standard method for learning more about a specific sector? (particularly biotech sector)
The important piece here is not necessarily understanding intimate details of biological engineering per se, but rather understanding how the business operates as a singular unit. It is also important to understand the business case for a firm, the evolution of demand for its products/services and the cost of its revenue. To understand a particular sector of the market, you should begin by studying how that sector interacts with and is influenced by the larger market and economy as a whole, both domestic and abroad. From there, you should study individual companies and again see how they interact with one another, the sector, market, etc. Many biotech firms have a different offering and meet different business and consumer demands. Some are near term solutions to existing problems, some long. It is important to see how the firms collectively interact with the consumer base and then differentiate on an individual level.
Quant has been an interesting part of finance, but I always thought they missed something really important.   The standard methods of statistical analysis can’t explain what’s going on with economy and firms. Otherwise, quant hedge funds would have been making money all the time.   The conventional quants find patterns in data, test them then go live. These models work until some fundamental (or not so fundamental) shifts in the market. Then they find themselves back in the drawing board looking for their next model. This kind of analysis seems like a lot of grind for fairly  unpredictable returns.   There are more and more companies that don’t lend themselves well to fundamental analysis as we know it. Financial data and some poor flawed human analysts insights alone can no longer explain much.   This is a unique set of challenges that Data Science, more specifically AI could solve. The speed at which AI can learn and process information is just mind boggling. AI can learn the entire financial history of decision making in minutes. It can recognize patterns, make sophisticated analysis and constantly update its probability tables as the new information comes in. This is something no human can compete with.    Imagine a quantitative engine that adapts as the economy changes. It could draw heaps of unstructured data about a company, learn from it in real time, make course corrections and spit out its recommendations.   To the degree that human decision making is involved in the strategic decision making of companies, we will need the depth of context that can be provided by humans, but I see the field moving away from excel spreadsheets with fairly poor predicting capacity to AI models with strong predictive capacity. Public sector and private industry retirement plans, taxation and estate planning would be the most substantial differences between the two countries. The concepts for accumulating wealth are the same, and if you are doing anything particularly lucrative with an above average amount of risk, the aforementioned differences are not very relevant, for a twenty something. "From Investopedia:  ""Beating the market"" is a difficult phrase to analyze. It can be used   to refer to two different situations: 1) An investor, portfolio manager, fund or other investment specialist   produces a better return than the market average. The market average   can be calculated in many ways, but usually a benchmark - such as the   S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average index - is a good   representation of the market average. If your returns exceed the   percentage return of the chosen benchmark, you have beaten the market   - congrats! (To learn more, read Benchmark Your Returns With Indexes.) 2) A company's earnings, sales or some other valuation metric is   superior to that of other companies in its industry. Matching the market, I would presume will be generating returns equivalent to the index you are comparing your portfolio with. If for a sector/industry then it would be the returns generated by the sector/industry. As an index is more or less a juxtaposition of the market as a whole, people tend to use an index." Think again.    **All prosperity** ultimately comes from the generation -the *creation*- of wealth.    We create wealth out of the ether when we take a thing -a physical item- which is worth little and turn it into a thing that is worth more with the power of an idea and the application of labor.  On a macro scale, that translates into the manufacturing sector.  The manufacturing sector in the US has *changed*, it's not gone.  It's spectacularly healthy in a plethroa of new ways, while all the old ones have died off or are dying a slow death.  The new manufacturing sector demands skill, not just attendance.  *Unskilled* work is drying up, because under current laws unskilled people cost more to employ than they can possibly produce, but someone with a skill in trade can get a job in half a heartbeat, especially if they are willing to move to where the job is.  No nation of any size can prosper without the internal generation of real wealth.  The idea that we can be a nation of bankers and managers is laughable and is precisely what got us into our current situation.  The future is and *will always be* in making new things.  Labor is not a derogative word and it does *not* equate to a second-class existence, as pay rates are currently demonstrating.  It was geniuses working in the trades who were the innovators and entrepreneurs that built American industrial power (thus, economic power) in the first place.    It will be again. https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/most-important-finance-books-2017-1  Bloomberg, finacial times, chat with traders, calculated risk, reuters, wsj, cnbc(sucks), bnn (if canadian)  Audio books on youtube helped me read a lot of finance books in a short amount of time, listen while working out.  One thing that helped me stand out at my student terms (4th year here) was learning outside of the classroom and joining an investment club. Learning programming can help if thats a strength, but its really not needed and  it can waste time if yoi wont reach a point to build tools.  Other than that at 18 you have more direction than i did, good luck! The technical skills (excel, matlab, econometrics) others posted are absolutely essential, but I have seen a ton of world class number crunchers who could not put anything in context.  My advice:  - Read any annual report for any company you find somewhat interesting, aim for reading 2 or 3 a week.  This is the best way to learn real world macro economics and get a very strong grasp on financial accounting  - Practice writing about what you learn. "I would recommend ""How to Read a Financial Report : For Managers, Entrepreneurs, Lenders, Lawyers, and Investors"" by John A. Tracy for the following reasons: I also think the book would bridge the gap nicely between a broad understanding of finance and a more serious technical know-how." Why is that? With all the successful investors (including myself on a not-infrequent basis) going for individual companies directly, wouldn't it make more sense to suggest that new investors learn how to analyse companies and then make their best guess after taking into account those factors? I have a different perspective here than the other answers.  I recently started investing in a Roth IRA for retirement. I do not have interest in micromanaging individual company research (I don't find this enjoyable at all) but I know I want to save for retirement. Could I learn all the details? Probably, as an engineer/software person I suspect I could. But I really don't want to. But here's the thing: For anyone else in a similar situation to me, the net return on investing into a mutual fund type arrangement (even if it returns only 4%) is still likely considerably higher than the return on trying to invest in stocks (which likely results in $0 invested, and a return of 0%). I suspect the overwhelming majority of people in the world are more similar to me than you - in that they have minimal interest in spending hours managing their money. For us, mutual funds or ETFs are perfect for this.