I work developing financial market software, manly for pricing and risk, for more than ten years and know how hard studying finance is for a newbie.

There are a lot of math, from high school to college, that someone need to know before getting start with financial study. In some point, however, someone will realize that needs to go even deeper to calculate a simple rate of return (or you really think that Excel IRR or Yield works for every case?).

Finance 101 is a series of post about finance that tries to help newbies to understand financial market and products in an intuitive way. Posts will be short and focused in few (if not one) subjects.

I hope you enjoy the posts, comment a lot and correct me (why not?) as soon as I make a mistake.