#investing basics

Ticker symbols look like they should be obvious abbreviations. They aren’t. They’re a 19th-century engineering compromise that survived the move to electronic markets, and they still carry the fingerprints of how the system worked in 1867.

A call is a bet that something will go up. A put is a bet that something will go down. That’s most of what you need to know, but the small print is where people lose money.

The NYSE closes for ten full holidays a year, plus three early-close days, plus the occasional emergency. Here’s the full calendar and the surprising history behind some of the dates.

Volatility isn’t the same thing as risk. It isn’t the same thing as direction. And the most-quoted volatility number on TV measures something almost nobody understands.

A $1 move in a $5 stock and a $1 move in a $500 stock are not the same thing. Here's why traders almost never talk in dollars, and the few cases where they actually do.

Everyone uses bull and bear without ever defining them. Here are the real cutoffs, where the terms came from, and the part most explainers skip about how they actually feel from the inside.

An index fund is the boring product that beats almost every clever one. Here's what it actually is, why it works, and the small print most explainers leave out.