Introduction
The Stock Market for Beginners: Cutting the Learning Curve
Sydney Tremayne
The stock market for beginners looks so easy at first but I remember how stupid I felt later!
It was my first time “investing”. I felt so worldly!
I was 20, living in a single room in a rooming house with a pet alligator. I had £20 in a savings account at the main branch of one of the largest London banks.
Imagine this place: dark polished wood, glittering brass, dim lighting, a ceiling several stories in the gloom above…a place where whispers seemed more appropriate than normal conversation, where staff glided from place to place as if wearing slippers.
How times have changed!
I called the manager from a pay phone. The manager! Of a place like a cathedral! And he actually answered the phone. No gatekeeper: here was the Big Cheese himself!
“I have some money,” I said, “and I want to invest the entire amount. What do you recommend?”
I had no idea until years later when some were brokerage clients of mine that most bank managers know little or nothing about stocks. I just assumed that since banks dealt with money their managers must know how to invest it.
He recommended a South African goldmine that I later discovered was so obscure it was listed in just one paper in Britain – the most expensive one specializing in investments and written in a language half of which I did not understand. It certainly did not explain the stock market for beginners.
With the same forward movement as a rocking horse
For a month I watched this silly South African stock rise a penny only to fall a penny the next day, over and over again while I spent many pennies daily on a newspaper so I could read one tiny line of type.
A month later, I called the bank manager again. “I don’t think this stock is very good. Please sell my entire holding!”
How he didn’t bust a gut laughing I will never know. British bankers must starch and iron their faces!
That was 55 years ago, the beginning of a wildly successful private and professional career as an investor.
Helping you to avoid my mistakes
The Stock Market for Beginners and other efforts today are devoted to helping you to avoid all the many mistakes I made. When you realize that a 25-year-old must save twice as much as a 20-year-old to get the same result in retirement (and a 29-year-old must save three times as much) you understand the value of time and the importance of starting out early and with as few mistakes as possible.
Investing successfully is easy! Forget all the mumbojumbo fed to us by a self-important investment industry that would be out of business if everyone knew how easy it truly is.
We will strip down in this space to bare and simple essentials. The rules I will provide you are logical and most can be proved with a basic pocket calculator. You need no degree (or particular amount of intelligence).
You will learn a system to protect against inevitable falling markets and the panic they cause. You will discover how to take control of your own financial future instead of leaving it in the hands of a commission-based salesman. You will learn in a few weeks what took me 55 years to learn.
As we go along, please ask questions and I will do my best to answer them; just don’t ask for my latest stock tip. You will learn how easy it is to choose stocks for yourself – and how little the selection really matters under the protective conditions I will give you. Those who spend their time agonizing over choices largely waste that time; there is a better way.
If you’re looking for instant wealth you will not get it here. If you want excitement, thrills and spills, you won’t get them here. But if you want a cautious, patient approach that will bring you better returns than you likely get now, or if you’re in your 20s or 30s and you want a sensible shot at retiring a millionaire, you are in the right place.
All this on one hour a year – just a single hour a year – of work. Think this is unbelievable?
Welcome to The Stock Market for Beginners (and for those honest enough to know there is still more for them to learn). Click on the orange RSS button to be alerted when each new post is made.
And tell everyone who you think might like a more comfortable retirement when the time comes to visit http://www.TheStockMarketForBeginners.com