The stock market have been very generous towards investors during the recent years and the S&P 500 index is at its highest levels now. Unfortunately, good past returns do not guarantee good future returns and some market analysts, economists, and investors have started to worry about the yield curve movements.

Rogue Trader is a great story of a guy who caused a collapse of the world's second-oldest bank in 1995. 20 years have passed since the film's release so we're a bit late for a review but we feel that it's an important movie to remember because this movie is still underappreciated and misunderstood.

For many years, the majority of economists based their financial theories on a few basic assumptions: all market participants are perfectly rational (investors aren't emotional at all), and they are also free from any biases or information processing errors. The real-life and practical economy showed that these assumptions don't work in many cases and people tend to behave irrationally from time to time.

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.

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.

There are two groups of market participants: institutional and retail investors. 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 simple examples.

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.

We all used to recognize companies by their names but there are many other ways to identify a particular company. Every company needs a so-called “ticker symbol” in order to be tradable on a stock exchange. Apple Inc, an American IT giant is also known as “NASDAQ: AAPL” and Nestle SA, a Swiss conglomerate, is also known as “SWX: NESN”.

What is a successful trade? Well, we may say that any trade that generates profit might be considered well executed and it's usually done by buying some asset, waiting for its value to appreciate and then by selling it for a higher price.

Candlestick price chart in trading and technical analysis is a very common way to visualize price movements. It's relatively easy to understand, it's informative and this type of chart can give some additional helpful hints to a trader that a simple chart can't provide.

Alpha (α) coefficient in investing is used for measurement of the success of a particular portfolio. Along with beta, the alpha coefficient helps portfolio managers to determine how certain picked assets performed against the market average. In this article, we'll explain how to use alpha and why is it important for investors.

It's believed that investing is something that only the rich and old people should be interested in but an early start can bring many financial benefits. We'll explain why you should start investing early and what benefits it can bring when you get older.

Is it trading or investing when someone buys stocks? What's the difference? These two terms still cause confusion so, in this article, we'll explain how investing is different from trading, and we'll also provide a few simple examples of each activity.

Traders use many strategies to minimize their risks and maximize their returns, but one of them is particularly common and useful: it's the “1% risk rule". In this article, we'll break down this simple yet effective risk management strategy and show how a portfolio manager can use it in his daily financial operations.

Today we are starting a new category on our website - stock forecasts. We'll share an opinion on stocks’ future prices, analyze them from technical and fundamental points of view, and give our recommendation on whether we would consider buying, holding or selling a particular market security.

When it comes to trading, people often look at asset prices and analyze its fluctuations with various methods but there is another thing which can tell us a lot about security: its trading volume. Today we'll explain what trading volume is and how to use it.

Before a company makes its way to the public market, it has to go through a complex and expensive procedure of Initial Public Offering (IPO). In this article, we'll look at how an IPO usually goes, why is it important, and why many mid-size companies are trying hard to achieve this significant milestone.

Liquidity is a core concept in finance, capital management, and business and that's why this term is often used in media by portfolio managers, market analysts, and various economists. Although this term is very popular, it's not that easy for an outsider to understand what it means.

ETFs are relatively new financial instruments that were introduced in 1993 in the US and in 1999 in Europe. These financial tools create new opportunities for investors and they have become very popular nowadays. Today we'll explore the essence of ETFs as well as why they are beneficial for investors.

Market capitalization refers to the valuation of a certain company derived from the market value of its shares. It's a simple, yet important metric in financial analysis that many investors look at regularly. Market capitalization in finance is often shortened to market cap.

The S and P index was developed by Standard & Poor's company in the US. This company specializes in financial market analysis and they needed to develop a tool, which can represent the current state of the whole American market just in one number.

There are a lot of ‘animal’ slang words in finance and there are many reasons for that. One of those reasons is that investors are animals too and sometimes they behave in the irrational, herd-ish ways. Today we'll take a look at two of the most famous ‘animal’ terms in finance: a bull and a bear market.