As a novice who want to acquire in investment, you should be specific to the kind of investment you want to grab the understanding before venturing into it, in Bitcointalk what we discuss is cryptocurrency and it have a specification of investment so it left for you to outline if you want to venture into Trading or Buying and Selling of crypto for short term duration or you want invest on long term duration.

Any investment have it own discipline and encouraging on what to do have to do with the nature of what you want to do specifically but now let me assume that you want a guidelines to invest in cryptocurrency and especially in Bitcoin or altcoin, so investing in bitcoins it depends on your understanding on Bitcoin and what you comprehend concerning bitcoin investment because Bitcoin have advantages and disadvantages before any body should queue to invest in bitcoin the knowledge should have been acquired to avoid regret after the investment.

Sometimes when people invest in altcoin they complain of lose everytime but to overcome a lose in any cryptocurrency investment you have to make a proper research of that particular project you want to invest to know the capability of the coin before you invest knowing that altcoin investment some of the coin's doesn't have good potential and they can die at any point, so it's good to make a research first to know the reputation and potential of the project, so with your findings will determine the duration of your investment with such project, but in bitcoins you can decide to invest long term or short term but remember that you can only invest what you can afford to lose in cryptocurrency investment.