Your starting question
What is investing for?
Follow money from the people who need it to the businesses and projects that use it. Learn to ask whose purpose an investment serves before judging its return.
By the end: Explain an investing arrangement and identify the questions a scholarship charity must answer before committing money.
Try the short baseline. Identify what you need to investigate.
Use diagrams, worked examples and regular choices with feedback.
Work the case in your companion workbook and discuss the trade-offs.
Complete the review and record what changed your mind.
1.1 · Introduction to Investing
Start with a purpose
Introduction to Investing · the work you will do
- 1Start with a purpose
- 2Identify the claim
- 3Trace the risks
- 4Explain the choice
Video coming soon · about 1 minutes
Welcome to Introduction to Investing
Use the narration below while the recording is being made, then try the decisions in this lesson.
Read the full narration
Welcome to On Judgement. In Introduction to Investing, we will follow four connected steps. Start with a purpose. Then Identify the claim. Then Trace the risks. Then Explain the choice. You do not need to know the answers before you start. Make an initial choice, read or watch the explanation, and use the feedback to reconsider. A mistake is useful when you can explain what it revealed. Work on the cases independently or discuss them with your club. Keep longer written responses for the parts where you need to make an argument of your own. By the end, use the evidence and calculations to explain a decision and what could change it.
Start with the foundations
Nine lessons introduce investing, the people and institutions involved, investment claims, sustainability, risk, return and value. Each lesson includes explanations, a worked example, activities, jargon and five questions with feedback.
How to use the module
Work independently or with your club. Keep a workbook, attempt each task before opening feedback, and discuss where the evidence allows more than one reasonable view. Finish with 20 questions and a written scholarship committee case.
Before you start: ten questions
This is a baseline, not a pass-or-fail test. Record your answers and uncertainties before opening explanations. Return to them after the module to see what changed.
1.1 Introduction to Investing
Start with the foundations: nine lessons, worked examples, activities and a final investment case. No prior investing knowledge needed.
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1.1.1 What is investing for?
Start with purpose: understand asset owners, managers, mandates and how capital reaches businesses.
Start with purpose: understand asset owners, managers, mandates and how capital reaches businesses.
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Distinguish spending, saving and investing by purpose and risk.
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Distinguish a firm, a fund and a portfolio.
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1.1.4 Investing in everyday life
Explain why pensions, insurers, endowments and sovereign funds invest.
Explain why pensions, insurers, endowments and sovereign funds invest.
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1.1.5 Sustainable investing: the approaches
Distinguish ESG integration, screening, thematic investing, stewardship and impact objectives.
Distinguish ESG integration, screening, thematic investing, stewardship and impact objectives.
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1.1.6 Sustainable investing: evidence and trade-offs
Explain why stakeholder interests can align or conflict over time.
Explain why stakeholder interests can align or conflict over time.
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1.1.7 Risk, return and value
Calculate simple total return and compound growth under explicit assumptions.
Calculate simple total return and compound growth under explicit assumptions.
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1.1.8 Who does what in investing?
Classify owners, managers and service providers by their responsibilities.
Classify owners, managers and service providers by their responsibilities.
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Replace categorical myths with evidence-based, qualified explanations.
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Module review and final assessment
Check your foundations and apply them to the scholarship committee case.
Check your foundations and apply them to the scholarship committee case.