Anyone know anything about investing?

sure, that your get rich scheme will most likely result in your becoming more impoverished.

theres something called a risk/reward continuum. if somebody promises you a huge return on your investment, its likely extremely risky and you could lose everything.

Ha ha ha!  I am on a similar journey myself.  My grandfather was in finance.  My father was in finance.  I tried to break the mold and become an engineer but here I am.  In finance.  Learning the ropes.  I dont know a lot, but I havent lost any money in the stock market yet, which means I know more than most people, as sad as that may be.

Anyway, here is what Ive learned so far.

You can start by losing all those dreams of becoming a dot-com millionaire because thats a load of crap Wall Street feeds you so you get all crazy and buy their stocks at too high a price.  Then they cash out and youre left holding the (empty) bag.

Intelligent investors look for businesses that are run well, selling at low prices.  The best investor in the world (Warren Buffett, 2nd richest man after Bill Gates) has earned about 30% a year (for 45 years) on his investments.  That may not seem like a lot, but that means hes doubling his money every 3 years.  Nobody can touch that track record when it comes to investing.  So if youre buying stocks, thats probably the ceiling on how much youre going to make.

Real Estate, gold, oil, gemstones, and god knows what else are all different beasts and require a whole other field of training.

Anyway, if you really want to invest, youre going to want to sock away 3-6 months of money in a savings account so you dont have to sell immature stocks to pay your bills.  While youre doing that, read this investors guide at about.com.

it will give you the right mindset.  This kid is smart and prudent.  Thats the kind of person you need to be, because the market takes wild swings, often without a good reason, and you need to know exactly how much your stock is worth so you know when its time to sell.

Finding out how much a stock is worth is really complicated, and thats what Im working on now.  Teach yourself how to analyze balance sheets and income statements so you can catch the funky accounting tricks companies pull.

Make sure you know what youre doing before you put any money down.  You need to be absolute zen master before you start playing with money, because CEOs will lie through their teeth to try to get you to buy into their pipe dream.

Anyway, if you get through that site and you still want to go through with this, let me know and I can tell you about some other books / websites.