What is the difference between the asset management division in an investment bank and an investment company?
I would say that there is no real difference.  Asset management companies that is part of large banking groups usually seat in separate entities and operate independently from the rest of the bank. Assuming proper procedures (and regulators usually check that) are in place they will not share information with the rest of the bank and their assets are clearly segregated from the rest of the bank. They have the same fiduciary duties as an independent AM and are probably using the broker/dealer services of other banks as well as their parent. Reputation is a key issue for banks and conflict of interests are usually managed properly. Independence also comes and goes. The corporate history of Neuberger Berman is a good example. Neuberger Berman was once an independent asset manager. In 2003, it merged with Lehman Brothers, thus loosing its independence. When Lehman went bankrupt in 2008, NB did not join its parent company in bankruptcy and did not lose the assets of its clients. The company continued to operate until it was acquired by the management. Finally it is mostly a question of marketing and positioning.
My uncle successfully manages a portfolio for an investment firm in New York. I believe he works with somewhere around 2.5 billion dollars, mostly endowments from schools and other funds like that. I know that he had to work very hard to get where he is today but he's been rewarded with excellent compensation and a lot of freedom to do his job how he sees fit. Private Equity is simply some type of an investment company, which is owned in a way not accessible to the public. ie: Warren Buffet runs Berkshire Hatheway, which is an investment company which itself is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. This means that anyone can buy shares in the company, and own a small fraction of it. If Warren Buffet owned all the shares of Berkshire Hatheway, it would be a Private Equity company. Note that 'Equity' refers to the ownership of the company itself; a private investment company may simply buy Bonds (which are a form of Debt), in which case, they would not be technically considered a 'Private Equity' company. A Hedge Fund is a very broad term which I don't believe has significant meaning. Technically, it means something along the lines of an investment fund (either public or private) which attempts to hedge the risks of its portfolio, by carefully considering what type of investments it purchased. This refers back to the meaning of 'hedge', ie: 'hedging your bets'. In my opinion, 'Hedge Fund' is not meaningfully different from 'investment fund' or other similar terms. It is just the most popular way to refer to this type of industry at the present time.  You can see the trend of using the term 'investment fund' vs 'hedge fund' using this link: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=hedge%20fund,investment%20fund Note that the high-point of the use of 'hedge fund' occurred on October 2008, right at the peak of the global financial crisis. The term evokes a certain image of 'high finance' / 'wall-street types' that may exploit various situations (such as tax legislation, or 'secret information') for their own gain. Without a clear definition, however, it is a term without much meaning. If you do a similar comparison between 'hedge fund' and 'private equity', you can see that the two correlate very closely; I believe the term 'private equity' is similarly misused to generally refer to 'investment bankers'. However in that case, 'private equity' has a more clear definition on its own merits. "Index funds may invest either in index components directly or in other instruments (like ETFs, index options, futures, etc.) which are highly correlated with the index. The specific fund prospectus or description on any decent financial site should contain these details.  Index funds are not actively managed, but that does not mean they aren't managed at all - if index changes and the fund includes specific stock, they would adjust the fund content. Of course, the downside of it is that selling off large amounts of certain stock (on its low point, since it's being excluded presumably because of its decline) and buying large amount of different stock (on its raising point) may have certain costs, which would cause the fund lag behind the index. Usually the difference is not overly large, but it exists.  Investing in the index contents directly involves more transactions - which the fund distributes between members, so it doesn't usually buy individually for each member but manages the portfolio in big chunks, which saves costs. Of course, the downside is that it can lag behind the index if it's volatile. Also, in order to buy specific shares, you will have to shell out for a number of whole share prices - which for a big index may be a substantial sum and won't allow you much flexibility (like ""I want to withdraw half of my investment in S&P 500"") since you can't usually own 1/10 of a share. With index funds, the entry price is usually quite low and increments in which you can add or withdraw funds are low too." Reading the descriptions on Amazon.com it appears Investments is a graduate text and Elements of Investments is the undergraduate version of the text. There are two basic issues here.  First, there is the difference between accounting terms and their dictionary definitions.  Second, once you dig into it there are dichotomies similar to put vs call options, long sales vs short sales, bond yield vs interest rate.  (That is, while they are relatively simple ideas and opposite sides of the same coin, it will probably take some effort to get comfortable with them.) The salient points from the Wikipedia article on debits and credits: In double-entry bookkeeping debit is used for increases in asset and expense transactions and credit is used for increases in a liability, income (gain) or equity transaction. For bank transactions, money deposited in a checking account is treated as a credit transaction (increase) and money paid out is treated as a debit transaction, because checking account balances are bank liabilities. If cash is deposited, the cash becomes a bank asset and is treated as a debit transaction (increase) to a bank asset account. Thus a cash deposit becomes two equal increases: a debit to cash on hand and a credit to a customer's checking account. Your bank account is an asset to you, but a liability to your bank.  That makes for a third issue, namely perspective. Put simply:    Financial Services provides or facilitates access to capital in some capacity, and are companies unto themselves (TD Ameritrade, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, etc), this also includes accounting companies which provide financial information, and insurance companies that deal with risk.  Corporate Finance is part of all businesses in any industry (So for example Starbucks has a finance department, and those employees are doing corporate finance), and plans how to use capital to fund a company's projects and make sure there is sufficient cash on hand as it's needed for daily operations.  Corporate Finance interacts with Financial Services to access the capital needed to fund the business's activities. International equity are considered shares of companies, which are headquartered outside the United States, for instance Research in Motion (Canada), BMW (Germany), UBS (Switzerland). Some investors argue that adding international equities to a portfolio can reduce its risk due to regional diversification. "The balance sheet for a bank is the list of assets and liabilities that the bank directly is responsible for.  This would be things like loans the bank issues and accounts with the bank. Banks can make both ""balance sheet"" loans, meaning a loan that says on the balance sheet - one the bank gains the profits from but holds the risks for also.  They can also make ""off balance sheet"" loans, meaning they securitize the loan (sell it off, such as the mortgage backed securities). Most major banks, i.e. Chase, Citibank, etc., could be called ""balance sheet"" banks because at least some portion of their lending comes from their balance sheet.  Not 100% by any means, they participate in the security swaps extensively just like everyone does, but they do at least some normal, boring lending just as you would explain a bank to a five year old.  Bank takes in deposits from account holders, loans that money out to people who want to buy homes or start businesses. However, some (particularly smaller) firms don't work this way - they don't take responsibility for the money or the loans.  They instead ""manage assets"" or some similar term. I think of it like the difference between Wal-Mart and a consignment store.  Wal-Mart buys things from its distributors, and sells them, taking the risk (of the item not selling) and the reward (of the profit from selling) to itself.  On the other hand, a consignment store takes on neither: it takes a flat fee to host your items in its store, but takes no risk (you own the items) nor the majority of the profit. In this case, Mischler Financial Group is not a bank per se - they don't have accounts; they manage funds, instead.  Note the following statement on their Services page for example: Mischler Financial Group holds no risk positions and no unwanted inventory of securities, which preserves the integrity of our capital and assures our clients that we will be able to obtain bids and offers for them regardless of adverse market conditions. They're not taking your money and then making their own investments; they're advising you how to invest your money, or they're helping do it for you, but it's your money going out and your risk (and reward)." "A fund is a portfolio, in that it is a collection, so the term is interchangeable for the most part.  Funds are made up of a combination of equities positions (i.e., stocks, bonds, etc.) plus some amount of un-invested cash. Most of the time, when people are talking about a ""fund"", they are describing what is really an investment strategy.  In other words, an example would be a ""Far East Agressive"" fund (just a made up name for illustration here), which focuses on investment opportunities in the Far East that have a higher level of risk than most other investments, thus they provide better returns for the investors.  The ""portfolio"" part of that is what the stocks are that the fund has purchased and is holding on behalf of its investors.  Other funds focus on municipal bonds or government bonds, and the list goes on. I hope this helps. Good luck!" the difference is whose money is being invested. when you deposit money in a bank, it is FDIC insured and capital requirements are set to ensure the preservation of your deposits. if the bank wants to make huge derivative bets, with leverage inherent in the instrument or provided by another bank, deposits are involved in the equation. "For US stocks it's a bit of a gamble. Many actively managed funds underperform the market indexes, but some of them outperform in many years. With an index you will get average results. With an active manager you ""might"" do better than average. So you can view active management as a higher risk, potentially higher reward investment approach. On the other hand, if you want to diversify some of your investments into international stocks, bonds, junk bonds, and real estate (REITs) active management is highly likely to be better than indexing. For these specialized areas specialized knowledge and research is needed." The main difference between a mutual fund and an ETF are how they are bought and sold (from the investors perspective). An ETF is transacted on the open market. This means you normally can't buy partial shares with your initial investment. Having to transact on the open market also means you pay a market price. The market price is always a little bit different from the Net Asset Value (NAV) of the fund. During market hours, the ETF will trade at a premium/discount to the NAV calculated on the previous day. Morningstar's fund analysis will show a graph of the premium/discount to NAV for an ETF. With a mutual fund on the other hand, your investment goes to a fund company, which then grants you shares while under the hood buying the underlying investments. You pay the NAV price and are allowed to buy partial shares. Usually an ETF has a lower expense ratio, but if that's equal and any initial fees/commissions are equal, I would prefer the mutual fund in order to buy partial shares (so your initial investment will be fully invested) and so you don't have to worry about paying premium to NAV In view of business, we have to book the entries. Business view, owner and business are different. When capital is invested in business by owner, in future business has to repay it.  That's why, capital always credit. When we come about  bank (business prospective) - cash, bank, fd are like assets which can help in the business. Bank is current asset (Real account) - Debit (what comes into the business)                                        Credit (what goes out of the business) Hence credit and debit differs from what type of account is it.... credit - when business liables debit - what business has and receivables I used to work for blackrock, although not in the finance side of the house. Which coast are you on? There's still a big difference in culture - west coast used to be BGI and was acquired in 2009, doubling the size of the company. "Asset management typically refers to the ""product""  group e.g. Mutual fund, etf, etc., like invesco offering qqq or some emerging market mutual fund.  Capital management is more vague and can refer to a wide range of financial products and services including asset management and stuff like ptfl planning, wealth advisory etc.  That said they are both used interchangeably and not like anyone would correct you if you used one vs the other..."