"An easy-to-understand, easy-to-use primer that helps take the mystery out of money, indexes, treasury bills, stocks, commodities, options, bonds, tracking performance, risk/return, mutual funds, futures, inflation"--Cover.

Includes index.

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 -- The Value of Money -- Trading Money -- 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 -- Getting Stock Information -- Reading the Stock Tables -- Sifting Stock Information -- Evaluating Companies -- The Stock Market -- Trading on the New York Stock Exchange -- Trading on the Nasdaq Market -- Reading the Averages -- Market Indexes -- Market Cycles -- Crash! -- Trading Around the Clock -- Tracking International Markets -- The Global Indexes -- 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 -- A Look at the World of Bonds -- Mutual Funds -- Mutual Funds: Putting It Together -- The Mutual Funds Market -- Targeted Investments -- Focused Funds -- Inside a Mutual Fund -- Mutual Fund Quotations -- It's All in the Charts -- Tracking Fund Performance -- The Prospectus -- International Funds -- Futures and Options.

Traces the history of money and discusses stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures, and options.