21/02/2022
Examples
The easiest way to define finance is by providing examples of the activities it includes. There are many different career paths and jobs that perform a wide range of finance activities. Below is a list of the most common examples:
Investing personal money in stocks, bonds, or guaranteed investment certificates (GICs)
Borrowing money from institutional investors by issuing bonds on behalf of a public company
Lending money to people by providing them a mortgage to buy a house with
Using Excel spreadsheets to build a budget and financial model for a corporation
Saving personal money in a high-interest savings account
Developing a forecast for government spending and revenue collection
Finance People at Work
Finance Topics
There is a wide range of topics that people in the financial industry are concerned with. Below is a list of some of the most common topics you should expect to encounter in the industry.
Interest rates and spreads
Yield (coupon payments, dividends)
Financial statements (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement)
Cash flow (free cash flow, other types of cash flow)
Profit (net income)
Cost of capital (WACC)
Rates of return (IRR, ROI, ROA)
Dividends and return of capital
Shareholders
Creating value
Risk and return
Behavioral finance
Sources of Financial Information
To learn more about the industry, here are some of the most popular and helpful resources:
Google Finance (market data, stock prices, news, etc.)
The SEC website (company filings)
Bloomberg News (company and industry news)