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Finance: What's the Difference Between Stocks and Bonds? 186 Views


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What is the difference between stocks and bonds? Stocks are ownership. They control the election of the board of directors, who hires the CEO, who controls everything. Bonds are just debt, or obligations the company owes, payable in cash, with interest tacked on.

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Transcript

00:00

finance a la shmoop. what's the difference between stocks and

00:08

bonds? welcome to our little town. the last stop on our tour ends here at the

00:13

town square with an excellent display of stock. and then over here we have the [man in stocks]

00:17

bond .hey wrong tour! hi me again mister shmoop

00:23

you may remember me from such shmoop classics at the st. Valentine's Day

00:27

Massacre college 101 and the ever popular ode to a freakin comma. but today

00:33

I'm here to talk to you about the difference between a stock and a bond.

00:36

financial kind. yep long way to get here but the difference is really simple

00:40

stocks are about ownership when you own some shares of stock you own a piece of

00:46

something .when you own a bond you are essentially just the renting money to

00:50

someone .that's it .stocks and bonds get mentioned together all the time because

00:54

they're both investment vehicles .that is places to put your money. but as far as

00:59

what backed them up well they're really different animals. so let's dig in a bit

01:03

on stocks. meet whatever dot-com. it has 10 million shares outstanding. outstanding

01:08

not meaning that it's a strictly good company. it's just a term that refers to [kids smile on the couch]

01:11

the total number of shares of ownership of the company or said another way it

01:15

means that the Pie of whatever com is cited in to 10 million slices and each

01:20

slice is called yes shockingly a share. whatever.com trades publicly for 10

01:25

bucks share giving it evaluation of a hundred million dollars. that is

01:29

investors who are paying $10 a share for whatever com are valuing the company at

01:33

a hundred million dollars. that's 10 million shares times $10 to get you

01:39

there. yeah ten million slices of pie. big pie. okay so you decide to put all of

01:43

uncle Larry's inheritance money into whatever com at ten bucks a share.

01:47

that's a hundred grand. there we go. you are now the proud owner of 0.1% or [woman smiles holding money]

01:54

ten thousand shares of whatever dot-com congratulations.

01:57

maybe .well things with whatever dot-com go along just fine in one day you are

02:02

sweating on the Stairmaster and the ticker what scrolls buy on CNBC showing

02:07

up five hundred percent. the headline makes you giddy. woo of the whoo

02:12

you just turned your 100 from uncle Larry into 500 grand .why ?well

02:17

because Apple has just announced that it will pay 50 bucks a share on 10 million

02:21

shares that valued whatever dot-com it's 500 million dollars to buy the company.

02:26

yeah so whatever icon becomes now part of Apple. so you celebrate. but things

02:31

could have done different .condolences there .yeah stocks can go that way. [woman drives red sports car]

02:35

so he just turned uncle Larry's life savings that he gave to you and that you

02:40

invested in this risky new company into nothing. yeah nice job they're. a big fat

02:45

hundred grand smoking hole in your bank account .so yeah stocks carry a lot of

02:49

risk it can be good but oh it can be bad. check out this chart for the S&P 500 for

02:54

the last hundred or so years. well the S&P 500 is just an index or the

02:58

500 largest companies in the world generally speaking. but with a high

03:02

Western lean. on the selection of the company there goes Westerners who built

03:06

the index. well it's the most common representatives of performance when

03:09

investors ask so how's the market doing? anyway back to the chart. well you

03:14

can see from the early 1950s until the mid 1960s or so not much went on and

03:21

just kind of flat they're paying dividends then we had 70s and basically [stock market chart shown]

03:24

the market was flat for a decade but dividends went up and up and up. it's the

03:28

company still we're making a lot of cash profit.. and Reagan came into office in

03:32

the early 80s now 1980 there said give us our Iran hostages back and all that

03:37

and then the market took off and it went nuts. there's a little bit of correction

03:41

there nineteen eighty eight nine there is sell them and then blam the greatest

03:47

bull market in history all the way up until 2000. when things burst and yeah

03:51

it's been quite a ride. so you can see up down up down

03:54

but generally from 1950 to 2017 change up and up is really nicely up. that's

04:00

what we do here. alright but the main takeaway is that over time stocks went

04:04

up on average from here to here about eight or nine maybe ten percent a year.

04:08

so what does that tell you about stocks? well that risk is less generally [stock market chart shown]

04:12

speaking if you're able to hold stocks for a long time. that is over time the

04:18

markets in the capitalist system basically bail you out of problems if

04:22

you can hold the stocks long enough .so if you're 20 think lots of stocks. it's

04:26

you know you won't need the money for decades if you're a newly retiring 75

04:30

year old not so much. you just can't afford to live through a bad bear market.

04:34

so instead maybe you do halfsies with stocks and bonds or you go all-in just

04:39

on bonds. and live on a budge.t all right so what is a bond well take your

04:42

friendly cable and internet provider Comcast. they borrow money all the time

04:47

from the public so they can buy smaller cable companies and TV companies and

04:51

content companies or pay for programming you know or buy gum.

04:55

well the lion's share of Comcast bond offerings have paid about 5% a year

04:59

which isn't much but on the upside none have ever not paid their interest. in

05:04

fact waste fewer than 1% of bonds in the u.s. don't fully pay up.

05:08

meaning that in general for decently rated bonds that is bonds which are

05:12

rated by experts as being safe bets to fully pay off both principal and [bonds examined by experts]

05:16

interest almost never default. as Shakespeare said default is not in Our

05:21

Stars but in ourselves. and it's close enough. well but think about the

05:25

difference on an investment which compounds ie grows exponentially each

05:29

year at a rate of 5% for 20 years versus an investment that compound at 9% over

05:35

20 years. the difference is about 4% a year doesn't sound like much maybe, but

05:40

over time that's a really big difference. let's pull out of our handbag our handy

05:45

dandy rule of 72. which is a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation tool

05:48

that helps you figure out how many years it takes an investment to double .if an

05:52

investment grows at 10% a year it doubles in 7.2 years which means we lose

05:56

a full doubling in value of our investment here using the 5% bond. in 72

06:02

divided by 4 there we go for 18 years .so said a different way after 18 years have

06:07

just investing in bonds for suggest investing in stocks we end up with half

06:12

as much money if history repeats itself and it doesn't always. but it's something

06:16

think about. anyway that notion feels like a lot to pay for

06:19

the greater safety or certainty of a bond. all right so now you know your

06:23

stocks from your bonds and it'll come in handy if you're ever robbed by one of

06:26

them at gunpoint and have to you know pick them out of a lineup. [lineup shown]

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