How the Internet Made Financial Wizards out of Us All

Undoubtedly, the World Wide Web has been one of the most miraculous inventions in the history of humanity.

21:47 23 August 2018

It has fundamentally and forever changed the way we communicate, the way we entertain ourselves, the way we work – and, also, the way we learn and approach knowledge. This includes our knowledge of financial markets and the investment world: the advent of the internet has led to a democratization of our access to information about financial institutions and financial markets.

Learn How to Manage Your Investment Portfolio Online

This has inadvertently made us all into financial wizards – or, at least, potentially financially savvy individuals. Nowadays, it is no longer a matter of whether you have the resources at hand or the money to invest in an education about the financial world. Rather, it is a question of whether you have the passion to put in the time and effort to educate yourself with the help of countless online resources and tools. There are even dedicated online courses that teach you the basics of economics and how to build and manage your own diversified investment portfolio – and most of them are for free. This does not mean only theoretical knowledge but, also, learning real-world skills, applying them in case studies and understanding in practice how to gain insight into the workings of financial markets.

Become an Online Trader

Financial markets remain obscure and distant for those who are simply not interested in learning more about them; for the rest of us, there are countless ways to pull back that veil of obscurity that allows financial jargon to be the exclusive realm of financial and investment professionals – and almost all of them are online. There, you can find tools that allow you not only to understand the lingo but also get your hands dirty and do some investing yourself. There are online platforms where you can trade in CFDs across a wide range of assets, such as stocks, ETFs, Forex, indices, government bonds and even commodities spanning across metals, energy and agriculture. Getting a firsthand taste of how financial products and stock markets work is the next step in consolidating knowledge about finance – and it is amazingly easy to find a platform to do it when you take to the internet.

Get Stock Market News First - on Your Smartphone

Smartphones have made this learning process even easier. With a simple search, you can find several apps that are dedicated to monitoring stock markets worldwide so that you can learn in real time how markets fluctuate, as well as technical analysis and tips on stock picks – and even conduct market signal scans. This increased access to tools and resources online has led to a vast amount of people learning more about how financial institutions work. This democratization of access to knowledge and practice that the internet has brought with it is not exclusive to the finance industry; other sectors, like digital content creation, have also been highly decentralized thanks to the virtual world.

There are no excuses any more – those who really want to learn and apply their knowledge now have the unique opportunity to use online resources to realize that drive.