Learning — Stock Trading & Day Trading¶

A short, deliberately curated list. Most retail trading content is noise — entertainment dressed as education. These are the high-signal exceptions.

Books — start here¶

Foundations (read in this order)¶

The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing (Larimore, Lindauer, LeBoeuf). The boring, default-path guide that beats most active strategies. Read first.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Burton Malkiel). The case for efficient markets and indexing.
The Intelligent Investor (Benjamin Graham). 1949, still relevant. Read chapters 8 and 20 minimum. The rest is context.
The Four Pillars of Investing (William Bernstein). Theory, history, psychology, business of investing in 200 readable pages.

Once you're considering active strategies¶

Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard (Mark Minervini). Specific to growth/momentum equity trading; one of the few practitioner books with verifiable returns.
Following the Trend (Andreas Clenow). Systematic trend following in futures, but principles transfer to equity ETFs. Workable for a full-time job.
Stocks for the Long Run (Jeremy Siegel). Empirical case for equities over multi-decade horizons.

Risk and process¶

Trading in the Zone (Mark Douglas). Trading psychology done right.
The Hour Between Dog and Wolf (John Coates). Neuroscience of risk-taking. Will explain why your brain betrays you in volatile markets.
More Money Than God (Sebastian Mallaby). History of hedge funds. Understanding what you're actually competing against.

Quantitative / academic¶

Expected Returns (Antti Ilmanen). Dense, academic, definitive on what drives returns across asset classes.
Quantitative Momentum (Wesley Gray, Jack Vogel). Practitioner take on the momentum factor.

Skip these¶

Anything titled "How I made $X in Y" by an unverified author.
"Get rich" books from financial entertainers.
Books promising specific systems that "always work."

Online courses and education (worth paying for)¶

Coursera / edX investing courses from Yale, Wharton, etc. — solid foundations, free to audit.
Khan Academy — Macroeconomics + Finance & Capital Markets — free, surprisingly deep.
Bionic Turtle (FRM prep) — financial risk management; rigorous.
CMT Association — Chartered Market Technician program; if you're serious about TA, this is the credential and curriculum.
AQR's research library (free): aqr.com/Insights/Research. Some of the best-written quantitative finance papers.

YouTube — high-signal channels¶

Patrick Boyle — ex-hedge-fund quant, dry humor, no nonsense. Macro and current-events explainers.
Ben Felix (Common Sense Investing) — evidence-based passive investing. Counter-programming to the hype.
Joseph Carlson — long-term dividend/quality investing; portfolio transparency.
Lyn Alden — macro analysis, often nuanced. Her Substack/newsletter is the primary work; YouTube is summary.
The Plain Bagel — financial concepts explained well; aimed at beginner-to-intermediate.

Channels to be skeptical of¶

Anyone whose business model is selling you a course, a "trading room" subscription, or a Discord. Their incentive is not aligned with your trading; it's aligned with new sign-ups.

If a creator's primary income is courses, ask: why isn't trading their primary income, if they're so good?

Real research and data¶

SEC EDGAR (sec.gov/edgar) — primary source for company filings (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, proxy statements). Free, authoritative. Where serious analysis starts.
FRED (fred.stlouisfed.org) — Federal Reserve macroeconomic data. The gold standard for free macro data.
Federal Reserve papers and minutes — if you want to understand what's actually driving rates and policy.
SSRN (papers.ssrn.com) — academic finance papers, often free PDFs.
Robeco / AQR / Research Affiliates research libraries — institutional-grade research, freely shared.
Damodaran Online (pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar) — Aswath Damodaran's free valuation course materials, data, and spreadsheets. Required if you want to value companies seriously.

Tools¶

Charts and analysis¶

TradingView — de-facto charting; free tier covers most needs.
Finviz — free screener and heatmap.
Stock Rover — paid; deep fundamental screening.
Portfolio Visualizer — free backtest of asset allocations and simple factor strategies.

Research and news¶

WSJ, FT, Bloomberg — paywalled but worth it if active.
Benzinga Pro — fast news, alerts; for active traders.
Substack newsletters — Doomberg, Lyn Alden, others. Selectively useful.

Data feeds for backtesting¶

yfinance (Python) — free, good enough for individual study.
Tiingo, Polygon, IEX Cloud, Norgate — paid, higher-quality, point-in-time, no survivorship bias.
CRSP / Compustat via WRDS — institutional-grade; available to academics.

Communities¶

r/Bogleheads, r/personalfinance — sane discussion of long-term investing.
r/securityanalysis, r/SecurityAnalysis — fundamental analysis, more serious.
r/algotrading, r/quant — systematic / quantitative trading.
Twitter / X — fintwit has gems and a lot of noise. Curate aggressively.
Avoid: r/wallstreetbets is entertainment, not education. Treat it like reality TV — funny, sometimes informative about behavior, not a source of strategy.

Practice rhythms — actual education, not entertainment¶

A 6-month learning sprint that beats most "courses":

Months 1–2: read Bogleheads' Guide + A Random Walk + The Four Pillars. Open a brokerage. Set up auto-investing in index funds. Don't actively trade.
Months 3–4: read The Intelligent Investor + Stocks for the Long Run. Browse SEC filings of 5 companies you use. Build a watchlist. Paper-trade ideas in a spreadsheet (date, ticker, hypothetical entry/stop/target, outcome).
Months 5–6: read Trading in the Zone + Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard. Define a small (≤10% of investable assets) active satellite. Pick one style (e.g., momentum-on-daily-chart swing). Backtest in Portfolio Visualizer or TradingView. Paper trade for 3 months minimum before any real money.

After this, you've done more than 99% of retail traders ever do. Whether you go further is a deliberate choice, not a YouTube rabbit hole.