Resources for a Beginner

I've recommended it here many times before, and no surprise, once again: Personal Finance for Dummies by Eric Tyson. It's about more than just investing - it also covers things like assessing your current personal "balance sheet", prioritizing things like paying down credit cards, etc, getting adequate insurance, etc.

He's also got a very good Investing for Dummies, but I definately would start with Personal Finance if I I were starting completely from scratch.

I subscribe to MStar, but not entirely for their star ratings. Their articles and discussions are very good, and way more useful than star ratings.

To be quite honest, the WSJ is not the place. I'd start with Kiplingers and/or SmartMoney, I think, as far as subscriptions to periodicals goes. And I wouldn't worry about individual stocks but rather, start with a bigger picture - the whole debts, assets, figure out your goals and plans and situation thing. Then, at least to get going, almost certainly use a very small set of funds - for which research at MStar is quite helpful.

I would definitely not start with "analyzing a stock" kind of stuff. There are lots of other things to take care of first.

And ask questions here. There are some very bright and knowledgeable and experienced folks on this newsgroup. The more detail you can post, the better answers you'll get.

I don't think Morningstar's premium service is that useful for a beginning investor. OTOH, they have a lot of very good tutorial material on their web site, and good articles with practical advice and not just a lot of business news. Money, Kiplinger's, and SmartMoney all also run sites more oriented towards personal finance than hardcore investment geek or stock trader stuff.

-Sandra

The bashing of their gold star system came from someone who didn't get his gold star. I subscribe to Morningstar stock investor. So far so good. But a bull market makes everyone a genius. If you are interested in buying stocks buy their book on stock investing (Five Rules for Stock Investing, or something like that).

I have learned more from this group, reading Kiplinger's and Smart Money than you can imagine.

Not sure what your age, marriage status, vocation etc - But if you share with the group you will get better directed answers. This group is seen by many and the folks that answer are on target. The Moderators keeps all on the straight and narrow as well.

Good Luck, and I assume by the question that you are fairly young. GOOD Don't wait until you get older, start now....

cil

I like Yahoo! Finance for data and statistics.

In addition to the periodicals Bread suggested, I'd add Money and BusinessWeek.

Bread's book suggestions were also good, and if you are interested in individual stocks, I'd add Peter Lynch's books (starting with _Learn to Earn_ and moving backwards in publication order), and Benjamin Graham's _The Intelligent Investor_ to the list.

-Will

Data and statistics are available on many sites, already mentioned by others.

is my list of recommended reading, it covers quite the range of authors and topics. 'Personal Finance for Dummies' as another poster mentioned, is a great start, covering a broad range of topics, but not able to do too deep a dive on many of them. "Security Analysis" by Graham & Dodd is the bible for those who wish to understand stock selection, while for others, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton Malkiel 'proves' one cannot really beat the market, and you are therefore better off investing in index funds, as John Bogle would agree.

JOE

wrote

I particularly like the books that joetaxpayer recommends at his site (see his post). These are going to take a while to skim and digest. When you need a break from all the verbage, experiment with the interactive asset allocation tools linked at

. They will introduce you quickly to a standard recommendation when investing: Diversify. Of course, then understanding why one should diversify is the question you want to ask and have answered. Do lurk here as well.