What is a Reserve Currency?

All of the major countries’ central banks hold a significant portion of their reserves in foreign currencies. Why do they purchase them and why the U.S. dollar is the most popular reserve currency? In this article, we’ll explain what the reserve currencies are, what purpose do they serve and why the world’s central banks hold them.

What is Beta in Finance?

Alpha (α) and beta (β) are two crucial coefficients that are used for measurement of success of a particular portfolio. Beta represents the volatility of a particular asset (or the whole portfolio) versus the volatility of the benchmark. In this article, we’ll explain what beta is and give a few simple examples to demonstrate how it can be used.

Movie Review: The Big Short (2015)

It’s hard to make an entertaining and interesting film about the stock market for the masses, many filmmakers have tried (Margin Call, Rogue Trader, The Wolf of Wall Street, etc.), but most of them failed to attract an average person.

Institutional vs Retail Investors

There are two main groups of market participants: institutional and retail investors. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of market participants aren’t small and independent individuals but large institutional investors who manage massive capital. In this article, we’ll explain the difference between institutional and retail investors with some examples.

Common vs Preferred Stock

There are two main types of stocks on the public market: common and preferred. Why do we need to have two distinct types of shares and what’s the difference between them? In this article, we’ll take a look at these two types of stocks (shares) to figure out which one would be a better choice for an investor.