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Whether you’re new to investing or you need to bone up on the basics, this is a great place to start. We begin by helping you understand what you need to know and, perhaps more importantly, why.
More than making a good return on your investments, we will also help you understand how to protect your money. Diversification, the right account type and the right brokerage can make a big difference in your investing and is most often overlooked.
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These articles will help you in your investing decisions, whether you're planning to invest on your own or if you just want to understand what your broker is doing with your money.
By the end of this guide you will understand why you should be an investor, how markets work and you’ll have a basic understanding of various account types and investment types. When you complete this section you’ll be ready to learn more about the process of finding stock trades. Let's get started!
 What You Should Know Before Investing Set your expectations appropriately and start thinking about a strategy that’s right for you and your circumstances. These articles introduce you to our approach and methods.
The Benefits of Investing This is where we’ll walk you through the benefits of investing and how to get started.
- Time Value of Money: In this section we’ll help you understand the impact of time on your portfolio. Whether time is your enemy or your friend depends, at least in part, on your investing strategy.
- Tax Deferral: Give it to the government now or later? We’ll explain how a tax deferred investment benefits you.
- Diversification: No sense making money if you lose it just as fast. Investing in various markets improves your odds of making money, and keeping it.
Understanding the Markets  As an investor you are participating in a global marketplace where the price of the goods you’re buying and selling is affected by various influences. It’s important to understand how the markets are set up, how they work and how the basic operation of the market can affect how much money you make. The overview starts here.
- The Stock Market: There are great opportunities in the stock market. IN order to better take advantage of those opportunities it’s helpful to understand how the market works. Specifically, we’ll talk about efficiency and how the stock market creates efficiency.
- Market Participants: An overview of companies, exchanges, brokerages and other participants and the role they play in your investing actions and decisions.
- Why Stock Prices Move: Ever wonder why, exactly, the Dow Jones Industrial Average moves up and down? Why does a stock price move anyway? Before you begin life as an investor it’s good to know more about the forces at play that may affect your decisions.
Opening an Investment Account We’ll help you understand the various investment accounts that you can open. Each of these accounts offers distinct benefits and it’s important to understand their differences. Read the overview here.
- 401(k) Retirement Accounts: The most ubiquitous company-sponsored retirement plan is often the most misunderstood as well. We’ll show you the benefits of funding a 401(k) retirement plan.
- Roth IRA: These relatively new plans are a great benefit to investors, but can also be very confusing.
 Choosing the Right Stock Broker
It’s not uncommon for investors to have multiple broker relationships these days. It’s important to understand the costs and benefits associated with each type of brokerage so that you can organize your accounts accordingly. Read the overview here.
- Full Service Brokers: If you’re looking for more individual attention and professional, hands-on oversight, then this may be a good option for you. Full-service brokerages, as the name implies, offer much more than trade execution.
- Discount and Online Brokers: If all you’re after is cheap execution then there are plenty of options available. But that doesn’t mean they’re all alike.
Finding the Right Investments for You  By now you understand the benefits of investing, how the markets work, you’ve picked a broker and you’ve opened an account (or at least a practice-trading account). Now it’s time to start exploring the different types of investments, understand how they work, and discuss which investment type might be appropriate for you. The overview starts here.
- Stocks: Stock investing will always offer the most direct, uncomplicated form of investing: direct ownership in a single company. But what exactly is a stock and how is it priced?
- launched in the early 80s to give investors an easy way to diversify their retirement portfolios and mimic professional management without paying professional fees.
- Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs): A nice hybrid between a mutual fund and a stock, an ETF can provide investors with some diversification and management but with a much lower fee structure. They also trade more like a stock than a mutual fund, which introduces interesting new possibilities.
- Options: Once the domain of the sophisticated trader only, options have become a staple of Main Street investing. Yet to this day many new investors falsely assume that any option investment is a risky one. However, more and more investors have learned that there are easy options strategies out there that can reduce investing risks and improve returns.
- Forex: Investing in foreign currency is a relatively new opportunity for individual investors. While it sounds complicated it can actually be easier to follow than either stock or option investing, if you have the right guide.
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