vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"First, I applaud you for caring. Most people don't! In fact, I was in that category. You bring up several issues and I'll try to address them separately. (1) Getting a financial planner to talk with you. I had the same experience! My belief is that they don't want to admit that they don't know how things work. I even asked if I could pay them an hourly fee to ask questions and review stocks with them. Most declined. You'll find that very few people actually take the time to get trained to evaluate stocks and the stock market as a whole. (See later Investools.com). After looking, however, I did find people who would spend an hour or two with me when we met once a quarter to review my ""portfolio""/investments. I later found training that companies offered. I would attend any free training I could get because they actually wanted to spend time and talk and teach investors. Bottom line is: Talking to their clients is the job of a financial planner. If he (or she) is not willing to take this time, it is in your best interest to find someone who will spend that time. (2) Learning about investing! I'm not affiliated with anyone. I'm a software developer and I do my own trading/investments. The opinions I share are my own. When I was 20 years away from retirement, I started learning about the stock market so that I would know how it worked before I retired so that (a) I could influence a change if one was needed, and (b) so I wouldn't have to blindly accept the advice of the ""experts"" even when the stock market is crashing. I have used Investools.com, and TDAmeritrade's Think-or-Swim platform. I've learned a tremendous amount from the Investools training. I recommend them. But don't expect to learn how to get rich from them or any training you take. The TDA Think-or-swim platform I highly recommend BECAUSE it has a feature called ""Paper Money"". It lets you trade using the real market but with play money.
Start by paying down any high interest debt you may have, like credit cards.  Reason being that they ultimately eat into any (positive) returns you may have from investing.  Another good reason is to build up some discipline.  You will need discipline to be a successful investor. Educate yourself about investing. The Motley Fool is probably still a good place to start.  I would also suggest getting into the habit of reading the Wall Street Journal or at the very least the business section of the New York Times.  You'll be overwhelmed with the terminology at first, but stick with it.  It is certainly worth it, if you want to be an investor.  The Investor's Business Daily is another good resource for information, though you will be lost in the deep end of the pool with that publication for sure.  (That is not a reason to avoid getting familiar with it.  Though at first, it may very well be overkill.) Save some money to open a brokerage account or even an IRA.  (You'll learn that there are some restrictions on what you can do in an IRA account.  Though they shouldn't necessarily be shunned as a result.  Money placed in an IRA is tax deductible, up to certain limits.) ????? Profit! Note: In case you are not familiar with the joke, steps 4 & 5 are supposed to be humorous.  Which provides a good time to bring up another point, if you are not having fun investing, then get out.  Put your money in something like an S&P 500 index fund and enjoy your life. There are a lot more things to say on this subject, though that could take up a book.  Come back with more questions as you learn about investing. Edit: I forgot to mention DRIPs and Investment Clubs.  Both ideas are suggested by The Motley Fool.
Try this as a starter - my eBook served up as a blog (http://www.sspf.co.uk/blog/001/). Then read as much as possible about investing. Once you have money set aside for emergencies, then make some steps towards investing. I'd guide you towards low-fee 'tracker-style' funds to provide a bedrock to long-term investing. Your post suggests it will be investing over the long-term (ie. 5-10 years or more), perhaps even to middle-age/retirement? Read as much as you can about the types of investments: unit trusts, investment trusts, ETFs; fixed-interest (bonds/corporate bonds), equities (IPOs/shares/dividends), property (mortgages, buy-to-let, off-plan). Be conservative and start with simple products. If you don't understand enough to describe it to me in a lift in 60 seconds, stay away from it and learn more about it. Many of the items you think are good long-term investments will be available within any pension plans you encounter, so the learning has a double benefit. Work a plan. Learn all the time. Keep your day-to-day life quite conservative and be more risky in your long-term investing. And ask for advice on things here, from friends who aren't skint and professionals for specific tasks (IFAs, financial planners, personal finance coaches, accountants, mortgage brokers). The fact you're being proactive tells me you've the tools to do well. Best wishes to you.
"This Stack Exchange site is a nice place to find answers and ask questions. Good start! Moving away from the recursive answer... Simply distilling personal finance down to ""I have money, I'll need money in the future, what do I do"", an easily digestible book with how-to, multi-step guidelines is ""I Will Teach You To Be Rich"". The author talks about setting up the accounts you should have, making sure all your bills are paid automatically, saving on the big things and tips to increase your take home pay. That link goes to a compilation page on the blog with many of the most fundamental articles. However, ""The World’s Easiest Guide To Understanding Retirement Accounts"" is a particularly key article. While all the information is on the free blog, the book is well organized and concise.  The Simple Dollar is a nice blog with frugal living tips, lifestyle assessments, financial thoughts and reader questions. The author also reviews about a book a week. Investing - hoping to get better returns than savings can provide while minimizing risk. This thread is an excellent list of books to learn about investing. I highly recommend ""The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing"" and ""The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need"". The world of investment vehicles is huge but it doesn't have to be complicated once you ignore all the fads and risky stuff. Index mutual funds are the place to start (and maybe end). Asset allocation and diversification are themes to guide you. The books on that list will teach you."
"I get the sense that this is a ""the world is unfair; there's no way I can succeed"" question, so let's back up a few steps. Income is the starting point to all of this.  That could be a job (or jobs), or running your own business. From there, you can do four things with your income: Obviously Spend and Give do not provide a monetary return - they give a return in other ways, such as quality of life, helping others, etc. Save gives you reserves for future expenses, but it does not provide growth. So that just leaves Invest.  You seem to be focused on stock market investments, which you are right, take a very long time to grow, although you can get returns of up to 12% depending on how much volatility you're willing to absorb. But there are other ways to invest.  You can invest in yourself by getting a degree or other training to improve your income.  You can invest by starting a business, which can dramatically increase your income (in fact, this is the most common path to ""millionaire"" in the US, and probably in other free markets). You can invest by growing your own existing business.  You can invest in someone else's business. You can invest in real estate, that can provide both value appreciation and rental income.  So yes, ""investment"" is a key aspect of wealth building, but it is not limited to just stock market investment. You can also look at reducing expenses in order to have more money to invest. Also keep in mind that investment with higher returns come with higher risk (both in terms of volatility and risk of complete loss), and that borrowing money to invest is almost always unwise, since the interest paid directly reduces the return without reducing the risk."
As a young investor, you should know that the big secret is that profitable long term investing is boring.  It is is not buying one day and selling the next and keeping very close tabs on your investments and jumping on the computer and going 'Buy!' , 'Sell'. That makes brokers rich, but not you. So look at investments but not everyday and find something else that's exciting, whether it's dirt biking or WOW or competitive python coding.  As a 19 year old, you have a ton of time and you don't need to swing for the fences and make 50% or 30% or even 20% returns every year to do well. And you don't have to pick the best performing stocks, and if you do, you don;t have to buy them at their lowest or sell them at their highest.  Go read A Random Walk's guide to Investing by Burton Malkiel and The only Investment Guide you'll ever need by Andrew Tobias. Buy them at used bookstores because it's cheaper that way.  And if you want more excitement read You Can Be  a Stock Market Genius by Joel GreenBlatt, One up On Wall Street By Peter Lynch, something by Warren Buffet and if you want to be really whacked, read Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Talib, But never forget about Tobias and Malkiel, invest a regular amount of money every month from 19 to 65 according to what they write and you'll be a wealthy guy by 65.
You can try paper trading to sharpen your investing skills(identifying stocks to invest, how much money to allocate and stuff) but nothing compares to getting beaten black and blue in the real world. When virtual money is involved you mayn't care, because you don't loose anything, but when your hard earned money disappears or grows, no paper trading can incite those feelings in you. So there is no guarantee that doing paper trading will make you a better investor, but can help you a lot in terms of learning. Secondly educate yourself on the ways of investing. It is hard work and realize that there is no substitute for hard work. India is a growing economy and your friends maybe safe in the short term but take it from any INVESTOR, not in the long run. And moreover as all economies are recovering from the recession there are ample opportunities to invest money in India both good and bad. Calculate your returns and compare it with your friends maybe a year or two down the lane to compare the returns generated from both sides. Maybe they would come trumps but remember selecting a good investment from a bad investment will surely pay out in the long run.  Not sure what you do not understand what Buffet says. It cannot get more simpler than that. If you can drill those rules into your blood, you mayn't become a billionaire but surely you will make a killing, but in the long run. Read and read as much as you can. Buy books, browse the net. This might help. One more guy like you.
"practice using excel more  read more books on investing, practice making investing thesis, practice remaining ""nice"" while getting good and bad critique, expand your knowledge (it is impossible to be the best at everything in investing due to the multiple forms of investing that have contradicting principles), and think economics.  Finance will be useless if you have a very limited understanding of ""scarcity"""
If you want to invest in stocks, bonds and mutual funds I would suggest you take a portion of your inheritance and use it to learn how to invest in this asset class wisely. Take courses on investing and trading (two different things) in paper assets and start trading on a fantasy exchange to test and hone your investment skills before risking any of your money. Personally I don't find bonds to have a meaningful rate of return and I prefer stocks that have a dividend over those that don't. Parking some of your money in an IRA is a good strategy for when you do not see opportunities to purchase cashflow-positive assets right away; this allows you to wait and deploy your capital when the opportunity presents itself and to educate yourself on what a good opportunity looks like.
Investing requires capital, and the fastest way to get the capital is to develop good saving habits. Investing is an ongoing process to help you accumulate wealth, so to take advantage of compounding, the earlier you start, the better.  I can suggest a few pointers to get you started on the investing journey. Godspeed! :)
Investing money in the stock market with [Compound Stock Earnings](http://www.compoundstockearnings.com) is a great way to build wealth and plan for the future. However, few people know what the stock market is let alone how to begin investing in it. It is important to understand how companies and stocks work before investing in them.
Whey protein, coffee, skills, skills, skills did I mention skills?  Learn useful things and no debt.  As for actual investment vehicles.. I have bad views of what is going to happen of the next 10 years.. I doubt you'll be allowed to own anything you invested in....
An additional way to get a better grip on the mechanics of what you're looking to do is to use a paper trading tool. For example, thinkorswim gives you $200k in virtual money to trade with- money you don't have to worry about as you might initially make mistakes in trading futures. As mentioned above, each product has it's own pricing and trading options on futures (derivatives of derivatives) is even more confusing, so you'll be well-served by a risk-free learning tool.
Given what you state you should shop around for an advisor. Think of the time required to pursue your strategies that you list? They already have studied much of what you seek to learn about. Any good investor should understand the basics. This is Canadian based but many of the concepts are universal. Hope you find it helpful. http://www.getsmarteraboutmoney.ca/Pages/default.aspx
If you just want to save for retirement, start with a financial planning book, like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Simple-Financial-Strategies-People/dp/0743269942 and here's my editorial on the investing part: http://blog.ometer.com/2010/11/10/take-risks-in-life-for-savings-choose-a-balanced-fund/ If you're thinking of spending time stock-picking or trading for fun, then there are lots of options. Web site: Morningstar Premium (http://morningstar.com) has very good information. They analyze almost all large-cap stocks and some small caps too, plus mutual funds and ETFs, and have some good general information articles. It doesn't have the sales-pitch hot-blooded tone of most other sites. Morningstar analyzes companies from a value investing point of view which is probably what you want unless you're day trading. Also they analyze funds, which are probably the most practical investment. Books: If you want to be competent (in the sense that a professional investor trying to beat the market or control risk vs. the market would be) then I thought the CFA curriculum was pretty good: However, this will quickly teach you how much is involved in being competent. The level 1 curriculum when I did it was 6 or 7 thick textbooks, equivalent to probably a college semester courseload. I didn't do level 2 or 3. I don't think level 1 was enough to become competent, it's just enough to learn what you don't know. The actual CFA charter requires all three levels and years of work experience. If you more want to dabble, then Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor certainly isn't a bad place to start, but you'd also want to read some efficient markets stuff (Random Walk Down Wall Street, or something by Bogle, or The Intelligent Asset Allocator http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Asset-Allocator-Portfolio-Maximize/dp/0071362363, are some options).
"Hmm... Well there are several ways to do that: Go to any bank (or at the very least major ones). They can assist you with buying and/or selling stocks/shares of any company on the financial market. They keep your shares safe at the bank and take care of them. The downside is that they will calculate fees for every single thing they do with your money or shares or whatever. Go to any Financial broker/trader that deals with the stock market. Open an account and tell them to buy shares from company ""X"" and keep them. Meaning they won't trade with them if this is what you want. Do the same as point 2, but on your own. Find a suitable broker with decent transaction fees, open an account, find the company's stock code and purchase the stocks via the platform the broker uses."
"I tell you how I started as an investor: read the writings of probably the best investor of the history and become familiarized with it: Warren Buffett. I highly recommend ""The Essays of Warren Buffett"", where he provides a wise insight on how a company generates value, and his investment philosophy. You won't regret it! And also, specially in finance, don't follow the advice from people that you don't know, like me."
The actual CFA charter requires all three levels and years of work experience. If you more want to dabble, then Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor certainly isn't a bad place to start, but you'd also want to read some efficient markets stuff (Random Walk Down Wall Street, or something by Bogle, or The Intelligent Asset Allocator http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Asset-Allocator-Portfolio-Maximize/dp/0071362363, are some options). It wouldn't be bad to just read a textbook like http://www.amazon.com/Investments-Irwin-Finance-Zvi-Bodie/dp/0256146381 which would be the much-abridged version of the CFA level 1 stuff. If you're into day trading / charting, then I don't know much about that at all, some of the other answers may have some ideas. I've never been able to find info on this that didn't seem like it had a sketchy sales pitch kind of vibe. Honestly in a world of high-frequency trading computers I'm skeptical this is something to get into. Unless you want to program HFT computers: http://howtohft.wordpress.com/
What is a good resource to learn about options trading strategies? Options are a quite advanced investment form, and you'd do well to learn a lot about them before attempting to dive into this fairly illiquid market. Yale's online course in financial markets covers the Options Market and is a good starting point to make sure you've got all the basics. You may be familiar with most of it, but it's a decent refresher on lingo and Black-Scholes. How can I use options to establish some cash flow from long standing investments while minimizing capital gains expenses? This question seems designed to get people to talk about covered calls. Essentially, you sell call contracts: you let people buy things you already have at a price in the future, at their whim. They pay you for this option, though usually not much if the options aren't in the money. You can think of this as trading any return above the call option for a bit of extra cash. I don't invest with taxable accounts, but there are significant tax consequences for options. Because they expire, there will be turnover in your portfolio, and up front income when you take the sell side. So if you trade in options with close expiration dates, you'll probably end up with a lot of short-term capital gains, which are treated as normal income. One strategy is to trade in broad-based stock index options, which have favorable tax treatments. Some people have abused this though to disguise normal income as capital gains, so it could go away. Obviously the easy approach is to just use a tax advantaged account for options trading. An ETF might also be able to handle the turnover on your behalf, for example VIX is a series of options on S&P500 options. A second strategy I've heard of is buying calls and puts at a given strike price. For example, if you bought Dec '13 calls and puts on SPX @ 115 today, it would cost you about $35 dollars. If the price moves more than 35 dollars away from 115 by DEC '13 (in either direction), you've made a profit. If you reflect on that for a bit, you'll see why VIX is considered a volatility index.
If you don't have a good knowledge of finance, maybe you should not put too much money in individual stocks. But if you really want to invest, you can just compare the rate of return of the most known stocks available to you (like the one from the S&P for the US). The rate of return is very simple to compute, it's 100*dividend/share price. For example a company with a current share price of 50.12 USD that delivered a dividend of 1.26 USD last year would have a rate of return of 100 * 1.26/50.12= 2.51% Now if you only invest in the most known stocks, since they are already covered by nearly all financial institutions and analysts: If you are looking for lower risk dividend companies, take a sample of companies and invest those with the lowest rates of return (but avoid extreme values). Of course since the stock prices are changing all the time, you have to compare them with a price taken at the same time (like the closing price of a specific day) and for the dividend, they can be on several basis (yearly, quartely, etc..) so you have to be sure to take the same basis. You can also find the P/E ratio which is the opposite indicator (= share price/dividend) so an higher P/E ratio means a lower risk. Most of the time you can find the P/E ratio or the rate of return already computed on specialized website or brokers.
No, SPDR ETFs are not a good fit for a novice investor with a low level of financial literacy.  In fact, there is no investment that is safe for an absolute beginner, not even a savings account.  (An absolute beginner could easily overdraw his savings account, leading to fees and collections.) I would say that an investment becomes a good fit for an investor as soon as said investor understands how the investment works.  A savings account at a bank or credit union is fairly easy to understand and is therefore a suitable place to hold money after a few hours to a day of research.  (Even after 0 hours of research, however, a savings account is still better than a sock drawer.) Money market accounts (through a bank), certificates of deposit (through a bank), and money market mutual funds (through a mutual fund provider) are probably the next easiest thing to understand.  This could take a few hours to a few weeks of research depending on the learner. Equities, corporate bonds, and government bonds are another step up in complexity, and could take weeks or months of schooling to understand well enough to try.  Equity or bond mutual funds -- or the ETF versions of those, which is what you asked about -- are another level after that. Also important to understand along the way are the financial institutions and market infrastructure that exist to provide these products:  banks, credit unions, public corporations, brokerages, stock exchanges, bond exchanges, mutual fund providers, ETF providers, etc.
The right way to develop confidence is to get educated. Confidence can come from many sources, but the right source of confidence is an understanding of how markets work. Markets react (and overreact) to news. I think the biggest factor to trading successfully is to not allow emotion to drive you. You should determine how much you are comfortable gaining and losing and set those in limit and stop orders rather than just using market orders all of the time. As I've grown in my understanding of the market, I find it much more rare that I feel confident enough to make a specific bet. Most of my money is allocated in index funds, and I only buy and sell small amounts to reset the percentages according to a preset allocation plan. I still keep some cash available for speculative trades in the account where those trades will add the most value.
What the first person said. You're scared because you don't understand investing one bit. You'll be less scared once you understand it. Best way to understand it is to try it out.   For me it has to be real money. So perhaps try out with small amounts of money you're comfortable with and do w/e you want with it, think of it as a purchase and not an investment. Then research why your account balance went up or down.