Learning to invest: books, podcasts, YouTube and courses worth your time

How to spot good teaching

• It explains risks and costs, not only upside.
• It does not promise returns or tell you what to buy next week.
• The author discloses how they earn money, including affiliate links and paid promotions.
• It teaches how to think, so you can check the claims yourself.

Widely read books

• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, John C. Bogle: the case for low-cost index funds.
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Burton Malkiel: how markets price information, and why beating them is hard.
• The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham: value thinking and the “margin of safety” idea.
• The Simple Path to Wealth, JL Collins: a plain-spoken approach to saving, index funds and independence.

Podcasts, YouTube, forums and courses

Pick a few creators and judge them on the list above rather than on their latest prediction. Community forums can be great for questions and terrible for conviction trades: treat posts as ideas to check, not instructions. A paid course is rarely necessary; regulators and exchanges publish free investor-education material, and your broker’s learning centre covers the mechanics.

Learn the vocabulary first

Much of the jargon hides a simple idea. Our other guides explain the terms in plain English: market basics, funds, order types, ratios, filings and account types.

Be most suspicious of anyone who is certain. The honest answer to most investing questions starts with “it depends”.