Remember this, stock prices rarely go up if earnings is not getting better, so it is very possible to lose your shirt even when you think a company is very unvalued. Go read business history books - study the up and down of important companies from the past e.g. Xerox, IBM, RCA Walmart etc See if you can figure out repeating patterns between their stock prices and their changing fundamentals. If you want all the answers right away, I have an amazing deal - for $10k, I will tutor you for 2 days ;)