The Idler Guide to Investment with Edward Chancellor

Join Edward Chancellor, renowned investment strategist and financial historian, for an online course on how to be an idle investor. You’ll learn what investing actually means and how it differs from speculation, how you can make money without really trying, and how idleness can be an asset to the wise investor.

And above all, you’ll emerge from the course with a new confidence when it comes to money matters.

“The Idler Guide to Investment” is your essential course on the history, present and future of the financial world, packed with ideas and information to help you make good decisions around money.

Across seven witty, learned and always entertaining lectures, financial historian Edward Chancellor shares with you his four decades of experience and learning – and it’s all designed to help you live more idly.

Edward wants to help you avoid losing your money and making costly pitfalls which are often, he says, the result of greed or fear. Freedom from financial worry is our goal.

In the course, Edward explains the mechanics behind speculative manias, fads and delusory crowd behaviour. He teaches us about bubbles in history – tulips, diving machines, railways and the Internet – and how to avoid getting caught up in one.

He concludes with some practical suggestions on what to do with any excess cash you might have.

The course is accompanied by voluminous notes, a quiz to make sure you’ve been listening, a glossary of financial terms, and a short “further reading” list.

So whether you are a newbie who doesn’t know the difference between a bond and a stock, or a more sophisticated investor who would love to learn more history and get stimulated by Chancellor’s contrary views, then carry on. You’ll be entertained and inspired and might even make some money – without making too much of an effort.

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

About the Tutor

Edward Chancellor is a financial historian, author, journalist and investment strategist.

Edward’s new book is The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest (Allen Lane, £25), in which he traces the history of interest from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia, through debates about usury in Restoration Britain and John Law’s ill-fated Mississippi scheme to the global credit booms of the twentieth century. “A timely, vitally important and hugely readable book,” Ruchir Sharma, Chairman, Rockefeller International.

Edward is also the author of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation which has been translated into many languages and was a New York Times Book of the Year.

After reading history at Cambridge and Oxford, Edward worked for Lazard Brothers and until 2014 he was a senior member of the asset allocation team at GMO. He is currently a columnist for Reuters BreakingViews and has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, MoneyWeek and the New York Review of Books.

In 2008, Edward received the George Polk Award for financial reporting for his article “Ponzi Nation” in Institutional Investor.

What you Get

Video: seven video lectures

Live online session: Meet the Tutor Q&A with Edward Chancellor

Audio: the option to download and listen to the lessons in podcast form

Downloadable notes: in your printable notes you’ll find edited transcripts of Edward’s talks, a glossary of useful investing terms, and a “further reading” list

Exclusive course forum: here you can chat and swap tips with fellow students from the Idler community

Quiz: Test what you’ve learned with our fun multiple choice quiz

Certificate: When you pass the quiz you will be sent a personalised Idler Academy Certificate of Completion

Course Outline

Introduction: (11 minutes)

Edward outlines what we will learn in this course and sets out the differences between investment and speculation.

Lesson One: Speculative Manias (23 minutes)

Periods of speculative euphoria can lead to spectacular losses. Edward gives a short history of speculative bubbles and the lessons to be drawn from them.

Lesson Two: Investment Fads (19 minutes)

Edward cites more ways to spot a speculative bubble. We look at wasted investments, investor sentiment and IPOs.

Lesson Three: Debt (12 minutes)

We see how speculators seek to enhance their returns with debt and look at some checklists for spotting speculative bubbles.

Lesson Four: Yield Chasing (18 minutes)

We look at ways investors chase money when interest on their deposits is low. We find out about carry traders, junk bonds and foreign bonds including what happened to Russian bonds before and after the invasion of Ukraine.

Lesson Five: Inflation (22 minutes)

Edward explains why paper money is vulnerable to inflation, the value of bonds, gold and cryptocurrencies, the causes of inflation and how to react when it returns.

Lesson Six: The Battle for Investment Survival (15 minutes)

Edward discusses index funds, the pros and cons of choosing a fund manager, noteworthy lessons from history for the experienced investor, and his top seven pieces of advice for new investors.

Meet the Tutor: This is your chance to meet Edward Chancellor and ask questions (one hour)

Everyone on this course along with all Idler Academy members will be invited to a special online meeting with Edward Chancellor at 6pm BST, on Wednesday June 1st 2022. The recording of this event will be added to the course after the event.

Note: This is a journalistic course and aims to provide good ideas and information. However, we cannot see into the future, so please note that you use the information at your own risk and that we can’t accept liability if things go awry. The info in the course does not constitute financial advice, so always do your own research.