What has been your worst investment mistake, why and what warning sign did you ignore before it happened?

Not taking my cost basis out of a telecom fund I bought in the early 90s when it soared like 10x by 2000. I thought a mutual fund was "diversified enough" and "run by experts" that they would have taken some profits to protect the gains. WRONG. It fell back to a bit lower than my cost basis.

If you were starting from scratch today, what would you NOT learn or continue to learn?

I would follow my advice to start with 80% in a few index funds such as the Total US stock market fund and a Total International fund in maybe 80:20 ratio and then use the 20% to "explore" ways to try and beat buying and holding with annual rebalancing of those two funds.

If you want to get more funds, I offer a free sample of my newsletter where I give names and weightings for 80:20 & 50:50, aggressive & conservative, portfolios made of index funds for the 80% I recommend you buy and hold but for annual rebalancing.

If you could only keep ONE investment rule for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Understand compounding and the effects of taxes on frequent trading in taxable accounts.

To what extent do you know if a news item truly matters to your investment style?

Generally if "everyone" and especially CNBC's Jim Cramer "knows that this is true" then take it with a grain of salt. There is a reason Cramer hasn't published his annual returns for his portfolio in years.

Where do you reccomend to learn to invest, finance, etc...??

Learn to use Excel and calculate your annual return for your investments and adjust for new money added or taken out. If you can't match or beat index funds, then do something fun with the time or get help.

Any apps, websites, tools recommendations??

I haven't updated this in years as Amazon changes links and editions often and I hardly make anything on commissions these days but there is a good list of books here to get at the library or buy for your own library.

Reading List - KirkLindstrom.com