Money Lessons with Andrew Temte, PhD, CFA

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy widens the map beyond American markets to make the case for owning international stocks. 

He explains home-country bias — the natural pull to invest only in the companies of your own country — and points out that more than a third of the world's stock market value sits outside the United States. 

Andy walks through the two practical ways an ordinary investor can own forei...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy answers a question he has been holding since last year: if your stock trades are free, how does a broker make its money? 

He explains payment for order flow — the arrangement where your broker sells your order to a wholesale market maker that fills it and pays for the privilege. Andy walks through why your everyday orders are so valuable, where the real conflict of interest hides, a...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explains the exchange-traded fund — the ETF — the vehicle most people now use to own a whole index in a single trade. 

He traces it back to the first one, State Street's SPDR, launched in 1993 to track the S&P 500, and shows how an ETF differs from the index mutual fund Jack Bogle created in 1976: one trades all day on an exchange like a stock, the other prices just once, ...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy tackles a phrase we lean on without ever defining it: "the market." He explains what a stock market index is, where the Dow, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq-100 come from, and how each one measures the market differently — the Dow by share price, the others by company size. He unpacks the Dow's hidden divisor and the outsized power of a denominator, shows how a handful of giant compa...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy uses the 2021 GameStop saga to reveal the hidden machinery that runs underneath every stock trade. 

He explains how a struggling video-game retailer became the most heavily bet-against stock on Wall Street, why ordinary investors banded together to buy it, and how its price rocketed from about $17 to around $483 in a matter of weeks. 

Then he answers the question that left millions o...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores information asymmetry—the gap between what some market participants know and what others know—and the rules that try to keep that gap from getting too wide. 

He walks through the structural advantages built into the architecture of the market itself, the meaningful distinction between buy-side and sell-side analysts that financial pundits throw around without explanat...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores one of the most misunderstood practices in financial markets — short selling. He traces the origins of the practice to Isaac Le Maire and the Dutch East India Company in 1609, walks through the mechanics of borrowing shares to sell them, and explains the asymmetric risk that makes short positions fundamentally different from owning a stock. 

He brings the lesson to life wit...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy picks up where last week's IPO episode left off and walks through what changes once a company is publicly traded. 

He explains the lockup period that follows every IPO — using Airbnb's May 17, 2021 lockup expiration and six-percent drop as the concrete example — then breaks down the SEC's three core disclosure filings (10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K) that drive the rhythm of public-compa...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy walks through what happens when a company goes public — how a private business with a small group of owners becomes a publicly traded stock that anyone with a brokerage account can buy. 

The episode covers the five reasons companies decide to go public, the underwriting process and the role of investment banks, the road show and how the offering price gets set, and what happens on t...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy tackles one of the most foundational questions in investing: what is a stock actually worth? Returning to value-investing pioneer Benjamin Graham, Andy walks through the three primary lenses professional analysts use to estimate stock value—relative valuation, asset-based valuation, and cash-flow-based valuation—and shows how each one offers a different angle on the same question.&...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy walks through the three categories of risk that dominate the experience of owning stock: firm-specific risk, market risk, and behavioral risk. He explains why a stock's daily movement is mostly driven by company news, but why the broad market overwhelms those differences when it moves sharply—answering the listener's natural "which is it?" question. 

Using the 2008 financial crisis ...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores leverage and margin — what happens when investors borrow money to buy stocks. He traces the story from the unchecked margin trading of the 1920s that fueled the 1929 crash through the regulatory response that reshaped modern markets, including Regulation T and FINRA's maintenance margin requirements. 

Andy walks through a margin call example to show how borrowed money ampli...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores preferred stock — the hybrid security that sits between bonds and common stock in a company's capital structure. He traces its origins to the Railway Mania of 1840s Britain and the aftermath of the Panic of 1837 in America, where distressed railroads and canal companies invented a new class of shares to attract cautious investors. 

Andy explains how preferred stock borrows ...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy traces the historical shift from dividend-focused investing to earnings-based valuation, showing how mandatory financial disclosure in the 1930s transformed the way investors evaluate stocks. 

He walks through five essential equity metrics—earnings per share (EPS), the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, the dividend payout ratio, the price-to-sales (P/S) ratio, and the price-to-book (P/...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores how dividends work and why they matter for investors building long-term wealth. He traces the history of dividends back to the Dutch East India Company's first payment in 1610—which was made in spices, not cash—and walks through the four key dates every dividend investor needs to understand. 

Andy also explains dividend yield, why some companies pay dividends while ot...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy breaks down the three most common ways companies change their share structure. He explains how stock splits work — including Apple's five splits and Warren Buffett's famous refusal to split Berkshire Hathaway—and why reverse stock splits often signal trouble. 

He then explores share buybacks, how they boost earnings per share, and why investors need to look past the headline n...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explains what you actually own when you buy a share of stock. He explores the concept of the residual claim — why shareholders are last in line during bankruptcy but first to benefit when companies thrive — and walks through the four key rights of common stock ownership: voting, dividends, information, and the right to sell. The episode also covers the bankruptcy priority hierarchy...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy breaks down the three fundamental stock order types every investor needs to understand — market orders, limit orders, and stop orders. He explains how each order type works, when to use them, and the tradeoffs between speed, price control, and downside protection. The episode also covers order duration, how brokerages route your trades behind the scenes, and why regulators require broker...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores the mechanics of stock trading, focusing on the concept of liquidity. He explains how liquidity affects stock prices, the role of specialists in maintaining market order, and the significance of the bid-ask spread. The conversation also covers the historical context of stock price quotations and the impact of decimalization on trading costs, emphasizing the importance of understanding...