What is The Money Question?
The Money Question is a blog for anyone interested in learning about the investment markets. The Hayne Royal Commission is turned up unscrupulous behaviour by Australian banks and financial advisers. These institutions seem to be preying on vulnerable people, people who place their trust in others with the assumption that banks, advisers and planners have their best interests in mind. It seems that isn’t always how things turn out.
Investor education is the key
Financial markets and products are increasingly complex. Here at The Money Question we think that investor education is vitally important and that with better knowledge of investment markets everyone will be better off. Many investors don’t understand the markets well and that makes them vulnerable to misinformation and bad advice. We hope, over the course of these posts, to educate and inform investors about a range of financial concepts, a range of financial products and a range of financial strategies so that the right questions can be asked and answered. In this way our readers will know what to ask of an adviser and be able to make sense of the answer.
In words you can understand
Importantly we aim to use plain talk. At The Money Question we’re tired of hearing some fairly basic concepts explained in intimidatingly difficult language; in our opinion this may have the effect of confusing and scaring investors. The basics of investing are not all that hard: you don’t need an impressive-sounding list of university qualifications to gain a full enough understanding to be able to make your way through the maze of products that are out there.
Topics we’ll cover in The Money Question include:
- Risk, reward and how to spot a bad investment
- Some basic economic concepts
- Interest rates
- compounding and how it can work for you and against you
- how interest rates are set
- how interest rate products work
- some simple things about bonds
- The share market
- how share prices are calculated
- share market investing
- Managed funds
- ETFs
- Alternative investments
- Behavioural finance
- how emotions can cloud your judgement
- why losses hurt more than gains
- the unconscious biases that can lose you money
We don’t give advice
The Money Question isn’t a place for financial advice, in fact, we’re not allowed to give any advice. Anything that we do write will be general in nature and won’t take into account any particular reader’s personal circumstances. If you are looking for advice please contact a financial adviser. Our aim is to give you the knowledge to ask the right questions, to be able to judge advice for yourself and to develop your investment acumen.
If you have a money question of your own you’d like answered please drop us a line.
Thanks for reading The Money Question.
The Money Question 