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 the first day of trading — including why the price you and I pay is almost always different from the price the institutions paid the night before.

Using Airbnb's December 2020 IPO as a concrete example, Andy unpacks the "pop" between offering price and opening price, then revisits the three risks of stock ownership from two weeks ago to highlight how cognitive biases — particularly the urge to follow the crowd — make hot IPOs especially dangerous territory for everyday investors.

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. 

Using the dot-com bubble as a cautionary tale, Andy illustrates what happens when relative valuation becomes untethered and stock prices disconnect from underlying business fundamentals. The unifying principle: speculation can run for surprisingly long stretches, but eventually a business must generate cash, or its price will be revalued to reflect what's actually there.

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 and the March 2020 pandemic crash as examples, Andy shows how fast and slow declines both punish panic-selling, just on different timelines. He closes with the observation that most of the gap between what individual investors earn and what the market returns isn't about picking the wrong stocks—it's about behavior.

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 amplifies both gains and losses, then closes with practical questions every investor should ask before borrowing to invest.

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/B) ratio—explaining what each one measures and when to use it.

Andy connects these modern tools back to Benjamin Graham's pioneering work in value investing and shows how they build on dividend and buyback concepts covered in earlier episodes.

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 others don't, and how dividend-paying stocks fit into a broader portfolio strategy based on individual risk tolerance.

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 numbers to see whether real value is being created. The episode also covers dilution and why issuing new shares comes at a cost to existing shareholders.

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 and why the risk-return tradeoff of equity ownership has made stocks the primary engine of long-term wealth creation.

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 these concepts for effective investing.

In this episode of Saturday Morning Muse, Andy explores the evolution of financial markets, focusing on the innovations of the Dutch Republic in the early 1600s. He discusses the limitations of previous equity ownership models and how the establishment of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) revolutionized investment through the introduction of transferable shares and a secondary market.

In this episode of Saturday Morning Muse, Andy explores the historical evolution of stock ownership, beginning with the Roman Publicani and the Venetian Commenda. 

He discusses how these early systems of equity ownership laid the groundwork for modern financial practices through capital pooling and risk spreading for investment in major infrastructure projects and trading expeditions.