Hey, here’s a great book for folks starting out in investing and planning—William Bernstein’s “The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio”. He’s a very clear writer, and very sensitive to the impact of fees on market returns.

Check out their education section: http://www.fool.com/school.htm

Unless you have a significant amount of time to devote to learning about financial planning, you can’t beat finding a financial planner who you trust.

Good luck!

I want to start investing but I know absolutely nothing about it. So I need to go read up on the absolute basics. I haven’t looked it up but I’m sure The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Investing exists.

I have had good luck with Investing after visiting this Site, by the Mutual Fund Education Alliance. You are Just the person this site is set up for. It has free Morningstar Reports on about any funds you want to explore, and It has pre-set information on low initial investments of $50 bucks or less. Also has investing strategies for any level of investors experience. Good luck, Charles http://www.mfea.com/default.asp

Hi Tara -

I won’t suggest a place to start reading. You’ve already got some good suggestions above.

I will however, suggest that you start practicing by creating a MSN MoneyCentral account with your Hotmail address.

I will also suggest that you start learning about options trading from the very outset of your adventure. The aim of my suggestion is not for you to make money fast with risky options strategies. Rather, I think you might benefit from learning about a position that is called a “covered call option”.

An excellent (but weighty) learning reasource is a book called “Options as a Stategic Investment” by a gentleman named Lawrence MacMillan.

Options are confusing and often misunderstood. Please feel free to hit me up if you have any questions.

.DaveFer (www.davefer.net)

Look here: http://www.bloomberg.com/analysis/univ/index.html

Bloomberg has the info. Their books are really good too.

I’m looking to start doing some more serious investing too. I already have a 401(k) which carries a low risk factor and also a low gain factor. If you have the time, stocks are the way to go. If you can’t invest the time then find a financial planner your comfortable with. They will probably recommend mutual funds. I’ve also been watching “Mad Money” w/ Jim Cramer on CNBC at 6pm every weeknight. He’s intense and passionate and just right for me, the “individual invester”. He’s already rich beyond your wildest dreams so really the only way I see that he even does this is because of his passion. He’s also written some good books (which would help with one of your other goals!) like “Real Money”, also you could set up a practice portfolio on Yahoo! Finance which is really easy to do. Good luck!