Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 388, Investing Your Money.
This is ESL podcast episode 388.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development at in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Visit our website at eslpod.com.
You can download a learning guide for this episode to help improve your English even faster.
We suggest you take a look at the learning guide.
We also have an ESL podcast store and an ESL podcast blog at Thank you for watching by someone who is trying to tell people, instruct people how they should invest their money, how they should keep their money so that they can make more money.
Let's get started.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to today's seminar.
We're going to talk about how to invest your money and how to maximize those holdings.
First, we'll talk about market trends and where to find the best opportunities right now.
Getting in on the ground floor is and getting the highest appreciation is what we all want.
A good investor also knows when to divest, and we'll talk about how to read the warning signs.
Many of you have money in savings but you want a better rate of return and you're willing to speculate a little to get it.
We'll discuss how to diversify your portfolio to minimize risk while maximizing your return.
Are you ready to make some money?
Let's get started.
This episode is about making money.
Usually, we use this expression when talking about work classes, classes that help you do better at your job, for example.
So he begins by thanking everyone for coming to his seminar.
He says, we're going to talk about how to invest your money.
To invest means to buy something with your money with the hope that it will increase in value, so that you can sell it later to make more money.
So you buy something today, hoping that it will increase in its value, and then you sell it two years or five years or ten years later and you make more money.
You could buy property like a house or a building.
You could buy stocks, which is partial ownership in other companies.
There are many different things you can buy as investments.
This seminar is about how to invest your money and how to maximize those holdings.
To maximize means to make something as big or as large as possible.
Your boss says we want to maximize sales.
He means we want to make as much money as possible.
To maximize your holdings means to make as much money on the things that you own as possible.
Your holdings are things that you own, especially stocks in a company where you own part of the company.
This is a word that has a couple of different meanings.
Take a look at our learning guide for some additional explanations.
The seminar introduction continues with a description of what they are going to talk about today.
He begins by saying, first, we'll talk about market trends.
A market is a general word for a place to buy and sell things.
You can go to the supermarket to buy goods food, for example.
In this case, the market is referring more to the economy, to things like the stock market, where you buy and sell stocks.
A trend is the direction something is moving over time, so you can have a trend going up, a trend going down or a trend staying.
The same Market trend then, is the way that the economy and the stock market are moving over time.
Are they going higher, getting better, or going lower, getting worse?
He's also going to talk about the best opportunities right now.
He says getting in on the ground floor is what we all want.
To get in on the ground floor means to become involved in an activity as early as possible, at the very beginning.
So a company is just starting and you want to get in on the ground floor.
You would get involved in the company right away as soon as it gets started.
The ground floor is the bottom floor of a building.
Here, though, the expression means to get in at the beginning.
Getting in at the ground floor is what we all want.
Getting the highest appreciation is also what we all want.
Appreciation in this case means an increase in the value of something over time, an increase in how much something is worth.
So if you buy a house in Los Angeles for 500000 10 years from now, you hope that it will have a good appreciation value.
Maybe it will be worth $750,000.
Appreciation has a couple of different meanings.
Take a look at the learning guide for some more explanations.
A good investor also knows when to divest.
To divest, D-I-V-E-S-T, is the opposite of invest.
To divest means to sell something, to sell some investment, such as a stock or some piece of property.
He says we'll also talk about how to read the warning signs.
The warning signs would be indications or signals that something bad is going to happen.
For example, you come home and you see your wife with a very angry look on her face and she has a frying pan in one hand.
This is probably a warning sign that you are in trouble.
Warning signs, then.
Are signals, indications that something bad is about to happen for the stock market?
There may be warning signs that things are going to get worse.
He continues by saying, Savings refers usually to a bank account where you put money into.
It's not exactly an investment usually.
Sometimes savings accounts will give you interest on your money, meaning you will get some money back on your money as like an investment.
But often a savings account is just a place to keep your money that you need in the future to take out to spend on the things you need to buy.
He says, Once again, savings accounts in the United States don't pay very much money.
The rate of return is the percentage of money that you can earn or make on your investment in a specific period of time.
The interest rate, for example, is a rate of return.
It's the amount of money that you will get back, the percentage of your investment.
So, for example, if you have 100 and you invest it in a stock the Center for Educational Development Incorporated stock One year later your investment is now worth 105.
Your rate of return was 5% for the year.
If you want a better rate of return than what you can get from a savings account, you need to speculate a little.
To speculate means to buy something because you hope or believe that the value of that thing will increase greatly, so that you can sell it later and make a lot of money.
To speculate means, in this case, to buy something.
There are other meanings of the word speculate.
To speculate in general means to give your idea about something even though you're not really sure or don't have all the facts.
In finance, in talking about investments, to speculate means to buy something, thinking you're going to get rich very quickly.
Usually that doesn't work out very well.
It doesn't happen that way usually.
Finally, he says we'll discuss how to diversify your portfolio to minimize risk while maximizing your return.
To diversify means to increase the different types of the thing that you have.
In this case, the different kinds of investments.
So maybe 25 of your money is in stocks and 50 of your money is in land, in real estate, and 25 of your money is in gold.
That would be to diversify, to take your money and invest it in different kinds of things.
Your portfolio is the group of stocks that you own, the kinds of investments that you have in general.
So your entire list of investments would be your portfolio.
Risk is the possibility that something negative or bad will happen.
To minimize risk.
Minimize is the opposite of maximize, meaning to make smaller means to make sure that you won't have something negative happen in the future, to try to reduce the possibility of that negative outcome.
Now let's listen to the story, this time at a normal rate of speech.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to today's seminar.
We're going to talk about how to invest your money and how to maximize those holdings.
First, we'll talk about market trends and where to find the best opportunities right now.
Getting in on the ground floor and getting the highest appreciation is what we all want.
A good investor also knows when to divest, and we'll talk about how to read the warning signs.
Many of you have money in savings, but you want a better rate of return and you're willing to speculate a little to get it.
We'll discuss how to diversify your portfolio to minimize risk while maximizing your return.
Are you ready to make some money?
Let's get started.
The script for this episode was written by a woman who maximizes your opportunities to learn English.
Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
This podcast is copyright 2008.
