I have 20k to invest ...

[buffett]

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Rule Breaker subscription is $199 for the year

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Whoa. I had no idea about this. Sorry.
I didn't know they've since turned this into a newsletter.
If you can search the fool.com archives to read the Rule Breaker (and Foolish 8, if you can find that) archives from the Good Ol' Days ('98-'03, roughly), that should be quite a good start for your "high risk, high reward" education.

[FatOtt]

I've been reading and posting on the Motley Fool for years. When you talk about Rule Breakers and identify them as "High risk, high reward", well, I'd say you're half right. Rule Breakers was a strategy that basically said, "Own the hot companies, price be damned". That's a strategy that worked pretty damn well in the momentum-driven late 90's.

Now, the Motley Fool offers a number of subscription-based services. I don't subscribe to any of them, but I don't think it would be a bad idea if you wanted to stick your toes in the stock market's waters. Bill Mann is a TMF writer that I respect a lot - if he's involved in one of the newsletters, I'd recommend that one.

I've also heard very good things about "Value Investor Insight", a newsletter (co?)written by Whitney Tilson. Tilson seems like a decent investing writer who follows (or at least claims to follow) the teachings of Warren Buffett. I believe I met him at a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting and he seemed like a nice guy.

By the way (to the OP), no matter how much money you have or how much money you're making or how many years of income you have in front of you, $20k is a lot of money and I would sincerely advise you to not think about it in any way that approximates gambling or a "Hey, I'll try trading and see how it goes" kind of attitude.

[buffett]

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Bill Mann is a TMF writer that I respect a lot - if he's involved in one of the newsletters, I'd recommend that one.

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Ditto for me.

Btw, he co-writes (with one of the Gardner brothers) the Hidden Gems newsletter and edits the annual Stocks 200X guide.

[ QUOTE ]
Tilson seems like a decent investing writer who follows ... the teachings of Warren Buffett.

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Ditto again.

Don't put your money on the advice of some liberal arts graduate who's a professional writer for fool.com or another site. These are novelty sites that display their good performing portfolios and downplay and eliminate their bad performing portfolios.

First, read a book like A Ramdom Walk Down Wall Street/Malkin. Then read the financial news and see how stocks are affected and what affects them. Think about industries that you are familiar with. If you think you have a worthwhile insight, buy shares of that company. I would start by doing some 'paper trades' to see if you're getting it.

Lastly, choose an online broker that doesn't charge more than $10 per limit order. Anything more than that is wasteful.

[cdxx]

choosing the right source to listen to is important. look at the author's quals. choose one with experience.

edit : stupid quick reply. here's the rest of my reply.

a book is a terrible source of information if the book is the only thing you have! yeah, i said it! there are great books, but by no means should you put yourself in the hands of one or a group of writers who finished writing it in the past and can no longer change what they said.

a daily/weekly newsleter, website, newspaper, don't replace a book but IMO they are so much better because they stays current.

[buffett]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't put your money on the advice of some liberal arts graduate who's a professional writer for fool.com or another site. These are novelty sites that display their good performing portfolios and downplay and eliminate their bad performing portfolios.

[/ QUOTE ]
On this forum, I’ve held my tongue in a lot of situations where my first instinct was to respond to voice my disagreement with someone regarding a stock or a philosophy or maybe even a person. 3-poster or pooh-bah, though, I won’t stand silent if another person tries to denigrate Bill Mann. He’s a great analyst, he’s got a lot more investing experience than most people on this forum, and he’s a great business/economic thinker. He remains at Fool for a variety of reasons, but his investing skill is at least on par with his former colleagues who have gone on to prestigious buy-side firms (Phil Weiss at T. Rowe Price, Randy Befumo and Dale Wettlaufer at Legg Mason, and Zeke Ashton at Centaur were his main Fool comrades.) Say what you want about the Fool site/brand/investing track record/other columnists. There are many parts of it that I don’t like. But Bill is the real deal.

From what I've read of the Fools, they are lightweights, imo. Their research is superficial, mostly surfing Yahoo and reading press releases. Researchers should read completely through all the SEC filings at a minimum. I prefer thestreet.com, or even better, their more sophisticated variant, realmoney.com.

[cdxx]

thestreet.com is a good source.