Starter Enterprising Investor
The steps you outlined are fine by themselves. Step 5, seeking criticism can be less helpful than one may think.  See stocktwits.com  There are a lot of opposing opinions all of which can be correct over different time-frames.  Try and quantify your confidence and develop different strategies for different confidence levels. I was never smart enough or patient with follow through to be a successful value investor. It was very frustrating to watch stocks trade sideways for years before the company's intrinsic value was better reflected in the market.  Also, you could make an excellent pick, but a macro change and slump could set you back a year and raise doubts. In my experience portfolio management techniques like asset allocation and dollar-cost-averaging is what made my version of value investing work. Your interest in 10k/10q is something to applaud.  Is there something specific about 10k/10q that you do not understand?  Context is key, these types of reports are more relevant and understandable when compared to competitors in the same sector.   It is good to assess over confidence!  It is also good to diversify your knowledge and the effort put into Securities Analysis 6th edition will help with other books in the field.  I see a bit of myself in your post, and if you are like me, than subsequent readings, and full mastery of the concepts in 'Securities & Analysis 6th ed.'  will lead to over confidence, or a false understanding as there are many factors at play in the market.  So many, that even the most scientific approaches to investing can just as equally be described as an 'art'. I'm not aware of the details of your situation, but in general, for you to fully realize the benefits from applying the principals of value investing shared by Graham and more recently Warren Buffett, you must invest on the level that requires use of the consolidation or equity method of accounting, e.g. > 20% ownership.   Sure, the same principals used by Buffett can work on a smaller scale, but a small scale investor is best served by wealth accumulation, which can take many forms. Not the addition of instant equity via acquisitions to their consolidated financials. Lastly, to test what you have learned about value investing, and order execution, try the inverse.  At least on paper.  Short a stock with low value and a high P/E.  TWTR may be a good example? Learn what it is like to have your resources at stake, and the anguish of market and security volatility. It would be a lot easier to wait it out as a long-term value investor from a beach house in Santa Barbara :)
The book HOLD: How to Find, Buy, and Rent Houses for Wealth by Chader et al. was one of the best I've read on the subject. It has all of the basics, explanations, examples, and gives you real-life assumptions for your inputs when you do your analysis. It does contain some less-relevant information now that was more realistic before 2007, but it's a worthwhile read (or listen). They have some good starter worksheets, as well, on their website to help you do your analysis, which I found useful despite already having my own. "Kinda like this?  ""For starters, a group of Perry appointees on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality gave Simmons a license to build his hazardous nuke dump, even after the TCEQ's own team of scientists agreed that the project was too risky, given how dangerously close it lies to the Ogalalla aquifer, which provides drinking water for seven states.""  [From Matt Taibbi's Rick Perry article](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/rick-perry-the-best-little-whore-in-texas-20111026)" I think you should consult a professional with experience in 83(b) election and dealing with the problems associated with that. The cost of the mistake can be huge, and you better make sure everything is done properly. For starters, I would look at the copy of the letter you sent to verify that you didn't write the year wrong. I know you checked it twice, but check again. Tax advisers can call a dedicated IRS help line for practitioners where someone may be able to provide more information (with your power of attorney on file), and they can also request the copy of the original letter you've sent to verify it is correct. In any case, you must attach the copy of the letter you sent to your 2014 tax return (as this is a requirement for the election to be valid). P/E ratio is useful but limited as others have said. Another problem is that it doesn't show leverage. Two companies in the same industry could have the same P/E but be differently leveraged. In that case I would buy the company with more equity and less debt as it should be a less risky investment. To compare companies and take leverage/debt into account you could use the EV/EBIT ratio instead. Its slightly more complicated to calculate and isn't presented by as many data sources though. Enterprise Value (EV) can be said to represent the value of the company if someone would buy it today and then pay off all its (interest bearing) debt. EV is essentially calculated like this: (Market Capitalization plus cash & cash equivalents)  minus interest-bearing debt.  This is then divided by EBIT (Earnings before interest and tax) to get the ratio. One drawback of this ratio though is that it can't be used for financials since their balance sheet pretty much consists of debt and the Enterprise Value therefore doesn't tell us very much. Also, like the P/E ratio it is dependent on fresh numbers. A balance sheet is just a glimpse of the companys financial situation on ONE DAY, and this could (and probably will, although not drastically for bigger companies) change to the next day. Yes. There are exceptions under the pre-JOBS laws to allow unaccredited investors (off the top of my head I don't remember the limit, but 35 sounds right). However, it increases the amount of information the company has to give to those investors.   Post-JOBS you're allowed to have up to 500 unaccredited investors and as far as I know, it doesn't really change the information the company has to give. "From the perspective of a small business owner:  First there are no entry level positions.  There are only lower paying positions and higher paying positions.  Get the idea that employers are supposed to be your post secondary education out of your mind.  Replace that with working your ass off and impressing employers with your skill set.  The reality is I make a hiring decision based first on these two accounting factors. #1 How much do I have to invest in this person to make them effective #2 How long until this person is covering his/her own overhead and begin to turn a profit. Then you get into ""is this person going to fit with my team"" etc..  I am always going to choose the person that has the best return formula for my business.  Here's a hint, it's the same formula for choosing vendors and making capital purchases.  It's also the very same formula that my customers use when they consider buying from me.  Even a single person in my organization that doesn't fit that formula will cost me business through the loss of customers or not getting a customer we're going after.  For me it works, for candidates looking for a career guidance councilor, it does not. In the capitalist economy my job is to make sure the lights are on, the products or services are good, and your paycheck clears.  If you like me doing my job, then your job is to make me more money, keep my customers happy, and bring new customers to the company.  Entry level doesn't do that so there are no entry level jobs in my company." Many people have provided very good answers to this question and all the answers provide sound advice and justification. Below are some of my thoughts on the questions that you have put forward. 1) The investment manager question: The returns on your capital for a half year has been quite low; having said that, some investments do take more than half year to show some growth. You could try talking to your investment manager and ask where your money has been deployed and why the returns are low. If there are no real explanation given forth (which would be more likely as you have mentioned your investment manager does not like to discuss your money with you) you should conside Xolorus & Pete's advice and forthwith take all your money from investment manager and park it in the bank till you figure out what to do next with it. 2) Finances are not my forte: At 22 finance is nobodies forte, it takes longer than that; however having said that, how do you know finance is actually not your forte? Being a computer science graduate you would be more than comfortable with the mathematics required for finance. You may not have looked seriously at finance till now (I assume by your statement). Once way to be certain about this would be self learning, some good books have been refered above and there are online information, courses and articles on the Internet, for example here. You could give some spare time and explore if finance interests you or not. 3) If finance interests you: Then consider the 30K as your seed fund and take a small portion of it say 2K and try out your hand at investing on your own in the instruments that you feel most comfortable and see how you fare, you are young enough to take the risk. Rest of the money you could put in other low risk instruments (that you have identified through self study) 4) If finance does not interest you: The probably you are better off with an investment manager, as observed above, it will take some time for you to identify him/her 5) On returns: As mentioned above different instruments produce returns differently, however, one question that is universally asked is how much return on an invetment shoule one expect (you were expecting more than $12 on your investment). It is a difficult question to answer as invetment returns and investment needs depend on a persons financial goals and risk taking profile. One way to have some measure is to take 15-20 years CAGR of the stock index return and reduce it by 2-3%, that is (in many cases, not all) a reasonable return expectation in medium-long term. "You could have some of the chaos and create a product for yourself, which is owned fully by you, where nobody would ever be able to fire you or go over your head or oust you or force you to sell.   That's the beauty of bootstrapping.  My essay was not anti-startup and it was not anti-fun-creative-chaos. It was anti-venture capital, anti-pipe dreams, anti-selling-yourself.   My whole blog is pro-building-products because products as assets, which make money -- and the difference between a normal person with a job (even at a startup) and the truly rich is that the rich have assets and the normos just have time.   I aim to be ""truly rich"" and not sell my time. Thus my 3-year journey into products. Thus my blog."