I have been learning finance and working in the industry for the past 11 years, and I must say there is nothing that brought me more joy than teaching others the basics of financial literacy. Our financial health is very important in the modern society and can have significant impact on our actual health.

Over the last two years there has been a spike in attention to the industry from the retail clients aiming to gather more knowledge about investing. The reason for that is two-fold:

1. COVID has impacted a lot of households resulting in job losses and additional free time for many forced to work at home. The unfortunate ones had to start looking into the new ways to generate money and many came across the idea of making money in the stock markets. The fortunate WFH folks had an opportunity to free up their commute time and many also investigated the ways to boost their earnings.
2. Democratisation of the trading platforms (such as Robinhood). In the current market you can start investing with virtually $1 on your account. Even five years ago, this was just a drop in a sea that was less than a trade commission to buy a stock. Also, buying a stock implied buying the whole instrument, while today you can buy a fraction of it, which makes the market even more accessible.

The increased attention to investing has also created a lot of buzz around the world and offered a great opportunity to fill an information void for retail investors. While a lot of quality content has been created, a wide range of pseudo experts have risen as well. Many of them do not necessarily have experience and strong command of the subject. There is a strong filtering limitation in the modern world and filtering out some of lower knowledge experts might cost you a lot of time. Additionally, there are millions of the multi-layered terms that one encounters when starting to read the financial articles and listening to the experts. Some point out that it is the way greedy bankers hide their secrets from public, however the terminology is there for the very specific reason – it provides the industry specialists the means to deliver the complex concepts in shorter timeframes.

The aim of this blog is to make sure what’s behind that complex terminology and the information here will be purely educational; you will not hear any word of market advice or financial news review. Nonetheless, you will be able to find a lot of basics that will help you better understand the matter and begin your investing journey.

I hope this blog would allow me to spread my knowledge and share my experience with people genuinely interested in learning new things. I will begin by explaining the basic accounting aspects and presenting various financial asset classes.

Please note, none of the information on this blog represents the opinion of my employer and all information does not represent a financial advice.