Fundamentals of Investments

This text has a focus on the student as an individual investor or investment advisor, and provides treatment of the basic types of financial instruments, focusing on characteristics, features, risks, returns, and the markets in which they trade.

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This book has three main aims: to focus on students as investment managers, giving them information they can act on, instead of concentrating on theories and research without the proper context; to offer strong, consistent pedagogy, including a balanced, unified treatment of the main types of financial investments as mirrored in the investment world; and to organise topics in a way that makes them easy to apply, whether to a portfolio simulation or to real life, and to support these topics with hands-on activities. A consistent, unified treatment of the four basic types of financial instruments - stocks, bonds, options, and futures - focuses on their characteristics and features, their risks and returns, and the markets in which they trade.