Stock Trading and Other Foreign Languages

Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

For a while now I have been toying with getting my children involved in stock trading. I have read up on this numerous times and in great detail and still don’t understand any of it though, making it an impossible subject for me to teach on. Stocks, Options, Mutual Funds, ETF’s…
it’s all Greek to me.

We really want our kids to grow up with money smarts. I would love it if my children had a full and firm understanding of how to grow their wealth, invest well, and avoid mistakes that the common adult makes when it comes to wants, needs, and money matters. This means that I must find a way to figure it all out without frying my brain so that I can pass what I learn onto them. Maybe we won’t actually invest but I still feel it would be good for my kids to understand the ins and outs of investing and trading.

Online trading companies are too numerous to count. You could spend all day browsing the many online brokers available to the novice stock trader. Many of these sites offer tremendous fee discounts and other freebies that you won’t find at more expensive stock trading and investing companies. One online trading site I have browsed is Firstrade. Although I am still a bit confused I have to admit that Firstrade has plenty of information to get anybody started in the complicated business of investing. They deal in numerous aspects of money investing, not just stocks. Information on Bonds, IRAs, Options, and more can be found in abundance at Firstrade, making first time investing a little less daunting.

Like I said, we may not get involved in this at all. However, having a basic knowledge of how it all works can be beneficial to our future. The kids might even have fun with it, too. Maybe we will pick some stocks to follow and see how we would do if we actually invested in these stocks.
Baby steps.

Is there any curriculum available on this?