Finance Kickoff: Going Back To Business School

On my resume, under education, I list a BBA from the University of Michigan because I “attended” undergrad business school. Which is different from studying business. That would imply that I actually applied myself in an effort to learn as much as I could about economics, accounting, financial markets, etc. In reality, I focused more on how to keep my GPA up and graduate while doing as little work as possible. Which perhaps contributed to my job at graduation--house painter. So to now go back and learn about financial markets is going to be like starting from scratch.

My approach is to attend the Fidelity “Trading Knowledge Center," where a series of videos will teach me the meaning of terms like equity and leverage.



The first section in their knowledge center is “TOOLS,” which teaches you about the trading options available through Fidelity. That should be further down the list, since I likely can’t take advantage of any tools before I understand more about the market. So my first class will be “ANALYZE,” which theoretically will teach me about “technical and fundamental analysis.”

In addition to this, I’ll aim to read 1-2 books on the subject.

As I move through the process, I’ll try to post entries in which I’ll do several things:

Summarize what the section or book is talking about and explain it in a way that I, and hopefully someone as dumb as me, can understand.

Apply concepts to a real life company or stock, so that I can prove to myself that I actually understand it before pouring money in.

Evaluate how valuable the lesson is. Meaning, is this something that will actually be useful in investing or give me some sort of insight.

Include “idiot lessons.” These are very basic terms or concepts that I had to look up because Fidelity incorrectly assumes I know them, and without understanding them you can’t truly know what they’re talking about.

Since my goal upon graduating was to never go back to school, we’ll see how persistent I am with this new “learning.”