Not too long ago, CNN Money posted “The smartest advice I ever got.” The article is really just a list of forty really good pieces of financial advice. In that list, Whitney Tilson described the secret to learning how to invest — the secret of the stock market:

About 12 years ago I was trying to learn more about personal investing. My good friend Bill Ackman, currently a hedge fund manager for Pershing Square Capital Management, told me, “Read all of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire-Hathaway shareholder letters. That’s all you need to know.”

The Berkshire-Hathaway shareholder letters are available as PDFs from Berkshire Hathaway’s website. They date from 1977 and were all written by Warren Buffett. If you aren’t familiar with the ‘Oracle of Omaha,’ the simplest explanation is his net worth: $62 billion. Buffett’s father was a stock broker — comfortable, but not exactly rich.

I can’t recommend enough that you take the time to read these letters. Investing in the stock market seems like black magic, but in addressing his shareholders, Buffett boils down the matter to the principles of sound investing.

One of the reasons that I think Berkshire Hathaway has done so well under Buffett’s leadership is the fact that he can look at investments clearly. As a rule, most investors let their emotions — at least their optimism — affect their decisions. But Buffett can simply state facts and move on. Consider his predictions for insurance (the cornerstone of Berkshire Hathaway’s ability to generate revenue) for 2008:

That party is over. It’s a certainty that insurance-industry profit margins, including ours, will fall significantly in 2008. Prices are down, and exposures inexorably rise. Even if the U.S. has its third consecutive catastrophe-light year, industry profit margins will probably shrink by four percentage points or so. If the winds roar or the earth trembles, results could be far worse.

Personally, my first reaction to the idea that the best part of my investment will soon be facing trouble is to worry. Maybe I should sell. Maybe it won’t be too bad. Maybe I should never have made that investment in the first place.

Maybe I should just calmly consider the situation and look at the numbers. Buffett spends two pages explaining how Berkshire Hathaway becaame so heavily involved in the insurance business — and why it was a good move. He is confident in the company’s overall investments because he has done the research to know not only what makes a good investment, but also what factor affect an investment and how strongly.

Buffett saw the housing bubble coming. Personally, I’m willing to bet that insurance companies are going to have a tough time in the next couple of years, too. That doesn’t mean I’m going to assume that insurance makes for a bad investment. I’ve been listening to Buffett: “If you’re an investor, you’re looking on what the asset is going to do, if you’re a speculator, you’re commonly focusing on what the price of the object is going to do, and that’s not our game.”

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Investing hard earned money is something that many Americans tend to shy away from. There are a variety of reasons why, perhaps it’s too risky, too complicated, or we think we don’t have enough money to invest at all. Our attitude towards investing needs some adjustment. We shouldn’t look at investing as something power hungry suit wearing tycoons from the 80’s do, rather we should look at it as an opportunity to help out companies and causes that have the same ideals we do.

Companies We Can Believe In
The first thing we should realize when we start investing is that we are giving our money to someone else. Generally, we wouldn’t give money to someone we didn’t like, right? So supposing you were against Big Oil, would you give your money to an oil company? No, you would most likely give your money to an alternative energy company, like solar or wind power. The reason why some people hesitate to do this however, is that the cash return on investment with solar or wind power would be significantly less than returns from an oil company.

As investors, we need to determine what our goals are. Are we trying to make money, or are we trying to help out a cause we believe in? If we are simply trying to make money, then we don’t have to worry about what those companies are doing with our investment money, as long as we get our return. If we’re investing in something we believe in, then return on our investment may not come in the form of dividends, but as advances in the field we bought into. My choice to invest in solar power may not net me much in cash returns, but hopefully in the future the technology will have developed enough to change the way this nation uses energy. Personally, I find that outcome much more rewarding than a check for a few dollars every month.

Returns Other Than Cash
The term ‘investing’ often conjures the image of climbing stock market charts and cash returns. But when you think of it in broader terms, investing can take many forms. Investing something implies that you are willing to help out a cause simply because you agree with its goals. Whether it be your time, your money, or your resources, investments are sometimes the only way those causes can realize those goals.

Nonprofit organizations are a major player in world change, and often they are solely supported by the contributions of individuals of like mind. If your goal is the same as these organizations, you may consider investing in them. Benefits from the government like tax credits are of course a major benefit, but more than that you’re working to help a cause that otherwise couldn’t succeed without your help. Investing doesn’t mean you have to give money to corporations, it means you give money to anyone who you deem worthy.