Stock Market Fundamentals

Start here: what the market is, how money grows and how trading works.

1. Why Put Your Money to Work — Why cash quietly loses value, how investing puts your money to work, and the habits that matter more than picking winners.
2. Investing Myths, Busted — Seven common beliefs that keep people out of the market or push them into bad decisions — and what is actually true.
3. Compounding: How Money Snowballs — Compounding, the Rule of 72, and the different ways an investment pays you — capital gains, dividends and interest.
4. Owning a Piece of a Company — A share is a slice of ownership in a real business. Here is what you actually own, what you get, and why prices move.
5. Why Companies Go Public — What an IPO is, why a private company would sell shares to the public, and what changes once it lists on an exchange.
6. How Exchanges & Market Hours Work — Where stocks actually trade, when the market is open, and why the opening bell, closing bell and after-hours sessions behave differently.
7. Bid/Ask & Order Types — How the order book works, what the bid-ask spread costs you, and when to use market, limit, stop and stop-limit orders.
8. Market Cap & Sectors — How to measure a company’s size, what small, mid and large cap mean, and how sectors group companies that move together.
9. Risk, Reward & Spreading Your Bets — Why higher potential returns come with bigger swings, the difference between company risk and market risk, and how diversification protects you.
10. ETFs & Indexes in Plain English — What a market index measures, how ETFs let you buy a whole basket in one trade, and what to check before buying one.