The Wall Street journal guide to understanding money & investing

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money & Investing initiates you into the mysteries of the financial pages — buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures and options, spotting trends and evaluating companies. For those who are curious but intimidated by everyday financial jargon, this guide offers a literate, forthright and lively alternative.

Kenneth M. Morris, the president of Siegel & Gale, Inc., is one of the nation's leading experts in simplified communications. A pioneer in the plain language movement, he developed the first easy-toread business documents for the insurance, brokerage, banking, telecommunications and credit card industries, as well as several government agencies.

Dr. Morris has created a unique service that helps businesses cut through complexity and provide customers with helpful information they can use to make informed business decisions. Clients include: Chubb, Citibank, Federal Express, Fidelity Investments, GE, IBM, IRS, MCI, The Prudential, Ryder, Shearson, Toyota, UPS and Xerox.

He is the author of The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Personal Finance, The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Markets, American Dreams: One Hundred Years of Business Ideas and Innovation and Literature in Bureaucracy: Readings in Administrative Fiction, as well as numerous articles on information design and the use of technology to improve business communications. Dr. Morris is a member of the editorial boards of the Information Design Journal and Visible Language. He also serves on the Executive Board of the European Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Morris has lectured at Carnegie Mellon University and taught for 11 years at John Jay College in the City University of New York. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in English from Columbia University and a B.A. with high honors in English from Cornell University.

CONTENTS

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING MONEY & INVESTING

MONEY
The History of Money
Paper Money
The U.S. Dollar
The Money Cycle
Other Forms of Money
The Federal Reserve System
Controlling the Money Flow
The Money Supply
Measuring Economic Health
Consumer Confidence
The Consumer Price Index
The Economic Cycle
The World of Money
Trading Money
Money Away from Home

STOCKS
Stocks: Sharing a Corporation
The Right to Vote
The Value of Stock
The Stock Certificate
Selling New Stock
Stock Buyers
Buying Stocks
Selling Short
Buying on Margin
Stock Quotations
Reading the Stock Tables
Sifting Stock Information
Evaluating Companies
The Traditional Stock Market
Trading on the New York Stock Exchange
The Electronic Stock Market
Reading the Averages
Market Indexes
Market Cycles
Crash!
Traders Around the Clock
Tracking International Markets
The World Stock Index
International Investing

BONDS
Bonds: Financing the Future
The Bond Certificate
Figuring A Bond's Worth
Rating Bonds
Tracking Bond Performance
Municipal Bonds
U.S. Treasury Bonds, Notes and Bills
A Bond Vocabulary
Buying and Trading Bonds
Other Bonds, Other Choices
The World of Bonds

MUTUAL FUNDS
Mutual Funds: Putting It Together
The Mutual Funds Market
Targeted Investments
Special Purpose Funds
Inside a Mutual Fund
Mutual Fund Quotations
It's All in the Charts
Tracking Fund Performance
The Prospectus
International Funds

FUTURES & OPTIONS
Futures and Options
Commodities
The Futures Exchanges
Trading Futures Contracts
Hedgers and Speculators
How Futures Work
Reading Futures Tables
Financial Futures
A World of Options
Reading Options Tables
Using Options
Other Options
Tracking Other Options