Payroll Best Practices Most the taxes paid are through paychecks, so a large part of payroll accounting is properly accounting for all taxes. Most people are familiar with their annual personal tax return, but payroll tax filing works a bit differently. Payroll is run weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or even semi-monthly, so for each pay cycle, Read More…
GAAP – Accounting Gains and Losses Revenue and Gains are related fields related to the income a company receives. The main difference between them is the source of the income. Revenue Revenue represents income earned by the firm through the primary goods and/or services provided. It is the income earned from the firm’s operating activities. For Read More…
GAAP – Accounting Revenue and Expenses One of the first challenges auditors and regulators faced when developing the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) was trying to standardize how companies account for their revenues and expenses. Before GAAP, companies had (more or less) free reign on how and when revenue and expenses were reported, leading to Read More…
Accounting for Liabilities Every firm needs capital to purchase assets like inventory, land, and equipment. They also need cash to help manage expenses such as paying employees. How do companies raise the money they need to run their businesses? The answer is through a mix of liabilities (borrowing money) and equity (selling shares of ownership Read More…
GAAP – Accounting for Assets Facets of Assets How much is someone worth? One way to think about it could be to add up assets, or everything a person owns that holds financial value. First, think of everyday items like cash, a car, a computer, and perhaps money stored in a savings or investment account. Read More…
GAAP – Accounting for Equity The Basic Accounting Equation says that Assets – Liabilities = Equity Equity (stockholders’ equity, owners’ equity, etc.) is the claim shareholders of a company have on assets once the liabilities have been satisfied. Equity on the Balance Sheet There are five critical entries on a balance sheet related to equity: retained earnings, Read More…
GAAP – Purpose, Framework, and Terms What are the objectives of financial statements? How can accountants best meet these objectives? These are the very questions that the Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) set out to address in 1976 when they began developing the conceptual framework. FASB’s goal was to identify the objectives and concepts that Read More…
How To Check a Business’s Financial Health Every year or two, most of us go to the doctor’s office to receive a check-up on the state of our physical health. The doctor typically checks several measurements (height, weight, blood pressure, etc.) in order to gauge how our health has progressed over the past year. They Read More…
How To Launch Your Career in Accounting More students than ever are interested in a career in accounting. So, where do you begin? What do you need in order to become a successful accountant? How can you market yourself in the accounting world to stand out among employers? This is a broad overview of what Read More…
Futures Contracts are a standardized, transferable legal agreement to make or take delivery of a specified amount of a certain commodity, currency, or an asset at the end of specified time frame. The price is determined when the agreement is made.
An option gives the owner the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell the underlying instrument(we assume stocks here) at a specified price(strike price) on or before a specified date(exercise date) in the future. (this is different for European options as they can only be exercised at the end date). Exercising the option is using that right to to buy or sell the underlying instrument.
Spot and Futures contracts are a standardized, transferable legal agreement to make or take delivery of a specified amount of a certain commodity, currency, or an asset at the current date. The price is determined when the agreement is made.
What are Mutual Funds? Pop Quiz
Decoding What Moves The Market Stock and bond prices move up and down every day, sometimes by very large amounts. Before you start investing, the first thing to understand is why these price movements happen, and how to plan for them. Stock Price Movements Stock prices are often represented on a line graph that shows Read More…
5 Ways to Get Investing Ideas The most challenging aspect of starting to invest is picking the first few stocks to add to a portfolio. Every investor has their own techniques and strategies, but we want to give you the tools you need to place your first trades and get your portfolio off to a Read More…
Buying on Margin & Short Selling Explained A margin trading account is a type of investment account offered by brokerages that allow investors to borrow money to buy securities. With a margin account, an investor can borrow funds from the brokerage firm against the value of the securities in their account. This allows the investor Read More…
Brokerages exist to allow individuals to make investments into the larger market. In other words, they connect individuals to the markets as a whole.
Bonds are essentially a much more formal I.O.U (I owe you) used to borrow money. You buy the bond in return to interest over a given period of time. When a corporation or government needs money they issue bonds that people buy. In turn, the issuer (the person who sells the bond) takes the money. However, no one would buy something if they didn’t get something in return, so the issuer will offer to not only pay the person back at a specified date but also provide some interest along the way.
Mutual Funds are a way you can buy into a wide range of stocks, bonds, money markets, or other securities all at once. They are professionally managed, so you are basically buying a piece of a larger portfolio.
ETFs are a fairly new way that you can buy a large group of stocks, assets, or other securities all at once. ETFs trade just like stock; you can buy and sell shares of an ETF throughout the day on an exchange.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, more frequently known as the Dow or the Dow Jones, is a stock market index made up of 30 of the largest publicly-owned companies based in the United States. It’s a price weighted index meaning that the index’s price is an average of the price of the 30 stocks that make it up.
The New York Stock Exchange (or NYSE) is the largest stock exchange in the world. Think of it as an organized, fast-paced flea market where buyers and sellers from all over the world come to trade U.S. stocks (and now some foreign shares as well). It is where over 2,800 of the biggest U.S. companies have their shares listed.
How to Choose Stocks Strategically The most challenging part of starting to invest is picking the first few stocks to add to your portfolio. Every investor has their own techniques and strategies, but we want to give you the tools you need to place your first trades, and get your portfolio off to a good start. Establish Read More…
Why You Should Diversify Your Portfolio Understanding what it means to build a diversified portfolio is one of the first concepts a new investor needs to understand. When talking about investing, diversification means to expose yourself to less risk by investing in different asset classes, industries etc. So if something bad happens to one of your Read More…
Why Invest in Stocks vs. Keeping in Savings? Can’t view on YouTube? Click Here Investing in stocks can be a great way to make your money work for you and build long-term wealth, once you have set up your budget and emergency savings fund. In this lesson, we’ll explore why investing in stocks is a Read More…
How to Read a Stock Quote like a Pro Definition A stock quote gives essential information about a particular stock at a point in time. The quote normally includes information such as the name of the company, the ticker symbol, the price, the day’s high and low prices, and the trading volume. Details Usually when Read More…
A “Ticker Symbol” is a unique one to five letter code used by the stock exchanges to identify a company.
Stock is defined as a share of ownership in a company. If you own a company’s stock, you own a percentage of the company itself. This includes partial ownership of its assets (like equipment, vehicles, and buildings) and partial ownership if its income and profits.
What is a Student Loan? A student loan is exactly what it sounds like – a loan given to students to finance their studies. This is most common for college or university students, but also works for trade schools and other vocational studies. Most of the time when a person takes out a loan, they Read More…
Property rights is the foundation of all free-enterprise economic systems. It is what allows people to profit from capital and ideas, without fear of seizure by the government or theft. Definition “Property Rights” usually refers to a set of fundamental rights giving citizens control over their own land, capital, and ideas. Land Property Rights The Read More…
Evaluating how students diversify their portfolios is one of the key concerns of most classes on our platform. Our new Diversification Report just made this a whole lot easier! The new Diversification Report on StockTrak.com gives you a complete look at how students allocate their portfolios – both by security type and by industry. The Read More…
We take student data privacy seriously – with constant innovations to keep student data secure. However, we work with more and more schools that have their own restrictions on what kinds of personal information can be gathered, even for administrative purposes. To help make sure that all schools have access to our platform, we just Read More…
Our latest enhancement finally brings to bear our real-time, true-to-life Forex simulation! Our previous currency trading simulation allowed trading on a pure cash basis – students could buy and sell currencies at the real-time FX rates. While this is still very instructive, it missed out on the full nuance of Forex trading with dynamic charting Read More…
Administrators often ask for our team to reset individual accounts, or even entire classes after a “practice period” at the beginning of the semester. These requests have been getting so popular that we built it right into your admin pages! Starting in Spring 2020, the “Ranking” report in your administration tools will have a new Read More…
Administrators may have already realized there are two separate Rankings pages- the “Live Rankings” (which is visible for students), and the Rank Report (available in your Class Summary Reports). The rank report uses end of day values from the previous trading day, and includes useful tools for managing your class – including buttons to view Read More…
Google Slides and PowerPoint presentations, covering the material from the most popular articles in the Learning Center. Copy or download the presentations, and feel free to add your own material and notes! These templates are available courtesy of PersonalFinanceLab.com
See our customizable library of lesson plans! Most lesson plans include several activity ideas, including activities utilizing the stock game, the included Learning Center, as well as activities from other sources. Pick and choose what works best for your class!
In this lesson students will be learning about the different options that they have after graduating high school. They will be looking at different careers and learning about what skills and level of education is required to be successful in those careers.
In this lesson students will be learning about income tax and why certain states have an income tax. Students will be learning about taxes from the start to finish, from filling out tax forms to calculating what percentage will be taken out of their income.
In this lesson students will learn what sales tax, discounts and tips are. These are important things for students to know and learn because they will be interacting with these terms in their everyday life. Students will walk away being able to calculate all of these terms in a variety of situations.
In this lesson students will be learning about the different costs that come with buying and owning a car. This lesson is important because there are many costs that students do not think come with owning a care and it is important to take them all into consideration before owning a car.
This lesson introduces the concept of opportunity cost in the eyes of both the consumer and the producer. Students will walk away from the lesson thinking about the opportunity cost that comes with each decision that they make.
This lesson plan in an introduction to “Needs” and “Wants”, and how we use that distinction to make decisions throughout the day. The class activities also start to bridge the gap between the basic concepts, up through integrating concepts of money, and the foundations of budgeting.
In this lesson students will learn about the basics of what a credit card is and the different responsibilities that come with owning a credit card. Students will learn about what both a credit report and credit score are and the impact they have on someone’s finances. By the end of the lesson students will Read More…
This lesson plan will introduce students to the concept of comparison shopping. There are a variety of activities that all center around comparing different items in order to get the best value for your money. Students will be able to find the unit prices of various items and also how and where to research different Read More…
This lesson is an introduction to buying a stock. Students will be introduced to basic vocabulary that is involved with a buying and owning a stock. Students will be going through the entire process of buying a stock from looking up the stocks ticker symbol to buying a stock on the market.
In this lesson students will be learning about both budgets and spending plans. They will be able to tell what the different parts of each are and when to use either. They will be looking at other peoples’ budgets and saving plans to evaluate how to create one. They will leave with the tools and Read More…
In this lesson students will be learning all about checking and how to track their purchases. Throughout the different activities students will be interacting with checks and connecting that back to budgeting and spending. Students will go through the entire bill paying process from reading a billing statement to writing a check in order to Read More…
In this lesson students will be learning about different types of scams that could happen over the phone or on the computer. They will be able to identify when they find a scam and will learn the importance of not falling into the scam. Includes 5 customizable activities
It takes time to dive into reports on StockTrak, and ensure students are following up with their portfolios as they should. That is why we created our new Activity Report, available for Fall 2019 classes! The new Activity Report shows an interactive graph if your class trading activity over the last 14 or 30 days, Read More…
The field of accounting is typically divided into two areas, financial accounting and cost (or managerial) accounting. Whereas the purpose of financial accounting is to report the results and position of a business to external parties, cost accounting focuses on internal reporting for the purpose of improving managerial decision making. This means that cost accounting Read More…
A company’s financial statements give investors, managers, and other “users” a complete, honest look at its financial health. Finished financial statements follow a standardized format, letting investors compare different companies in the same industry apples-to-apples. For the company’s financial reporting team, this presents a challenge – every business’s internal operations are different, but all activities Read More…
Instructors who use a lot of assignments have noticed the list is getting long – we now have over 300 activities available. This is great for flexibility, but can be frustrating when setting up assignments each week, avoiding duplicates. With this in mind, we launched our new “Flag Duplicate Tasks”. This new feature will look Read More…
The next time you are setting up Assignments for your class, you might notice a new item at the very bottom of the list – “Assessment”. An “Assessment” is a new type of quiz, added because we received many requests from teachers to have more “Comprehensive” assessment tools for their classes. If you add an Read More…
Many of the most effective class projects using the portfolio simulation have students work in teams. This presents some challenges with the portfolio simulation – striking a balance between cooperation and ensuring accountability for each students. With our most recent update, you get the best of both worlds! The new StockTrak Team Functionality will let Read More…
If you are seeing this message, welcome to the Admin Dashboard! The admin dashboard is composed of 6 independent pieces: Announcements Box – this will show the current announcement you have posted for your class. If you post an announcement, it will appear on the right side of every page for all your students, Read More…
Class Forums are the newest feature added to the trading platform – this will allow your students to post messages, and reply to their classmates, all in one place. Forum posts are short messages, around 500 characters each (a bit more than a Trade Note). We also show the latest forum posts on the right Read More…
One of the most common requests we get from instructors is if students can see each other’s trades. Well, now they can! One of the most common requests we get from teachers is if students can see each other’s trades. Well, now they can! We added a new contest rule, called “Public Portfolios”. If Read More…
One of the most-requested new features in Spring 2018 was cryptocurrency trading, both from students and teachers. You asked and we listened – crypto trading is now available! Cryptocurrencies currently share some of the rules from Stocks, such as the commissions and position limits. However, you can trade cryptos both using a quantity (such as Read More…
With the latest upgrade to the trading platform, students can now take short notes with every trade! We call this “Trade Notes” – a short, 1-3 sentence explaining the rationale of every order, connecting their trades with what is learned in class. As the instructor, you can also require trade notes for your class. When Read More…
Comparative Advantage is the concept where one person, business, or economy is able to outproduce one particular product or service compared to another person, business, or economy. The concept of comparative advantage is essential to understanding both why people choose different careers, and why countries engage in international trade. Comparative Advantage At The Personal Level Read More…
Graphing is one of the most important features of spreadsheets. When you need to present your findings, whether as a written report or a presentation, summarizing your data in graphs is the best way to quickly communicate large amounts of data. This guide will walk through taking your raw portfolio data, making some simple Read More…
The most important reason you would want to use excel to track your stock portfolio is trying to calculate your profit and loss from each trade. To do this, open the spreadsheet with your transaction history. It should look something like this: Tip: If you have not bought and then sold a stock, you can’t calculate how Read More…
If you’ve been trading for a long period of time you might have been curious to know what your daily returns were. Excel and Google Sheets can help you efficiently calculate this in a simple way. Suppose we started trading on August 29th, 2017. It is now September 7th and we would like to know Read More…
The first step in using any spreadsheet is getting some data! This tutorial will show you different ways to import some of your portfolio data into a spreadsheet and how to format it to make it easier to read. Getting Data The first step to using any spreadsheet is getting some data – once we Read More…
In Economics, “Gross Domestic Product” is the one statistic to rule them all – a measure of the total size of an economy. Definition The “Gross Domestic Product” of a country is the total value of all finished goods and services that were produced in a given year. In other words, this is the total Read More…
The accounting cycle is a series of steps that businesses take to track transactions and consolidate financial information over a specific accounting period (month, quarter, year). The end result of the accounting cycle is the production of accurate financial statements for that period and preparedness for the next accounting period. We will examine the steps Read More…
Property rights is the foundation of all free-enterprise economic systems. It is what allows people to profit from capital and ideas, without fear of seizure by the government or theft. Definition “Property Rights” usually refers to a set of fundamental rights giving citizens control over their own land, capital, and ideas. Land Property Rights The Read More…
A covered call is an options insurance strategy where you simultaneously have an open position on a stock and sell a call option for the same symbol. Adding a short call in your open positions means that you are obligated to sell your stocks at the strike price contingent on the option buyer. However, you Read More…
A covered put is an options insurance strategy where you simultaneously have a short open position on a stock and sell a put option for the same underlying option. Adding a short put in your open positions means that you are obligated to buy your stocks at the strike price, contingent on the option buyer’s Read More…
A floor is an options insurance strategy where you simultaneously have a long open position on a stock and a long put for the same underlying asset. Adding a long put to your open position means that you are obligated to sell your stock at the strike price. The long put ensure that you can Read More…
A cap is an options protection strategy where you simultaneously have a short position on a stock and a long call for the same underlying asset. Adding a long call to your open position means that you are obligated to buy your stock at the strike price. However, you already have a short position on Read More…
A bull spread is a strategy where you simultaneously buy a long call at Strike Price 1, and sell a call for Strike Price 2. Recall that users will pocket the premium should the option not be exercised. By selling a call with a higher strike price, users can reduce their total transaction costs and Read More…
A bear spread is a strategy where you simultaneously sell a put at Strike Price 1, and buy a put at Strike Price 2. Recall that users will pocket the premium should the option not be exercised. By selling a put with a lower strike price, users can reduce their total transaction costs and create Read More…
A box spread is an option strategy that is created by combining the components of the bull spread and the bear spread. By creating a box spread, you are creating a neutral riskless position that generates a return like a bond. A box spread can be used to borrow or lend funds. What are its Read More…
A ratio is an option strategy that is created by having X amount of call options at Strike Price 1 and shorting Y amount of call options at Strike Price 2. By creating a ratio, you are creating an option strategy where you can reduce your total option costs by shorting more call options are a higher strike price. Read More…
A bullish collar is a protection strategy where you simultaneously buy a call at strike price 1 and sell a put at strike price 2. This strategy is for investors who has a bullish perception on the underlying asset. We can also create a “bearish” collar by simultaneously buying a put at strike price 1 Read More…
A straddle is a volatility bet where you simultaneously long a call at Strike Price 1 and long a put at Strike Price 1. This creates a triangular shaped payoff and profit graph where the reward is based on the volatility of the stock. Traders can also bet against volatility by shorting a call at Read More…
A strangle is a volatility bet where you simultaneously long a call at Strike Price 2 and long a put at Strike Price 1. You will notice that the difference with a straddle is the difference strike price for the long call. By buying a call with a higher strike price, you are buying a Read More…
A butterfly is a volatility bet that the trader can implement to protect against large fluctuations, or to gain on volatility. You will notice that a butterfly is almost like a straddle, with a difference in the edges. The traders can add additional contracts to his/her strategy to reduce the risk of large losses or Read More…
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Pop Quiz [mlw_quizmaster quiz=191]
Pop Quiz [mlw_quizmaster quiz=190]
Pop Quiz [mlw_quizmaster quiz=189]
The trading platform has recently been upgraded to allow for Team Portfolios – grouping participant’s individual holdings and trades into a bigger Team portfolio. How It Works When creating your next challenge, you will see a new option – “Do users work individually or in teams?”: Selecting “In Teams” will ask how many total teams Read More…
Pop Quiz [mlw_quizmaster quiz=188]
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International Trade is the system under which businesses, individuals, and governments trade goods and services. This exchange from many different National economies is what makes up the Global economy. Imports and Exports When we talk about international trade, we usually think in terms of imports (the goods and services a country buys from outside) and Read More…
Inflation: how much less a dollar is worth next year compared to today. Most consumers hate inflation – it erodes your savings, and eats away at the real benefits you get from increasing income. However, inflation plays a necessary role in the economy, and without it much of the economy would quickly fall apart. Inflation Read More…
As a society with a market-based economy, the government has three broad mandates: Ensure the common defense Promote economic growth Strive to maintain a just society On the face, only one of these implies direct intervention in the economy, but all three are interconnected with the economy as a whole. This means every action taken Read More…
Government spending makes up a whopping 20% of all spending in the American economy, including the salaries of all government employees, government contracts to private companies, and military spending. This is all paid for by taxes, meaning more than 1/3 of all economic activity filters through the public sector in some way. This means government Read More…
The “Time Value of Money” is one of the most important concepts in economics, investing, and business. For individuals, this determines how much you save and spend. For businesses, it determines how quickly they try to expand. For investors, it decides the mix of a portfolio. What is the Time Value of Money? “Time is Read More…
Short Put What is a short put? Recall that a put option is a contract where the buyer has the right (not the obligation) to exercise a sell transaction at a specific strike price before an expiration date. A short put is a term used when you sell a put option for an underlying asset. Read More…
Short Put Recall that a put option is a contract where the buyer has the right (not the obligation) to exercise a sell transaction at a specific strike price before an expiration date. A short put is a term used when you sell a put option for an underlying asset. A trader that has a Read More…
Recall that a call option is a contract where the buyer has the right (not the obligation) to exercise a buy transaction at a specific strike price at expiration date. A short call is a term used when you sell a call option for an underlying asset. A trader that has a short call option Read More…
A long call is a term used when you own a call option for an underlying asset. A call option is a contract where the buyer has the right (not the obligation) to exercise a buy transaction at a specific strike price at or before an expiration date. In the world of trading, owing a Read More…
Short Stock What is a short stock? A short stock is an expression used when you sold shares of a company that you did not own beforehand. Let’s say you expect a stock’s price to drop. Shorting a stock would involve a strategy where you borrow shares from another party (usually a broker) and sell Read More…
Long Stock What is a long stock? A long stock is an expression used when you own shares of a company. It represents a claim on the company’s assets and earnings. As you increase your holdings of a stock, your ownership stake in the company increases. Words such as “shares”, “equity” and “stock” all mean Read More…