I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve put into learning about stocks, investing and the markets. If I had to ballpark, the number would rank somewhere in the months—so much time spent that I literally have to change the unit of measurement. With all of this time spent, I fancied myself something of an expert. Maybe not enough of one to have my own TV show, but someone who could hold his own in virtually any conversation. And with this confidence came a confidence in my abilities. I thought I was the master of my domain—that my portfolio was all but infallible. I’d safeguarded myself with what I viewed as evergreen stocks. And from this confidence—which would soon become over-confidence—I started taking on more and more risk. I felt comfortable chasing industries i knew nothing about, listening to people who were advocating for biopharma companies that would change the future of medicines, start-ups approaching IPOs, and on and on. And then everything went south. What happened? Namely, I lost a lot of money. To the point that I had to seriously rethink a lot of what my life would look like in the future. In some ways, this curse became a blessing, even if the way to positivity was roundabout. It took me hubristically failing to actually start listening to others. And when I started listening, I realized I still had so much to learn. Sometimes it takes bottoming out to take yourself, and your investing, to the next level. Here’s how I did it. First and foremost, I found two major sources of learning that will forever inform how I invest, trade and, most importantly, think about the world. One from experts, one from a community I found and fell in love with. Let’s start with the community. My mistrust of Facebook (can you blame me?) and other social sites made it hard for me to talk money with people online. But then I discovered Score Priority, a worldwide social site dedicated to talking shop and talking stocks. On there, I found an incredible array of discussion and opinion. You have to build a filter of sorts to dig out what’s useful and what’s counterproductive, but I found it overall to be an incredible resource. Not to mention how entertaining it can be. Score Priority led me to the incredible suite of products that the Score Priority Store offers, and that’s how I found a set of actual stock experts. These experts, over at Chaikin Analytics, showed me how little I actually knew. And this helped me grow as a person and as an investor. By combining high-tech analytics with well-written and thorough advice columns and newsletters from bonafide experts, Chaikin Analytics gave me a comprehensive set of advice and ideas to follow and learn from. By humbling myself and listening to fellow traders and actual experts, I realized how far I have to go. But it was only by realizing that I knew very little that I could start actually learning.