Stocks, Bonds, Cash & Alternatives

Meet the instruments — stocks, bonds, cash and alternatives, what each is and how each pays you.

You know yourself. Now meet the instruments. Stocks are residual ownership in a business. Bonds are loan contracts with a schedule and a due date. Cash is short-term optionality that slowly loses to inflation. Alternatives — REITs, commodities, crypto — are a small, optional flavour bucket. Eight lessons on what each one IS, how each one pays you, and why their correlations matter. Capstone: a one-page cheat sheet in your own words.