Allison Schrager, Columnist

Finance 101 Still Explains (Almost) Everything

February 9, 2026 at 10:00 AM UTC

Corrected

February 9, 2026 at 5:46 PM UTC

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”

Making markets more efficient.
Photographer: BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP

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Investing these days feels harder than ever. So much has changed, and there are so many uncertainties, from the financial (what’s going on with tech stocks?) to the cosmic (what will the new economic world order look like?). To make matters worse, there is no haven — not gold, not crypto, not even US Treasuries.

There is a way to manage this environment: Embrace Finance 101. Recall the basics you learned in financial literacy class in high school, or in that one finance course you took in college, or while getting your MBA, or just from reading the classics on investing. Everything you need to know to manage this market environment is contained in a few nuggets of wisdom.