Money, Markets & Wealth · Markets
Stock Market Foundations
Understand markets before you ever place an order
- How shares, funds, exchanges and orders actually work
- Fees, dividends and taxes as arithmetic you can do yourself
- Risk and diversification taught with evidence, not slogans
- Read a prospectus, factsheet and annual report without help
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What this program is
Almost everything published about the stock market is either an advertisement or entertainment. The result is a strange gap: people can name a dozen tickers and cannot say what a share entitles them to, what a bid-ask spread costs them, or why an expense ratio compounds against them for thirty years. That gap is expensive, and it is what this course closes.
We start with the instrument and work outwards — shares, bonds and funds; exchanges, brokers, order types and settlement; indices and what tracking one actually means; the arithmetic of fees, dividends and taxes; and the empirical behaviour of risk, correlation and diversification. Then we read real documents together: a fund prospectus, an annual report, a factsheet, so the numbers in them stop being decorative.
Two things this course is explicitly not. It is not a trading course: we teach no entry signals, no chart patterns, no options strategies and no systems, and we will tell you honestly what the research says about retail short-term trading outcomes. And it is not advice: no security is recommended, no allocation is suggested, and no forecast is offered — by anyone teaching it, at any point.
The six modules
What you actually own
Shares, bonds, funds, ETFs and trusts — what each is legally, what it entitles the holder to, and how they differ in liquidity, claim priority and tax treatment. Ownership before opinion.
Markets, brokers and the plumbing
How exchanges match orders, what market, limit and stop orders do, bid-ask spreads, settlement, custody, and what happens to your assets if a broker fails. The plumbing is where avoidable losses live.
Indices, index funds and active management
What an index is and who decides its contents, what tracking means and where tracking error comes from, and the evidence on active versus passive performance after costs — presented as findings with their limitations, not as a slogan.
The arithmetic that decides outcomes
Compounding, expense ratios, transaction costs, dividend reinvestment, inflation and the drag of taxes. You will compute these yourself on a spreadsheet, because a percentage point of annual fee is abstract until you have seen thirty years of it.
Risk, volatility and diversification
Volatility versus permanent loss of capital, correlation and why it rises in a crisis, concentration risk including employer stock, sequence-of-returns risk, and the behavioural research on why investors underperform their own investments.
Reading the documents
A fund prospectus, a factsheet and a company annual report read together, line by line: fees, holdings, risk disclosures, and the sections written to be skipped. Plus how to spot the standard markers of investment fraud.
Format and logistics
- Live online — small cohort, discussion-based
- Weekly 75-minute sessions
- 6 modules
- Spreadsheet exercises; no brokerage account required or requested
- No prior finance background assumed
- Trading strategies, signals, tips or security recommendations
What you leave with
- A working mental model of how a market transaction actually happens
- The ability to compute the lifetime cost of a fee, spread or tax drag yourself
- A vocabulary that makes financial media legible — and its incentives visible
- A checklist for reading any investment document before signing anything
Pricing
Pricing for this program depends on format, cadence and length, so we quote it on the consultation call rather than publishing a number that would be wrong for most families. Ask an advisor — the call is free and there is no obligation.
Common questions
Please read before enrolling
Investor education only. This program does not recommend securities, does not teach trading strategies, and does not provide investment advice. Past performance never predicts future results, and all investing carries risk of loss. KPM Academy is not a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer.
Educational content and coaching only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. KPM Academy is not a registered investment adviser.
Before You Invest: A Reader's Checklist
Seven sections, each with a question to answer
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