Stock Market Investing for Beginners: Stocks, ETFs & Bonds

FLAGSHIP EXPANSION — OCTOBER 2026: This course has been rebuilt as a complete flagship program: 48 video lessons, about 3.5 hours of content, 26 sections. NEW SECTIONS: Bonds & Fixed Income; Financial Statements; Valuation & DCF; Your First Trades; Risk & Diversification; Investor Psychology; ETF & Index Masterclass; Reading Companies Like an Analyst (moats, management, fraud red flags); Retirement & Tax-Smart Investing; and Market Crashes & History's Lessons — ending in a written crash playbook. Includes 14 quizzes, 4 hands-on assignments, and a downloadable Excel Investor's Toolkit (compounding calculator, fee simulator, DCF model, dividend & portfolio trackers, research checklist). No hype, no hot tips — a complete, calm system for investing your own money.

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Become a stock market expert — even if you're starting from zero.

Master stock market investing: ETFs, dividends and compounding — dodge the hidden fees eating your returns.

This course takes you from complete novice to confident, educated investor in 18 short, plain-English lectures. No finance degree, no jargon, no hype — just clear explanations of how the market really works and how to build a personal investment strategy you can stick with.

Built for beginners — and now also for finance professionals: three new lectures cover the full shelf of financial products and services, an advanced behavioral finance toolkit, and a professional's playbook for using this material with clients and teams. Accountants, advisors, and managers will find plain-English frameworks they can use in client conversations and workplace financial wellness sessions.

What you'll learn:

- How the stock market actually works: stocks, exchanges, and what moves prices

- What happens behind the scenes when you tap "buy" — brokers, bid-ask spreads, and order types

- Dividends from the ground up: yield, payout ratios, ex-dividend dates — then real dividend strategy (DRIPs, Aristocrats, taxes)

- ETFs explained properly: what they are, how they're built, and how to choose one

- Indices and index funds: the yardsticks of the market and why index investing beats most pros

- Hidden fees: how a single percent in fees can cost you tens of thousands over time — and how to avoid it

- The magic (and myth) of compounding, and why starting early matters more than timing the market

- Investor psychology: the biases that cost real money and the systems that protect you

- Inflation: the invisible thief eroding your wealth, and what has historically outrun it

- How to research a stock before buying, with a simple 5-point checklist

- Building a diversified portfolio, including the classic 3-fund approach

- Creating your personal investment strategy: goals, risk tolerance, lump sum vs dollar-cost averaging, and automation

- Financial products and services: the full investment shelf — savings products, bonds, stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, and derivatives — mechanics, risks, and benefits of each

- Behavioral finance deep dive: mental accounting, sunk costs, framing, availability and hindsight bias, home bias — plus the professional-grade systems that guard against them

- The professional's playbook: using this course's frameworks in client conversations, workplace financial wellness programs, and your own continuing education

This rebuilt edition fixes real problems in the original course — including two lectures that had the wrong videos attached — adds a brand-new definitive lecture on market indices, and adds three professional-tier lectures on financial products, behavioral finance, and putting it all to work.

Educational purposes only: this course teaches investing concepts and is not financial advice. I'm not your financial advisor — always do your own research and consider speaking with a qualified professional about your situation.

No prior investing knowledge needed. Just bring your curiosity.