Everything You Need to Know About Business, Finance and Investing

Investing in stocks is easy, fun, and rewarding if you stick to certain principles. Stock picking is not rocket science. You only need to know the underlying dynamics of a business, value that business, and arrive at a price at which you would like to buy that business, providing a large margin of safety to safeguard your money.

Friends often poke me with basic doubts on stocks, finance and investing (or rather they want to be spoon fed; they want to know which stock is going to shoot up the next day!). However, citing my experience I would always discourage them to not look at the stock market as a casino but to look at it as a market where businesses are sold. The next question would be to suggest a wonderful business and how to value that business. In fact that should be a subject taught at business schools throughout a semester. The subject is of enormous quantum that it is tedious to cover in a couple of minutes. However, to our advantage somebody has said about that in a nutshell, covering all the essentials of business, finance and stock market investing. Hedge-fund manager, William Ackman (aka Bill Ackman), CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, has briefly but clearly said in a 44-minute video about “Everything You Need to Know About Finance and Investing in Under an Hour” covering all the basics of business, finance and investing that should be helpful for amateur investors and those who are beginning their career. It is in very simple language citing examples and is very much helpful, a must watch for everybody. Here is the video for you.

So you are enlightened with everything you need to know about business, finance and investing now than you were 45 minutes ago! You have made a good investment. Good for you.

In this video, I am not supporting the last part about relying on money managers or mutual funds. I always don’t advocate to take refuge on them in this information age. You work hard to make money and only you know how hard it is to earn and save money. The irony is that all of us are good at earning but bad at managing our money and finances! Know that you are your best money manager. Who else can manage your money better than you? Money managers have their own interests – fees! Like Warren Buffett, I am too of the view that if you have 2% a year of your funds being eaten up by fees, you’re going to end up not even better than the stock market indices. Hence in your best interests, find time to read, research, and to find avenues for investing, on your way to getting rich. Knowledge, patience, perseverance, and discipline pays in stock markets. Happy investing!