Investing - Starting Out

Hi!

I thought that I'd start a blog to discuss my progress with educating myself, and finding out about investments.

I have been interested in investing, but have to admit, know nothing much about what to do or how to do it.  Finally, I thought that it was time to start to look into what is involved, what investment types are out there, what theiy are like profile-wise, and ultimately how I might make money out of them.

Since I'm a bit of a scrooge, I don't easily part with cash, without knowing that what I'm buying is what I need, and represents good value for money.

So, my first foray into investing started off with value investing, and how people have done this in the past.  This obviously brings up names like Ben Graham, Phil Fisher, Warren Buffet and many others.  This way of working rings true with me, because I like the idea of picking stock that is good value for money, or is good quality, and purchasing it.

I find during my research that this area of investing has an almost cult like following.  to the point where people seem almost to want to mention Warren Buffet to make themselves seem credible (whereupon everyone gets on their knees)  I like to look into what I'm doing a little further.  I have read about the tenets of investing and how they work, and how a lot of the people who offer stock picks completely fall outside of these tenets.  
To give you an example, they tell you that you should buy something, hold something sell something, and many other permutations that possibly mean something to them, but not so much to the casual user.  As a value investor, I would expect that I would need to know about the fundamentals of the stock in question, how much it represents in terms of value, what the managers are like, and finally that the price of the stock is below the value of that company.  Many of these companies don't actually tell you the value of the stock, and I even see possible evidence of them only picking the really strong buying positions (of which the subscriber of the service is not informed)  This seems like a nice little ploy to get people into investing in stocks and believing that they're getting true value stocks, when really their subscription to that service only allows the people running it to further invest in the real value.

I don't think that there's any substitute for knowledge.  How can we subscribe to such a service, which may make money, if we're not aware of the true nature of the stock on which they're reporting?  We surely can't.

I suppose we could subscribe, then take the time to value the company ourselves, and research ourselves, and make our own mind up, but then what are you really paying for, as it certainly would no longer represent value for money.  Isn't that by itself an oxymoron?  You are a value investor that invests part of your money in a 
subscription that by itself does not represent value?

Valuing a business is the stuff I like, a lot of it is mathematical, and fairly straight forward at that, then there's research into the managers of the company, and whether what they're saying matches up with what the numbers tell you.  Interesting stuff, I think.

Those points aside, this looks like quite a promising area to search further into.  My trouble then is that I have no idea of how I might pick a stock, and time it correctly to buy, and thus extract the best reward for doing so.  Next, I have to look at trading patterns, will that allow me a greater insight into what 
the stock is doing, and when I should "pull the trigger"?