Anyone Want To Briefly Help A Young Investor Create a Portfolio?

no offense but if your asking this forum for questions on how to invest then you should probably stick to an index.

Some basic books , assuming from your post that you are a long term investor, are intelligent investor and security analysis by ben graham. Warren Buffett annual reports also provide good insight.

Seriously though, you shouldnt be speculative with your parent's money if that's all they got...

3 letters: E T F

easy and cheap way to diversify

as above post said, probably safer to stick with index, but if youre interested in specific sectors/industries/regions, using ETFs is probably a safer way to play it.

you mentioned india and brazil- what about an emerging market etf such as BIK (S&P BRIC 40) or EEM?

for telecom theres IST, and for natural gas (well, oil and gas exploration) theres XOP

check this site out: https://www.spdrs.com/

Alright thanks guys. Yeah, I was just looking for tips/interesting tickers to look into, I plan on doing a lot (and I mean a LOT) of research/reading myself and I'm definitely not looking into anything too speculative because I'm not going to throw away my parents' money away either. But what are the best books for total noobs like me? I'd see myself as more of a buy-and-hold investor so are there good books/sites on that?

Post above said it all - Security Analysis and Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. Probably the most well regarded value investing books available. If you're looking to buy and hold that's easily the best starting point. Also I know I may get some shit for this but I might recommend Jim Cramer's books on investing. He dumbs things down enough for anyone to understand. You can build your knowledge from there.

But ya until you know your shit stick with SPDRs.

sorry to plug, but if you're down for a little risk in your portfolio, check out the blog in my sig below and keep an eye on it. its about to become much more sophisticated in the near future, but no matter what direction it goes he'll always roll out a slew of "Hot Shorts" for you to look into. John Tabacco's (CEO, LocateStock) at the top of the shorts game and gets some powerful data from his Matador platform, which is the only program of its kind out there. If you're down to take a small portion of your portfolio and do some swing trading, the returns tend to speak for themselves on the pics. like i said, it's in its beginning stages right now, hence the simple blog layout, but its going to become a lot bigger. keep an eye on it forsure.

Margin positions (either long or short) don't really belong in an investment portfolio.

If you believe in the 35-year economic cycle, small-caps outperformed after the 1974 oil crisis until the rest of the market exited the secular bear in the early '80s. My view is that the 35-year economic cycle reflects demographic trends, and it makes sense that as there's restructuring in the economy, people will find younger businesses to work with.