Why does the stock market go up and down? Well, the stock market has been likened to a teenage girl because of its erratic moods and volatility. But that’s not really a fair thing to say about teenage girls. Their mood swings are not as bad as the stock market. So what causes this up…
Read MoreHere’s a quick lesson for you. It’s surprising how few people really understand what you’re about to learn… the difference between sales, expenses, and profits. What are sales? Well, sales can also be called gross revenue, gross sales, gross receipts, or total sales. Whatever you want to call it, sales are the total value of…
Read MoreWhich style of investing performs better? Active or passive? About 86% of active large cap managers beat their index in 2014. Only 86%. That means 14% of these higher cost ADHD OCD managers didn’t even do as well as their index. Oops, wait! I made a tiny mistake. I didn’t mean to suggest that only…
Read MoreHere’s a little story. It’s a story of two seemingly different brothers who share a common job. Cornelius was a rather astute and precocious child. He was a hard worker. Very analytical and Type A. He had to be right, so he spent hours and hours in his room researching and learning. He got a…
Read MoreImagine you are an apple farmer, and you have a bunch of acres and thousands of apple trees. Side note, have you had a Honeycrisp apple?! These things are amazing. I should know; I’m from Washington State, the land of angst-filled musicians, rain, and apples. In your apple orchard, you have different types of apple…
Read MoreYou may hear news commentators say, “The action on Wall Street today was strong, blah, blah, blah.” What do they mean by Wall Street? Wall Street refers to the financial and investment community. In fact, there was a movie way back in the 1980s called Wall Street, and it was about the stock market (side…
Read MoreOkay, so what in the world are they talking about when they call the stock market a bull or a bear? Bulls and bears? You’ll hear this a lot, so you should know what it means. A bull market is a stock market going up in value, and not just for the day, but over…
Read MoreWhat Do They Mean When They Say “The Market Was Up Today”? You might hear it on the radio, in a news broadcast, or read it online. The stock market used to be this esoteric industry that only a few people were a part of and even fewer knew anything about. But then, as more…
Read MoreAre you familiar with the dating app Tinder? It lets you view photos of people and slide their photo left or right, depending on if you like them or not. So how is the stock market like Tinder? For both, you have a large group of people coming together and they are all evaluating a…
Read MoreYour Get Money Smart education would not be complete if we didn’t talk briefly about this next type of investment. Good news! In the last lesson, you learned not only about mutual funds, but you also learned about exchange traded funds, or ETFs, as they are called. ETFs are a little different from mutual funds,…
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