My first Post (i am new)

[NiR]

Hello i am new here and this is my first post. i am trying to get into stocks with my poker winnings but i dont have much knowledge. if anyone can post anything that might help me please do so. i am specifically lookinf for some up to date books that i can read.or some programs that might help me understand stocks 101.

i dont want this to be a useless thread so this is my input. i started a thread in another site on this and i got alot of informaation there. but i didnt get much info on books and programs. here is the thread. i think it will be helpful to alot of people here.

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=472498&highlight=stocks

[Sniper]

There have been several recent posts on books, you can start here:

suggested reading list (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=2953989&page=0&view=c ollapsed&sb=5&o=14&vc=1)

[DpR]

Let me save you a lot of effort and likely poor results. I am assuking you are relatively young. Take all the money you plan on investing for the long term and buy:

40% IVV
20% EFA
20% IWM
10% TIP
10% AGG

You average individual investor does about 60% as well as market indexes (sadly this includes people with financial advisors). Each one of those poeple think they can do better. They can't, it is overwhelmingly likley that you cannot either. Buy these indexes and forget about it. You will not regret it.

[Sniper]

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40% IVV
20% EFA
20% IWM
10% TIP
10% AGG


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Mark to Market, YTD this port allocation would have returned roughly:
1.0% in Cap gains
0.7% in Dividends

1.7% total return YTD is nothing to get excited about!

[NiR]

this is all gibrish to me.. please explain. and i am going to invest with my poker winnings. i will only invest about 1k after tons of research and when i learn how everything works. so more info the better.i will only start with this amount and will hopefully improve. is this a good amount to start with? what is a good amount? and keeps the books comming. a book that shows me the BASICS of how to get started with stock market. i will get the advanced ones next. keep the info comming folks. and i willl beat the stock market!!! i am 20 btw.

[FishHooks]

I am in a similar boat as you. I'm 18, made about 4k in poker winnings currently 6 table 2/4. I was looking to invest in stocks as well. But from what I've heard you really need some decent capital. From my understanding you need a pretty diversified portfolio to do well in the stock market and with little capital thats pretty hard. Also commisions suck when you aren't buying much at a time. I have some books on order, will be here soon and going to read about all different types of investments, money markets, mutual funds etc. From what I've heard the mutual funds might be the best option if you dont have much capital. This is all just from what I've heard so dont put this in stone. With not much money I'm just looking for something that would give me a higer return rate than some savings accounts which will give up to 3.5% intrest, while still being able to get some "experience" in the market. Since I'm a kid I dont have any bills to pay so when I move up in poker and get more money, then I can proboly affort diversify and get a little more agressive. So I would say dont put it in stone that you want to invest in stocks, read some books and maybe invest in other things.

[MrMon]

If I were 18, I'd think there were three legit investments with $4000.

1. Your college education. Face it, you aren't going to be a pro poker player. Poker can supplement your income, but don't depend on it. And even if going pro were a legit goal, get the education. Nothing has a higher return. (Not to mention the fish in college dorms and frat houses.)

2. If you have the skill, bankroll it into higher limits. Caution is warranted, but again, a pretty high return if you have the skill.

3. Declare the income and put it in an a deductable IRA. (I assume you can do this. Tax experts may wish to chime in.) Then simply buy a S&P 500 Index fund or Spiders with dividend reinvestment. Let sit for 50 years. Dull. Boring. The route to lifetime financial security. (Assuming a 10% return, that would make it worth about half a million.)

[FishHooks]

1. I am leaving for college in like 2 weeks, University of Florida, go gators. I also have no intentions of being a poker pro, I used to ponder the idea that maybe one day. However it's not the kind of life I want.

2. Since poker is my only income, I tend to make sure I'm fully bankrolled and I move up after a certain amount of hands if I'm winning.

3. Possibly, but I dont think I will really start doing this till I graduate, I dont want to invest in an IRA now because from my understanding you can't touch it till your 60.

[NiR]

to tell you the truth, all these advices are preety safe advicse . the ones about putting it away for an x number of years and getting a good return. but honestly i am into investing for the thrill of gambling and MAKING money. thats why i will make sure i learn to beat it. i have the patience and understanding to be a good invester as i am in making money through poker so hopefully i will do alright. and truthfully, i wont be starting stocks until i have a good bankroll. and i will start with about 5k in stocks i guess since 1k seems to low. but i wont start until i have every understanding of what my returns might look like when i invest on certain stocks and if the value goes up. i have NO understanding of how it works and thats what i am hear to learn. i am not looking for the safe road where my retirement plan will be secured. i am looking to make some big money and obviously i wont be making big money with starting with 5k.. but like poker i am hoping i can build it up. and also this is just my stepping stone to my big master plan lol.. poker is lvl 1. stocks lvl 2. realestate lvl 3. big money stocks or daytrader lvl 4. or maybe just more realestate. ofcourse i have my electrical engineering degree which i will get in 2 years or so to fall back on if my plan doesnt work but to be rich you gotta take risks. or thats the way i see it. i might be wrong.. but i am still learning. keep the info comming.

[Sniper]

In addition to the other stock market related books I suggested earlier, you might want to start on an even more basic level with some personal finance books...

The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach, is a good starting point.

[wadea]

For a noob, I think "The Motley Fool Investment Guide" goes through the nuts and bolts of what makes a good investment quite nicely and offers some ideas about how to find opportunities. This book was published back when Motley Fool was a little "purer" than they are today. After touting themselves for not selling out, they now offer several newsletters for purchase and have a pay side to their website. Anyway, this book came before all that and I liked it when I was starting out. It's easy to understand and appeals to common sense. Good luck,

-w.a.

[DpR]

Its better than the negative amount poster will get when he is constantly buying high and selling low.

[DpR]

1) You are not going to beat the stock market. There are many professionals out there with a lot more knowledge and experience than you whose proffesion is to beat the market. The market is like poker, a zero sum gane - you have to be better than the pros to beat the indexes. You cannot get that way by reading a few book. Even among those profeesionals I refer, only about 5% beat an index after fees and taxes. Get that? 95% of people who's job it is to beat the market cannot do it.

2) Don't bother thinking about stocks until you have $10k to invest.

A lot of people everywhere including this board will tell you they beat the market yada yada yada, while a coupel may infact, the vast majority most likely do not even know how to measure their performance.

[DpR]

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to tell you the truth, all these advices are preety safe advicse . the ones about putting it away for an x number of years and getting a good return. but honestly i am into investing for the thrill of gambling and MAKING money. thats why i will make sure i learn to beat it.

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I guarantee you have poor investment results. In fact with your approach to it, you may lose it all. I know you will not believe me, so you will go ahead and learn the hard way. There are MILLIONS of investors in this country who think just like you - they all do horribly in the stock market.

[Sniper]

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Its better than the negative amount poster will get when he is constantly buying high and selling low.

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A very negative view of the markets that doesn't represent reality.

OP is looking to educate himself about the markets, and like anything else, with enough education and enhancement of the skills needed to succeed, OP can be successful.

[FishHooks]

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1) You are not going to beat the stock market. There are many professionals out there with a lot more knowledge and experience than you whose proffesion is to beat the market. The market is like poker, a zero sum gane - you have to be better than the pros to beat the indexes. You cannot get that way by reading a few book. Even among those profeesionals I refer, only about 5% beat an index after fees and taxes. Get that? 95% of people who's job it is to beat the market cannot do it.

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This guy has no idea what he's talking about. The stock market is not a zero sum game. If it was a zero sum game that would mean that random stocks would go up and down and the dow would overall stay the same. Historically there has never been a 30 year period in which the market has gone down, and I believe there is an average of like 3-4% gain in the market each year. That proves it is not a zero sum game, the market would have to have no rate of growth and no rate of decline for it to be a zero sum game.

Also this 95% talk is just retarded, since it's their job they would have to be making money, obviously some dont but for the most part they are pretty successful. Also how you even find a stat like this even assuming it was real.

[Sniper]

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1) You are not going to beat the stock market. There are many professionals out there with a lot more knowledge and experience than you whose proffesion is to beat the market. The market is like poker, a zero sum gane - you have to be better than the pros to beat the indexes. You cannot get that way by reading a few book. Even among those profeesionals I refer, only about 5% beat an index after fees and taxes. Get that? 95% of people who's job it is to beat the market cannot do it.

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This post shows your fundamental lack of understanding of the stock market, its participants, and the way it works.

The Stock Market is not a zero sum game.

There are many people who outperform the indexes. There are many more people who have no idea, or desire, and settle for mediocre returns.

The objective of most mutual funds is NOT to beat the key indexes, and they operate under severe restrictions that an individual investor is not bound by.

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2) Don't bother thinking about stocks until you have $10k to invest.

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This is also not good advice, and compares to saying you shouldn't play poker till you can beat the 2K/4K game.

[Sniper]

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There are MILLIONS of investors in this country who think just like you - they all do horribly in the stock market.

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The truth is exactly the opposite... the stock market has created considerable wealth for the average person.

[wadea]

I know this has already been said several times, but this "zero sum" statement is so wrong that I am compelled to add another reply to strengthen the converse arguement. Anybody who had to take economics to graduate high school should understand why this is.

The truth is that anybody can make money in the long term by simply investing in an S&P500 index fund. I promise. Give it 10 years and I promise you'll be ahead.

Also, any individual investor with a good understanding of how to value stocks and the time and effort to do their homework can beat the S&P500 over the long term. And here's another hint, focus on small caps .

-w.a.

[NiR]

although you might be correct about 5% beating it but that seems alot to me. like with poker, i am sure you know what % of people actually beat online poker regularly. if you know that then i am sure you understand that it is less then 5%. much less. ya i am sure stocks is a whole another game and may be much more difficult and 5% of the pros beating it seems very hard. but i am not quite getting what your saying. so your saying that only 5% of the professionals make money from it and the other 95% lose money? all i mean by beating the stocks is making profit consistently. ofcourse you will lose and win but on average hourly rate, you will be ahead. please explain. yes i know that reading few books wont do anything. i am not beating online poker by reading few books. i am bebating it with experience. and thats what i need in stocks. but i will do my homework before i start.

[NiR]

i didnt read the replys afterwards so i am reliefed about the coments lol. but anyway i am just doing hw now on stocks. then ill experience it with a bankroll that i wont be afraid to lose. "invest what you can afford to lose." thats the way i think about all this so i will NOT go broke. believe me. if i invest 5k ill make sure i have alot of "buyins" in my bank account to do so. and i just got "investing for dummies." lol. ill start by reading that and move on to the next book. since i dont have enough money to invest now anyway... i will just do my hw and get all the info i can before starting. keep the info comming.

[Sniper]

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although you might be correct about 5% beating it but that seems alot to me. like with poker, i am sure you know what % of people actually beat online poker regularly. if you know that then i am sure you understand that it is less then 5%. much less. ya i am sure stocks is a whole another game and may be much more difficult and 5% of the pros beating it seems very hard.

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The most recent quotes from poker sites are 7-8% of players end the year in the black.

The percentage of winners in the stock market is substantially higher!

[NiR]

y point my exactly. but even 7-8% seems to much. last i heard it was less then 5%. i may be wrong.

[FishHooks]

7-8% might be correct at online sites, its proboly even less 3-5% at casino's with the larger rake.

[PancakeBoy]

have u read any of the Motley Fool's books? if so what have u thought of them?

[MrMon]

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although you might be correct about 5% beating it but that seems alot to me. like with poker, i am sure you know what % of people actually beat online poker regularly. if you know that then i am sure you understand that it is less then 5%. much less. ya i am sure stocks is a whole another game and may be much more difficult and 5% of the pros beating it seems very hard.

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The most recent quotes from poker sites are 7-8% of players end the year in the black.

The percentage of winners in the stock market is substantially higher!

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I find it hard to believe only 7-8% of poker players are in the black on an annual basis. Either that, or I'll have to raise my own opinion of myself. Anyone care to provide a link?

[Sniper]

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have u read any of the Motley Fool's books? if so what have u thought of them?

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I have read some of the Fool's books, and I would put them in the category of books about how others make $ in the market. (you can see my suggested reading list in an earlier post in this thread)

Its good reading after you have a basic foundation of how to evaluate their suggestions.

[Sniper]

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I find it hard to believe only 7-8% of poker players are in the black on an annual basis. Either that, or I'll have to raise my own opinion of myself. Anyone care to provide a link?

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Here's a link:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lovinger/050719&num=0

And a quote...
"Well, as it turns out, there is one group that can -- and does -- track this kind of stat, though they are not about to publicize the results. That group consists of online poker site management, two members of which revealed to me at the WSOP that what intuition suggests must be true -- only 8 and 7 percent, respectively, of all players on their sites finish the year in the black. And I'm not talking about deep in the black, either. The vast majority of those winners are not about to give up their day jobs."

There have been several threads on this topic in other forums on 2+2, here's my take on the numbers, originally posted in another thread...

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If you examine all the factors, its fairly easy to see where all these numbers are coming from...

Rough expectation for long term players:
Ring Games - 40% win / 60% Lose
SNG - 20% win / 80% lose
MTT - 5% win / 95% lose

Other factors to account for...

The winning expectation numbers move up a bit when you account for extra $$$ from RB, Bonus, Point programs, Freerolls, etc.

The losing numbers move up alot when you account for the large number of players that try to play and lose their initial deposit and never return.

If you consider the relative number of people that play ring vs tournaments, its not to hard to understand how a casino mgr would be quoted as saying winners are less than 10%, but a ring players PT database shows 40% winners.


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