FINRA Investment Education Competencies

Ames Public Library Staff

June 2008 Assessment #1

Identifier (e.g.,Mother’s maiden name)______

Please respond to each of the following statements. How confident are you in your ability to:

Competencies Not confident Somewhat Very confident

1. Distinguish between stocks, bonds and mutual funds. / o / o / o
2. Easily locate the ticker symbol for a stock or mutual fund. / o / o / o
3. Find historical stock quotes. / o / o / o
4. Locate financial information about a company. / o / o / o
5. Explain general online investment resources such as Motley Fool and Yahoo Finance to patrons interested in doing investment research. / o / o / o
6. Explain the basic information on the Daily Stock WebPages. / o / o / o
7. Use online resources to answer questions on stocks, bonds and mutual funds. / o / o / o
8. Demonstrate to patrons simple-to-use free company investment information websites such as “BigCharts.com” and “Hoovers.com”. / o / o / o
9. Explain the basics of using a stock or mutual fund screening tool. / o / o / o
10. Use ValueLine (print and electronic), Morningstar (print) and the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s to locate stock, bond and mutual fund information. / o / o / o
11. Explain the use of the Ebsco indexes to locate investment research. / o / o / o
12. Suggest how to access resources that APL does not own such as the business index ABI Inform. / o / o / o
13. Locate and explain basic financial calculators such as Mortgage 101 or Quotes.com. / o / o / o
14. Suggest resources for specific age groups like GenX, baby boomers, or the silent generation. / o / o / o

Prepared by Diana D. Shonrock, Parks Library, Iowa State University for the Smart Investing @ your library project with the Ames Public Library. February, 2008