3-02 Understanding Stock Quotes 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 you get a stock quote, you Read More…

3-01 How to Look Up a “Ticker Symbol” The first thing you must understand about trading stocks is that the exchanges have assigned each stock a unique “ticker symbol” for identification purposes. When researching stocks, getting quotes, and placing trades, you usually have to know the ticker symbol. Stock ticker symbols are usually 1 to Read More…

2-11 Resources Now you should be a bit more familiar with how the stock market works, what drives prices, and general trends to look out for. The next chapter is all about choosing your first stock and making your first trade! Glossary Supply – The total quantity of a good, service, or security available for Read More…

2-10 Buying Individual Stocks Versus Investing in Mutual Funds As a newer investor, you should also be aware that you can save some research time by investing in mutual funds instead of individual stocks. Mutual funds contain a mix and diversity of stocks in which you will spread out one investment into many small blocks Read More…

2-09 Why Stocks Are a Good Choice For Investing In this course, we generally advocate that stock market investing is an excellent choice to receive consistently high Return on Investment (ROI). This does not mean we think everyone should be “stock picking” – but that stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs generally provide the best return Read More…

2-08 What is a Brokerage? When you are ready to start buying your own stock, you won’t withdraw some cash from the ATM, head to New York, and look for someone with paper shares to sell. Instead, you would open an account with a stock brokerage, where you will make your trades. What is a Read More…

2-07 The Danger of Trying to Time the Market The mere perception that a market is becoming Bearish is not a predictor of disaster. Fortunes have been made in A prolonged period of pessimism and falling stock prices that seems to feed on itself and generates even more pessimism and even lower stock prices. Bear Read More…

2-06 Bull vs. Bear Markets Business and economic popular news will often refer to “Bull” or “Bear” markets. You probably already have some idea what this means – “Bull” markets tend to be going up, while “Bear” markets tend to be going down. What is a Bull Market? A “Bull Market” means that investors are Read More…

2-05 Market Timing and Moving Now that you know what the stock market is and what role the Stock exchanges are simply organizations that allow people the ability to buy and sell stocks. Stock Exchange plays, let’s take a step back and look at how stock prices and the economy move. As you might expect, Read More…

2-04 Public versus Private Companies & IPOs versus Secondary Market Securities Now that you know what an exchange is, it’s necessary to make a very important distinction between what shares trade on exchanges and what shares don’t. Most companies are private companies and don’t trade on exchanges. The barber shop and the florist on the Read More…

2-03 Other Stock Exchanges In addition to the New York Stock Exchange, there is also the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) and NASDAQ. In the past, the NASDAQ was for smaller companies that were just getting started, and it was prestigious for them to move up to the NYSE or AMEX. These smaller companies included a Read More…

2-02 A History Lesson – Wall Street Wall Street” is a street in New York City, near the southern end of Manhattan Island. It is the home of the New York Stock Exchange, and the biggest center of stock trading and finance in the world. History The first European colony in what we now know Read More…

2-01 What Are Stock Exchanges? In the last lesson, we used a simple example of 10 buyers and 10 sellers who got together in the same room to make trades of one company’s stock. In the real world, there are hundreds of millions of people and companies trading trillions of shares of millions of company’s Read More…

1-13 Resources Congratulations, you are through the first chapter! This is a glossary review and some extra resources for more information before we continue on to the chapter exam. Glossary Bank accounts – a depository account at a bank that acts as a secure way to store your money and withdraw it later. Checking Accounts Read More…

1-12 Recent Performance of Investments Now that we have looked at several different types of investments, we can compare how they have performed over time. In this case, we will pretend we invested $10,000 in Stocks, Gold, Commercial Real Estate, Residential Real Estate, and a Savings Account in January of 2010, and pulled our money Read More…

1-11 Real Estate If you are a homeowner, your home is probably where you keep most of your wealth. Everyone hopes to be able to sell their home for more than they paid for it – which means that every homeowner is a real estate investor! “Real Estate Investing” means making money based on buildings Read More…

1-10 Foreign Currency and Foreign Stocks You just got some insider information – Nintendo is about to announce a new Zelda game, coming out on their new console. Gamers are getting pumped up, this is a sure-fire hit. As a savvy investor, you think now might be a good time to invest in Nintendo! But Read More…

1-09 Gold and Other Precious Metals When we covered commodities, we mentioned iron and copper, but not Gold and Silver. That is because Precious Metals operate by different rules than other commodities – and are very different to investors. This is because unlike iron or copper, which is just used as inputs for other industry Read More…

1-07 Bonds Unlike Stocks are “equity investments” which means that individuals that own stock shares of a company actually own part of that company. stocks, which are equity instruments, A debt obligation of a company, the U.S. Treasury Department, or a city where the borrower receives funds (usually in increments of $1,000), makes semi-annual interest Read More…

1-06 ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds) ETFs are a cross between mutual funds and stocks. ETFs are simply a portfolio of stocks or A debt obligation of a company, the U.S. Treasury Department, or a city where the borrower receives funds (usually in increments of $1,000), makes semi-annual interest payments based on the coupon rate, and eventually Read More…

1-05 Mutual Funds A mutual fund is a type of investment where a money manager takes your cash and invests it as he sees fit, usually following some rough guidelines. For example, the Fidelity Group has a fund that specializes in finding high dividend paying Stocks are “equity investments”, which means that individuals that own Read More…

1-04 Stocks Stocks are “equity investments” which means that when you own shares of a company you own part of that company. For example, if you own 1,000 shares of Apple Computer stock and Apple has 1,000,000 shares that are “issued and outstanding,” then you own 0.1% of the company. If Apple were then to Read More…

1-03 Certificates of Deposit (CDs) With a An investment choice at most banks where you agree to deposit a specific amount of money for a fixed period of time (this is called the maturity). By agreeing to keep your money at the bank for a certain length of time, the bank usually pays you an Read More…

1-02 Basic Bank Accounts Bank accounts are issued by banks, credit unions, and savings & loan institutions as a secure way to store your money and make it easily accessible later (without carrying around all your cash everywhere you go). If you are sitting with your first $500, you usually have two options for accounts: Read More…

1-01 Understanding Investment Choices The first time Tiger Woods grabbed a golf club he couldn’t hit the ball perfectly straight 300 yards and the first time Michael Jordan touched a basketball he couldn’t dunk it, so don’t think that you will be able to earn a 100% return in the first year. Before Tiger could Read More…