Concepts
Plain-English explanations of 35 finance concepts, by topic: Basics, Stocks and bonds, Funds, Building a portfolio, Investing from Switzerland and Retirement.
Basics
- Asset Class, Stocks, bonds, cash and real estate each work in their own way.
- Compound Interest, How interest on interest turns time into your biggest advantage.
- Emergency Fund, The cash that keeps a bad month from becoming a forced sale.
- Inflation, Why CHF 10,000 buys a little less as prices rise, and what to do about it.
- Interest Rate, How the SNB's rate reaches your savings account and your mortgage.
- Liquidity, How fast your money turns into cash, and what that costs.
- Market Timing, Missing a few of the best days costs more than you'd expect.
- Opportunity Cost, Every franc you place somewhere is a franc you can't place elsewhere.
- Real Return, The return that counts is the one left after inflation.
- Risk and Return, More risk buys the chance of a higher return, not the promise.
- Rule of 72, Divide 72 by the return, and you know when your money doubles.
- Time Horizon, When you'll need the money decides how much risk it can take.
Stocks and bonds
- Bond, Lend money, collect interest, get your principal back.
- Dividend, Part of a company's profit, paid out in cash to its owners.
- Price-to-Earnings Ratio (P/E), What a share price says about earnings, and what it can't tell you.
- Stock, Own a slice of a company and share in the profits it pays out.
- Total Return, Price change plus dividends: the whole return, and what the SMI leaves out.
- Yield to Maturity (YTM), The coupon is what a bond pays. The yield is what you actually earn.
Funds
- Accumulating vs Distributing ETFs, Paid out or reinvested: what a fund does with its income, and how it's taxed.
- Active vs Passive Investing, Why most active Swiss equity funds trailed the index, and what that costs.
- Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF), One trade, many companies: how ETFs work and what they cost.
- Index Fund, Copy the market instead of trying to beat it, at a fraction of the cost.
- Total Expense Ratio (TER), A fraction of a percent a year, tens of thousands over a lifetime.
Building a portfolio
- Asset Allocation, Stocks, bonds and cash: the split that decides your ride.
- Diversification, Spread your money so that no single failure can sink you.
- Dollar Cost Averaging, Fixed amount, fixed schedule — the simplest way to keep investing.
- Portfolio Rebalancing, Why portfolios drift from their target — and how rebalancing fixes it.
- Volatility, Why the road to higher returns is bumpy, and when the bumps matter.
Investing from Switzerland
Retirement
- AHV (1st Pillar), Today's workers pay today's pensions. What that means for yours.
- Pensionskasse (2nd Pillar), Your pension fund in plain words: what goes in, and what comes out.
- Pillar 3a, The 2026 limits, the tax saving and the new retroactive top-ups, explained.
- Three-Pillar System, AHV, pension fund, Pillar 3a: who pays, and what each one covers.