My only experience with markets at this point is equities, how do you suggest I learn more about fixed income markets?

It is very typical for college students’ knowledge of the markets to consist of the current levels for the DJIA & the S&P 500.  If you are in this camp, don’t worry – its normal.  The equity market is most people’s first exposure to the markets – and it is the easiest one to follow.  There’s plenty of publicly available information and for the most part, its pretty basic – there’s one stock and it goes up or down.  But the fixed income markets, in my opinion, are far more interesting and offer greater opportunity to succeed as a female – largely because there have historically been fewer women in the bond markets.  Instead of picking a handful of stocks to follow in a model portfolio, try picking a sector you have interest in and then focusing on a few companies within that sector and follow their credit story.  Learn about their capital structure.  What is their credit rating?  How do they fund themselves?  Companies issue press releases when they raise public debt.  You can do this for countries as well if you have interest in treasury debt.

Megan Philbin