Market Crises & Events
The COVID-19 Market Crash of March 2020
33.9% in 23 trading days. That’s how fast the S&P 500 fell from its February 19, 2020 record high to its March 23 low — the fastest move…
Market Crises & Events
Market Crises & Events
The GameStop Short Squeeze of January 2021
I was 17 when GameStop happened. Watching it on a Discord server full of people my age who had never owned a stock before, refreshing Yahoo Finance on…
Stock Trading Encyclopedia
What Is a Broker-Dealer?
A broker-dealer is a firm (or, less commonly, an individual) that does two distinct jobs: it executes trades on behalf of clients (the broker function) and it trades…
Personal Finance
What Is a Credit Score?
A credit score is a three-digit number, usually on a 300-850 scale, that summarises how reliably you have repaid borrowed money. Lenders read it as a probability estimate:…
Personal Finance
Dollar-Cost Averaging: The Power of Consistent Investing
Dollar-cost averaging (DCA) is when you put a fixed amount of money into the market at a fixed schedule — weekly, every two weeks, monthly — no matter…
Famous Traders & Investors
John Bogle and the Index Fund Revolution
I read The Little Book of Common Sense Investing in a café in Lisbon in 2022, about six months after I'd lost €3,000 on a meme coin. I…
Personal Finance
What Is an Emergency Fund?
An emergency fund is a cash reserve set aside to cover unexpected expenses — job loss, medical bills, car repairs, home emergencies — without having to sell investments,…
Beginner's Path
How to Open a Brokerage Account
A brokerage account is the account you open with a licensed broker-dealer in order to buy and sell securities. It is the channel between your bank account and…
Stock Trading Encyclopedia
What Are Stock Splits?
A stock split is a corporate action that increases the number of a company's outstanding shares while proportionally reducing the price per share. In a 2-for-1 split, every…
Stock Trading Encyclopedia
Order Types Explained: Market, Limit, and Stop Orders
An order is the instruction you send to a broker to buy or sell shares under specified conditions. The choice of order type controls three things at once:…
Stock Trading Encyclopedia
What Are ETFs? Exchange-Traded Funds Explained
An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is an investment fund that trades on a stock exchange the same way a single stock does. Each ETF holds a basket of assets…
Stock Trading Encyclopedia
What Is Market Capitalization?
Market capitalisation (or "market cap") is the total market value of a company’s outstanding shares. The formula is simple: current share price multiplied by total shares outstanding. A…
Market Crises & Events
The Dot-Com Bubble
I lost €3,000 on a Solana meme coin in late 2021. That’s my dot-com bubble — smaller scale, 20 years late, exact same mechanic. So when I read…
Stock Trading Encyclopedia
What Is an IPO?
An Initial Public Offering, or IPO, is the process by which a private company sells shares to the public for the first time. It marks the moment a…
Stock Trading Encyclopedia
NASDAQ Explained
The NASDAQ is the second-largest stock exchange in the world and the first one built to run entirely on computers instead of a physical floor. It opened on…
Stock Trading Encyclopedia
What Is a Stock?
A stock is a share of ownership in a company. Buy one share and you own a small slice of that business — with a claim on its…