Investing All-in-One For Dummies. Eric Tyson

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Introduction

      Successful investing takes diligent work and knowledge, like any other meaningful pursuit. Investing All-in-One For Dummies presents basic investing topics — such as building an emergency fund, determining your financial goals, and choosing a broker (if you’re not a do-it-yourself investor) — but also introduces some slightly more advanced subjects, like fundamental analysis, that can enhance your investing strategies. In between, you find the basics of investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, real estate, and trends like cryptocurrencies.

      This book can help you avoid the mistakes others have made and can point you in the right direction as you build your portfolio. Explore the pages of this book and find the topics that most interest you within the world of investing.

      In all the years that we’ve counseled and educated investors, the single difference between success and failure, between gain and loss, has boiled down to two words: applied knowledge. Take this book as your first step in a lifelong learning adventure.

About This Book

      To build wealth, you don’t need a fancy college or graduate-school degree, and you don’t need a rich parent, biological or adopted! What you do need is a desire to read and practice the many simple yet powerful lessons and strategies in this book.

      This book is designed to give you a realistic approach to making money. It provides sound, practical investing strategies and insights that have been market-tested and proven from more than 100 years of stock market history. You’re not expected to read it from cover to cover. Instead, this book is designed as a reference tool. Feel free to read the chapters in whatever order you choose. You can flip to the sections and chapters that interest you or those that include topics that you need to know more about.

Investing intelligently isn’t rocket science. By all means, if you’re dealing with a complicated, atypical issue, get quality professional help. Hiring someone is dangerous if you’re financially challenged. If you do decide to hire someone, you’ll be much better prepared if you educate yourself. Doing so can also help you focus your questions and assess that person’s competence.

Foolish Assumptions

      No matter your skill or experience level with investing, you can get something out of Investing All-in-One For Dummies. We assume that some readers haven’t invested in anything other than baseball cards or Pez dispensers and have no clue of where to even start. If that describes you, the first part of the book is custom-made for you and takes extra care to step through all the key points in as much plain English as possible. (When we have no choice but to use investing jargon, we tell you what it means.) But we also assume that more advanced investors may pick this book up, too, looking to discover a few things. The book takes on more advanced topics as you progress through it.

      Here are some assumptions we made about you as we crafted this book:

       You have about seven cents in your checking account and you’re working to pay off credit card debt or student loans (or both), but you know you need to start