Introduction
Contents
The Investment FAQ is a collection of Frequently Asked Questions and answers about investments and personal finance, including stocks, bonds, options, discount brokers, information sources, retirement plans, life insurance, etc. I invite you to use the FAQ as a comprehensive, unbiased introduction and reference to investing. Complete beginners might want to take the tour for beginners, which includes pointers to pages with advice, introductions to stocks and bonds, and helpful reading material.
History
The FAQ was originally developed in late 1992 to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in the Usenet newsgroup misc.invest. The newsgroup misc.invest.stocks was created later, around 1994. The newsgroup misc.invest was renamed to misc.invest.misc in mid 1996. The Technical Analysis FAQ was added in late 1996.
Background
For some background information, browse these links:
- An interview that I did via email with Abbot Chambers of GNN in 1994 about the FAQ and how I compile it.
- An article that I contributed to GNN in 1995 about the problems of too much traffic and too little content in misc. invest.
- Charters for the misc.invest.* newsgroups. These explain the mission of the newsgroups and give examples of the topics that are appropriate for discussion there.
- Search the newsgroups using Google groups.
Status
Both this site and FAQ are works in progress. The articles get updated when I spot something good or when someone sends me new information. If you would like to contribute an article, or if you find information that is vague, outdated, or just plain wrong, please drop me a line.
Accolades and Publicity
Remember when web sites were giving each other icons back in the late 1990s? Well, here are a few relics of those days.