Stock Markets Made Easy

Stock markets offer the opportunity to create wealth and achieve financial growth. However, investing or trading involves a significant amount of risk. However, a lot of us can be confused by the complexities of the financial markets, fear making costly errors, or wish to put our money to better use.

To address these challenges, we’ve designed stock markets course for beginners to provide a comprehensive understanding of the financial markets.

The objective of this course is to help you make informed investment decisions, manage risks effectively, and achieve your financial growth and wealth-building goals.

This course will first help you lay a strong foundation by understanding how the capital markets work and their structure, the process of investing in an IPO, terminologies related to the stock market and the various corporate actions that can impact your investments.

As we progress, you will get an overview of the NSE website and an introduction to the Live Terminal to provide you with a real-world experience empowering you to monitor live market data. 

Moving on, you will see how the economy affects stock prices and a basic understanding of mutual funds as an investment vehicle. Further, we will cover the introduction to fundamental analysis, different approaches to stock investing, and the basics of technical analysis.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to make informed investment choices and work towards achieving your financial growth and wealth-building objectives.

Please find below the topics covered in the Stock Market Made Easy course: 

Section 1: Basics of Capital Market

• Functioning of Financial Markets: We will start with understanding the financial market, where we will learn the interdependence of the financial ecosystem, where participants such as buyers, sellers, and consumers help in the smooth functioning of the market. It discusses capital creation through banks and financial markets, focusing on SEBI's role in regulating the Indian stock market. Then we will explore the types of capital markets, i.e., primary & secondary markets and how they function. 
• Participants of Capital markets: Further, we will get an overview of various participants such as investors, companies and stock markets exchanges; types of investors such as retail investors, high net worth individuals and institutional investors; depositories such as NSDL & CDSL, clearing corporations and the custodian.
• Understanding Initial Public Offering (IPO): Next, we will deep dive into the concept of IPO and explore the reason why the company decides to go public, the different types of public issues apart from IPO, such as FPO and OFS, the IPO procedure in India, different investor categories for IPO- Retail Individual Investors, Non-Institutional Investors and Qualified Institutional Buyers, the basis of allotment, applying for IPO through ASBA which is considered as the most convenient way and case study on Lodha Developers to understand the entire IPO process.

Section 2: Understanding Stock Markets- The Practical Way

• Key Concepts and Trading Terminologies: Once we are through with the fundamentals of the stock markets, we will learn about the indices based on small cap, mid cap and large cap, sector/industry, broad market, free float market cap; demat and trading accounts; contract notes- contents and its format; types of market sessions and timings- pre-open sessions, regular trading sessions, block deal session, and the closing session; trading terminologies such as tick size, bid and ask spread, impact cost, market depth, circuit breakers, types of orders, market sentiment trackers, foreign institutional investors & domestic institutional investment, bulk deal, block deal, and insider trading; broker selection; margin trading system; rolling settlement.
• Introduction to Live Terminal: Further, we will see live market terminal applications (including dashboard, watchlist, and order placement), as well as the importance of newspaper analysis for informed investment decisions.

Section 3: Corporate Action & Its Types

Moving on, we will learn about corporate actions and how company decisions affect stock prices. Dividends are one example of how firms share earnings with shareholders. We'll also look at bonus issues, which are additional shares offered at a reduced price, and stock splits, which increase the number of shares while keeping the overall value the same. In addition, we'll learn about share buybacks, which happen when firms pay a premium to shareholders for their shares. 

Section 4: All you need to know about Mutual Funds

• Introduction to Mutual Funds: We will further understand the basic concept of mutual funds and their advantages to know how they work as investment vehicles. We will also explore mutual fund schemes, such as open-ended and closed-ended, to gain insight into the options available in the market and to choose the most suited ones based on your financial goals and risk tolerance. 
• Concept of SIP: Further, we will learn about the SIP, which allows for regular monthly investments in stock markets, promoting financial discipline and possible wealth creation over time. It helps people with consistent earnings attain their goals through rupee cost averaging and diligent investing. Additionally, this unit will help you solve the dilemma of investing in a single payment or dividing it into 12 equal installments as a Systematic Investment Plan (SIP). SIPs include investing regular amounts over time, which benefits salaried persons and those looking to reduce risk. The decision between Lumpsum and SIP is based on cash flow, risk tolerance, and available capital.

Section 5: Economy & Financial Markets

• Macroeconomics- Introduction & its Importance: Here, we will understand what economics is, the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics and the importance of macroeconomics despite lagging indicators. It explains how lagging indicators may still influence markets and how traders can use them and introduce the concept of leading indicators. This unit also emphasizes the relevance of macroeconomics in comprehending event impacts, provides historical instances such as George Soros' trade, and briefly discusses the 2013 Indian currency crisis, underlining macroeconomics' practical importance in trading and investing.
• Key Growth Variables: Next, we will learn the significance of tracking economic health through important indicators emphasizing GDP. Comprehending the importance of GDP tracking includes understanding its significance in foreseeing economic and market cycles and helping with strategic decisions in various asset classes. Explore various approaches to calculating GDP, such as the Output, Expenditure, and Income approaches.
• Price Level Indicators: Now that we’ve understood the basics, we will move on to understand the prices within an economy and how they change over time. We will learn what inflation is, the ways that cause inflation: Demand-Pull Inflation and Cost-Push Inflation, the impact of inflation on the stock markets, and the concept of Nominal GDP and Real GDP. Next, we will understand deflation and why it is worse for the economy. Further, we will also understand the specific indicators we need to keep an eye on for tracking inflation, such as WPI and CPI.
• Role of Government: Moving on, we will explore the role of government in an economy, fiscal policy and how government can use it to manage the economy by using fiscal policy tools such as increasing/decreasing taxes and increasing/decreasing government spending. We will then move on to understand the monetary policy and various related tools, including interest rate-related tools, liquidity-related tools and direct market action.

Section 6: Learn Fundamental Analysis

• Introduction to Fundamental Analysis: Next, we will understand the basic concept of fundamental analysis and how you can become an owner of a company by purchasing its shares. We will then touch upon the factors that affect the stock prices such as negative or positive newsflow, liquidity in the company, etc.
• Different Approaches to Stock Investing: Further, we will explore the Top Down & Bottom Up approach to investing, and learn to carry out the Economy and Industry, and Porter's Five Forces and SWOT analyses. Additionally, we will understand the pros and cons of various approaches.

Section 7: Learn Technical Analysis

Now that we are thorough with the basics of the stock market, and fundamental analysis, we will explore the philosophy behind the technical analysis and understand price over time and the concepts of volume and open interest in trading.