Equity is the portion of an asset or enterprise you truly own after subtracting what you owe. In personal finance, it shows up as home equity (house value minus mortgage balance), business or owner’s equity (assets minus liabilities on your […]

Capitalism is an economic system where private individuals and businesses own productive assets and operate them for profit, with prices and output guided primarily by supply and demand. The United States is best described as a mixed-market economy: predominantly capitalist

Blockchain promises faster settlement, richer audit trails, and programmable money — but not every claim holds up in regulated finance. In 2025, U.S. rules for payment stablecoins are finally on the books, supervisors have clarified what banks may do, and

A balance sheet summarizes what an organization owns, owes, and the residual interest left for owners at a specific point in time. For beginners, it is the clearest snapshot of financial position; for more advanced readers, it is the foundation

Compound interest is interest earned on both your original principal and the interest previously added to it. Over time, this “interest on interest” can turn steady saving and investing into outsized results — or, on the flip side, make revolving

Altman’s Z-Score blends five accounting ratios into a single index to flag a company’s near-term distress risk. First published in 1968 using multiple discriminant analysis on U.S. manufacturers, it remains one of the most cited early-warning tools in credit analysis,

Standard deviation is the most widely used statistical gauge of how much an investment’s returns vary around their average. In plain English, it’s a volatility yardstick: higher standard deviation means wider swings — both up and down — while lower

“Assets” are the building blocks of your net worth. They include what you own that has value — cash in the bank, investments, real estate, and certain rights that can produce future benefits. The right mix of assets can create

APR expresses the true, yearly cost of borrowing in a single, standardized figure you can compare across lenders. For mortgages and installment loans, it combines the interest rate with most finance charges. For credit cards, it signals how expensive it

Every financial decision involves a trade-off — choosing one path means giving up another. That foregone path is your opportunity cost. In practice, this lens helps you align alternatives on equal footing, compare risk and liquidity — not just headline

P-values are everywhere — in medical trials, economics papers, investing backtests, and credit-risk models — and they’re often misunderstood. A p-value is not the probability that the null hypothesis is true, nor is it a guarantee that a result is