Finance
41 lessons · about 200 min in all
How money, interest, risk and markets work. Education only: these pages never tell you what to buy.
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General education, not financial advice.
Learning paths
- Money over time
5 lessons · about 20 min
How money grows, what it is worth today, what inflation takes, and what costs take.
- Common-sense investing: the case for index funds
13 lessons · about 61 min
John Bogle's argument for owning the whole market at low cost, taught chapter by chapter from The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, with the arithmetic worked out and his 2007 figures clearly dated. Education only: no fund recommendations.
- The Intelligent Investor: Benjamin Graham's ideas
24 lessons · about 122 min
Benjamin Graham's classic, taught chapter by chapter with Jason Zweig's commentary: investing versus speculating, the defensive and enterprising investor, Mr. Market, reading a company, and the margin of safety. Graham's companies and figures are taught as dated case studies. Education only: no stock tips.
All Finance lessons
- Compound interest 5 min
Interest that earns interest, and why the years matter more than the rate looks.
- Present value 5 min
How to compare money paid at different times.
- Measuring inflation with a price index 4 min
How a basket of shopping turns into one inflation number.
- Real and nominal interest rates 3 min
What your savings really earn once rising prices are counted.
- Costs and the market return 3 min
Why investors as a group must earn the market return minus their costs.
- The Gotrocks family 4 min
Bogle's parable of a family that owned every company, until the Helpers arrived.
- Where stock returns come from 5 min
Dividends, earnings growth, and the swing in what investors will pay: Bogle's way of splitting the market's return.
- Owning the whole market 4 min
Index funds, the S&P 500 and total-market indexes, and why a market-value-weighted index looks after itself.
- Fund returns versus investor returns 6 min
Why the return a fund reports is not the return its investors actually get, and how timing opens the gap.
- Taxes are costs too 5 min
How trading inside a fund creates tax bills, and why Bogle counts taxes alongside fees.
- When future returns are lower 5 min
Bogle's 2007 forecast, built from dividends, growth and the P/E ratio, and what actually happened next.
- Why past winners rarely repeat 5 min
Survivorship, reversion to the mean, and star ratings: why picking yesterday's best fund is harder than it looks.
- Paying for advice 5 min
What a financial adviser can and can't do for you, how advisers are paid, and what an advice fee costs over time.
- Costs go on forever 5 min
Expense ratios, sales charges and trading costs, and why low cost is the most reliable guide Bogle found.
- Bonds and money-market funds 4 min
When returns come almost entirely from interest, costs take an even bigger bite.
- New indexes and ETFs 5 min
"Smart" indexes that promise to beat the market, and exchange-traded funds: Bogle's doubts, and the case for them.
- Graham, the arithmetic, and a plan 5 min
Benjamin Graham's defensive investor, Bogle's "relentless rules of humble arithmetic", and the plan he suggests: one investor's reasoned view.
- Investment versus speculation 4 min
Benjamin Graham's test for what counts as investing, and his two kinds of investor.
- Inflation and the investor 4 min
Why neither bonds nor stocks fully protect you from rising prices, in Graham's data and Zweig's.
- A century of market history 5 min
How Graham judged whether the whole market was cheap or dear, and why he never trusted the past to repeat.
- The defensive investor's portfolio 4 min
Graham's split between bonds and stocks, the 50–50 default, and rebalancing when the mix drifts.
- Defensive investors and stocks 4 min
Graham's four rules for a defensive stock list, why he kept out growth stocks, and dollar-cost averaging.
- What the enterprising investor avoids 4 min
Graham's "don'ts": second-grade bonds and preferreds, foreign government bonds, and new issues sold on enthusiasm.
- What the enterprising investor does 5 min
Unpopular large companies, bargain issues priced below their working capital, special situations, and looking abroad.
- Mr. Market 5 min
Graham's moody business partner who quotes a price every day, and why you don't have to take it.
- Living with fluctuations 5 min
Why even safe bonds swing in price, the shareholder's two positions, and Zweig's list of what you can control.
- Investing in funds 5 min
What Graham thought funds did well, his arithmetic on closed-end funds at a discount, and Zweig's checklist for choosing one.
- The investor and his advisers 4 min
Graham's test for whose advice to trust, what good advisers actually do, and Zweig's "trust, then verify".
- Security analysis for the lay investor 4 min
How Graham tested a bond's safety, his simple growth-stock formula, and Zweig's warning signs in a company's reports.
- Per-share earnings and their traps 4 min
Graham's two warnings about earnings per share: don't trust one year, and read the footnotes.
- Comparing four companies 4 min
Graham's side-by-side method: profitability, stability, growth, finances, dividends and price, on his 1970 four.
- The defensive investor's screen 4 min
Graham's seven tests for a defensive investor's stocks, from financial strength to the 22.5 rule, with a calculator.
- The enterprising investor's screen 7 min
Graham's looser tests for an enterprising investor, what his single-factor experiments found, and the advice to practise on paper first.
- Convertibles and warrants 6 min
How a convertible bond works, why Graham mistrusted new ones and condemned warrants, and Zweig's view of convertibles today.
- Four extreme case histories 7 min
Graham's four cautionary tales from 1968–1971, the warning signs each one showed, and Zweig's parallels from the dot-com years.
- Eight pairs of companies 7 min
Graham's method of comparing neighbouring companies on price, quality and record, with two of his pairs and one of Zweig's.
- Shareholders, managements and dividends 5 min
Graham on what owners should expect of managers and dividends, and Zweig on proxy statements, buybacks and executive pay.
- Margin of safety (1): the idea 5 min
Graham's central idea, the gap between price and value that protects you from error, for bonds, ordinary stocks, growth stocks and bargains, with a calculator.
- Margin of safety (2): in practice 7 min
Why a margin of safety needs diversification, how Graham used it to tell investment from speculation, his four business principles, and Zweig on the cost of a big loss.
- The superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville 6 min
Buffett's 1984 argument that Graham's followers beat the market by skill, not luck, and the reasons to weigh it with care.
- Graham today 7 min
Graham's postscript on one lucky, well-prepared decision, Zweig's closing advice, and a review of the whole path.
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