• What are Asset classes?

An asset class is a collection of investments that share similarities, including how they behave in the marketplace, the purchasing process, and how the government regulates them. There are four broad classes of assets which include; Equities (stocks), Fixed-income and debt (bonds), Money market and cash equivalents, real estate and tangible assets.

Rise currently gives you access to three asset classes such as: Stocks, Fixed-income (Euro bonds), and Real estate.

• What is a portfolio?

A portfolio is a grouping of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies and cash equivalents, as well as their fund counterparts, including mutual, exchange-traded and closed funds.  An investment portfolio can be thought of as a pie that is divided into pieces of varying sizes, representing a variety of asset classes and/or types of investments to accomplish an appropriate risk-return portfolio allocation. 

• What is diversification? 

Diversification is a risk management strategy that mixes a wide variety of investments within a portfolio. A diversified portfolio contains a mix of distinct asset types and investment vehicles in an attempt at limiting exposure to any single asset or risk. The rationale behind this technique is that a portfolio constructed of different kinds of assets will, on average, yield higher long-term returns and lower the risk of any individual holding or security.

• What is compound interest? 

Compounding is a process of growing.  Compound interest is the addition of interest to the principal sum. It is calculated by multiplying the initial principal amount by one plus the annual interest rate raised to the number of compound periods minus one.  Interest can be compounded on any given frequency schedule, from continuous to daily to annually.

• What is devaluation? 

Devaluation is the deliberate downward adjustment of the value of a country's money relative to another currency, group of currencies, or currency standard.

• What is inflation? 

Inflation is the rate at which the cost of goods and services rises over time. Inflation is a quantitative measure of the rate at which the average price level of a basket of selected goods and services in an economy increases over some period of time. It is the rise in the general level of prices where a unit of currency effectively buys less than it did in prior periods. Often expressed as a percentage, inflation thus indicates a decrease in the purchase power of a nation’s currency.