This technology is essential to BIG oil. And we have strong reason to believe this tiny stock could get a takeover offer from a major oil company tomorrow. Check out this briefing ahead of a coming offer.
| The Two ‘Secrets’ to Mastering Investing
The Investment U E-Letter: #339 The Two ‘Secrets’ to Mastering Investing “How did you get so much investing knowledge at such a young age?” I get asked this question often. I don’t know what answer people are looking for but I’ll tell you how I learned what I’ve learned… It wasn’t through school, though I went as far as you can in school. It wasn’t through a personal mentor, though I’ve been fortunate to spend time with many great investment minds. And it wasn’t through some type of divine intervention, or “just having a knack for it.” How I got here is simple. Today, I’m going to share with you exactly how I did it, and how you can do it, too.There are two things you need to do, and that’s it. But they are big… 1. You need to learn as much as you possibly can. How to Get Started on Your Journey Getting out there and investing is the obvious part. You’ve probably already done some of that, and probably have lost money in your time. That’s okay. As long as you consider that money as “tuition” – that is, as long as you try to learn from each of your mistakes – you’ll be getting better. Tiger Woods can’t just read about golf to be good at it… he’s got to take some swings. Learning as much as you possibly can is the part that most people slack off on for whatever reason. I just don’t get how people can invest and avoid learning. I spend my days trying to learn more, and to get better at this craft, just like Tiger Woods works on his craft and then applies what he’s been studying. A friend (who writes www.EarlytoRise.com) says it takes 1,000 hours to master anything. Mind you, 1,000 hours is no guarantee of success. It basically means that you know what you’re doing. By that gauge, he’s probably about right. So if you can study investing 10 hours a week for 100 weeks, you’ll know what’s going on. The question is, what should you study? A Great Education…In Five Powerful Books If you’re just getting started, I’d highly recommend the Investment U Course. I’m biased here because I wrote it. But it was written to be “everything you need to know about investing, and nothing you don’t.” You can read it in an afternoon. And it will probably save you tens of thousands of dollars in “tuition.” How else can you spend an afternoon and save yourself tens of thousands of dollars? After you finish that, you ought to read Safe Strategies for Financial Freedom, written by Van Tharp, D.R. Barton and myself. This book is brand new (it had hit number-seven on Amazon.com before it came out). The official release date is June 4, but it is available on Amazon.com right now. There is a lot here. Next, you may want to consider Financial Reckoning Day, written by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin. Bill and Addison asked me to create the charts for this book, which made the New York Times bestseller list for a while this year. In one section, they compare Japan’s investment frenzy that peaked in 1990 and the subsequent bust over the last 14 years to the U.S. today. I prefer to use history to guide my guesses about the future. And this book is the best book this year at both giving the history and informing those guesses. In the new book Bull’s Eye Investing, John Mauldin kindly credits me for my research and work (and flattery will get him everywhere). Like the last two books I mentioned, this book covers a ton of ground. I particularly liked some of the behavioral finance stuff in this book… like “the six emotions that cause investors to make mistakes:” 1. Fear of regret – so you hold losers too long Also, don’t buy a hedge fund until you’ve read Mauldin’s book. Another “new” book that I highly recommend is The Book of Daniel Drew (it is only available at www.FraserPublishing.com). It originally came out nearly 100 years ago. But the lessons are so powerful, I talked the publisher into bringing it back into print. Drew was one of the world’s most powerful investors in the mid- to late 1800s. Three pithy quotes from the book: 1. “The money market is the key to the stock market. They who control the money rate also control the stock[s].” It is a great read (but quite frankly, you can skip over the first 75 pages or so, and start where Daniel meets Vanderbilt in New York for the first time. That’s where the action begins.) That’s about it. You know how to master investing: Learn it and do it. Here are five books to get you a long way down the right path. Finish these and, well, you’ll have just 950 hours to go… Today’s IU Cribsheet
Good investing, Steve
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