Investing is defined as “spending money with the expectation of achieving a profit or material result by putting it into financial plans, shares, or property, or by using it to develop a commercial venture.” We quickly and completely cover the basics of investing in only about 40 minutes. If you want honest, objective information about investing, this is your course. It’s also geared to people who want to start investing now! We define what stocks, bonds and mutual funds are. In addition, we cover risk and return, two key investing concepts. We cover ethical/social/environmental investing, providing expert-level instruction on these topics. We show returns generated by various types of investments from 1801 to 2011. We show you how to use various techniques to invest in stocks and bonds at low or no cost. Finally, we describe some of the best mutual funds in the marketplace. Our lecture provides the rationale for both investing and for environmental, social and governance investing, or ESG investing, or “using Environmental, Social and Governance factors to evaluate companies and countries on how far advanced they are with long term investing. “Once enough data has been acquired on these three metrics, they can be integrated into the investment process when deciding what equities or bonds to buy.”
