Stocks & Equity Investing
What a stock is, how to value it, and what moves equity prices.
Stocks are where most investors begin, and this topic builds the foundation end to end.
It starts with what a share actually is and the claim it gives you, moves through common versus preferred stock and the rights that come with ownership, then turns to the tools that price a business: market capitalization, the price-to-earnings ratio, return on equity, and the economic moats that protect long-run returns.
Sector context ties it together, so a company is judged against the right peers.
The aim is practical fluency: by the end you can read an equity, size it, and form a view on what it is worth rather than only what it costs.
Start here
A stock is a fractional ownership stake in a company. Buy one share and you own a small slice of the business, with a…
Most equity is common stock, the ordinary ownership share that votes and rises and falls with the business. Preferred…
Market capitalization, or market cap, is the total dollar value the stock market currently places on a company's…
The P/E ratio tells you how many dollars investors are paying today for each dollar of a company's annual earnings. It…
An economic moat is a durable competitive advantage that lets a company keep earning above-average returns on capital…
Return on equity measures how much profit a company generates for each dollar of shareholder capital it holds. It is…
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