Stocks are really alluring.  We have all grown up hearing stories of riches being logged inside of five seconds from buying XYZ stock, all thanks to a tip from a golfing buddy.  I am here to tell you that believing that is a bunch of nonsense, and investing takes discipline and focus.  In many respects, [...]

Be Honest, You Don’t Know the Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve is perhaps the most powerful entity on planet Earth.  Yes, for real.   Unfortunately, I would bet one of my nine lives that you have no idea what the Federal Reserve is, what they do, and why to care.  It’s all good, been there before. [...]

Investing Rules for the College Crowd Apologize for the stereotyping, but I am going to make two different assumptions on your finances.  First, the personal balance sheet has a ton more liabilities then assets, so investing in bonds, stocks, or anything else is the furthermost thought in the mind.  Cash in hand today is of [...]

Can’t Make Money in the Stock Market If… While a good portion of the United States is focused on Hurricane Sandy bringing havoc to the East Coast, I wanted to share a secret on the stock market.  You, of course, could share this with your parents as they probably have a ton of money locked [...]

The old time investing crowd thinks of a “cigar stub” stock as an industrial related company, made so as workers on the line are supposed to be gritty cigar smokers.  However, since we are a younger crew at Decoding Wall St., we add this wrinkle: a “cigar stub” stock could be a bank as its [...]

The lazy person’s way of saying “safehavens”, which are meant to cover up that lazy person’s way of saying “investors are buying investments that are safer than stocks, such as debt issued by the U.S. Treasury.”

There is noooooo backyard pool holding a “risk free asset”, whatever the hell that means.  Really, though, a “pool of risk free assets” is a group of investments that have less risk than stocks.  A good example: Treasury notes, which are backed by the U.S. Treasury.

The most important ingredient in developing a new financial jargon word is catchiness.  No matter if it borderline makes no sense, it has to be catchy first and then hint at making sense.  “Grexit” passed the grade, and means the threat of Greece exiting the Eurozone. “FROB” also passed, even though it’s an abbreviation for [...]

Local police beware that monetary morphine is being pumped into your surrounding economy on the sneak!  Unfortunately, the police are unable to arrest those dealing monetary morphine.  The reason?  It has nothing to do with drugs in the technical sense, just a figment of the financial service industry’s imagination.  Monetary morphine, decoded, is when central [...]

This is the type of financial jargon that makes us cringe.  “Risk” is supposed to be a stock because, well, to invest in a company’s stock is risky.  “Rally” is when stocks, or other asset prices, rise in value.  So, a “risk rally” is a trading session when most stocks move up in price.  The [...]