning Autism including Asperger's. This is a great memoir, and wonderful description of growing up different'.
  
  
• First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple by Dr Cameron West. Whether you are dismissive of the validity of Dissociative Identiy Disorder or think it is a genuine condition, I read this many years ago, and found it compelling.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics. (probably most interesting from a Freudian perspective, deals with many of our unconscious instincts)

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces The Shape Our Decisions - Unconscious decision-making, behavioral economics, consumer psychology. Fun read.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Most popular book on the psychology of persuasion, covers all the main principles. Very popular among business crowds.

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships - Social neuroscience, mirror neurons, empathy, practical stuff mixed with easy to understand brain science.

Authentic Happiness - Positive Psychology, happiness, increasing life satisfaction.

Feeling Good - A good primer on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Also widely considered one of the best self-help books by mental health practitioners.

The Brain That Changes Itself - Neuroplasticity, how experience shapes our brains. Some really remarkable case studies that get you wondering how powerful our brains really are.

The Buddhist Brain - The practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom from a Buddhist perspective.

That should give you more than enough to chew on.

Here's my suggestions:

• Freakonomics is a fun introduction to economics. It has some caveats (most high-level economists disagree with the book) but I think it's a great way to get excited about economic concepts and see some of the things you can do with them.
  
• There are a bunch of excellent topic-focused lighter-reading economics books such as: Wikinomics, The Wal-Mart Effect, and Predictably Irrational, to name a few.
  
• I know you said "pop-sci" but if you're into mysteries at all then there's a fun series of two books written by a pair of economists called Murder at the Margin and Fatal Equilibrium. The books are murder mysteries in which the main character solves the mystery using economic principles. They are a little silly but an entertaining read.
  
• If you're interested in something a little more hands on there are a number of free (low expectation) online introductory courses. The University of Illinois in particular is offering a completely free course in Principles of Microeconomics. It's fairly unorthodox and should be both fun and informative. I highly recommend it from personal experience.
  
  Hope that helps!

I will echo what was already written, but I will address two major points. The first is your acute state of mental health, and the second is philosophical background on the question you asked concerning work.

If you are having suicidal ideation than you need to get help to stabilize. If its possible, talk to professionals, and develop a support network if possible, that knows how you feel. You need to disconnect from the 'conspiracy' world a bit, and focus on something positive. Enjoy nature, and engage in some activity where you are physically moving with people you love.

Books that are topical and I found very helpful, center around what the meaning of 'work', as a category that structures our world as it actually is. The first books is [Shop Class as Soulcraft]
(https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467). In this work, the author, who actually worked for a Global Warming denial propaganda farm before quitting, engages in an exploration of the difference between skilled manual labor and unskilled labor, and what the differences are for being a human.

The second book, I am somewhat apprehensive to post, but I think it is really insightful. That is the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of Marx, especially the section called, " Estranged Labour". It is an exploration of what work really is, as an activity that connects human beings, where we satisfy each others needs, and in doing so reproduce a social organism, and it is an exploration how we become alienated, and how these activities start to appear as forces outside of our control, that control us, and are deeply exploitative. They don't have to be that way.

I hope this was somewhat helpful, and I hope you feel better soon.

Switzerland Follows Iceland In Declaring War Against The Banksters

Above Photo: From WakingTimes.com.

“If you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.” –Josiah Stamp.

Iceland has gained the admiration of populists in recent years by doing that which no other nation in the world seems to be willing or capable of doing: prosecuting criminal bankers for engineering financial collapse for profit.

Their effective revolt against the banking class, who drove the tiny nation into economic crisis in 2008, is the brightest example yet that the world does not have to be indebted in perpetuity to an austere and criminal wealthy elite.

[http://www.wakingtimes.com/2012/06/07/icelanders-force-accountability-for-banks-why-cant-we/]

In 2015, 26 Icelandic bankers were sentenced to prison and the government ordered a bank sale to benefit the citizenry.

[http://theantimedia.org/first-they-jailed-the-bankers-now-every-icelander-to-get-paid-in-bank-sale/]

Inspired by Iceland’s progress, activists in Switzerland are now making an important stand against the banking cartels and have successfully petitioned to bring an initiative to public referendum that would attack the private banks where it matters most: their power to lend money they don’t actually have, and to create money out of thin air.

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2014/12/12/conspiracy-bring-honest-money-world/

“Switzerland will hold a referendum to decide whether to ban commercial banks from creating money.

The Swiss federal government confirmed on Thursday that it would hold a plebiscite, after more than 110,000 people signed a petition calling for the central bank to be given sole power to create money in the financial system.

The campaign – led by the Swiss Sovereign Money movement and known as the Vollgeld initiative – is designed to limit financial speculation by requiring private banks to hold 100pc reserves against their deposits.” [The Telegraph]

Switzerland is in a key position to play a revolutionary role in changing how global banking functions.

In addition to being the world’s safest harbor for storing wealth, it is also home to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a shadowy private company owned by many of the world’s central banks, and acting as a lender to the central banks. [https://www.bis.org/]

The BIS is the very heart of global reserve banking, the policy that enables banks to lend money that does not actually exist in their bank deposits, but is instead literally created electronically from nothing whenever a bank extends a line of credit.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/091298645X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?]

Reserve banking is the policy that guarantees insurmountable debt as the outcome of all financial transactions.

The Sovereign Money initiative in Switzerland aims to curb financial speculation, which is the intended and inevitable result of reserve banking, the tool that makes financial adventurism possible by supplying the banks with endless quantities of fiat money.

[http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/06/29/can-this-economy-be-saved-by-injecting-fiat-money-into-banks/]

Limiting a bank’s ability to produce money from nothing would be a direct blow to the roots of the banking cartel, and would cripple their ability to manipulate the world economy.

Here’s how it works, in rather simplified terms:

“…if we had access to the same computer terminals the banks have, we could magic in or out of existence all the imaginary stuff we are trained to think of as important – money – in whatever quantities we liked.

This is how it works: when they print quite a lot of this stuff there is a boom. When they print too much of it, there is inflation (actually, the printing of money is inflation). When they stop printing it or simply hold on to it, there is a depression.” [https://www.rt.com/op-edge/327191-switzerland-money-banks-ban-referendum/]

In Switzerland, 90% of all money in circulation is electronic, and for this, The National Bank of Switzerland has become the direct target of the Sovereign Money Campaign.

Swiss law has in the past required required banks to back all currency creation with collateral assets like physical silver or gold, however in recent decades the climate has changed, and, “due to the emergence of electronic payment transactions, banks have regained the opportunity to create their own money.”

The grass roots campaign said in a public statement regarding the intentions of the referendum, “banks won’t be able to create money for themselves any more, they’ll only be able to lend money that they have from savers or other banks.”


This is an interesting twist in the human saga of man vs. banks, and while it remains to be seen if the referendum passes or not, it must be pointed out that it does have its own problems, articulated by Sam Gerrans:

[https://www.rt.com/op-edge/327191-switzerland-money-banks-ban-referendum/]

“… it does say that the central bank should be given sole right to create money.

This would essentially leave the creation of money in the same hands as those who control the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England rather than allow them to farm out the process.

But at least it shows that people are beginning to wake up to where the true power lies.

In the unlikely event that this grass-roots movement in Switzerland should get its way and its proposed legislation be enacted, and then begin to morph into something which really does threaten the banking elite, we must not be surprised if Switzerland is shortly discovered to be harboring weapons of mass destruction, or to have masterminded 9/11, or to be financing Islamic State.”

Part of the cultural conditioning of our time is an ingrained, pre-assumed dependency on sacred cow institutions like banking.

Just like it is impossible for most Americans to envision a world without Democrats and Republicans, it is difficult for most people to imagine a world without predatory global banking.

Yet, there are a number of other possibilities for trading, storing wealth, and facilitating development in the world.

[http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/08/24/the-next-global-financial-crisis-is-here-and-this-is-what-we-can-do-about-it/]

This is not the only economic system we can imagine, and as Iceland has proven, people can regain control of their collective wealth, so perhaps this revolution will foment further in Switzerland, presenting a chance to at least bring greater awareness to the truth about central banking.

https://www.popularresistance.org/switzerland-follows-iceland-in-declaring-war-against-the-banksters/

An hour a day devoted to learning about stocks is a solid plan. I would suggest that the very first book you read be "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham who was Warren Buffetts mentor at Columbia University and taught Buffett how to use the Value Investing approach https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

This is a dense read and you should approach it as if you were taking a course and studying for a final exam. Get yourself a notebook and write down all of that golden info buried in each chapter. Keep in mind this book was first written in 1949 and the format of it and the financial language may be difficult to get through but take your time, don't rush through it, take notes, highlight paragraphs, and absorb the information you'll be glad you did in the future.

​

Below is essentially a list of things I wish I could have told myself years ago in order to save a lot of heartache and lost money. Hopefully it helps you to avoid a lot of painful lessons that I learned the hard way.

• Study "value investing" in depth. Ignore the people who say Value Investing doesn't work, Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Joel Greenblatt, Peter Lynch, Mario Gabelli, Mohnish Pabrai, etc... have made fortunes buying companies at discounts using the value investing approach.
  
• After reading The Intelligent Investor further educate yourself on value investing by reading about the above investors, some have written book themselves others have had many books written about them. Also checkout r/SecurityAnalysis
  
• As a beginner invest heavily in a broad based index fund that cover the whole S&P500 (VTSAX, SPY, etc...) and only devote a small percentage of your portfolio at first to stocks you've selected until you get your feet wet.
  
• Ignore the financial media at all costs (Mad Money, Fast Money, Squawk Box, basically everything on CNBC...) they will lead you down a dark path that mostly resembles gambling as opposed to investing.
  
• Be in it for the long haul. Do not day trade. Find undervalued companies with great management teams that have been beaten up by the market and buy shares that you know should be valued at $50 on sale for $25 dollars when the conditions are right. As Buffett has said imagine that you have a punchcard that has 20 tickets and each time you buy a company a ticket gets punched all you get for your whole life is just those 20 companies. You would want to take your time and analyze each company to ensure you're making the right decision before you buy.
  
• Don't spend 10 minutes even thinking about buying a companies shares unless you are comfortable enough with your decision to hold it for 10 years.
  
• Do not trade options, futures, forex, etc.... as a beginner just stick with equities at first. Get some experience under your belt and then if you want to tred into these waters later do so, but with caution.
  
• There are some decent financial advisors out there but there are also lot more not worth their salt. It's good to talk to them once in a while but take their advice with caution, no one will safeguard your money or care about it as much as you do. Also most of them get paid commissions for putting you into whatever investments will give them the highest commission so look for a "fee-only" advisor if you're going use one. Trust me your financial advisor will still sleep like a baby if he loses your entire life saving, how will you sleep though?
  
• Pay no attention to the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) this is some academic mumbo jumbo out of the University of Chicago that tries to make the case that markets are always efficient, it's been in most financial textbooks for decades and like most things learned in college is complete bullshit. Markets are very emotional and prone to all types of irrational behavior because well people are very emotional and irrational at times....especially when money is on the line.
  
• Pay attention to large scale macro-economic conditions such as the current 10-2 year bond yield inversion that just happened a few days ago and has been a signal that has preceded the last 5 recessions. Usually a recession doesn't occur for 12-18 months out after the yields invert and there's no guarantee that it will happen just be aware of it and other macro economic indicators so you know where the economy is in the business cycle. This will allow you to take advantage of certain buying opportunities when prices are depressed.
  
• Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

A lot of this comes down to how actively you want to engage in the process, how much of an "enterprising investor" you want to be as opposed to a defensive investor.

For the more defensive position, a lot of /r/investing appreciates Graham's approach emphasizing value, even if a substantial quantity of capital is devoted to playing the market itself (something Graham called speculating). If that approach is interesting to you--which seems likely given your stated desire for low to medium risk with steady growth--then the main adjustments you'd need to make are as follows:

• Quit sinking the majority of your capital investment into just a couple stocks and stay away from actively managed mutual funds, too. For upwards of 80% to 90% of your capital, go with a balance of indexed stocks and bonds. A common way to do that is to subtract your age from 100 and let the difference be the percentage of stocks; in your case, we're talking 76% of your capital in indexed stocks and 24% in bonds if you did not set aside anything for more speculative forms of investment. If you set aside, say, 10% of your capital for speculation, then we'd be talking about roughly 68% of your total capital in indexed stock and 22% of your total capital in bonds. Periodically buy / sell to maintain this balance; some people who are really disinterested in closely playing the market do this only once or twice per year with long term success. Your goal here is to diversify your capital outlay in one of the most boring yet demonstrably low risk / consistent growth ways out there, and that is a portfolio heavily biased towards indexed stock and bonds. For a text that develops the logic and details of this approach, read The Millionaire Teacher.
  
  
• There are tax advantages to contributing to a 401k; so, a lot of people would council maxing this out. Nevertheless, a 401k is just a type of account; you would still want to follow the principle in the previous point in deciding specifically what sort of investment you want to "point" your 401k towards. (I say this because some people are under the mistaken impression that a 401k is itself a form of investment, e.g. "I have some capital in stocks, some in bonds, and some in a 401k.")
  
  
• With whatever quantity of capital you chose to devote to more speculative activity, say, 10% of your total capital outlay, think of this as your chance to experiment. If you like KO and WEN, great. As frequently as you want to play the markets, whether you want to go long on this stock or short on that, this (and only this) portion of your capital is yours to do with as you please. Have fun, but don't ever allow yourself to pull capital from your more secured forms of investment over to speculative activity if your goal is "low to medium risk with steady growth." Speculation is inherently risky; that's the way it works. And it's not something you can just do every once in a while with consistently solid results; it takes serious devotion.
  
  
• Since you mentioned holiding a normal savings account and/or a CD, I'm going to mention that most folks council retaining upwards of 3 to 6 months worth of expenses in a totally liquid form of savings. This won't make you any money whatsoever (well, unless we wind up with a nice drop in inflation and you can take advantage of some pretty crazy rates select credit unions offer, like Baxter's "Rainy Day Savings" at 3.0% APY). But that's okay; the goal here is to have cash on hand for an emergency. CD rates are pretty terrible across the board right now; so, you're better off going with a high interest online savings account like ING Direct Savings or Discover Online Savings if you don't want to bother with or cannot get credit union membership enabling you to snag those nicer savings account rates.

Credit card companies get ~3% off everything you spend on their card. So of course they're going to keep letting you do it. If you spend $10,000 on something and use a credit card, that merchant has to give the credit card company around $300. Interest and annual fees are just icing on the profit cake.

That's why you have things like 1-3% cashback cards; they're sharing that percentage with you in some cases, but still mostly keeping it for themselves. I buy everything with credit cards and sign up for new ones all the time, because I get tons of miles/points doing so. I don't overspend, and I never pay interest, and I've earned over 260,000 miles/points so far. I value each mile/point at 2-5 cents.

As far as what to do with your investments; there is a bunch of research available online. I'll again suggest The Bogleheads Guide to Investing as a primer for this sort of thing. There is also the Bogleheads wiki. Morningstar has tons of information on virtually every fund, but you need to know what you're looking at so read the book first to learn things like expense ratios, R-squared, and standard deviation.

As far as investing in things that match your value system, you could invest in local government bonds, which is very beneficial for tax purposes and usually a good, safe investment in your local community, but I wouldn't worry too much about it overall. Investing in any one sector or specific group of companies is never a good idea. You should be investing in index funds, i.e. the whole market. No one, over the long term, has ever beaten the market as a whole. Yes, you'll own a little bit of all the horrible companies, but it's the safest bet for your future and that's not something you really wanna screw around with.

More important than what specific funds you should invest in is at what percentages, i.e. your "asset allocation". I won't go into it in too much detail on this, read the book above for more information, but a popular rule of thumb is to invest your age (e.g. if you're 30, invest 30%) in bonds, and the rest in stocks. As you get older, you change that asset allocation to match your age. If you want to make it super easy, most investment firms have "target retirement funds" that do all the work for you. Most 401ks offer such funds, and you're probably already subscribed to one. It's a safe bet to stick with that.

tl;dr: banks get money whenever you use your card. invest in whole market index funds.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing/dp/0060555661

This was one of those books that really got me thinking - there's a few more that come to mind ... Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits.

All of these books basically center around how to decouple emotion from the act of investing; hence, why these books are still powerful decades after being first published.

Sounds like you're not going out on the streets because of this - which is great. But, it sounds like you're kicking yourself in the butt (which you really shouldn't.) I recall the dot com glory days. I was in grad school, using this brand new website called e-trade and investing in all the companies whose products I used (sandisk, etc). Just making bank (on paper), it felt great. I thought that I understood the mechanics of the market but when things began to go sideways for me - I too hodl'ed.

Out from the ashes comes the phoenix... So take this as a learnable moment. Mine cost me dearly as well (sounds like more actually - if that helps ;-) ), but from the most expensive of all teachers (experience) I did walk away with new tools. So when fresh opportunities arose, I was in a better position to analysis, understand, and control myself to take fuller advantage of these gems...

Personally I think that we are really just beginning to see the power behind bitcoin and would suggest hodling. I'm sure that many will say that's a bad idea (perhaps so.) I'd also recommend paying off everything as quickly as possible and stopping any/all future trades - at least until such time that you feel more confident and comfortable in doing so. I feel that any further trades may result in compounding these feelings of dread and you may also regret them in the (long term) future.

Putting this aside to give yourself time to recalibrate is probably best.

First thing you have to do is learn all the lingo and jargon. Then you can learn the principles and strategies.

Investopedia is a fantastic place to get learn the lingo. Just search a word you don't understand and there will be a short article explaining it.

Then you can go two ways, learn pragmatic practices like Fundamental Investing vs Analytical Investing, Day Trading vs swing trading, stocks vs options trading, forex trading, etc.

Or you can study the grand scheme and mentality you need to become wealthy. From my experience you first need to have the mentality of a wealthy person before you can become wealthy. Like how TRP teaching you to be a certain way before you actually are. A good analogy is, "You don't meet any 80 year old people that are poor and great with their money". Just doesn't happen, your wealth is directly correlated to your behavior and outlook. Mentality and frivolous spending dictate your wealth, not how much your job pays you or your hourly wage. I know people making 100k a year that are fucking broke and will be broke the rest of their lives just because they don't care to learn how to use money.

I'd start with studying the most successful investors and businessmen ever. Learning how powerful compound investing is will probably be the most important thing. This is a great video over Warren buffett and his overarching mentality to investing. Study everything you can on him and how he "Thinks". He's mentality is what you need to learn and emulate.

The Intellegent Investor is probably the best primer book you'll ever read for investing. Its an extension to Buffetts mentality. The technicals will be over your head as a novice but pay attention to the mentality like buffett. It's written by a guy that entered the stock market in 1915 and survived through 5 recessions and is considered one of the best investing books ever written. It's one of the first books Warren Buffett ever read, he talks about it too in that video I linked. It's been updated every five years since it was written in the 70's. I'd suggest learning as much about Benjamin Graham, the author of this book, as you do Warren Buffett. Cause he's who Buffett learned from.


Now, once you get the mentality and lingo down you can focus on actual strategies and pragmatics. Financial Education youtube channel is a good place to learn fundemental investing. he's a bit goofy but he's solid on his delivery and takes a more modern approach to the buffett style of investing.

I'd recommend learning the basics of fundamental investing first. Learn how to read balance sheets, cash flow statements, income reports. Study market caps of companies, P/E Ratios, are they under or over valued, etc.

Once you have the basics of fundamental down then you can learn analytical. This is where you can make high returns on your investments but it is greater risk unless you learn how to manage them. Tons of people lose their ass in analytical because they don't know what they are doing. Educate yourself and don't be one of them. youtube the difference between day trade vs swing trade, momentum vs breakout trading, learn the difference between options and stocks, support and resistance lines, studies, indicators & signals.

That should be a good start.

edit Also Download the Robinhood app, it's the first free trading app ever. So you can literally start with $10 if you want and fuck around. the beauty of trading and investing is, it's not about the amount you start with. It's your % return per day, per month, per year. There are people day trading with 300%+ return in a month. They can take $50 and turn it into $15 or 5k and turn it into 15k. your return percent is the magic number, not how much you start with.

insomniac84, your response is lengthy and it is obvious this is something you care about. I would first like to direct you to Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. It is inexpensive, short, and concise.

Next, I would like to ask you how single-payer government healthcare would be any different from having insurance companies? Our problem right now is high insurance premiums. If federal healthcare was passed, wouldn't we be in the same situation with higher taxes (or deficit spending equaling inflation) replacing the insurance premiums, except without the option of not having insurance because we will be taxed for not having the government plan?

Think of Social Security. What was set up to make retirement an option to everyone by requiring lifelong payment has become a moneypit. The Social Security fund is spent annually by congress on other failing programs. Instead of people having the option of choosing different IRA plans through private banks, that money was pulled into the government, and never accounted for. I think everyone will agree Social Security has failed to do what it was intended and our seniors are not receiving enough if anything compared to what they paid in. What would make single-option healthcare any different?

Do you expect cell phone service to be "free?" Your 10 cents a kilobyte pays for the initial risk that company took when starting, the set-up of the network, the maintenance of the network, and the improvement of your network and cell phone service. Because there is profit in it for the cell phone company, there is motivation for them to continue service, hire smarter labor, and improve their service. Because there is profit in the cell phone industry, other companies are drawn to it, seeking to provide a better service, and lower cost to improve profits, resulting in the consumer having better, cheaper service.

I hope my response to your cell phone question also illustrates what Paul is trying to say about healthcare. Simply replace maintaining the network with medical school and drug research.

The monopolies you say run our nation are only allowed to do so by our legislators. A natural monopoly cannot exist unless it continues to provide the best product at the lowest cost. Utility, telephone, and other monopolistic industries are allowed to do so because laws have been passed by our politicians permitting it.

I know this is long, but I hope it has answered some of your concerns. Also, I have a close friend who took the PCAT today and would hope you don't want a shitty pharmacist. She is entering that field because it is profitable and she can make a good living while working with chemistry. She isn't paying for Pharm School to have her salary capped and do it "at cost" :)

Please read Hazlitt's book, he can explain this much better than I.

The immediate response is to your last point.

> We are, as a rule, talking about corporate profits here, so the connection between profits and social good is tenuous at best.

First of all, many smaller enterprises, such as YouTubers and other smaller producers are hurt by infringements of copy right as well as corporations and 'The Man'. Additionally, when no third party is harmed by the creation or transaction (called an externality in economics e.g. burning oil is an externality because everyone's natural resources suffer), a profit means that you created a social benefit. Big companies don't get paid arbitrarily; they're paid because people saw merit in their creations and chose to view or purchase those creations, hence, a social good.

If companies, small businesses, and content creators were paid far less for their work, far less quality content will be produced. If Disney knew they would barely turn a profit with every new release, would they throw billions at each movie and really ensure that it is a quality production? While many people are motivated by their own sense of creativity and desire to contribute, a significant portion of creation is driven by the desire for profits (not necessarily a bad thing). Without that desire, there would be no content, no creations for the public to enjoy.

Sauces:
https://youtu.be/tk862BbjWx4

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Freedom-Anniversary-Milton-Friedman/dp/0226264211


PS: While I believe that copyright and defense of intellectual property is necessary, modern American copyright law is fucking insane. Don't get me started on the DMCA.

>Since the free market would fail to provide products and services (defense, public infrastructure, water resources, sanitary services) equitably, the government necessarily exists to provide these services.

This is completely untrue. How would the private sector fail to provide such services? Currently the reason the private sector doesn't provide for some of these services in certain areas (many of these services are indeed provided by the market) is that the government has a monopoly on these services. Before government got involved these services were solely provided by the market place.

>The concept of equity (equal protection) is a constitutional concept that tends to necessitate government provision of certain goods and services.

This is not how it works in reality. Government offers greater access and protection to certain wealthy connected individuals and corporations. When the government takes $500 from me that I would have spent on say new tires for my car and gives the money Haliburton, how is efficiency created? When the Fed prints a few billion dollars (thus lowering the value of the money we hold) and gives it to Lockheed Martin, how is efficiency created?

>While I will concede the point that the production of the federal government is not nearly equal to the resources it takes in, it is fallacious to assert that the government does not produce.

Creating a monopoly on services and providing less than the resources it takes in isn't equal to producing a product or service. In the market place consumers can weigh the trade offs between capital and a particular product or service. With a government monopoly the consumer isn't given this choice and efficiency is greatly reduced. For some basics you can read How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes.

>I believe that a reasoned approach to governance, as asserted by Ron Paul in many respects, would bring us much closer to government efficiency...

Closer yes, but closer is quite relative. It still wouldn't be able to come close to efficiency that the free market could achieve.

>...and simultaneous effectiveness first by delegating more power and resources to state and local governments to provide those services that are best provided at that smaller scale and second by re-prioritizing the allocation of government resources within the federal government based on more appropriate measures of public health and safety.

Although Dr. Paul does indeed want to remove much of the power of the Federal government and return it to the states, he really would like to see most of government just get out of peoples lives all together. He understands that the free market would be far more efficient and that government will just continue to take away any liberties you might possess.

I've immersed myself in science and history my whole life and quite possibly the best book I've ever come across that condenses everything in a sequential order is "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson.

> In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail—well, most of it. In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, traveling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.

The book is simply amazing. I learn something new from it everytime I read it and I highly recommend it to everyone from an uneducated teenager to a PhD carrying senior!

While you're at it, I would also recommend the rest of his books. Bryson is an amazing nonfiction writer (I daresay one of the best in the world) and his penmanship will captivate you. Just search for him on Amazon and pick another one of his books up in a category that interests you as he writer about a very broad range of topics.

Edit: Also, I highly recommend "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared M. Diamond. and Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt

I don't want to sound like a dick, but you're making assumptions and treating them as fact. There is no reason manufacturing jobs NEED to move overseas other than the top echelons of corporate America want it that way so they can maximize their profits at the expense of American workers. The supposed beauty and inevitability of neoliberal trade policies have been touted for so long by folks like Paul Krugman, that many have just assumed this is the inevitable way of the world. It isn't. This is not to say that free trade between equals in the global community isn't good and sometimes in fact necessary to spur on needed competition and efficiencies. But the idea that the American worker, as well developing economies overseas and their workers, must submit to free trade policies over all other tools of trade policy, such as tariffs, is simply untrue. There needs to be a more healthy mix of free trade and protectionism. Otherwise America and the world community devolves into a feudal system that does much to contribute to unrest, dissatisfaction and even violence all over the world.

The manufacturing jobs exist, they just don't exist in this country as much as they once did. Sure, some of these jobs are being replaced by automation. But free trade globalism and technology do not have to leave American workers or workers overseas ravaged. That happens as a result of political choices made in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere around the world.

Obama and Hillary have employed "incrementalism" in a vain effort to keep workers and others in need placated while they keep their richest donors happy. It doesn't have to be this way and it shouldn't be this way.

We can eliminate and/or redo trade deals. We can let workers have a meaningful seat at the table as these deals are negotiated. We can do much to restore the middle and working classes. That we haven't, again, is in large part a political choice.

Check out these books if you want, or at least know they exist. (https://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Politics-Washington-Richer-Turned/dp/1416588701)

(https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986)

These authors don't have all the answers, but it's a good start.

> Or that communism creates starvation (joke)

I don't think this is a joke. While causal designs would be difficult to apply, the spatio-temporal correlation is hard to ignore.


>Regarding causality- as you know that’s nearly impossible to prove in the social sciences.

Actually, these days the application of designs and approaches that provide strong support for causal claims have become quite prevalent. Some standard references-



1

2

3

4

good framework reference or a slightly heavier read

and the old classic


In fact, the Nobel prize in economics this year went to some people who have built their careers doing exactly that

It's actually become quite hard to publish in ranking journals in some fields without a convincing (causal) identification strategy.


But we digress.


>We will never be able to do an apples to apples study between heterosexual and homosexual child rearing for some of the reasons you mentioned above. (Diversity of relationship styles, not both biological parents within gay/lesbian couples)

In this case it isn't far fetched at all. The data collection for the survey data used in the study you linked could just as easily have disagregated the parents involved in same sex romantic relationships instead of pooling them. If I understood correctly, the researcher had obtained the data as a secondary source, so they didn't have control over this.

Outcomes for children in the foster care system are well studied, so one could in principal easily replicate the study comparing outcomes between children in the foster care system and those adopted into homes shared by stable same sex couples (you couldn't likely restrict it to married same sex couples, though, because laws permitting same sex civil marriage are too recent to observe outcomes).

>My bottom line-that I don’t see many disagree with if they are being intellectually honest, is a stable monogamous heterosexual family structure is the best model for immediate families. Or would you disagree?

But that's not the question at hand, is it? What we are interested in here is comparing kids bouncing around the state care system to those adopted into homes with two same-sex parents in a stable relationship.

That is exactly my point. The comparison you propose is uninformative relative to the question of permitting same sex couples to "foster to adopt". Because the counterfactual for those children is not likely to be a "stable monogamous heterosexual family". It is bouncing around the foster care system.

>well, obviously you're always going to have some. but the gov't was too new at that time for business influences to infiltrate it deeply. Esp relative to the situation today.

Not true at all. The country was founded on the principle that the role of government should be to protect private property from the majority of people. Originally, you couldn't even vote if you weren't a landowner. Businesses didn't infiltrate it, they completely controlled it.

>how is that any different from having politician running things? who decides who gets to vote? doesn't direct democracy require that all citizens vote on all policy initiatives? what's to stop this small group of voters from colluding?

You honestly can't see the difference? If a factory (for instance) needs to make policy decisions, the workers all vote on what to do. They're all collective owners so they all get a say. It's not that difficult really.

>i don't give a fuck if i can survive on potatoes and a hut I grow and build myself. I want a plasma TV and to fly from New York to Seattle in 4 hours and a nice house and medical care. I think you're making a LOOOOT of assumptions about people's willingness to accept self-sufficiency for a horrible quality of life.

That's nice. I'm sure you also enjoy buying designer clothing that is drastically overpriced and made in sweatshops where the owners hire thugs to keep workers from organizing. I think you're also assuming that self sufficiency requires abandoning technology and living in a hut. It definitely doesn't. I can't tell if you're being deliberately ignorant or not.

>that's veeeery subjective opinion. i agree global warming is real, but it's a huge step to say it threatens life on Earth.

Then you must not know too much about global warming.

>this was not due to capitalism though, it was entirely the gov't bailouts, bank deposit insurance, and low interest rates.

According to Marx's social analysis, yes this is 100% capitalism. The bailouts and recession basically happened exactly how Marx predicted that the capitalist economy will function. According to Marx, it's not just about free competition, it's about the wealthiest companies using their wealth and power to stamp out competition and rig the system for their own interests. After all, they're only trying to make money so why wouldn't they? Money is such a strong incentive, isn't it?

>It seems our debate ends here. We seems to disagree on points that would take a lot of effort to explain to each other. And I'v got boards in a week. Take it easy. If you have time and interest to learn about Austrian Econ, I'd recommend http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1370971957&sr=8-4&keywords=peter+schiff

Peter Schiff is an idiot and a pseudo conspiracy theorist. I've already taken time to learn about Austrian economics. It has some decent ideas but if you're getting your view of Marx from Austrian economists then you're not going to know what you're talking about. All in all, it's one school of economics but it's not the only school or even the most practical school.

Both Economics in One Lesson and Basic Economics are golden, though for very different reasons.

Economics is One Lesson starts with a truth that is obvious and simple once you hear it explained. You think to yourself, "Well, yeah. Who could possibly think otherwise?" And then you hop onto Reddit and see that a substantial preponderance of Reddit are afflicted with a mindset and beliefs that fly in the face of this simple truth. It then spends time expanding on this truth and applying it to tons of different things that you wouldn't intuitively see it applying to.

Basic Economics is better though. Both are well worth reading, but Sowell's work is incredibly comprehensive. When I read it, it didn't come across as someone trying to prove any world view, as tends to be the case from so many economists. It is him simply seeking to explain economics to someone who is new to the field. To his credit, he uses terminology that is accessible to anyone and doesn't spend a single moment trying to prove to how smart he is. (Though his brilliance is immediately evident.) Its most important quality is that it doesn't ask you to partake in a string of thought experiments to reach some grand conclusions. Every assertion he makes is supported by multiple studies and historical examples. This happens time and time again. And the bolder the claim, the more evidence he provides. It's remarkable.

While it does weigh in at 700-ish pages, Basic Economics is almost certainly the perfect book for getting your feet wet when in economics.

> They would also be pretty unhappy if you told them that they had to walk to the grocery store instead of taking a bus or driving a car.

Actaully they would be unhappy, but only because they would see rich people driving by them.

If the entire country suddenly had to walk to the store, people would be fine with it. It would suck at first, but as I said, the issue is the income GAP, not GDP.

>Quick.. start informing people in China that economic growth isn't that important. Millions of people are being pulled out of poverty every day.

Standard /r/econ talking point. "Its ok, some people over there got out of poverty". No one who pushed free trade agreements ever gave a shit about poor people in china.

The thing is... China might have done just as well withotu those agreements. And mexico had better per capita income growth before NAFTA. The overall GDP has risen since then, but per capita income has stagnated... the reason for that is that mexico now has rich billionaires, so while GDP has gone up, NAFTA didn't really help the average worker. NAFTA increased the income gap. Interesting that free trade makes things worse.

>The article you cited looks nice, but it doesn't give us the entire picture. But it's good for cherry picking feel good stories to justify welfare.

Come on, /r/econ shouts 'lots of chinese are less poor now!' and that's not cherry picking?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/africa/02malawi.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Here is another article that explains why free trade and neoliberalism is a sham.

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986

This book also talks about it.

Im not sure if youre the guy I already said this stuff to, if so, sorry. I just lose interest in these discussions, people are not open minded here much at all.

Lets get rid of copyright and patent laws, if you are so eager to remove global poverty. S Korea gained it's success by pirating the software and books to educate its people. If it had had to pay more for books and software, it would have been able to educate many less people. Instead decades ago they stole books and software and many people there were able to get educations.

So... we're all about eliminating poverty around the globe right? Lets remove patents and copyright laws, and allow our knowledge and IP to flow freely into these poor nations!

Suddenly, freedom isn't so appealing, is it? Now all the business and tech people suddenly get all protectionist. Funny how that is.

And, sadly, that's becoming the case in America (perhaps the world) overall. Paul Krugman did an excellent interview recently with Bill Moyers on a recent book that came out that's making huge waves in economics. It's really worth watching the whole interview, but here's a key quote:

>...we're going to look back nostalgically on the early 21st century when you could still at least have the pretense that the wealthy actually earned their wealth. And, you know, by the year 2030, it'll all be inherited.

Combine this with another well known study that showed economic mobility has basically stalled in the U.S. for the past 20 years, and it becomes reasonable to think that, if you see a younger rich person, chances are pretty small that they were completely "self-made". Wealthier parents was probably the key factor.

I mean maybe in a Silicon Valley type of environment where someone is doing a tech startup type thing it's possible, and there will always be those extremely rare "rags to riches" exceptions; but in general, I'd be skeptical.

Edit: Wow that book is completely sold out on Amazon. What book sells out completely on Amazon? It's even more popular than I thought, I guess. (Also edited for some clarifications.)

> I'm pretty clueless when it comes to direct investing, but I'll look into it. I really don't want to micromanage this stuff, but I'm willing to learn the direct investing route if it's a substantial gain that is worth my time. How easy did you find it to get into that? How much time investment is there to establish such a portfolio and bonds?

I think for any reasonably intelligent person, it's very easy. Again, I recommend sticking to what is generally considered the best option for us "regular folk": passive investing in index funds. That means choose a balance of index funds (eg. US, Canadian, and International markets, and bonds), and keep contributing over time. Every 6 months or so, rebalance to make sure your holdings are keeping to your planned ratio.

I highly recommend reading the Canadian Couch Potato blog mentioned above, and the book The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing.

Opening accounts at TD Waterhouse or QuesTrade is just a matter of filling out a couple forms, and the actual act of investing involves transferring money from your bank account to your trading account, then using their web interface to purchase the funds you've chosen.

By doing a little self-educating and going with low-MER index funds, you'll save thousands & thousands of dollars over the years that higher priced mutual funds would have charged you for administration.

Not much here to offer in the way of advice but thought I'd express a bit of sympathy. I'm an electrician and naturally persuade people into working in a skilled trade. Maybe something to consider over retail until you get your ideal gig. Maybe climb the chain of another field of interest using existing skills while acquiring more. I love my job, fresh air, no customers, exercise, feeling of accomplishments... I'm testing for my Master Electrical License and would love to have your skills in addition to my own to aid in getting my company going and looking more professional right off the bat.

Best of luck friend, life isn't defined by falling down, it's defined by how you get back up. Read this while you ponder how you'll get back up http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467

Here is a random article I found about stock simulators.

How do you like to learn things? There are tons of books, podcasts and blogs about investing. Here are some popular ones or ones that I have read and used

• Books
  
  • The intelligent Investor
    
  • A Random Walk Down Wall Street
    
  • Your Money Your Life
    
  • The Richest Man in Babylon
    
  • I Will Teach You to be Rich
    
    
• Blogs
  
  • Stock Series
    
  • Mr Money Mustache
    
  • Mad FIentist
    
  • dozens of others, Google is your friend
    
    
• Podcasts
  
  • Money Tree Podcast -- pretty poor production quality but good general stuff.
    
  • There are tons of others, Google it.
    
    Warren Buffett famously/supposedly read every book in the financial section at the library by age 12--I think the important thing to take from that is you are still young and have tons of free time and aside from starting to invest as soon as you can (you can usually start as soon as you have earned income) you should be investing in yourself...getting good grades, figuring out what you want to do after high school, trying out businesses, learning marketable skills (e.g., coding, good writing skills, good interpersonal skills, good organizational skills, etc).
    
    Good Luck!

Pg 3 of 3
Step 3.
Hit the internet…..hit it hard. Hit it so hard, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (anecdotal inventor of World wide web), develops a rash. There are millions of websites, web pages, blogs, vlogs and other log-stuff all dedicated to market investing. Don’t expect to understand it all, don’t believe anything because you read it once. When you see a word or term you don’t understand, google it. Still don’t understand it? Make a note of it in a dedicated notebook and move on until you do. Every trading platform… Fidelity.com, Etrade.com, Scottrade.com and thousands of others are proud of all the articles, tutorials and informational video they provide in an effort to make you a better educated investor (and potential customer). The internet will become the single greatest tool you will have to get answers to your question, explore new areas of investing and learn what is actually going on in the worlds business and economy. Again, I caution never take anything as absolute truth from a single source…particularly the internet. Always confirm and reconfirm until you learn what is right and who you can trust.

Step 3a
Talk to people, ask questions, compare ideas and ask their opinion. Remember no one is always right, facts change when additional information is learned and different views can reveal opportunities and traps.

At this point, you are now comfortable with your personal situation and goals (step 1), comfortable with the basic of how the stock market works and how you make basic investments (step 2) and starting to see the effects events and information in the real world affects the performance of corporations and therefore the performance of your stock investments (Step 3).

Now, by this point in time, you will know if you want to stick in the shallow end of investing (long positions on broad index spanning Mutual funds, and ETFs) or wade deeper. There is nothing wrong with staying in this area, millions of people have built comfortable nest eggs by just buying massively held Mutual Funds and letting it do it’s thing. If you find it too confusing or just boring, it is better to stay simple, make smart choices and leave it be.

However, if you become like many of us, who, instead of falling asleep counting sheep, try to rank all the Dow companies by Market Cap at the time of the markets close that day, then you will want to continue your education.

But this is my recommendation to start and we can talk later if you want to move further.

Finally, I will leave you with three tips. The first was from my finance professor in grad school and has been a part of my financial life every single day since, the other two I learned from my life and those closest too me:

1. If you want to get serious about successful stock investing, read Graham’s book. It was written long ago and gets more useful every passing year. He was right, I refer to it weekly, if not daily
   https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484795713&sr=1-1&keywords=benjamin+graham
   
2. Everybody is born penniless and dies penniless. What you do in-between is important but not the only thing. A.k.a Money is nice, but if you let it take over you will miss all the truly cool shit in life.
   
3. No matter how well you believe your financial plan is created, nothing will prove so wrong as an unexpected pregnancy.
   Best Wishes and good luck
   
   

A rally is a period where the price continues to rise, because either new fiat money is flowing into crypto, or people are leaving one crypto for another at that time.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rally.asp


I use bittrex and coinbase and like them, but there are many options for exchanges. I live in Washington state, so I have less options because Kraken and Poloniex are not available here.


I'd recommend getting either a ledger nano s or trezor hardware wallet. I have a ledger and it's really cool. Others like the trezor, but I don't have experience with it. Look into both and figure out which one you like more. This is the most secure way to store many coins.


This stuff is definitely worth the effort. I think it will be a multi trillion dollar market in five years, so it's still really early days. If you have a background in tech, then you have a good advantage in assessing the technology and making a lot of money investing. Good luck to you!


Oh also, if you want to dive deeper into the tech, a good first read is Mastering Bitcoin. Even though it's about bitcoin, you'll learn the fundamentals that are used by all cryptocurrencies.
book link

>Regarding science, the flourishing of scientific development didn't start with the Enlightenment, but it exploded afterwards. Chinese science and technology was vastly better than Europe for about 400 years, but the Industrial Revolution still happened in Europe.

He isn't contesting that modern science and technology is mainly a European thing, what he is contesting is the idea that it happened as the result of Enlightenment thought.

Europe was already a world power before the first Enlightenment thinkers ever put pen to paper, and it had achieved this status through technological means.

When it comes to science, interest in performing scientific measurements with specialized instruments (such as astrolabes) was widespread in niche circles, and so was interest in Greco-Roman thought, before the Renaissance.

>Modern economics allowed science to be used by the average person, not just the elites. That was only able to flourish after the idea of individual property and innovation spread.

Modern economics (as in: capital markets, global trade) can be traced to the colonial companies (East Indian, etc), and to various Italian city-state ventures who traded on the Mediterranean, which happened before the Enlightenment. Niall Ferguson documents this in The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.

>The fact that a woman can leave an abusive marriage and raise children on her own is pretty damn great, too.

That kind of implies that the "old view" would be ok with abusive marriages, but that really isn't the case. It is true that women are vulnerable to abuse by their husbands, but the kind of tight communities of the past where women also had the support of their extended family (many brothers, etc.) were a buffer.

And while the effort of single mothers is to be praised, as they do truly heroic work, it still remains the case that single-parent households are not the preferred way to raise children.

>there was no system of nobility or inherited titles.

That is true, but as the case of the British shows, that wasn't an impediment to them eventually developing a stable, fair and balanced political system. The British had had already gone through several steps in reducing the assymetry between the various ranks in the hierarchy. Elsewhere in Europe, the Habsburg regime was progressing towards decentralization, with more power accumulating into the hands of the merchants and artisans, simply as a result of their increased economic strength. By contrast, the economic activity of the nobility was land ownership, which didn't scale.

So my point here is that the good effects attributed to the political innovations which came with Enlightenment were also possible in regimes which were more conservative.

I see the Enlightenment as an expression of political trends that were already "in the air". Some of these trends introduced good changes, while some things turned out to not need changing.

This is by no means either academic or comprehensive, but it's short, fun, and just might kick-start your interest, so give it a watch. There are a couple others following up. I seriously recommend you get one of the more accessible books on economics. NPR's Planet Money has a reading list of books they recommend, and a quick peek at top results in Amazon also indicate bestsellers like Basic Economics, Economics in One Lesson, or the humorously titled and fun Naked Economics.

Any of those will do wonders. Just select whichever looks like a good time.

Or don't -- what to do with scarce resources like your own time is of course your choice. An economic choice ;)

I'm not sure about an online course, but I can recommend some econometrics textbooks.

Goldberger's "A Course in Econometrics" is well written and covers a lot of important ideas. I especially like his treatment of residual regression in chapter 17 (I think): https://www.amazon.com/Course-Econometrics-Arthur-S-Goldberger/dp/0674175441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465847395&sr=8-1&keywords=goldberger+econometrics

Many people teach regression as minimizing the squared residual from a linear model. While that's a correct way to think about it, in my opinion it is easier to understand regression as performing matrix algebra on a data-generating process. That is, a linear model says that x causes y according to

y = xb + e

where y is an observed column vector of length n (for number of observations) x is an observed matrix, possibly including a constant, e is unobserved, and b is a parameter (vector) to be estimated. Well, just do algebra on it.

you want to "move" x to the left-hand side, but x doesn't have an inverse. Instead, multiply both sides by the transpose of x, which is x', and then you have x'x in front of b. If this can be inverted, then multiply both side by it's inverse. (x'x)^-1 x'x cancels, yielding

(x'x)^-1 x'y=b+(x'x)^-1 x'e

if (x'x)^-1 x'e=0, then you have just solved for b. In expectation, this is true under the OLS assumptions, and as the sample gets large, it is approximately true in sample. This is why OLS can recover b if the error is orthogonal to x. If not, then OLS gives you biased estimates of the causal parameter b.

Regression algebra is indeed quite simple. This makes regression algebra satisfying -- you are doing something extremely powerful without requiring comparably sophisticated mathematical technology.

Anyway, Goldberger's treatment of regression algebra really clicked for me, especially making sense of residual regression (why "all else equal" makes sense). You don't need to read every chapter. Chapter 17 works pretty well on it's own, for example. But the other stuff is useful as well.


"Mostly Harmless Econometrics" is not too hard to read without coursework forcing you to focus: https://www.amazon.com/Mostly-Harmless-Econometrics-Empiricists-Companion/dp/0691120358/ref=pd_sim_14_6?ie=UTF8&dpID=51qgNUMbyXL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR104%2C160_&refRID=NY8XZVBAX0ZHXXV69SAT

You might as well get Wooldridge's graduate level textbook on panel data econometrics -- you'll probably need to buy it in grad school anyway. It's hard to make sense of until until you've been forced to work through a lot of the math. After your first quarter or two of graduate level course work you should be comfortable enough with the material to teach yourself anything in this textbook. Before that though and you might not have the discipline or background to make heads or tails of this: https://www.amazon.com/Econometric-Analysis-Cross-Section-Panel/dp/0262232197/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465847582&sr=1-7&keywords=wooldridge

Interesting thing about bikes, they get your adrenaline up, but also get cortisol up as well.

Burning through traffic at 100+mph is awesome, but guys who just get off their bikes tend to have their eyes bulging out of their heads. Great for energy, but the extra good vibes don't really come until you've come down. Someone advised me against getting a panigale because it would roast my nads, and there are motorcycle related ED issues with some models.

If you are going to ride, get involved with the new wave custom scene by getting a cheap machine and building it out. The physical knowledge will be the real transformative aspect. If you are intellectual, read "Shopclass as Soulcraft," and check out sites like BikeExif to get the idea.

Also, mandatory viewing includes:

• TRP meets HD
  
• "How to Ride Bitch,"
  
• "Waiting out Winter"
  
• "Baja Ride Documentary"
  
• "Making fun of Waiting out Winter"
  
• More bike snark, but funny bike snark.
  
• Long Live the Kings
  
  
  

Disclaimer: I am referring to US PhD programs. Things are a bit different in Europe/Canada, but not in terms of material, only structure.

So what you learn in an Econ PhD is drastically different from undergrad. Unless you go to a heterodox PhD program, an Econ PhD is a “STEM” PhD whereas the same can’t be said for most undergrad Econ degrees. I wouldn't say it's impossible to learn the material on your own; however, 1) only wannabe researchers will gain from learning the material at the level of rigor of a Ph.D. program (some of the exercises are just intellectual exercises rather than providing you with tools you can use at a "normal job") and 2) the material is rather high level and it can be difficult to grasp if not being explained by someone who really understands it. The first year sequence at almost all schools is Micro 1, Macro 1, and Econometrics 1 in the fall, the the corresponding “course_title 2” course in the spring.

The first year sequence essentially lays the standard models/techniques in each of the overarching fields (micro, macro, Econometrics) along with the assumptions that those models rely on. The goal is for you to not just be able to memorize the assumptions and solve the standard models, but to truly understand why we need each assumption, what we gain by using it, and what limitations it imposes on the model. That way when we’re doing our own research and we have to relax an assumption or derive a completely new model, we understand what we’re doing.

After the first year, you choose a subfield of specialization (micro theory, macro theory, applied micro, Industrial Organization, behavioral economics, Econometrics, etc) and take courses which continue doing what you learned in your first year, but specifically for your subfield. Then after the second year, you write your dissertation.

If you’re curious what you learn in a first year micro class, here’s a link to download Ariel Rubinstein’s book Lecture Notes in Microeconomic Theory: The Economic Agent. It’s free on his website as long as you provide an email address. While Microeconomic Theory by MWG is a more standard book for first year Micro, I think Rubinstein’s book is better written, especially when compared to the consumer/producer theory sections of MWG. Also, it’s free :)

I just stumbled onto this subreddit for the first time now, so apologies if I'm not replying to the request as desired.

Investing isn't really something that you can learn, in the sense that it's not like riding a bike where you practice and then after a little bit you know how to ride a bike and that's it. Think of learning to invest more as a constant journey, where you're always growing and gaining understanding but you can't really ever know enough. Most successful investors, including Warren Buffett and Charles Munger, are voracious readers simply because there is so much out there to absorb.

Here's the start of a reading list to take a look at, listed in order of how I would tackle them in your place (though obviously skip some or jump ahead if one description catches your eye specifically):

• Millionaire Next Door--not an investing book, but you mentioned saving for the future and so I think this is a good place to start. This book, which covers the results of a study of many first generation millionaires, will teach you how you should be thinking about money, saving, and consumption. Dry, but not a difficult read.
  
  
  Indexing:
  
  
• Random Walk Down Wall Street
  
  
• Four Pillars of Investing
  
  
• Unconventional Success--These three I would consider as one big package, because they all address kind of the same philosophy and investing strategy (though in slightly different ways). There's no preferred order for this group, so I've listed them in what I think is from most accessible to least accessible (they all get into some technical details that may be difficult for someone not familiar with the topics, but they are all written for the layman so while it may take some work, you should be able to get through all three).
  
  
• Bogle on Mutual Funds--This is the only book I'm recommending here that I haven't actually read. I'm including it only because I realize that you asked for a crash course so to speak, and none of the three books above are 100% easily accessible (though they do cover everything). I've read other books by John Bogle and I know enough about him and his investment philosophy to be able to recommend this confidently enough and to have a good idea what he talks about here. I suggest trying as much of the above three as possible, but if you do find them too difficult try this one out first as it'll undoubtedly be an easier read all the while covering most of the basic points outlined in the above.
  
  
  Value Investing:
  
  
• The Little Book That Beats the Market--Very short, very accessible (all technical details are hidden away in the appendix. I don't recommend following his strategy outlined in the book verbatim, but as an intro to value investing concepts it's not a bad start.
  
  
• The Intelligent Investor--This is basically a summation of Warren Buffett's investing philosophy. It is quite old, and definitely difficult at times, but well worth reading.
  
  
  Those are what I would start with. I recommend reading the books on indexing first not because I think the efficient market hypothesis (one of the topics covered in all three books) is 100% correct (it isn't), but because you need to have a filter in place that makes you skeptical and able to dismiss all the garbage investing advice that's out there (technical strategies promising 10%+ yearly returns guaranteed, etc). The value investing books I include because it is the only chance you have of beating the market over the long run, though I would only recommend the active management route if you have the time and energy to dedicate to it.
  
  Most of what's in these books does boil down to a few basic tenets that could probably be summarized in a few pages, but I would discourage you from looking for quick investing summary information because it won't be of any use to you. It's not enough to understand/know the concepts. You have to believe in them, and live them every day. If you aren't absolutely convinced of the investing strategy you're using you'll wind up capitulating at the worst possible time and losing a lot of money, or at the very least being one of the many people who 'chase winners' only to suffer from consistently mediocre performance. That's why you need to be reading regularly--to keep your conviction and refresh yourself on the fundamentals.
  
  Best of luck.

IF you are trying to maximize your rate of return, you should be maximizing your 401(k) contributions up to the matching limit. Otherwise, you are passing up FREE GUARANTEED money. You can then invest this money in a low cost index fund offered by your plan administrator by using dollar cost averaging. The bottom line is that if you really are solely motivated by getting the highest rate of return, you should be maxing out your contributions to your 401(k), but only to the matching limit.

After reading all of your posts here, I think that you need to be honest with yourself about your motivations with this money. If you just want to play around in the stock market, that's fine. But know the difference between "maximizing returns for the long run" and playing in the stock market.

Don't get me wrong, I have money that I invest in the stock market that is separate than what is in my IRA/401(k). Some money I do not feel comfortable kissing good-bye until I'm in my 60s. I sense that you feel the same way. But you have to realize the consequences of not putting that money away (i.e. paying taxes on capital gains AND giving up FREE MONEY through contributions.)

So in the end, if you seriously want to maximize returns in the long run:

1. Max out 401(k) contributions to the matching limit, then
   
2. Max out a Roth IRA to the contribution limits, only then
   
3. Invest via a traditional taxable account.
   
4. Use dollar cost averaging in those accounts to buy low cost index funds as repeatedly recommended by Warren Buffett or, if you want to put in more time to your investing, read The Intelligent investor by Ben Graham as repeatedly recommended by Warren Buffett.
   
   Best of luck!

I really like applied stats but think a good understanding of stats theory is important for any researcher. A good "litmus" test, I think, would be reading Mostly Harmless Econometrics (you can probably find a place to check the book out for free). It isn't about health statistics at all but it is a very good "applied" theory book. If you get into the first bit and go "this isn't for me," that is fine and epi probably won't be a problem. If you go "this is interesting," then you might be worth looking at doing the required pre-reqs for the MS biostats program.

Relatedly, check out this free biostatistics bootcamp on Coursera. Check out the first few weeks of lectures and if you decide that the stat theory is more than you care for, epi is a good place.

Epi is a good field, don't get me wrong, but if you are interested in statistics, then it might not be a great fit. MHE and a few of those lectures might be very helpful in deciding if you are at all unsure of how you lean.

I got about 25 minutes into the video; I'm not wasting more time. If you want to know serious data about the dangers of central planning of the monetary system, there are vastly better sources that talk in real, economics, and not lofty, sensationalist terms.

The International Role of the Dollar: Theory and Prospect by Paul krugman

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

The Creature from Jekyll Island by Griffin

Milton Friedman's Free to Choose videos

--------

My main objections in the first 25 minutes of this "documentary" are:

1) They're not correctly defining or using the terms currency or money and not identifying their economic role. Money is not the center of an economy, it is the lubrication that permits economics to happen. Economics is the analysis of how scarce resources that have alternative uses are allocated by people (by markets).

Money doesn't create those allocations, money enables those allocations.

Even in an economic system without money, there would still be allocations of scarce resources that have alternative uses by people; whether that is choosing to use your time to cut down a tree for your neighbor in exchange for beef or choosing to use your time to mow a lawn for your mother in exchange for a smile and a thank you; your time is a scarce resource and you're choosing how to allocate it with zero money being involved.

Money is any medium of exchange and is created as a store of one's labor.

You receive a dollar in exchange for X minutes of your labor. That piece of paper stores those X minutes of your labor and you can use it in exchange for something you value.

So anyway - this video does a shitty job identifying what money is at the outset... I don't think it'll get better.

2) The banking system, monetary policy, and politicians making a killing off of those systems has not been hidden from anyone. As they admit, almost in a very quick juxtaposition with their incorrect statement, the bankers, academics, and politicians are very open about their systems.

The problem is that people are just happy with their lives and are safer than they've ever been throughout history.

3) A complete misunderstanding of what "interest" is and what fractional reserve banking is.

Interest is the cost of lending money... it is the price tag on a product just like on the coat or iPod you buy. The baker isn't going to give you all his bread for free; why should a bank give you money for free?

Fractional reserve banking can be done responsibly. Much like the interest rate, it should be done at the rate set by free markets. A fractional reserve rate of 90% almost completely guarantees that when you withdraw, you will always be able to withdraw all of your money. In exchange, banks will give you vastly lower of an interest rate than at a 10% fractional reserve rate because it is higher risk and lower reward for the bank.

Anyway - like so many other documentaries out there about extremely complex matters, this one is just trying to sell a product like every other good capitalist out there. They need to catch your attention and get you to talk about it to others to make money - so of course they're going to play to the 8th grade education market.

>So I dropped out and learned a trade. Perhaps I am still not stimulated intellectually, but I am stimulated mentally by the pride I take in doing things with my own hands and watching them work and serve a purpose and the challenge inherent to doing something I am not used to doing (working manually). This, I think, is the real reason women are overrepresented in college : men are not interested anymore because they aren't challenged anymore. It's the same gold star for participation, sit down, shut up and regurgitate mentality that has been ruining education for decades and that women excel in because it furnishes them with attention for not doing anything of note.

Yup... nothing I can really add to that. Other than an upvote.

---

Aw hell... I never could post a short comment like that in response. (LOL)

--
"Intellectual stimulation" basically just isn't going to happen in most of modern (post modern) academia -- if it ever even really WAS that, it ain't no more -- now it's just become an second iteration of (public/compulsory) high school, the main goal (other than indenturing people into debt via a loan & tuition extraction machine) now seems to be to create an extended adolescence, and keep young people OUT of the workforce for as many years as possible.

If you're actually really intelligent (i.e. 2+ SD's above average) then you pretty much HAVE to be autodidactic -- seek your stimulation (and satisfaction) via independent reading/studying (in whatever the fuck interests you at any given time); and then engaging in various hobbies -- IMO you were entirely right to seek out manual "hands-on" trade work; there's something about actually BUILDING/CREATING (or even "fixing") complicated or "custom" things with both your hands AND your mind that banal "academic" crap just cannot achieve.

---
By any chance have you ever read any of Matthew Crawford's books? I just finished his Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work piece... and it pretty much talks about and extends that very point; you might find that to be of interest.

Cheers!

Your question is very important. Especially for early stage or even first-time founders, who don't have the right support network yet. There are many more resources like Facebook groups, and youtube channels that you can leverage to learn more about entrepreneurship, specific skills, and industries. Let me know if you're looking for something more specific. I'd be more than happy to give you additional pointers.

 

Here is a list of resources that I found very helpful on my journey:

 

Forums
 

Reddit: I was impressed with the quality and depth that you can get by asking meaningful and targeted questions in the right channels such as r/entrepreneur and r/startups.

 

Podcasts
 

All of the podcasts provide a great learning experience through case studies, founder interviews, and startup pitches. Believe me when I say that whatever challenge you're having someone more experience can very likely help you.

 

1. Jason Calacanis: this week in startups
    
   
   
2. Tim Ferriss: The Tim Ferriss Show
    
   
   
3. James Altucher: The James Altucher Show
   
    
   
   Newsletter
    
   
   Launch Ticker News: One of the best newsletters out there that captures the latest tech and business news sent to your inbox several times per day.
   
    
   
   Blogs
    
   
   
4. Andrew Chen
    
   
   
5. Entrepreneurship Unplugged
   
    
   
   Books
    
   
   
6. Roger Fisher: Getting to Yes
    
   
   
7. Dale Carnegie: How to Win Friends and Influence People
    
   
   
8. Dan Ariely: Predictably Irrational
   
   
9. Eric Ries: [The Lean Startup] (https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522354359&sr=8-2&keywords=the+lean+startup)
   
   
10. Noam Wasserman: The Founder's Dilemmas

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661


Well yes, I do promote the book because I everyone should read it, but if you do a google search there are pdf available for free. :) I like the first edition best since it's really easy to read.

​

If you want to use a screener, something that is free and available then that's ok too. I mean I believe stock investing is a personal journey; so you decide for yourself what you want. And accept all consequences because you chose it.

Timing the market mainly refers to buying something with the expectation it will change in price fairly soon and you'll be able to sell for profit. Timing the market is a short-term strategy, but as you know, as an investor you should focus on long-term strategy so switching over your 20% to a index now would be a good move. If your company just starting offering index funds and your portfolio already consists of 80% index, I'm assuming you are pretty early on in your investment lifespan so making the switch now is much better than waiting to do it down the road or just leaving the 20% in the managed funds until you retire. Managed funds almost never match the market year after year, which is the appeal of index funds. Also, the lower costs will mean more of your money remains yours and it leaves more available to compound over the years.

I'd recommend this book for you, it's fairly short, but contains a lot of great information for someone newer to investing. I learned a lot from it. A Random Walk Down Wall Street is another one I'd recommend.

A few months ago I didn't really know anything about investing, but after reading those two and The Boglehead's Guide to Investing, I've learned quite a bit and feel pretty comfortable with the investment knowledge I've gained from them.

If you want to learn more, I would absolutely say take courses on it. My friends who are engineers have mentioned a lot of companies look very favorably on engineers who have business/finance knowledge, especially if you want to move into management.

If you wanted a book to read, I'd recommend Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor. Graham was an investment professional in the early 1900s who managed to make money through the Great Depression in the stock market. In his later years, he taught a finance class at Columbia and according to legend only one student ever got an A in that class, and that student was Warren Buffet. Look for an updated edition, as the book was written in the late 1960s, so some of the examples are pretty dated. This is the version I have. It looks like there is a newer revised edition too.

If you like podcasts (I am a huge podcast junkie), the podcasts from The Motley Fool are good and not very technical. Vanguard also puts out good podcasts, but those are a bit more technical. Planet Money from NPR is a good one that covers topics in economics in a way that is both interesting and engaging.

If you're a student, you can get a great deal on a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, which now includes a digital subscription iirc. I had it all through college, and it was a great resource. Seriously, it's $50 for the year. It's worth it.

I can think of a few

• Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" - WHY and how whole empires fall
  
  
• Niall Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money" - How money rules the world - here's how.
  
  
• Jarred Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" - his thesis might not be entirely correct - but it's a VERY fair look at how our history was influenced by these factors.
  
  
• Bruce Bueno De Mesquita's - "The Predictioneer's Game" - - How quantitative models are SCARILY accurate
  
  
• Emanuel Derman's "Models Behaving Badly" - And how sometimes quantitative models are totally wrong.
  
  
• Paul Roberts - "The End of Oil" - Probably the most serious and balanced read on what could be one of the most important economic problems facing our modern civilization in the next 20 years.
  
  
• Frank & Cook's "Winner Take All Society" - and why things are a problem.
  
  
• Richard Florida's "The Great Reset" - Florida is a pretty good author all around - far better than some others in the pitch.
  
  
• James Bamford's amazing "Body of Secrets" - Not all our enemies are external, and sometimes our allies turn out to actually be thuggish & deadly enemies.
  
  
• Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" - Nobody here is exactly as they appear.
  
  
• Carl Sagan's "A Demon Haunted World"
  
  
• Robin Marantz Henig's "A Monk in the Garden" - Yeah - the priest that proved Darwin's theory, in 1865.....oh yeah and he invented statistics along the way.
  
  
• Brian Sykes' "The seven Daughters of Eve"
  
  
• Douglas Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" - Every page is practically amazing - a collection of amazing old articles from Dr. H's work
  
  
• Kristina Borjesson's edit of "Into the Buzzsaw" - the hard truth about a couple of things in the US media
  
  
• Richard Dawkins' "Climbing Mount Improbable" - a great work about such an amazing idea.
  
  
• Kim Sterelny's "Dawkins vs. Gould" - this is a REAL debate about evolution!
  

To first answer question above, sounds like they invest in company but you have every right to re-balance as suited. And re-balancing is something you should do once, MAX twice a year.

We do it just once at the end of the year, and forget about it until then (unless we receive a letter that X fund is being replaced).

Anyone interested in a good investment read, and fresh off the boat in regards to Wall Street- I'd suggest "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham (Warren Buffets teacher). Great book that references old corporations and compares/contrasts them to companies nowadays. And provides ways/what to look for if you want to dabble in individual stock investments. Cheap on ebay/amazon too...

Regarding investing in a company, my wife has a decent plan with her company. Nice balance of large-, mid-, sm-cap's (bonds/internationals too), some indexes etc, but also the chance to invest in the company.

Agree with most redditors here, diversification is essential and key to not overloading/losing it all at once (i.e. Enron).

However, we do invest max 2% (or 3) of her contribution with company stock. I don't think it's too harsh to invest a very modest amount with the company; as long as you feel they're large enough/stable to be around for 10-20-30 years etc (it's one of top 5 media companies in the US).

Good luck!!

>Empirical methodology is about running regressions in order to establish causal or at least predictive relationships within the dataset.

Perhaps this is what empirical rigor means in practice, but the view that this is what empirical rigor should mean is ultimately untenable.

Josh Angrist might re-assert /u/OMG_TRIGGER_WARNING's question like this: it doesn't matter if X predicts Y almost with certainty, if tomorrow some policy change will cause the relationship to fall apart entirely. Causality is more important than correlation, because causality is the only true test of an actual economic model. Moreover, causality isn't something that you get from matching your data with some DSGE equations, finding p<.00001 with Newey-West standard errors, then passing a Hausman test. Unless you have a plausible quasi-experiment with a tight chain of causality, you have nothing except a statistical relationship. You can't even identify a diagram like X -> Y -> Z -> X.

There is a sort of nihilism in that worldview. If someone makes a valid criticism that breaks your chain of causality, there's no honest response except to ask for a suspension of disbelief. When all's said and done, you're not allowed to believe anything except local average treatment effects (LATEs) from randomized experiments. I don't see this as a useful standard to hold every single piece of empirical research to, because it's unreasonably demanding.

That's why I would agree with your general response, since I think macro is useful. This is because of one of the other reasons you've mentioned - there seems to be a sort of stationarity in the data where predictive relationships remain stable for a while. That's where I permit some suspension of disbelief. I think that makes me relatively lax, but I don't see a better alternative to answering the kinds of questions macroeconomists and policymakers need to ask. I might rephrase your answer to OP's question like this: macro is useful if we're OK accepting a lower standard for what constitutes useful information. There is use for statistical relationships which we hope will continue into the future but which aren't, currently, causally founded.

>do you have any suggestions of things to add?

VTI and/or something like VIG or DGRO, which capture dividend growth stocks - companies that have a history of increasing their dividend. I wouldn't let individual picks comprise more than 10% of my portfolio, but admittedly I'm an ardent index investor.

>I want to keep the dividend ratio over 7%

Why? You're just increasing your tax burden unnecessarily in doing so, especially with REITs, and you're missing out on mid- and small-caps, which have outperformed large-caps over time. I don't recommend chasing yield as income. Just sell shares when you want to.

>I prefer companies with growth potential and companies that survived the 2008 recession.

Look into VIG and long-term treasury bonds. This link shows how they fared better during the 2008 crash compared to the S&P 500. Long-term treasuries are usually inversely correlated to stocks.

>I feel like adding to many more would hurt my return as I have picked the "best" in the sectors I am involved with that support the dividend I would like to sustain.

How do you know you've picked the "best?" Evidence has shown time and time again that even most professional investors can't pick winners that beat a straight S&P 500 index fund over 10+ years, much less the average retail investor. I learned this the hard way firsthand.

You've said you're a beginner investor, which is even more of a reason to simply use index funds, or at the very least sector/factor ETF's as core holdings and then a small allocation for your individual picks if you want to keep things interesting. Or if you like the idea of picking winners, you can let Warren Buffett do it for you by simply investing in Berkshire Hathaway.

>I was considering a Chinese market ETF as the Chinese market is growing faster than the U.S. market currently. Opinions?

I don't know much about the Chinese market and it doesn't align with my investing strategy, so I can't really comment on that. You could utilize VIGI to capture international dividend growers.

I would suggest reading:

• The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
  
• Common Sense Investing by John Bogle, founder of Vanguard
  
• Google for articles related to "asset allocation," "risk management," "diversification," and "volatility reduction" in relation to investing.

> As a general thing, I'd avoid useless tokens as rewards. Something like a special edition logo t-shirt or free time on a tool that normally costs money to operate (we charge for laser cutter time) would make MUCH more sense than a star or ribbon. A yearly appreciation dinner / party with voted awards and accolades might work as well.

Just the opposite -- I've observed (and this is really well explained in Predictably Irrational and presumably other pop-psych lit) that when you offer money or money-equivalent for some things people previously did for free, nobody does anything for free anymore. Once you take things out of the social space and into the market, you can't go back.

So I think it's most important for the rewards to be purely for fun, so people continue doing them for the same reason people volunteer their time for everything else around the space -- because it makes them feel good. Give 'em a funny giraffe on their userpage that says "Glorious" or something, because you can't trade that for money.

Out of all of those, which would you say are frequently underrepresented in MSM? It seems like the first one is pretty readily parroted by everyone as though it is some grand indictment of supply and demand (it's not) -- try googling the phrase "perfectly competitive markets don't exist". Freakonomics did a pretty good job of popularizing the idea of externalities. Books like Nudge and Predictably Irrational have done a pretty good job of popularizing the recent ideas of behavioural economics. And what to do about natural monopolies (or what even constitutes a natural monopoly, in the real world) is still very much a matter of debate; it's not like there's a definitive answer to that.

Actually there is a brilliant book that everyone should read, which you might have heard of:

The creature from Jekyll Island

You will find that this is in fact not the first time the bailouts have happened. The author has done some wonderful research to show how this cycle has played out ad nauseam. In fact it is in chapter 2 itself. I encourage you to read it.

The origins as well as the mission of the Fed is anything but altruistic. I'm going to sound like a crazy right-winger for a moment, but the system really is geared towards enriching a small segment of elite while tying the rest in debt servitude for life.

That's what housing bubbles like the current one do. They force you and me to auction our future wages against each other in a giant competition, so that we can sign our lives into debt-servitude. (Don't get me wrong, debt can be good if used productively, but not like this). Rising house prices benefit only the banks, who can collect massive interest over 30 years. Again I'm hesitant to quote RT, but literally like it says, Read it and weep.

The banks meanwhile can use fractional reserve banking to create money, and lend it to you and profit. If they make risky loans, they get paid more interest. If the loans default... why hello Uncle Sam, where's our bailout? It is a zero-risk way to make tons of money, and it is bullshit.

Let's see what happens with all these treasuries now. I'm amazed that we have all concluded that QE was such a grand success, when QT hasn't even been done yet. The Fed is looking to stop their purchase of treasuries in the coming months, and let the current ones roll off the balance sheets. China is looking to slow down or stop treasury purchases. The Government on the other hand gave out massive tax cuts, and is looking to finance a $1 trillion dollar deficit by issuing more treasuries! The NK war, which will happen soon, will also be financed with debt. Jesus. This is not going to end well.

I see that Intelligent Investor by Graham has already been posted but that's certainly a good one. However it can be a bit dry for most readers and if you would prefer something a bit fresher I would read Deep Value by Toby Carlisle. He discusses and critiques Graham's teachings along with the strategies of other notable value investors such as Buffet, Icahn, Greenblatt and many others all in a more modern tone. It's been the bible for my own value investing strategies.

Other books to look into are:

• Dhandho Investor by Monish Pabrai (lots of simple strategies and examples for small risk - big payoff investments)
  
• Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier (good for understanding the discipline and mental state of a good value investor)
  
• Michael Lewis books such as Big Short and Flash Boys (These are less for learning investing and more for generating your own interest in finance with some fantastic writing. It's also good for learning what the reality of the markets and Wall Street are.)

I'm a Political Methodologist; I'm happy to give you some help. It would be useful to know what your mathematical background is, and what sort of things you're interested in doing. You have to understand, to me, this question is a little bit like "I'm interested in American Politics; suggest an introductory text, please." There's a huge variety of stuff going on here, it's hard to know where to start.

Do you want to be able to read statistics wrt PoliSci? Or are you interested in figuring out how everything works, so that you can create / replicate?

If you want something very undergraduate centric, my undergrad research methods class used the Kellstedt and Whitten book. It was fine, but obviously very rudimentary. It will get you to understand some of the big picture type stuff, as well as some of the simple statistical nuts and bolts you'd want to understand. This class also used the everpresent King, Keohane and Verba text, which is oriented around qualitative work, but Gary King is the foremost quantitative methodologist in the discipline, so it's still pretty good (and "qualitative" certainly doesn't mean "non-rigorous" -- it's cited a lot because it really delves into deeply into research design). That said, I don't remember a whole lot about this class anymore, and I haven't looked in these books for ages. My feeling is that both of these books will probably be close to what you're looking for -- they're oriented around intuition and identifying the main issues in inference in the social sciences, without getting too bogged down in all of the math.

That said, if you have more math background, I'd suggest Mostly Harmless Econometrics which is often used as a first year graduate level quant methods book. It's absolutely fantastic, but it isn't easy if you don't have the math background. It may also assume some preexisting rudimentary probability or statistical knowledge. I'd also suggest the Morgan and Winship. These two books are structured more around causal inference, which is a subtle reframing of the whole "statistics in the social sciences".

For more nuts and bolts econometrics, Baby Wooldridge is one of the standards. I think it's pretty often used in undergrad econ classes.

In general, though, statistics is statistics, so if you want to learn it, find an appropriate level of statistics/econometrics book.

Take a look at those books in your library/online/etc and see if any of them are what you're looking for.

I love the crap out of books. One of life's greatest joys is learning and books are such an excellent way to do it.

Business books you should read:

• Zero To One by Peter Thiel - Short, awesome ideas and well written.
  
  
• My Startup Life by Ben Casnocha. Ben's a super sharp guy. Learn from him. He started a company in his teens. He was most recently the personal 'body man' for Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn)
  
  
• The Lean Startup by Eric Reis - Fail fast and fail early. Build something, test, get feedback, and refine.
  
  Non Business Books (That Are Essential To Business
  
  
• Money Master The Game by Tony Robbins - I am a personal finance Nerd Extraordinaire and I thought Tony Robbins was a joke. Boy was I wrong. Hands down the best personal finance book I've ever read. Period.
  
  
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Ever seen Gladiator? This is the REAL Roman Emperor behind Russel Crowe's character. This book was his private diary.
  
  
• Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl - Hands down one of the most profound and moving books ever written. Victor was a psychologist and survived the Nazi training camps
  
  As a way of background I have newsletter where I share proven case studies of successful entrepreneurs. I outline step by step how they made money and got freedom from their day job. If you’re interested let me know and I can PM you the link to the newsletter or if you have any questions.

I don't know of any that compare, but, the Napoleon's Buttons is SUPPOSED to be good.

http://www.amazon.com/Napoleons-Buttons-Molecules-Changed-History/dp/1585423319/

Other books, engineering related, that I liked are:

Norm Lieberman's Process Troubleshooting books, the guy cracks me up!

Working Guide to Process Equipment (3rd edition probably cheaper): http://www.amazon.com/Working-Guide-Process-Equipment-Fourth/dp/0071828060/

Process Equipment Malfunctions (not as good as the other one, some overlap, but still worthwhile, and covers more breadth for individual issues): http://www.amazon.com/Process-Equipment-Malfunctions-Techniques-Identify/dp/0071770208/

The Prize (mentioned above): http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1439110123/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/188-3799228-4803548

The Quest (Follow on to The Prize): http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Energy-Security-Remaking-Modern/dp/0143121944/

Oil 101: http://www.amazon.com/Oil-101-Morgan-Downey/dp/0982039204/

The Mythical Man Month (Not engineering directly as it pertains to software, but, projects and project management are huge in engineering, though this book is timeless): http://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959/

Piping Systems Manual (You can NEVER know enough about pipe!): http://www.amazon.com/Piping-Systems-Manual-Brian-Silowash/dp/0071592768/

Pumps and Pumping Operations (OMG it is $4, hardcover, go buy now! This book is great... did you know OSU didn't teach their Chem E's about pumps? I was flabbergasted, gave this to our intern and he became not a scrub by learning about pumps!): http://www.amazon.com/Pumping-Operations-Prentice-Pollution-Equipment/dp/0137393199/

Any good engineer needs to understand MONEY too:

The Ascent of Money: http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177/

It's Nial Fergesuon, who has had his own series of dramas and dumb stuff. The Ascent of Money has a SLIGHT libertarian tinge... but it wasn't bad enough that I didn't enjoy it. I consider it a history book, and he attempts to write it like one.

Have fun!

>Thanks for the response.

Thanks for the conversation. I'm enjoying it.

>So, if I understand correctly, you're saying that karma as a content-sorting system is a useful and necessary part of reddit, while karma as a label on a redditor is an unnecessary and detrimental aspect of reddit.

I largely endorse this summary. I'm not saying personal cumulative karma is completely worthless, but I think "karmawhoring" is entirely related to going for a big score beyond that which is necessary to prevent filtering. I think there should be some point where you "win the game" or "stop leveling" and the score ceases to matter. Those who are only here for the score will either start a new account or leave. Those who were here for the discussions will continue on as before, less the annoying "you're just here for the karma" discussions.

At some point, our cups should truly runneth over.

>I would understand this opinion, as it is explained in the "Abolish Karma" post, but the very beginning of the linked comment seems to suggest otherwise:

>So, here karma (the summed label-on-a-redditor kind, not the content-sorting kind) is a currency regardless of its superficial valuelessness, which would seem to suggest something rather contrary to the "Abolish Karma" post: that karma does have some sort of underlying value.

I touched on this just a moment ago but I'm happy to elaborate.

Dan Ariely has done some interesting research on value and currency in Predictably Irrational. Basically, our behavior is manipulated easily by arbitrary numbers and arbitrary situations. The model for karma is very much like a score in a persistent-universe MMORPG. Scores in MMORPGs lead to gold farming. Most every participant on Reddit is at least passingly familiar with these environments and many of our participants are eloquently versed in them. Meanwhile, there are very few online communities that assign rank and weight to comments. So while the discussions have more in common with a PHPBB or the like, the community isn't unlike WOW.

Where things fall apart, of course, is the fact that you can't sell or trade Karma. Psychologically, however, that doesn't matter - we're primed to expect some sort of redemption system for our score because of past experience and peer influece, so we behave as if there's some sort of redemption system for our score.

I believe this makes Reddit a worse place rather than a better one - if there were some sort of exchange for karma, people wouldn't be scolded for having a high score. People who were just reposting things for the high score would be drummed out of the community. In a very real way, we're acting as if our poker chips are money... when in fact we can't even use them to bet more.

In a nutshell, Redditors behave as if that cumulative karma score had value, even though it doesn't... and this dichotomy causes a lot of squirrely behavior.

Like reposts.

Did you even read what I said?

https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/5hjt0i/venezuela_seizes_christmas_toys_to_distribute_to/db14hqn/?st=iwjxn7ek&sh=5db6c2c1

Economics is not a science. I've said so far that its not a science, that its a social science, and that knowledge of it is based largely on experience rather than on a formal logical system.

The fact that its not a science is irrelevant. To say that there is no value in the study of economics, and that you can't make claims about economics, given that they are imperfect and not scientifically rigorous truths, is asinine. And that is what you've said so far.

You are correct that many economists have tried to codify the principles of economics so that its like a science, particularly with the keynesians and neo keynesians. Within economic systems, certain things can be extrapolated. You can find a lot of truths in individual systems. Do they necessarily work in every sytem, all the time, to the same degree? No, they're more like a bunch of different levers you have to pull, some more at some times, some more at other times. Some systems work better with some groups of people than with other groups of people.

The reason why we haven't had ample data on socialism is because it doesnt work in practice. It always devolves too quickly to gain much data at all. Its a lovely idea, that everyone would be working for the good of everyone else and that we could implement all sorts of systems that make things better off. I bet that you could probably get it done with the japanese, they are so communally minded that they could make things work that even marx didn't dream of. The vast majority of people aren't as disciplined a people as the japanese though, and we can observe that even though they do tend towards a strong sort of isolationism and xenophobia, and towards having only japanese live in japan, that even given that that they are still importing other cultures and probably losing some of the virtues that made them so able to so widely adopt new political, economic and social systems in the past. I think that a socialist system could work, but it would probably be very isolated, and it would take a truly exceptional people to make it work.

We don't have the data on it because it takes such an exceptional people to make it work. If there are any cracks in those people, if they give in to their very human flaws, then the fact that it centralizes power so much tends to make the basis of their economies and political systems unravel.

Its simply better and more robust to not give such strong powers to the government. I find it fascinating that leftists these days are so pro socialism. Back in the 60s they were wary of "the man" and all that jazz.

I also recognize that its very likely that economists who have good views on things whom I agree with will get things wrong from time to time, but it's better to try to understand things imperfectly rather than just give up and say "oh well we can't be scientifically rigorous about this, we should just give up."

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Common-Sense-Economy/dp/0465002609

These are economists who recognize that its not a science so much as an ongoing process that appeals to it as a social science. They know that there aren't any scientifically rigorous proofs when it comes to economics.

For intro sociology, I'd recommend some preachy nonfiction. They are written for laymen but introduce the sociological style of approach. Something like Fat Land or Uninsured in America.

Freakanomics is not exactly sociology, but could be an interesting read for someone interested in social economics / group behavior. Jonathan Kozol is a reporter, not a sociologist, but his stories mix investigative reporting with a human element to focus on topics of interest to the field of sociology. I remember Nickel and Dimed also being a good read.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is not a book about sociology, but rather a specific example of culture clash within the context of medical care. That being said, it is a big reason why I decided to become a social worker (which is a profession in line with the two fields mentioned in your post).

A Place at the Table is a movie that might fit the bill.

Note: I'm American. I imagine other places would have different topics of interest.

Edited: add movie and fix format

The Law by Frederic Bastiat (awesome, short, soooo many quotable quotes)

Healing Our World by Dr. Mary Ruwart (old version available free)

Haven't read any of his books (have listened to many lectures and radio show), but something by Harry Browne should do quite nicely. I've heard great things about Why Government Doesn't Work

Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity - John Stossel (do check out his excellent Fox Business show "Stossel" on hulu.com, and look for his old 20/20 specials on libertarianism - they're fantastic)

good economists: Peter Schiff, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Walter Block

You might be better off waiting til you get more comfortable with libertarianism, but G. Edward Griffin's Creature From Jekyll Island is a must read. It's more about the monetary system and the Federal Reserve than libertarianism in general though.

I haven't read anything that makes a good argument against libertarianism, but can recommend a guy who makes a seemingly good argument against capitalism and for socialism - Michael Parenti. I haven't read any of his pro-socialist books (but have one on foreign policy called The Terrorist Trap which is quite good and very short. Libertarians and socialists tend to agree on not inviting war and not waging war). But I have listened to his pro-socialist lectures - they're well delivered and impassioned and a person who didn't know any better would easily be tempted. They're worth listening to to use his arguments and twist them to actually make the case FOR libertarianism. He'll use some faulty facts/data that leftists typically do such as "Hoover was an ardent free-market advocate and we can blame him and capitalism for causing the Great Depression" (we can blame him for the depression all right (prolonging it, to be specific), not b/c he was a capitalist but b/c he really started all the policies that FDR continued when he got into office)

Beyond intermediate texts, my classes ended up just reading papers from econ journals. You may want to pick up an econometrics text, get familiar with the methods, then read papers (here is a list of the 100 most cited).

I wrote my opinions on econometric textbooks I've used for another reddit comment, so I just pasted it in below. If you get into it, I'd recommend reading a less rigorous book straight through, then using a more rigorous text as reference or to do the practice stuff.

Less Mathematically Rigorous

• Kennedy - survey of modeling issues without the math. More about how to think about modeling rather than how do it. Easy to read, I liked it
  
  
• Angrist - similar to Kennedy, covers the why & how econometrics answers questions, very little math. Each chapter starts with a hitchhikers guide to the galaxy quote, which is fun. Just as good as Kennedy
  
  
• Long - this book is more about just "doing stuff" and presenting results, absolutely non-technical, but also dodges the heavy thinking in Angrist & Kennedy so I wasn't a big fan
  
  
• King - covers the thinking of Angrist & content of Maddala. It is more accessible but wordier, so give it a go if Kennedy or Angrist are too much. It is aimed at Poli Sci rather than econ.
  
  Middle of the Road
  
  
• Gujarati - I used this for a class. It wasn't hard to follow, but it mostly taught methodology and the how/why/when/what, and I didn't like that - a little too "push button" and slow moving.
  
  
• Woodlridge - a bit more rigorous than Gujarati, but it was more interesting and was clearer about motivations from the standpoint of interesting problems
  
  
• Cameron & Trivedi - I liked the few chapters I read, the math is there, but the methodology isn't driven by the math. I ddin't get too far into it
  
  More Mathematically Rigorous
  
  
• Greene - lots of math, so much it was distracting for me, but probably good for people who really want to learn the methodology
  
  
• Wooldridge - similar to Greene, you need a solid understanding before diving into this book. Some of the chapters are impenetrable
  
  
• Maddala - this book is best for probit/logit/tobit models and is somewhat technical but dated. My best econometrics teacher loved it

It's great that you do not have any debt. It's always good to keep physical Gold and Silver for long term investments however, real estate may be a better option. Not sure where you live but for 15K in Houston TX you can buy your self a nice piece of land. Land down here appreciates well as many people are moving here.

You may also look into trading stocks, however if you are thinking of stocks look into Fundamental Analysis for long term growth. Don't mess around with Technical Analysis yet as its better suited for short term investments.

$5k can get you some good diversified stocks.

Read this book - https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

I can't tell if you're just being cheeky but I'll bite anyways.

I just finished my third and final degree so I stand to gain nothing from supporting subsidized/free/more accessible schooling in the US; directly anyways. Indirectly however I'd like to think putting money towards the education of the public is both net positive and makes for a more informed and better functioning society. I wouldn't mind paying more taxes if my money went to education. Spending on education would save the coutnry money in other costs anyways (prison, unemployment, police, the costs associated with voting for the inept, etc.). Something to consider:

In Capital in the 21st Century Thomas Piketty concludes his first chapter with this: "historical experience suggests that the principal mechanism for convergence [of incomes]... is the diffusion of knowledge. In other words, the poor cath up with the rich to the extent that they achieve the same technicalogical know-how, skill, and education... Above all, knowledge diffusion depends on a country's ability to mobilize financing as well as institutions that encourage large-scale investment in education and training of the population... Concisely stated, these are the main lessons that history has to teach about global growth and international inequalities." (last paragraph before chapter II)

Firstly, fuck the guy you're arguing with lol, what a moron. That being said, as a believer in free open markets and someone who strongly believes that government in the modern age is nothing more than a criminal organization, I feel like I need to jump on your final sentence.

> real capitalism doesn't exist because people with power don't play with the rules, the make the rules and you can be damn sure they will bend the rules of the market in their favour if they want WHATEVER IT COSTS.

You are very close to the truth, in my opinion, but not quite there. You are absolutely right that, under our current political/economic climate, capitalism will always be a tool for the rich to push their agenda and add to their wealth - that is exactly what it has been used for in the age of big government. The one distinction I would like to make is that "real capitalism" can exist... it just cannot coexist with a state. The state is essentially a group of individuals who we have decided can operate outside of the free market. You do not decide to pay your taxes, you are forced to under the threat of jail time. This is simply an interaction that devalidates all other actions within the market. A state existing and having the power to control entire industries undercuts the power of the consumer to decide on a better service. The police force in your area has started killing innocent people because of the colour of their skin? Get a new police force. Your military "defence" force is suddenly on a murderous rampage across the middle east? Stop paying them. The private company printing your money is starting to give it away to their friends like it grows on trees? Tie your economy to a different currency. Medical costs skyrocketing? Oh would you look at that, it coincides perfectly with the involvement of the state, what a shocker.

Capitalism is a word that has been demonized by so many, and to an extent, they are right, but they are uninformed. What we have now is crony capitalism, where massive super corporations use the power of government to assure their continued success, instead of providing a value to their consumers in a voluntary interaction. In a capitalistic society that cannot be allowed unless you want massive injustice and economic tragedy. True open market capitalism would unlock a freedom for the individual that has never been achieved before. I think the biggest factor is the economy. The USD is the most inflated currency in the history of the world, and it ain't a close race.

I would strongly recommend against blaming capitalism for the condition the world is in right now, as it is an ultimately ironic opinion. Capitalism is the voluntary exchange of goods between free people... that's it. The context in which the capitalism is taking place is the issue. We are not ruining our economy because of all the technological advances being pushed by innovative companies trying to compete for your dollar, we are ruining our economy due to irresponsible, malicious actions being taken by people to further their own positions in life under the veil of government. Bernie Sanders is a fucking capitalist for christ's sake. The man is making millions of dollars selling books about how evil it is to make millions of dollars, and he's got an army of tax lawyers itemizing all of his deductions and making sure the state sees as little of his money as possible, despite preaching that the state should be taking more of your money because they're so good with it.

I'm just now realizing how long this is so I will have to end it here kind of abruptly lol. I am absolutely obsessed with this stuff and I am currently rereading Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, I could not recommend it enough, you seem eager to figure this out.

Here's a very simple 60 second video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN5XrGKoW3o

This is a more in depth, but still very simple and engaging video called The Philosophy of Liberty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I

Here's an introduction to Libertarianism by the CATO Institute. I haven't actually read this, but I trust this organization:

http://www.libertarianism.org/introduction

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt is a truly exceptional book and lays out the points so clearly and simply.

http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1

And of course there's the Reddit Libertarian community:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/

Come check us out. We'd love to have intelligent well spoken people like you with us

"Safest" and "Fastest" are inherently at opposite ends of the spectrum. When we take risks (in other words; give up safety) we expect to be compensated for that. Which speeds up the rate at which the money grows... But risk also increases the chance of loosing money. Not a position we want to put your mother in. "Best" takes into account both. "Best" is an individual choice, and what is best by your moms standards may not be what's best in your standards.

A good rule of thumb for dividing assets is take your age in safe investments. 'Safe investments' is usually expressed as 'bonds'. So if your Mom is 60 she should take 60% of the funds and place them in something ultra safe. In her case starting with a high yield savings account, such as ING Direct, might be best.

Then selecting a nice safe bond fund. Look for one with Low Fees (usually Vanguard is a good fund family to start with). Which can be purchased through Sharebuilder (part of the ING account already established).

I hope that helps. For more information check out Bogleheads Guide to Investing. Which is a summation of wisdom from the Bogleheads website.

I hope you're sincerely interested, because I am going to answer like you are :)

Each bracket has no relation to the next one. Drawing a line implies that there is a functional relationship between family income and SAT score. There IS a trend, but this is not the proper way to imply a trend. This implies something else at hand, like an equation or something.

I know I am not phrasing this well.

But even a bar graph would make the data look better.

Another thing to note: look at the axes! The y-axis starts at 400 and ends at 600. The altered axis makes the data seem more extreme. 200 points difference IS a large difference in SAT scores, but the way they represented it made it seem even larger.

If you are genuinely interested, there is an amazing book called "How to Lie With Statistics", which you can buy on Amazon that teaches you about all the naughty things that people do to manipulate their graphs to look better! Or you can download this powerpoint which goes over how to display data badly, haha!

A good book that is fun to read and has tons of anecdotes about scientific history is A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

In a similar vein, you can ponder the more mind-bending aspects of our Universe with Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Time

Other than that you may find some interesting things in the works of Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins (I personally recommend Dawkins's The Selfish Gene)

If you are sick of scientific titles you can also check out Freakonomics or The Worldly Philosphers

These Books are all written for a general audience so they go down pretty easy.

Deciding which major in College can be tricky - I was lucky since I knew exactly what I wanted to study before I left High School, but maybe some ideas in these books will pique your interest. My parents always told me to go to school to study something I love, and not to train for a job. I'm not so sure this advice carries through in "recovering" economy. You may want to factor in the usefulness of your degree post-college (but don't let that be the only thing you consider!).

Good Luck, and enjoy!

> I am fairly ignorant on the different options available to me as far as investing goes, but that's what investment companies are for, isn't it?

Absolutely. We have a financial advisor that keeps a close eye on our money, and he's more than earned his pay. But I think it important to educate yourself enough to develop a functional BS detector. Otherwise, you won't know what to expect in different market conditions and will have a tough time picking an advisor.

We got in with our guy nearly ten years ago because he maintained the value of his clients' portfolios in the dot-com crash while still delivering good returns during market upswings.

I'd recommend interviewing a couple of advisors before picking one. Don't be shy to ask how they get paid. Many of them get commissions based on selling particular financial products. Get up and leave as soon as you hear that. Others are limited to selling a particular set of products. That would also make me nervous. Part of the reason we picked our guy is that he takes a flat commission off the value of our portfolio (originally 1%/year, now around 0.75%) and can get us into all manner of financial products including options, commodities, etc. We primarily hold mutual funds and individual stocks, though.

> but if people who are making moves on Wall Street do what they have done recently, there is no guarantee that my retirement fund will have any value by the time I'm ready to draw on it. My dad has been investing in his retirement for decades, and in the last two years, it lost $50k in value.

There's no sure thing. You have to do something with your money and realize that holding cash has its own set of risks, particularly now that we have a madman with printing press in charge of our central bank.

FWIIW, our portfolio value dipped in 2008/2009, but we were fully recovered in value by mid 2009. We recognized the housing bubble for what it was and stayed out of that sector. My parents were blindly turning over their money to a manager who had them heavily invested in Fannie and Freddie. They lost a couple hundred large in the 2008 crash, and it's not coming back.

> Do you have any advice on where to start learning without having to spend every hour after work piddling with it?

Four of my favorites include One Up on Wall Street, Fail-Safe Investing, The Black Swan, and How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes. The first book talks about picking individual stocks (gave me the confidence to load up on AAPL back when it was trading under $100/share), the second about structuring a portfolio for growth while still playing defense, the third about common fallacies and hubris, and the last about what drives an economy (particularly useful for recognizing bubbles).

Is this at all helpful?

Blockchain Basics is probably the best high level overall business blockchain book, which focuses on proof of work mostly.


Blockchain Revolution is a good use case book. Not technical, but gets a little sci-fi with how blockchain may be used in the future.


But if you want technical, the best I've found is Mastering Bitcoin.


Business Blockchain was pretty good and gave me ideas for a couple extra slides for my Blockchain 101 presentations throughout my company.


But Book of Satoshi was probably my favorite read. It was great to get a slight history of bitcoin and see some of Satoshi's views from his perspective.

If you have time read this relatively short book. I recently began investing for my retirement after graduating college and landing a job.

It has some really good information even if you have already begun investing and have happened upon a large sum of money (I think the chapter is titled "how to survive a windfall" or something like that).

Also, do not rush into a decision because it "sounds" like a good idea. It would be wise to even sit down with someone that you trust who has been investing (and doing well) to chat about how best to invest the money. Your father sounds like a good start!

Good luck!

While this is not /r/investing, below are some suggestions which may be relevant. FYI, I work at an asset mgmt firm and run the credit/risk team.

You won't get rich, but what a fantastic gift. It's a good thing you have someone to help you begin thinking in those terms, but "investing in the stock market" is a broad concept.

First thing to remember is that you are at a disadvantage when it comes to "investing in stocks". Period. You will likely not pick big winners so what you likely want to do is to to avoid picking losers. With your limited background, if you want to "invest in your future", with that amount of money you may be better off selecting a mutual fund or an ETF that fits the amount of risk you are willing to take.

Next, since you are young the general guidance is to take on as much "intelligent risk" as possible. Take that rule of thumb with a grain of salt though. Everyone's risk tolerance is different. For instance, even when I was younger I was always "risk averse" and so invested more like a 50 year old. I preferred (and still do) equities from larger companies, proven cash flow, decent business strategy (what are typically called "Large Cap" stocks) and the debt (bonds) of companies which were more marginal and risky...whereas my peers loved Qualcom, WorldCom, Medtronic. So, we all are different...remember that. Never "bet" with money you can't lose. Investing in individual companies it not unlike going to a casino, but I always like to mention the caveat is that you can stack the risk cards in your favor with some investments.

If you really like the "idea" of investing and want to use this money to learn about how to do that best, take $15 and buy this book. Learning about investing is first an exercise in understanding the risks you are willing to take and find and analyze companies which have a risk profile lower than that but can grow at a rate you are comfortable with.

While there are a plethora of books on the market from Jim Cramer, Motley Fool, etc...the fact is, when it comes to investing in the equity of companies, The Intelligent Investor will help you set a baseline for the cash flow analysis of companies. Every analyst, nearly every PM, many risk managers and most decent MBA grad's that I know all have that book close at hand. I'm looking at a worn copy on my bookshelf right now.

Graham ain't sexy, high flying nor dramatic. Graham doesn't have fancy "sportscenter" type graphs you see on CNBC nor does it carry the vitriol you find on Fox Business News. But, it is an introduction into the basics of everything any intelligent investor strives to find: Companies who have the potential to grow at a level you are targeting while carrying lower risk relative to their peers.

None of what I mention above talks about "momentum" investing, technical analysis, algorithm's, options, hedging or any other method that isn't basic. As a new investor, you owe it to yourself to first learn "why" you are investing and then, my suggestion is, allow Graham to give you the initial "how" you should invest.

Look you may want to open a TD Ameritrade account. It has great tools and a lot of videos on education. I don't think there is a minimum but I could be wrong. They also have a great platform for novice and pro. Some on /r/investing may think eTrade is better. I've never used it.


A great book for you to buy is "The Intelligent Investor". Link. A lot of people will say time in the market is better than timing the market so if you would really like to get things on the role while you learn how to invest try looking at older companies with a great history, i.e. blue chip companies.

A great app for you to get is Robin Hood which does not have any commission fees, whereas TD Ameritrade will take $9.99 from you on any buy and sell and that adds up quick.

> So we need an army of accountants to go trough everyone's stuff every year. Not impossible, but excessive.

No - just people with > $1M in assets excluding primary residence. And almost all of those have accountants anyway. Certainly all of those with > $10M.

> So lets say it's grandmas old painting that she was given by some guy Picasso after a short romantic affair. Or grandmas old summer cottage. Or veteran car. Or whatever. People have sentimental stuff that has a high market value.

A. So? Pay for it or sell it. Or sell it now for less, with physical handoff when you die.

B. This is a straw-man argument, since you're describing incredibly rare events, when the current tax system is badly broken for most people.

> The family owned businesses will get out-competed by publicly traded businesses then.

Why?

> I mean, I get that that's good in your book

Didn't say that

> Wealth is a lot easier to hide than income. Income involves two people by default. There's a transaction that can be traced.

As does the change is wealth. People keep reporting income, and this is compared to the change in wealth.

> > Non-issue. Wealth is no more private than income.
> I see clear reasons for why it should be.

So state them, and we'll see if they hold water.

> I think you could be a bit more humble here. There's no big conspiracy. There's a reason for why wealth taxes aren't mainstream.

This is reddit. I'm supposed to know better than anybody else.

But also, Piketty.

> I think your tax rates are really optimistic: you should at least double the rates

We'll need detailed distributions of wealth for the top 10%, with a lot of detail above 99%. And I couldn't find it. But I think $1.5T should be enough - you're not replacing all Federal income (~$3.5T), just personal and corporate income tax and capital gains.

Please do not do BTL. Far richer people and more savvy investors have done BTL and lost money.

You have a wonderful gift. £170K is an amazing windfall for you and your partner. Do not throw it away on a speculative investment, one that you do not know anything about -- can you tell me, in quantitative terms, how the housing market is doing, what are your rental yields (gross and net)? If you cannot, do not enter the BTL market as an investment.

My suggestion to you is to look to buying a flat for yourselves to stay in, and take the remaining funds and fill up your ISAs each year. Within your ISAs, you can invest in low cost tracker Index Funds. If this concept is alien to you, now is a good time to read up about this! A simple beginner book is [The Intelligent Investor] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Practical/dp/0060555661) by Benjamin Graham.

Alternatively, look at [Nutmeg] (https://www.nutmeg.com). This is a simple platform that you can put your money into ISAs.

To put into simple terms about what your £170K can bring you:

1. You buy a small flat for £70K. You don't have to pay rent again.
   
   
2. You put the remaining £100k into ISAs. Fill you and your partner's ISA up to the maximum of £20K per person each year. From your original Capital of £100K in investments index funds, you safely withdraw ~4% each year without touching the capital. This means, you can get £4000 each year RIGHT NOW without doing anything, for the rest of your life, like a permanent pension. OR, if you choose not to withdraw your money RIGHT NOW, you can GROW your capital for the future.
   
   I am not your financial advisor! But please read and think carefully about your next steps. You have been handed an opportunity of a lifetime.
   

If you really want to understand why this is happening there's a widely praised book by an economist called Thomas Piketty that summarizes it like this:

-For most of human history the returns on capital exceeded economic growth. Because of this if you had capital to invest you were pretty sure to do a lot better than if you had only your labor to give. Economic inequality was the status quo. From a recent interview with Piketty in the NYT:
>Over the 1700-2012 period, world output has grown at 1.6 percent per year on average.
>In contrast, rates of return on capital can be 4 to 5 percent over centuries, or even higher for risky assets and high wealth portfolios. Contrarily to what Karl Marx and other believed, there is no natural reason why rates of return should fall in the long run. According to Forbes’s global billionaires list, very top wealth holders have risen at 6 to 7 percent per year over the 1987-2013 period, i.e. more than three times faster than per capita wealth and income at the world level.


-Around WWII this changed. Destruction, inflation and other crises, plus the social institutions set up after WWII in the west, caused inequality to stop rising.


-What we're finding out now is that this brief period, which lasted until the 1980s, was an anomaly. (Personally I find it interesting that this period stopped right around the time we in the U.S. and the U.K. decided we needed less regulation and government involvement in things). Things are now getting back to the way they used to be.
>U.S. inequality is now close to the levels of income concentration that prevailed in Europe around 1900-10. History suggests that this kind of inequality level is not only useless for growth, it can also lead to a capture of the political process by a tiny high-income and high-wealth elite. This directly threatens our democratic institutions and values.

The question is, what are we going to do about this?

>Let me be perfectly clear: there can be no liberty in a a world where no free market exists. Central planning necessitates control of every variable in order to maximize the result to society, which means that citizens participating in the plan must adhere to the central planners' decrees. Being offered choices by one's authoritarian rulers is not the equivalent to liberty; that is a false dichotomy.

Honestly, that's no more than asserting your own views.

I've seen some arguments in favor of economic freedom being necessary for other forms of freedom in Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom that are well-supported. Many such claims, though, seem to be little more than bald assertions. (And even of Friedman's arguments, while they may all be perfectly true, I'd prefer a more extensive collection of data supporting them, even if it made his book longer and more boring.)

Both time series and regression are not strictly econometric methods per se, and there are a range of wonderful statistics textbooks that detail them. If you're looking for methods more closely aligned with econometrics (e.g. difference in difference, instrumental variables) then the recommendation for Angrist 'Mostly Harmless Econometrics' is a good one. Another oft-prescribed econometric text that goes beyond Angrist is Wooldridge 'Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach'.

For a very well considered and basic approach to statistics up to regression including an excellent treatment of probability theory and the basic assumptions of statistical methodology, Andy Field (and co's) books 'Discovering Statistics Using...' (SPSS/SAS/R) are excellent.

Two excellent all-rounders are Cohen and Cohen 'Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences' and Gelman and Hill 'Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Modelling' although I would suggest both are more advanced than I am guessing you need right now.

For time series I can recommend Rob Hyndman's book/s on forecasting (online copy freely available)

For longitudinal data analysis I really like Judith Singer's book 'Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis'.

It sounds however as if you're looking for a bit of a book to explain why you would want to use one method over another. In my experience I wanted to know this when I was just starting. It really comes down to your own research questions and the available data. For example I had to learn Longitudinal/fixed/random effects modelling because I had to do a project with a longitudinal survey. Only after I put it into practice (and completed my stats training) did I come to understand why the modelling I used was appropriate.

I think you need to decide if you want to be more of an investor or a speculator. I don't really have advice for speculators.

If you want to be an investor, I have found these books useful; Economics in one lesson is good, and if you are really keen The intelligent investor.

These books are highly focused on fundamentals of the economy and investing in something that help you think to recognise the fundamental reasons why something is or could become valuable, and not fall in the emotional pitfalls by speculating on emotional impulse based of a graph, media soundbites and reddit fomo and fud.

When you understand the fundamental reasons for a (un)healthy economy and currency first, then it should hopefully become clear why the fundamentals/monetary properties of bitcoin - once you learn those - can contribute to a much healthier economy and why has to potential to become very valuable itself.

I'd suggest to also research articles that teach you about 'the origins of money'. A useful take-away to realise is, is that historically money has always been attempted to be forged. A currency that has a monetary property that is extremely difficult forge, has more potential value.

Highly recommended reading- Buy-In by John Kotter

It's an excellent read for anyone interested in the practical application of psychology & sociology knowledge in the business realm.

http://www.kotterinternational.com/book/buy-in/

Economics reading - Freakonomics

This was required reading in my Leadership course (for my MBA), with good reason.

https://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338

You are on a path towards higher management and leadership.

From this point forward, the answer to the questions "do you think I made a good decision signing up for the post-graduate studies? Will potential employers look at it and consider this diploma as worthy?" will forever more be a resounding YES!!!!

High quality post graduate certifications, higher degrees, and continuously striving to learn, be better, & adapt to an ever changing business environment are hallmarks of those who are successful (& expected/required of those who are considered for higher level positions) in the business/management realms.

Edit: look for a post graduate course on leadership. If your employer is large enough, they may have an agreement with a respected University to offer discounts or special classes to their employees, & may even offer classes onsite. Sign up for them!

> if interests on equity were not higher than the gdp growth, investing wouldn't make sense at all and we'd still live in an subsistence economy

That is a magnanimous misstatement.

When return on investment is greater than GDP growth than the enormously wealthy entrench their generational wealth and we have created a new class society. When your life's wealth is determined more by your inheritance than by your work you discourage creative and entrepreneurial growth and a lot of that energy and ideas get lost. The entrenchment of wealth is counterproductive to the wealth of a nation.

But don't take my word for it, browse through the book of an economist who has been actively researching this topic for over a decade

I'm one of those Robinhood users but I can't complain about much it's not a bad way to start learning how to trade and buy stocks. I contribute every payday into my account it's currently around $5,000. Not much but it's decent. For the last two-and-a-half years I've been investing a portion of my paychecks to the stock market I spent about four months losing a lot of money trying to follow all these YouTube gurus advice. I lost about $1,500 trying to do that. Eventually though I decided I should just teach myself the ropes instead of taking somebody else's word for it. I purchased 4 books from Amazon and these books are great they teach you a lot of stuff about the stock market how to value companies and ideas to help you grow your portfolio over time I just wanted to recommend these books if somebody is just starting out it's not that much money it's about $45 worth of investment it has been great for me since reading them. I also have to recommend a YouTuber that I follow quite closely his name is Jeremy and his channel is called financial education. I like his investment style and I try to do very similar things myself.

.https://amzn.to/2mnwnOg The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

https://amzn.to/2nVmy A Random Walk Down Wall Street by  Burton G. Malkiel

https://amzn.to/2nfkfiE Irrational Exuberance by Robert J. Shiller

https://amzn.to/2nn7imH The Bogleheads’ Guide to the 3 Fund Portfolio by Taylor Larimore

Okay lets start off with the move to electric as being "carbon" neutral. Most electric engines get their power in one way or another from coal. Coal is the dirties worst kind fuel you can pretty much get. Yet in the green new deal all of the existing energy sources are banned except coal. (Especially nuclear which is one of the cleaner sources). So if its really about the "science" why are only keeping one of the chief offenders at the exclusion of better cheaper cleaner energy sources?

https://www.enovaenergygroup.com/which-types-of-energy-source-produces-the-most-pollution/




Next, light rail. The left loves light rail mostly because between AM Track and the unions they own the rail industry in the united states. They can do as they please and reward their supporters. Light rail can and does make sense in smaller countries like Japan or in the nations of Europe because you have smaller more densely populated areas. By extension it could make sense for the coasts of the united states. Where is doesn't make sense is in the middle of the country. Its too big and too lightly populated for the numbers to really work. I would direct you to Freakonomics if you want some further reading material.

https://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338/ref=sr_1_1?crid=RL6DWAUXJAKW&keywords=freakonomics&qid=1551233567&s=gateway&sprefix=freak%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-1

​

Lastly Air travel won out over rail a hundred years ago for valid reasons. For large heavy cargo and freight, ships and trains still make sense. Where it makes no sense is for people. People want to get where they are going as quickly and cheaply as they can. Thus the invisible hand did its thing and you have the modern rail and airline industries.


So here are a couple of questions. Why to be environmentally sound to we have do things more stupidly? Like regress from air travel back to land and sea travel. Why are pro environmentalist so obsessed with forcing others to their way of thinking? Seems to me that if they lived what they preached and we saw real benefits from those actions people would naturally get on board and then you wouldn't need to regulate anything. The people would regulate themselves. Why would we as a species want to spend 5 times the net value of all money and product of human existence on a program doesn't even promise to solve the problem to any sort of measurable effect?


Just some thoughts

Here is the mother of all lottery advice comments. I think /u/Rabid_Tanuki may have been inspired by it. It’s entertaining and worth a read.

However, I would point out that £1m is not actually all that much money. It’s a good amount, and it can guarantee you financial security for life if you play your cards right. But in many ways you aren’t in nearly as precarious a situation as the people who win £30m. Even if you did tell people (DON’T!), this still is only enough to buy MAYBE one house in a high cost of living (HCOL) area like London. Your new friends wouldn’t expect Jaguars, just free trips, parties and help with medical expenses.

Still, you need to be careful: it’s surprisingly easy to fritter away a million euros/dollars/pounds/crowns. If you know you have trouble keeping money, then it’s a good idea to get financial advice on setting up some kind of trust. Taxes are another thing to think about. Realize, though, that there are many people who have this much in a standard brokerage account just due to having earned and invested over time. Since this isn’t a stupid amount of lottery money, you could do much worse than just sticking it in some index funds, turning on dividend reinvesting, and forgetting about it. (Which funds? Getting started investing can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. By far the most important thing is to start. Read this book.)

The reason £1m is able to guarantee you financial security is because of something called the 4% rule. TL;DR: once this is invested, you can safely take £40,000 a year out of it, if need be. As you’re looking for a career in journalism, having a base income of £40k which you can rely on is going to come in REAL handy.

Congratulations: you’ve been shown to the front of the “FI/RE” queue. (There’s a UK version too.) Now don’t fuck it up!

Instead of paying to talk to a financial advisor, why not spend a little time and becoming your own?

I'm not talking about making a living of being one or doing it for others, but don't automatically assume that a financial advisor is what you need to go about investing your money. I highly recommend you read The Bogleheads Guide to Investing. It's an excellent book that'll discuss how you can go about investing your money without spending a lot of money in an easy to understand way.

Beyond that? Take a trip, indulge a bit in that new video game or watch that you've always wanted. Keep it frugal, but enjoy things in life. As I tell my penny-pincher grandfather... you can't take it with you. Congratulations and enjoy!

Critical thinking is something that we stomp early, and that stays pretty well stamped out without some care and attention.

In his AMA earlier today, Neil Degrasse Tyson suggested that children are born scientists, who bring a sense of curiosity and wonder to everything they do. Adults are usually the ones whose minds slam shut.

Our schools, our churches, our upbringing in general teaches us precisely how to be accepting and uncritical. Those systems simply demand belief in what is being offered as though it were indicative of some capital-T "Truth".

So, your job needs to be to start thinking like a child again. Everything you encounter needs to be questioned and interrogated. Remember: You've been raised to do precisely the opposite, so this won't be easy. You need to continually remind yourself to look for the holes, the flaws, the shortcomings in the arguments that are put forward.

I would recommend the following things:

1. Start by examining Op-Ed pieces in newspapers. Look for the biases of the author. Figure out which side they're on. I recommend the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times op-ed pages. That's a fairly easy way to start looking at the arguments offered by the political left, and the political right in the US.
   
2. Pick up the following two books: The Philosopher's Toolkit and Thank You for Arguing They're excellent books that will offer you a set of tools to evaluate arguments from a reasoned perspective. They demonstrate the tools of good argument, informal logical fallacies, and rhetorical tropes that are commonly used to persuade. They are very handy books that everybody should have on their shelf.
   
3. If something seems off, then it demands further investigation. Evaluate the source of any and all information. Figure out where the data comes from, who funded the research, whether or not the numbers being presented are legitimate, etc. How to Lie With Statistics is a great tool for learning how people commonly fudge numbers to represent their positions. Knowing how it's done can help you see where people misrepresent data, whether maliciously or not.
   
4. Recognize your own biases and preconceptions. Make sure you're clear on where your own privileges and understandings come from. Interrogate your own position thoroughly.
   
5. Remember always that this will not be easy. Sometimes you will fall victim to the same biases and shortcomings as those with whom you are engaged in debate. Go easy on yourself, but remind yourself that you do not have all of the answers.
   
   The more you practice, the easier you'll find it to keep an open mind, and be willing to entertain evidence which challenges your beliefs and opinions. You'll even welcome those challenges, because they help you advance your knowledge and understanding.
   
   Do those things, and you'll find that all of the questions you pose here become much easier to deal with over time.

...said the pot to the kettle.

Look again. Hey, here's some more evidence (note the timing of major income/wealth inequality changes). If that's still not enough economic data to satisfy your interest, I hear Thomas Pikkety's book, "Capital in the 21st Century" is full of data. Too soon?

If you want details, I'm sure a competent economist, like yourself, will have no problem locating the data to substantiate the economic elements pointed out.

Political history is notoriously data deficient. Special interest groups and politicians like it that way, but there's another data trail that's quite revealing if you'd like to go there too...it's called political contributions. The Academic community has it's own data trail that can be quite enlightening as well (i.e., endowments, research grants and speaking engagements). Much to the chagrin of some ideologues, money leaves a data trail in life as it does in economics.

Feel free to provide data which refutes what has been pointed out. I would love to see it.

Sure!

This is kind of long, but it's the first video I watched. It gives you a nice intro into his thoughts, his style, and who he is. It's from the 1990's, but a lot of it still utterly relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2hPQ86lGV0

If you want something a little bit shorter, this is very good recent one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SDLBqIubCs

Also, it's a thick book, but Basic Economics is mind blowingly good.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491578598&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+economics

Sowell covers a lot of issues, and I don't always agree with him, but he is highly intelligent, he makes very logical and persuasive arguments. When I was more left leaning, one of the things that started to change me was the examination of economics. I watched Sowell and found that I could not disagree with him, hence the red pill.

Interestingly, when I debate friends who are form the left, usually referencing Sowell's point stumps people. I don't know why, but a lot of people seem to have shaky basis for their economic positions, but economics is very important when taking into account who we are (and have been) as a nation, and what's in the national interest.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296

If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets.

The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.

Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we're too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.

Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. Tomorrow's champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today's marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.

Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

> My first CD doesn't mature until September, so I have some time to figure it out.

That sounds good. Maybe familiarize yourself until then so you're ready.

> As far as a brokerage account, are there any advantages for Vanguard?

I don't think it matters but if you're going with Vanguard funds (admiral funds), then go with Vanguard. Read about it here. Perhaps Vanguard or Fidelity has an offer (free trades, free money) when you sign up so consider that. Depending on how much you want to invest, Vanguard has some interesting funds at certain levels of investment. List of Funds / ETFs / Some More Info

> I have my 401k and IRA wit fidelity.

You can do it all with Fidelity. It is your preference.

> Am I better off keeping all of my money with one company?

Maybe. It could be slightly easier. It is a preference question. You can invest in Vanguard and use Fidelity (vice versa).

> How can I learn how to pick funds?

Without getting crazy, you can read about the funds and what they do. What interest you? Me and you differ, so it might not help if I tell you what I would do.

> Any book recommendations?

Sure.

1. Read Me First
   
   
2. Read Me Second
   
   
3. Read Me Third

1. Good as any other active manager at a bank. At higher account values (1m+) they might have access to some things you'd need a financial advisor for, and maybe a few things below that you'd have to go between multiple accounts to get (or just not use those types of investments).
   
   
2. How much do you need for a down payment, and when? With what's leftover, when do you want to retire? Are fees charged based on account value or per trade?
   
   
3. They're probably going to have a very conservative distribution if you need the money that soon, which would be good advice.
   
   General: Even if you take advice from them, know that you don't have to stick with them. You could learn from them and (when you're ready), move your money to somewhere else (I'd suggest Vanguard).
   
   ML generally charges a 2% fee for accounts under 250k, which for you would be $680 a year right now. People talk about the market rising somewhere between 6-8% a year on average, so a 2% fee is effectively like taking 25% to 33% of your gains every year. For comparison, if you choose your own funds, you might be paying 0.1% which would be 1.2% to 1.6% of your total gains. Thanks about that -- 33% vs 1.6%.
   
   Best thing to do now is definitely to learn! For me reading the Bogleheads Guide to Investing seriously helped ( http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365 ). Aside from that maybe open up a Roth IRA and get used to buying/selling funds. That's a good place to learn because you won't have to pay taxes on the trades, and the amount is generally small enough that even if things go wrong you won't be out that much.

> You mentioned our GDP. 2/3 of our GDP comes from consumer spending.

Consumer spending and the output of the economy is impacted by how much people have to pay for gas, heat, oil, etc ENORMOUSLY(think about how much the average citizen spends on gas throughout a year and then think about them spending that on other things). Like I said you are uneducated in subject matters that are essential to comment on these matters and you are going to go on as if you aren't. All while arguing a position no analyst in the world would(hyperbole).

https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466453148&sr=8-1&keywords=Ascent+of+money

https://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/1439110123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466453203&sr=8-1&keywords=The+prize

Read these two books and you will have a clearer picture of this macro picture I was referring to and you will understand how absurd your position is. The ascent of money was made into a pbs documentary, albeit a 4 hour one. It doesn't do the book justice though.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ascentofmoney/

The Prize was a Pulitzer Prize, non fiction book that will educate you on oil and why the middle east is important.

https://careers.state.gov/work/foreign-service/suggested-reading
Click on the suggested reading list on that page.

To get the whole macro picture I was referring to, read these books. You may want to start with their recommended International Relations textbook. These are books the State Department recommends you read if you are going to negotiate and do diplomacy on behalf of United States government(pretty hardcore stuff).


Best of luck with your studies/investigations and enjoy the rabbit hole, it really is an eye opener into another world that is not really discussed in the media.

The quotes from the book:

> Someone who is desperate to buy a stock can easily end up having to bid 10 cents higher than the most recent share price before any sellers will be willing to part with it. That extra cost, called "market impact," never shows up on your brokerage statement, but it's real (p. 148).

What he is talking about is pricing impact. This is a real expense. Imagine you want to buy 100,000 shares of a stock that only trades 10,000 shares a day! If you need to get done today, you will have significant pricing impact. Large market cap tend to have more liquidity and therefore less pricing impact.

> Buying and selling a hot little stock can cost 2% to 4% (or 4% to 8% for a "round-trip" buy-and-sell transaction). If you put $1000 into a stock, your trading cots could eat up roughly $40 before you even get started. Sell the stock, and you could for over another 4% in trading expenses.
>
> ... Add it all up, and a stock trader needs to gain at last 10% just to break even on buying and selling a stock (p.149).

The author describes the costs including in actively trading. These costs include pricing impact, bid-ask spread, commissions, implementation shortfall, short-term capital gains tax, etc.

One significant goal of the SEC and FINRA over the last decade or so was to make changes to market structure to minimize transaction costs. Nowadays, move retail orders (which tend to be small, e.g. < 2000 shares), have very little pricing impact. In addition, the bid/ask spread has declined significantly since decimalization.

> Recently, finance professors Owen Lamont of University of Chicago and Paul Schultz of the University of Notre Dame have shown that corporations choose to offer new shares to the public when the market is near a peak. For technical discussion of these issues, see Lamont's "Evaluating Value Weighting: Corporate Events and Market Timing" and Schultz's "Pseudo Market Timing and the Long-Run Performance of IPOs" (p. 139).

I have not read these papers. It make sense that companies will do more IPOs when there is a high demand for equity issues so they may lower their cost of capital. I suppose one could argue market peaks near times when there is fervent demand for new issues.

Graham, B., Zweig J. (2006) The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition) HarperCollins Publishers. NY, NY.

In terms of investing, What Can You Expect From the Market in the Long Run? is a nice post on the buying and holding strategy and why you shouldn't sell in down markets.

Investing can be pretty simple these days. Most of the advice on WhiteCoatInvestor (and for young professionals in general) boils down to the following (often called the 'Boglehead' approach, after Vanguard founder Jack Bogle):

1. Live below your means to save up enough money to invest.
   
2. Buy the following four low cost ETFs/index funds. The percentage of stocks you own should be roughly equivalent to 110 minus your age; the ratio of US to international stocks or bonds should be 70:30 or 60:40.
   
   
   • ETF tracking the total US stock market
     
   • ETF tracking the total International stock market
     
   • ETF tracking the total US bond market
     
   • ETF tracking the total International bond market
     
     
3. Allocate as much as possible of the above into tax-advantaged accounts like a Roth IRA.
   
4. Keep living below your means so you can keep contributing to the above every month.
   
5. Enjoy having better returns than many professional investors!
   
   I recommend the Bogleheads' Guide to Investing as a starting place. A Random Walk Down Wall Street does a great job in explaining why passive investing (i.e. buying and holding) is much better than active investing for the average person.

This is not really an investment question, but rather a personal finance question:

http://i.imgur.com/PWfvdvB.png

If you've made it to the 'savings / investment' box, I'd recommend putting it in a low cost index fund ($3000 is enough to start investing with Vanguard, for example). I would not recommend investing in individual companies (unless you have good reason to) because you subject yourself to unnecessary risk. I recommend reading this so that you can learn what you need to know to make good decisions:

http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365

By the way <3 years is not a long enough time frame to reasonably guarantee solid returns from any assets. Stocks are much more of a 'sure thing' on a timeframe of 10 or 20 years. If you're going to need the money within 3 years you're best off with a high interest savings account, CD, or i-bonds.

That book? nothing but scaremongering. returning to the gold standard? what a crock of shit. Tell me, what is the difference between gold and fiat currency? can you eat gold? can you live in it? can you burn it? Anything useful? no, you can't. Fiat currency works fine as long as their is a perceived value, much like the gold standard, but with the ability to print more to match growth, and to control inflation.

boom and busts existed long before the creation of the federal reserve, hell, the idea of a federal reserve system isn't purely american, the The Bank of England pre-dates the american one by several hundred years, so idea isn't new and it has been tested out before hand, with great success. Probably something about the Rothschilds in their, wouldn't be surprised if it their was a mention of them. Do you have any idea what the Fed does by any chance? You know what they do?

1. they release US t-bills, sovereign debt, in an attempt to balance the BOP (balance of payments)
   
   
2. they set inflationary goals that they try to meet.
   
   
3. they provide economic data.
   
   
4. they provide short term lending to banks, as a way of injecting cash in to the economy ( i stress the term loan, they arn't giving away the cash)
   
   
5. they attempt to catch bubbles and collapsing banks before they get out of hand.
   
   
   please, read these, they are wonderful reads and provide the bases to understanding economics and public financing.
   
   http://www.amazon.com/The-Wealth-Nations-Adam-Smith/dp/161382081X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335219858&sr=1-1
   
   http://www.amazon.com/General-Theory-Employment-Interest-Money/dp/1467934925/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335219936&sr=1-1
   
   http://www.amazon.com/The-Ascent-Money-Financial-History/dp/0143116177/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335220011&sr=1-1

If I may - I humbly recommend to read a proper book on bitcoin, not some fluff piece.. Just assuming from the way that you chose your post title that you might be interested in a more substantial bitcoin reading :) Please ignore if that's not the case, don't wanna ruin your reading pleasure or anything.

Economic perspective: The Bitcoin Standard - The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

Not technical at all, very beginner friendly, but also not a lot of practical information: The Internet Of Money

Gently technical, beginner friendly: Inventing Bitcoin: The Technology Behind the First Truly Scarce and Decentralized Money Explained

Technical deep dives:

• Mastering Bitcoin (also available for free online, as it's an open source book)
  
  
• Programming Bitcoin
  
  
• Grokking Bitcoin

Rent seems a little high, but it might be the location. If that works for you, then so be it. You seem to know how to budget, so there's no point in giving you the spiel about how you might not be able to make it work.

Since you're good at saving money, the next step is to learn how to invest it. There's no point (IMO) in having $48k sitting in a checking account if you're not planning on any major purchases soon. You might as well let that money work for you. The 2 books I would suggest are The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias and The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Reading Andrew first is a great intro to investing and then Graham gets a bit more technical, IMO, so reading them in that order would probably be best.

If you want the general guidelines of what to do with money if you are saving it, then it is as follows:

1. Match your employers 401k contribution.
   
   
2. Max out your ROTH IRA
   
   
3. Max out your 401k if you have any left over money.
   
   Step 4 varies from person to person. Some people prefer maxing out their HSA account and using it as a "super ROTH IRA" and then sending left over money to their brokerage account. Others prefer just putting the extra money into their brokerage account and into taxable investments right off the bat. It's all up to you.
   
   Edit - Forgot to put an emergency fund as one of the steps. Have about 3-6 months worth of expenses sitting in the highest rate account you can find just in case shit hits the fan.

• The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• Security Analysis - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• The Interpretation of Financial Statements - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• Financial Shenanigans: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Fraud in Financial Reports - Howard Schilit
  
  
• Applied Value Investing - Joseph Calandro
  
  
• Analysis for Financial Management - Robert Higgins
  
  
• Margin of Safety - Seth Klarman
  
  
• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings - Philip Fisher
  
  
• One Up On Wall Street - Peter Lynch
  
  
• Beating The Street - Peter Lynch
  
  
• The Essays of Warren Buffett - Warren Buffett
  
  
• Snowball: Warren Buffett and The Business of Life - Alice Schroeder
  
  
• Buffett Beyond Value - Prem Jain
  
  
• Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond - Bruce Greenwald
  
  
• You Can Be A Stock Market Genius - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• The Little Book That Beats The Market - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• The Big Secret for the Small Investor: A New Route to Long-Term Investment Success - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator - Edwin Leferve
  
  
• Fooled By Randomness - Nassim Taleb
  
  
• The Black Swan - Nassim Taleb
  
  
• Poor Charlie's Almanack - Charlie Munger
  
  
• Rediscovered Benjamin Graham - Janet Lowe
  
  
• The Theory of Investment Value - John Burr Williams
  
  
• Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger - Peter Bevelin
  
  
• Security Analysis and Business Valuation on Wall Street - Jeffrey Hooke
  
  
• Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment - James Montier
  
  
• Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset - Aswath Damodaran
  
  
• The Dark Side of Valuation - Aswath Damodaran
  
  
• Financial Statements: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Creating Financial Reports - Thomas Ittelson
  
  
• Buyout - Rick Rickertsen
  
  
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert Cialdini
  
  
• Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes: Lessons from the New Science of Behavioral Economics - Gary Belsky
  
  
• The Warren Buffett Way - Robert Hagstrom
  
  
• The Most Important Thing - Howard Marks
  
  
• Competition Demystified - Bruce Greenwald
  
  
• Accounting For Value - Stephen Penman
  
  
• Distressed Debt Analysis - Stephen Moyer
  
  
• Bankruptcy Investing - Ben Branch
  
  
• The Vulture Investors - Hilary Rosenberg
  
  
• Creating Value Through Corporate Restructuring - Stuart Gilson
  
  
• Distress Investing - Martin J Whitman
  
  
• The Aggressive Conservative Investor - Martin J Whitman

>The key difference is that the government controls corporations in China instead of the other way around.

that's interesting. I can't speak to the truth of that claim. but there is a lot of Propaganda in the US and Canada that the opposite is true. Corporations in Canada and the US are literally writing laws now. More so in the states. And there is a concerted effort my right wing media to promote this as a good thing.

>The whole concept centers around getting some people to become super rich first to act as the engine for economic growth

That sounds like the route that south Korea took in the 70's and 80's. This book talks about it.



http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321403002&sr=1-2

Have you heard about this?

I know you already mentioned Huxley, but I have to first say Brave New World. Just because, man, nothing else could have really opened my eyes to a relative morality at such a young age. "Let's just purposefully grow people. Then let's have them embrace their sexuality at a really young age. Oh, and there are these other 'savages' that practice many of the old ways. We don't talk about them much. Oh, and all the old religion got mashed up when we put all the people together, so they sort of worship this Christ type mother earth type thing. It's cool. They're fine."

Then there's The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (click for online free version published by the author.)

Where do I start with this book? First, I would say it's both sexually and violently graphic. That's not the point, though. The point is: What happens when we actually do have a god that can, and will, give us whatever we want? Whatever we want, that is, except death. Everyone is immortal and everyone can invent their own world to live in. What happens? Really really good stuff. A short book, but just blew my mind.

Finally, I'm finding it hard to decide between Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, The Information, and Freakonomics. Each of these really expanded the way I think of things and how I look at the world around me. I'd recommend any one of them, it just depends on what you're interested in.

The target retirement funds are pretty great, especially if you are new to investing and haven't figured out the particulars. You can check out the Bogleheads' wiki or get the Bogleheads' guide to investing if you want to understand simple investing strategies a bit better. I would say that if you want to retire early you should save more than the IRA limits, but if you don't have an employer sponsored 401k, you will need to research the tax-sheltered investment options available to you. Compound interest is pretty awesome; assuming a somewhat conservative long term rate of return at 7% from your two IRAs, you will have over $1 million saved in 30 years, but your contributions will only be about $330 thousand!

Haiti, Africa, Latin America. These are capitalist countries. And more free market than most (not that true free markets actually exist anywhere).

Many of the countries that have moved from poverty to prosperity did it with capitalism, but they did it with a highly regulated capitalism with large amounts of government regulation. S Korea, Japan, Great Britain, the United States. What then happens is when a country becomes rich with government intervention they then find it is advantageous to deny government intervention to others. They reach the pinnacle. They then kick away the ladder for potential competitors.

Ha Joon Chang's "Bad Samaritans" is a good primer on this.

I had this moment back in 2006/07 when it became incredibly clear to me something was seriously out of whack and i needed to at least try to make sense of it all. It has been quite a journey but in the end i ended up basically changing my entire outlook on life, the economy and politics. I will come with some suggestions for reading and watching material but i just want to give one piece of advice: Every book you read, every article, every blog, every youtube lecture you see. You have do think, decode and analyze as best as you can. They will provide you with "lenses" that you can see the world through. The more you learn about a subject the sharper your lense will be able to focus information before it enters your mind. When you obtain new knowledge you might have to substitute a lens because this new one provides a better way of interpreting the world. When you have read so much that you have accumulated a good set of lenses about economy, history, philosophy, physics etc you can stack them and filter the information you perceive through all lenses at the same time, effectively they work like binoculars at this time. It is then that you will understand that you can maybe not grasp everything, but at least you will see a lot clearer than people only using simple and crude lenses. In addition you will be able to recognize, through their actions or words, the lenses that people around you use to understand reality. Im sorry if this was abstract.

1.
History, most undervalued subject when it comes to economics:
Read, watch listen to everything from Niall Fergusson. This man has a grasp of history that is very rare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson

2.
Do not be afraid to listen to fund managers, they are the most brutally honest, no nonsense people you will ever hear from. Their only goal in life is to obtain what they refer to as 'alpha', the truth. If you know the truth and everyone around has a clouded judgement or preconceptions about the economy you will win.
Of the most outspoken and knowledgeable managers:

• Ray Dalio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Dalio)
  
• Hugh Hendry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Hendry)
  
• James Grant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Grant_%28finance%29)
  
• Bill Gross (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gross)
  
• Mohamed El-Erian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_A._El-Erian)
  
• Kyle Bass
  I would watch all videos on youtube that any of these people are involved in, twice. Any term they use i would google and research thoroughly.
  
  3.
  Other notable economic/political figures:
  
  
• Robert Prechter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Prechter) You can choose to believe or ignore his wave theory, but his observations on human emotions and how they run our lives are incredible informative and mind opening.
  
  4.
  You also have to learn a lot of new words and what they mean. Everything your read or watch will refer to a lot of strange terms, people and philosophy, if you want any deeper understanding you have to read books on some of these specific terms. I would advice to learn in detail about:
  
  
• The bond market (http://www.amazon.com/Bond-Book-Everything-Treasuries-Municipals/dp/0071358625)
  
• The history of precious metals
  
• Keynesianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes)
  
• Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian School of economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises)
  
• Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, Collectivism and Corporatism. These are extremely important to learn as much as you can about with as much depth as possible. Incredibly enough this is the topic most of the population struggles most with but at the same time have very strong opinions on. Correctly identifying objectively what kind of "ism" that is the current dominant one and what was the dominant one at different stages in history. This is an extremely difficult topic because people get so emotional so fast, its difficult to find rational conversation partners.
  
  5.
  I would be careful putting too much faith in these notable people:
  
  
• Peter Schiff (He is blind to the real possibility of a deflationary shock)
  Even if he is blind to this he has the most perfect introductory book to economics:
  http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322700761&sr=8-1
  
• Paul Kruegman (He has blind faith that governments can allocate resources adequately good during a crises - a money printer)
  
• Max Kaiser (I dont know what to say, he is both a genius and a moron, you just dont know which one at which time)
  
• Gerald Celente (He seems very observant, but he always says the same thing, stagnant)
  
• Jim Rogers (He provides no real insight)
  
• Warren Buffet
  
• George Soros
  
  6.
  Be very weary of people who have a very binary view of economics or politics, they often only see the world through one lens. This gives them a very polarized outlook.
  
  7.
  Stay away from very technical blogs (like zerohedge) in the beginning. If you don't have a very clear and deep understanding of what you are reading it will just confuse. You need to know all the terms used and what they really mean, and not on a superficial level.
  
  I spent the last 5 years basically reading any book on any relevant subject, now i'm pretty content with my overview now. I have taken a somewhat negative short term view (the next 4-6 years) on behalf of the developed economies but an incredibly positive view on the long term outlook for the human race, the developing economies in particular. It is too late here now, i must sleep, i have probably forgotten a great deal of good names.

Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg

7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey

The Millionaire Next Door - Thomas J. Stanley

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

How to Get Rich - Felix Dennis

The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss


The Richest Man in Babylon - George S. Clason

The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham

*****

You can look at these books if you like. The Millionaire Next Door would probably be the one I would gift him first.

> What are some ways of identifying which stock to go after? Are there any particularly useful websites you use that help with this?

With only 1k using questrade you definitely shouldn't be actively trading like other people recommend. Even investing your entire account into one trade will cost you 1% ($5 on the buy, $5 on the sell) so it'll be impossible. Figure out if you want to be growth oriented or value oriented. Growth stocks are more expensive from a valuation perspective and have huge potential but also huge risk. Think of Facebook, Tesla, Netflix. Value stocks are stocks believed to have strong fundamentals and trade at a cheap valuation. These are a lot less exciting and generally lower risk/reward but can be the foundation for a stable long term portfolio. If you genuinely want to get into investing, read http://www.amazon.ca/The-Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing/dp/0060555661 pretty much the bible for investing. Also be weary of technical trading and patterns etc, people often fall into the trap of seeing something in complete randomness. Personally I'm a value investor and I work in equity research so studying companies is what I do for a living.

Since the seems to be a common question I'm just copy pasting some of my older responses.

Books to read:

• This book while perhaps a bit dry has all of the information that you are looking probably looking for. It is widely considered the definitive guide to investing in individual securities.
  http://www.amazon.com/The-Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing/dp/0060555661
  
  
• Here's a PDF of the Intelligent Investor.
  http://www.set.in.th/ben_graham_the_intelligent_investor.pdf
  
  
• This book, is a solid guide to building a stable portfolio. However, it doesn't get into the nitty gritty of individual stock evaluation. It is a good read, and offers solid commentary on how to avoid making bad choices.
  http://www.amazon.com/The-Investors-Manifesto-Prosperity-Armageddon/dp/0470505141/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334165783&sr=1-1
  
  General Advice
  
  
• On individual stocks: Without a lot of prior knowledge and research, the best you could hope to be doing buy buying an individual security is speculating. This is not a good way to invest for the long term.
  
  
• Until you get a better background in how the markets work, you are much safer going with an Index fund or ETF. Personally I like the S&P 500. Over the long term you will earn about 8% on your money (not bad!). Park your money for now, and do some reading to become more informed.
  
  
• Also, avoid penny stocks at all cost. You might as well take your money and go play blackjack at a casino, at least you get free drinks there.

The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition) (Collins Business Essentials)

Link: http://amzn.com/0060555661
Though it is for the real life investing, most theories still apply.

To answer your questions:

1. Don't bother buying Fnatic ,NV,C9, VP, or probably LG this major, there will be a huge amount of these for sale as they are the peoples favorites and will take FOREVER to get to a worthy profit, assuming all stickers will be 75% off after the final. Small teams that will most likely never return to the major are a no go as well, like spylce, gambit, etc. So choose the teams in the middle, their sticker prices will usually increase 100% within about 6 months and that's about as fast a turnaround you can hope for.
   
   
2. Like others have said stickers will most likely never go to the price they were in 2014 due to the size of the audience and the abundant knowledge that there is a possibility the stickers could be the next 2014 Kato Titan Holo. So will it take time ,yes.
   
   You could go for the gamble and try to buy stickers of teams who you may think will have a roster change like C9 or VP after the major. As we have seen in the past with G2,Titan,Fnatic a roster change directly affects the price of stickers.

Coming from someone who has a reasonable amount of experience investing, this is what I wish I were told when I was in your shoes.

1. DO NOT DAY TRADE. It is one of the surest ways to lose your paltry sum of money to fees and expenses.
   
   
2. Read http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101 ASAP. Very solid basic outline on how the financial markets work. Implement the advice today. Seriously, open an account and put your money to work for you. Compound returns are almost magic.
   
   
3. Rebalance annually.
   
   
4. Write down your ultimate goals and form a plan for executing them. Ex: I would like to have 100,000 by my 25th birthday. If equity markets return an average of 8% and you invest X each year, can you reach this goal?
   
   
5. Learn how to use Excel. I cannot stress enough how valuable MS Excel is in financial modeling. If this is truly an area of interest for you, you will be very well served by learning to use the tools of the trade.
   
   Best of luck.

Supply and demand works if we are perfectly rational actors. But there is considerable evidence that we're not: see Predictably Irrational and Thinking, Fast and Slow. Salary in particular is known for irrational behavior. See the discussion of motivation in Drive or the short version in Daniel Pink's TED talk. Programmers are already fairly well paid and while I would certainly love to be paid more, I'm not convinced that alone would significantly increase the supply of developers.

The evidence for the talent gap is both anecdotal--every company I've worked at and many others I've interacted with complained extensively about lack of good developers--and some limited data (example 1, example 2), though it's not clear how to properly measure something like this.

Finally, I'm not sure that merely having 10x skill is enough to guarantee 10x pay. Perhaps in a perfect market with perfect knowledge and perfectly rational actors, it might be, but that's not how the real world works. You need not only 10x skill at your job, but also at turning that into money, which may be a completely different set of talents. For example, a 10x writer might make less money than an average writer if that average writer had their book turned into a popular teen movie. Similarly, the way for a programmer to make 10x the money is usually not to focus on salary (although there were some stories of Google and FB offering millions to retain some developers), but equity. And there, an exec-level programmer can get 10x the equity of a normal dev, though there is obviously a lot of luck as to whether the equity ends up paying off.

Where are you in economics right now? Undergraduate? Graduate?

Advanced mathematics appears everywhere in economics, though your mileage may vary depending on your definition of "advanced". As a mathematician, I suspect that quantitative finance contains the most advanced mathematics, since in modern mathematics research the majority of interaction with economics is through quantitative finance. But unless you plan on doing the most advanced math, there's more than enough advanced math in non-finance economics to keep you interested.

Generally speaking, professional economists build up some skill in real and functional analysis, as well as a variety of other skills like optimization, stochastics, and PDEs, depending on their specific research interests. These are all graduate-level math topics, so I'd consider them reasonably advanced. Take a look into econ PhD prelim coursework. When I took the sequence, we used the texts Microeconomic Theory by Mas-Colell-Whinston-Green, Recursive Macroeconomic Theory by Ljungqvist and Sargent, and Econometrics by Hayashi. I think they're good springboards for you to evaluate the math in higher economics.

In quantitative finance, I'd maybe start by checking out Portfolio Risk Analysis by Connor, Goldberg, and Korajczyk, then if you're still interested, I'd pick up measure-theoretic probability. I recommend Probability with Martingales by Williams. Once you're comfortable with measure theory, look through Stochastic Calculus and Financial Applications by Steele. You'll very quickly enter the area of research mathematics while studying quantitative finance, e.g. jump-diffusion models and Levy processes appear in the pricing of exotic derivatives, and they're heavily studied by even pure mathematicians.