Reddit reviews Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset

Many individual stocks drastically under-perform the broader market index (e.g. S&P500, Russell3000). Historically, most of the growth in the market index comes from a select minority of "elite" stocks.

Many stocks fail. A minority hit it big. This is a deadly combination for investors whose strategy is to pick individual stocks. In fact, many mutual funds that pick individual stocks will underperform the market index in the long run when net of fees.

As an investor, you should make a choice about your own strategy:

1. If the odds don't scare you and you want to be an elite stock picker like Buffett, then you have to learn the principles of valuing assets. Some people have had tremendous success with this type of strategy. Many have failed. A reasonable introduction is this book
   
2. Instead of individual stocks, you can fill your portfolio with low-fee market indices. If you get a fancy enough broker, you can diversify the portfolio with indices that represent many different types of loosely-related assets (e.g. stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies). That's a lot more exposure than picking a few tech stocks.
   Whatever you decide, best of luck!
   
   For more general financial advice: Don't risk money you can't afford to lose. Buffett's wealth is the result of many years of respectable, constant growth. Large losses are very difficult to recover from and can ruin years of previous growth. To get rich you have to find a reliable strategy that compounds!

For a general Damodaran text, consider Investment Valuation

https://www.amazon.com/Investment-Valuation-Tools-Techniques-Determining/dp/111801152X

read more from Aswath Damodaran, he's one of the most highly regarded equity valuations experts. In addition, read the news from a reputable source (WSJ, FTs...) multiple times every day.

Be patient.

Aswath Damodaran is a great starting place for any new investor interesting in valuation methods.

His blog

One of this books, Investment Valutation

The DDM chapter from the above book

Basic .xls

If this is basically a video version of this book, it's nothing more than an intro to finance course. Nothing here for anyone other than a newbie.

His text, however, is quite a bit more detailed and thus worth going through, although as I've said before, his infatuation with DCF is sometimes hard to overlook. But his section on calculating "fundamental" multiples is something I've only found in 2 other investment books/texts, so definitely worth it.