TL,DR: Master basic investing concepts to get started The Unripe Peach / Investment Lifecycle Investments work like an unripe peach. First you buy, then you wait, then you (hopefully) reap the rewards of waiting. The amount you spent to buy the products is called cost basis, calculated as the number of products purchased times the price of each product. If you end up with more money than you put in, this is called a capital gain, and if you end up with less, then you have a capital loss. Toge...