To be completely honest, I learned much about investing while I was jailed for about a month, due to refusing breathalyzer test. I had a cellmate who straight up looked like a thug, tattoos and attitude to match. He was there for violation of parole, but before that he had been in prison for about 7 years for armed robbery! In that time he read books and books and even more books on investing and finance. He even got so far as to reading into currencies trading, according to him.

It seemed he still retained some of that knowledge when he got picked up again and passed some of down to me. Things like mutual funds, bond funds, stocks, interest rates, high frequency trading, day trading, and strategy were topics covered during our very long conversations. Much of it flew past my head because at the time I had very little experience with finance and technicals, however.

I took what I learned while in jail, and just sort of went with it.

My advice to you is to read. I like Google Finance, but Yahoo! Finance is also very popular. Go to those sites and just try to figure out what the numbers mean. What the symbols mean. Look it up! Check out http://www.investopedia.com/ There you will find definitions to the many terms used by financiers. Go to reddit.com/r/investing and look through what people have discussed. Research, reading, and asking questions is what I recommend.

Currently these are my positions:

3D Systems (DDD) Corning (GLW) Vale SA (VALE) Exone (XONE)

Two those are 3d printing technology stocks. Corning is the maker and supplier of Gorilla Glass, and Vale is a Brazilian mining company that I think is incorporated here in the U.S.