Idler editor Tom Hodgkinson introduces our new online course on financial literacy and investing

Do you get confused and slightly panicky when people start to talk about bonds and stocks, Bitcoin bubbles, tech stock routs, inflation, leveraged buyout booms and fiscal deficits?

Unsure whether to put your savings into gold or crypto or an index fund or shares or wine or just leave them in the bank?

Worry no more. We’ve just released a new online course for the Idler Academy: “The Idler Guide to Investment, or, how not to lose a lot of money.” It will help you to become financially literate and to make informed choices when it comes to investing.

It’s written and presented by Edward Chancellor, the renowned financial historian who has also worked for banks and funds. His first book, Devil Take the Hindmost, is a briliant history of financial bubbles and his forthcoming title, The Price of Time, is an equally brilliant history of interest over the last five thousand years.

Chancellor was called “one of the great financial writers of our era” by the Financial Analysts Journal.

He argues in this highly entertaining and informative course that investors don’t know their history. If they did, he says, they would avoid costly mistakes. Chancellor’s course is particularly timely: the price of tech stocks, Bitcoin and bonds have all fallen dramatically this year.

He also reckons that idleness can be a very good thing when investing: sometimes you need simply to leave well alone. Excessive activity often leads to losses.

Chancellor’s course, consisting of seven videos plus voluminous notes and glossary, will give any newbie huge confidence, and will also prove fascinating stuff to the professionals and armchair experts out there.

We can think of no better authority than the planet-brained and witty Chancellor to help we idlers become financially literate, able to detect a rip-off and avoid giving our money to charlatans. Do take a look at the trailer and learn how to make money – or at least hang on to it – without really trying.