What are penny stocks?

What are penny stocks anyway? You always here about them but does anyone actually invest in them? Well, some do and do quite well. However, it is a very specialized area of investing and should be approached cautiously. Here’s a basic run down of how they work. Investing in penny stocks is an option many […]

What is a hedge fund?

You hear about hedge funds all the time, but what is a hedge fund? If you watch the news or read about current events online, you might have a negative association with the term ‘hedge fund’. In recent years, there have been some major financial disasters related to hedge funds, and more specifically hedge fund […]

What is the foreign exchange market (Forex)?

So what is the foreign exchange market (FOREX) anyway? It’s something I’ve never really tried myself, but it’s a really interesting concept and might be fun to try out if you like the game. Also, there are a whole bunch of automated forex robots that many people claim work. We might even try one out […]

Basic Finance Bootcamp Lesson 7: Market Orders Versus Limit Orders

So now that you know a little bit about how the stock market works, let’s make sure you have some of the lingo down. As you will see below, ignorance on some of these terms can make your slick trading techniques costly. Today we are going to discuss market orders versus limit orders. The most […]

Basic Finance Bootcamp Lesson 6: Preferred Stock

We already talked about common stock in a previous post so this is a little out of order. However, better late than never. For completeness, here is a discussion about preferred stock. Enjoy. Preferred Stock When most corporations want to raise money, they do so by borrowing money or issuing new common equity (i.e., common […]

Basic Finance Bootcamp Lesson 5: Municipal Bonds

You’re probably sick of talking bonds by now, but we have one more category that we have to cover before you have all the basics that you need in this category. This last major bond category is municipal bonds. As the name implies, municipal bonds are bonds issued by local and state governments. While most […]

Basic Finance Bootcamp Lesson 4: Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, and STRIPS

This is lesson 4 in my basic finance bootcamp series. I hope you are not getting bored to death. Again, think of this as the foundation for many of the more exciting, exotic topics we discuss in the futre. In the last lesson, we talked about bonds. Bonds can be issued by private companies but […]