Investor Protection Basics: Safeguarding Your Money and Account

Every tool named in these lessons is free. Each one is run by a regulator or by a body set up under federal law.

Who the course suits

It’s for anyone with a brokerage account, or about to open one. You might be moving an old retirement account, funding your first taxable account, or listening to a pitch from someone who says they can manage your money better than you can. How you invest doesn’t matter here. A swing trader and a buy-and-hold dividend investor face the same four risks: dealing with the wrong person, misreading what protects the account if the firm fails, falling for a scam, and losing control of the login.

It also suits anyone who helps a parent or other relative with their money, since the lessons on fraud and on naming a trusted contact apply just as much to an account you watch over for someone else as to your own.

How it works

The lessons take those four risks in that order. Each runs twelve to fifteen minutes. Each ends with a short quiz.

Read with your brokerage login open. Several lessons ask you to look something up or change a setting as you go, and doing it on the spot, while the reason is fresh in your head, is the difference between knowing about a protection and actually having it switched on in your own account. Still choosing a firm? Have its name ready, and the name of anyone you’d deal with there. A recent statement helps too. It shows how your holdings split between securities and cash, which matters in the lesson on account protection.

Where the tools come from

Only public tools appear. FINRA runs BrokerCheck. The SEC runs the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site, EDGAR and a tips portal for reporting fraud. SIPC explains its own coverage. State securities regulators keep records and take complaints, and the North American Securities Administrators Association lists them.

No private services are recommended, and nothing in the lessons needs one.

What it leaves out

You won’t find anything on choosing investments, taxes, or comparing brokers on fees and features. The course also stays away from what to do after a loss has already happened, such as filing for arbitration or bringing a claim, because the right step there depends heavily on the details of your case, and a lawyer or the regulator’s own published guidance is the place to begin.

Where to go after it

Once the account is safe, you can start deciding what goes in it. How to evaluate a stock teaches you to judge one company from its filings. Building a diversified portfolio covers spreading risk across the whole account. If you trade actively, cash or margin account for swing trading explains how the account type changes what you can do, and how much you can lose when a trade goes against you.

Before you next send money anywhere, start with checking a broker or adviser.