What you will learn
- Cash and deposits
- Bonds and yields
- Equities and funds
- Commodities and derivatives
Cash and deposits
Cash is a claim or a directly held currency used for payments. A bank deposit is a liability of that bank; access terms, currency and applicable protection arrangements matter. Nominal stability does not guarantee stable purchasing power when prices change.
Bonds and yields
A bond represents contractual payments from an issuer. Its market price can change before maturity. Yield expresses a return measure based on price and assumed cash flows; distinguish coupon rate, current yield and yield to maturity rather than treating every quoted rate as equivalent.
Equities and funds
A share is an ownership interest in a business. A fund pools investments under a stated mandate. Read what it owns: a fund tracking bullion has different exposure from a fund holding mining companies, whose costs, debt and management also affect returns.
Commodities and derivatives
A commodity is a physical good; a derivative is a contract whose value depends on an underlying reference. Buying physical gold, holding fund shares and trading a leveraged gold contract produce different ownership, funding and counterparty arrangements even when prices are related.
Worked example
An investor holds bullion and shares in a gold miner. Gold rises while the miner reports higher operating costs and its shares fall. The result is consistent: the share is exposure to a business, not ownership of an equivalent quantity of bullion.
Try it yourself
Classify a cash balance, a government bond, mining shares and a gold futures contract. For each, identify the source of a possible loss and whether the holding represents direct ownership of gold.
Show the worked solution
Cash can lose purchasing power; a bond can face rate and issuer risk; mining shares face business and market risk; futures face contractual price and margin risk. None of these descriptions alone establishes direct ownership of allocated bullion.
Apply this to your course project
Draw an annotated map linking gold, currencies, rates and equities without claiming fixed correlations.
Keep the calculation inputs, assumptions and decisions with your work. Practical exercises are self-reviewed; the scored knowledge checks assess the questions shown, not an independent certification of practical competence.