Investing in Stocks and Bonds

Full overview

We will take a brief look at the history of stocks and bonds and talk about the specific problems that bonds and stocks help us overcome—the problems of imperfect and unequal information about the future.

This lesson describes the specific characteristics of bonds as well as different types of bonds, each of which reflects its particular use in society. We will also describe some basic features of the secondary resale market for bonds.

In this lesson, we discuss how the two prices related to bonds. We discuss how changes in the prices of bonds change the actual returns on holding a bond even if the interest rate on the bond doesn’t change, and how inflation impacts the real return on holding bonds.

In this lesson, we discuss the various elements that determine the returns to holding bonds and the risk of holding bonds. This, in turn, helps us understand why bond prices and interest rates rise and fall.

This lesson covers the common features of stocks and how they differ from bonds. We will also talk about how stocks are valued and how differences of opinion among investors regarding risk and return create a resale market for stocks—the stock market.

This lesson discusses the role that central banks play in modern economies, with particular focus on central banks’ role in setting monetary and interest rate policy, the goals of monetary policy, and how changes in policy impact the returns to stock and bondholders.

In this lesson, we talk about why these climbs and crashes in prices take place, focusing specifically on the extent to which bubbles and government debt crises are driven by real factors and to what extent they are driven by psychology.

The focus of this lesson is on personal finance and the role that bonds and stocks should play in decisions to save for the future, the importance of diversification, investing for the long term and placing your money in indexed mutual funds.

This lesson covers some of the issues and controversies that will shape the future of bond and stock markets: the future of financial innovation, the future of government regulation, the future of government debt crises, and the future of stock market bubbles.

NOTE: While cellular hotspots may allow access to our courses, users may experience connectivity issues by trying to access our learning management system. This is due to the potential high download and upload latency of cellular connections. Therefore, it is not recommended that students use a cellular hotspot as their primary way of accessing their courses.

NOTE: While we understand that our courses can be viewed on Android and iPhone devices, we do not recommend the use of these devices for our courses. The size of these devices do not provide a good learning environment for students taking online or live online based courses.