Right — new short just dropped, and I want to do something a bit different with this one.
If you’ve been around investing content for any length of time, you’ve heard the word “ETF” thrown around constantly. Reddit threads. YouTube comments. Group chats. Every “what should I buy” answer.
And if you’re anything like I was when I started — you’ve probably nodded along to it for months without anyone actually explaining what one is.
So here’s the version I wish someone had given me on day one:
An ETF is a basket.
That’s it. That’s the whole concept.
You buy one share of the basket, and you instantly own a slice of everything inside it. No picking individual companies. No spreadsheets. No agonising over whether Apple is overvalued this week.
Take FWRG (the Invesco FTSE All-World UCITS ETF) — one of the ones I talk about a lot. That single basket holds roughly 1,800 companies across developed and emerging markets. One click, one annual fee of 0.15%, properly diversified.
That’s the whole magic trick.
Now — here’s what I actually want from you on this thread.
The reason I made this short is because “ETF” is the word I used to nod along to. But it’s not the only one. There’s a whole vocabulary around investing that nobody bothers to explain properly, and most people are too embarrassed to ask once they’ve been around long enough that they “should” know it.
So I want to know:
What’s the investing word YOU still nod along to but don’t actually understand?
Could be:
Index (different from an ETF? same thing? both?)
Dividend yield (is that the same as the % return?)
Compounding (everyone says it’s magic, nobody shows the maths)
Bond (what does “buying a bond” actually mean?)
Drawdown / volatility / beta / expense ratio / accumulating vs. distributing
Or honestly — anything else. There’s no stupid one. The whole point of this thread is to make a list of the words that get used like everyone already knows them.
Reply with yours below. Whichever word racks up the most replies (or hits a nerve I wasn’t expecting), I’ll script the next short around it. This thread is the brief.
— Duncan
