Jessica Robinson

We are a non-profit organisation (registered charity number 91/6962) established in 2004 and dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls in Hong Kong through ground-breaking research, impactful and innovative community programmes, and education, media engagement and advocacy. Our three key focus areas are challenging gender stereotypes, increasing the number of women in decision-making and leadership positions, and empowering women in poverty to achieve a better quality of life for themselves and their families.

In brief, bonds are a form of loan where you (the investor) essentially serves as the ‘bank’. The loan can be to a company, a city or the government (the issuer). In return for lending your money you receive regular interest payments, with the issuer agreeing to pay you back the face value of the loan on a specific date.

Crowdfunding involves raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via an online platform.

An ETF, or Exchange Traded Fund, is basically a type of fund that ‘owns’ certain assets – these assets may include stocks, bonds, commodities, or futures. The ownership of the fund is then divided into shares that are traded on stock exchanges. As with any tradable shares, investors can buy and sell ETFs via stock exchanges during trading hours. Like a stock, each ETF has a ticker symbol and a price that changes in real-time.

Simply put “don’t put all your eggs into one basket.” The goal of diversification is to reduce risk in your investments.

Private equity (‘PE’) refers to investment in private companies that have not “gone public” (i.e. companies that have not listed on a public stock exchange). In their simplest form, private equity firms comprise investors who want to invest directly in companies, rather than buying company stock – pooling money into private equity ‘funds’.

In a nutshell, stocks are basically an equity investment that represent ownership in a company. This entitles the holder of a company’s equity to part of its earnings and assets. Public equity is a stock that is bought and sold through a public market such as the New York Stock Exchange or the London Stock Exchange.