hi nikhil
Welcome to valuepickr.
coming to your query I think this is the problem with almost all wannabe investors who want to learn and then invest wisely
Personally I think forums like VP provide perfect learning platform for guys like u who wants to start equity investing after doing his own research.
I learned most of my investing craft from forums and books like the one described by donald and the other which I consider my own bhagwad gita which is One Up on Wall Street. by Peter Lynch.
A combination of the two books should help you out by…
1). Lynch’s book will provide you a framework on how to find out good stocks
2). Dorsey book will teach you how to analyse the stocks you have found out.
Regarding the query of being early in an idea it is not necessary to be too early in all ideas to make big bucks.
What is important is to ride the full journey of a great company and even more important is to allocate a sufficient enough sum to make the journey fruitful besides being enjoyable.
You can read through the entire threads of various success stories like ajanta/kaveri/astral/mps/mayur/atul auto/thinksoft/rs soft/PIinds etc and many more as well as the flop stories like riddhi siddhi/lakshmi energy so that you get an idea about how investors think at various stages of journey.