How good is Wall Street Survivor for learning about investing?
"While I've never used Wall Street Survivor, I took a look over the marketing materials and I've seen multiple similar contests run among investment interns also just out of college.  I see some good here and some bad. First off, I love interactive web-based tutorials.  I've used one to learn the syntax of a new programming language and I find the instant feedback and the ability to work at your own pace very useful.  The reviews seem to say that Wall Street Survivor is a good way to learn the basics of how trading stocks works and the lingo.  Also, it seems pretty fun which I've found helps a lot. Wall Street Survivor will hopefully teach you that there are many real stock markets and that they may have somewhat different prices and they likely take the real and timely data from a single market. Wall Street Survivor also frightens me.  The big problem that I see with interns running similar contests is that the market is extremely random over short to medium periods of time.  An intern can make an awful portfolio or even pick stocks at random and still win the contest.  These interns know a lot about the randomness in markets already so they don't believe they are trading geniuses because they won a contest, I'm not sure there is much to temper this view on this web-site. Also, while Wall Street Survivor teaches you about trading it doesn't appear to teach you about investing.  The website appears to encourage short term views and changing positions a lot and doesn't seem to simulate the full trading costs (including fees) that would eat away at the gains of a individual investor that trades that much.  It gives some help with longer term thinking like diversification, but also seems to encourage trading that makes Wall Street Survivor more money, but are likely detrimental to the user. I would say have fun with Wall Street Survivor. Let it teach you some things about trading, but don't give the site much if any money.  At the same time, pick up a copy of short book called ""A Random Walk Down Wall Street"" and start learning about investing at the same time.  Feel free to come back to Stack Exchange with questions along the way." To be honest, wall street survivor is good but when it comes to learning the stock markets from Europe, Beat wall street is the game to be playing. You can try it out for your self here on http://beatwallstreet.equitygameonline.com/ It is easy to use and there are monthly prizes available to winners, such as Ipads, Iphones and students who play it the game can win internships at top investment banks and brokers I find this site to be really poor for the virtual play portion, especially the options league.  After you place a trade, you can't tell what you actually traded.  The columns for Exp and type are blank.  I have had better luck with OptionsXpress virtual trader.  Although they have recently changed their criteria for a non funded accounts and will only keep them active for 90 days.  I know the cboe has a paper trading platform but I haven't tried it out yet.
You should invest your money. To figure out what rate of return you need, use this equation: (How Much Money You Want Per Year) / (Total Amount of Cash You Have) = (Annualized Interest Rate) If we plug in the amount of annualized interest you can expect to safely get while not managing your money personally, 2% by my estimate, we get X / 1.2m = 0.02%; X=24K/year A measly $24,000 / year.  Many people say that you can get 10, 12, even 30% return on your investment. I won't speculate  on if this is true, but I will guarantee that you cannot get those returns simply by handing your money over to a money manager. So your options are, 1) Earn a guaranteed $24,000 and earn the rest you need to live by working 2) Learn to invest your money (and then do so intelligently) and earn enough to live off the interest To learn how to invest your money, read Beating the Street, by Peter Lynch. https://www.amazon.ca/Beating-Street-Peter-Lynch/dp/0671891634 Good luck! Audible has it.    http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/How-to-Win-Friends-Influence-People-Audiobook/B002V5BV96/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1409496635&amp;sr=1-1  No clue on torrents.    If I had to pick three for someone just starting, grab the above and One up on Wall Street and Getting to Yes.    That would put you on a great path.  There is a lot of garbage in the category, but On Up was my beginning investment bible in high school and Getting to Yes is something anyone should read/listen to get a better understanding of basic negotiation. Warren Buffett answered this question very well at the 2009 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.  He said that it was important to read everything you can about investing.  What you will find is that you will have a number of competing ideas in your head.  You will need to think these through and find the best way to solve them that fits you. You will mostly learn how to invest through good examples.  There are fewer good examples out there than you might think, given how many books there are and how many people get paid to give advice in this area.  If you want to see how professional investors actually think about specific investments, over a thousand investment examples can be found at www.valueinvestorsclub.com, just login as a guest.  The site is run by Joel Greenblatt (you would benefit from reading his books also), and it will give you a sense of the work that investors put into their research. Good luck. [Macabus](http://macabacus.com/learn) is one of my favorite resources. It walks you through the model, top to bottom - and best of all it's free.   When you get closer to understanding what you want to do long term, your firm will probably recommend/pay for a more comprehensive program like Training the Street or Wall Street Prep.   It's really hard to master this without working in the field, but if you can demonstrate that you have a strong grasp of the finance, accounting, and modeling (mainly excel) concepts, you will be a rockstar in your interviews. No. You're lucky, maybe, but not really a successful investor. Warren Buffet is, you're not him. Sometimes it is easier to pick stocks to bid on, sometimes its harder. I got my successes too. It is easier on a raising market, especially when it is recovering after a deep fall, like now. But generally it is very hard to beat the market. You need to remember that an individual investor, not backed by deep pockets, algo-trading and an army of analysts, is in a disadvantage on the market by definition. So what can you do? Get the deep pockets, algo-trading and an army of analysts. How? By pooling with others - investing through funds. "I would start with The Intelligent Investor.  It's more approachable than Security Analysis.  I read the revised edition which includes post-chapter commentary and footnotes from Jason Zweig. I found the added perspective helpful since the original book is quite old. Warren Buffet has called Intelligent Investor ""the best book about investing ever written.""  (Source)  I would suggest that endorsement ranks it before the other.  :) Security Analysis is more detailed and, perhaps, oriented at a more professional audience – though individual investors would certainly benefit from reading it.  Security Analysis is used as a textbook on value investing in some university-level business & finance courses. (p.s. If you haven't yet heard about William Bernstein's The Intelligent Asset Allocator, I also recommend adding it to your reading list.)" A couple of good books I enjoyed and found very understandable (regarding the stock market): As for investment information you can get lost for days in Investopedia.  Start in the stock section and click around. The tutorials here (free) give a good introduction to different financial topics. Regarding theoretical knowledge: start with what you know well, like your career or your other interests.  You'll get a running start that way. Beyond that, it depends on what area of finance you want to start with.  If it's your personal finances, I and a lot of other bloggers write about it all the time.  Any of the bloggers on my blogroll (see my profile for the link) will give you a good perspective.  If you want to go head first into planning your financial life, take a look at Brett Wilder's The Quiet Millionaire.  It's very involved and thorough. And, of course, ask questions here. Just romped a competition my school had, won $100. I'm not participating in this, but the key is to trade options. I made 244% in 2 months off only 3 trades. Won another competition last semester in my investment analysis class as well