Investors can use mutual funds and ETFs to buy a wide swatch of stocks or bonds without making too large a bet on any one company or sector. Take the S&P 500. You can buy the entire index, and the gains of the nationâs largest companies that comprise the list, for a minimal amount with either the Schwab S&P 500 (a mutual fund) or SPDR S&P 500 ETF (an exchange-traded fund).
Mention the history of the Internet to a group of people, and chances are someone will make a snarky comment about Al Gore claiming to have invented it. Gore actually said that he took the initiative in creating the Internet [source: CNN]. He promoted the Internet's development both as a senator and as vice president of the United States. So how did the Internet really get started? Believe it or not, it all began with a satellite. It was 1957 when the then Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite.
ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the ânetwork of networksâ that became the modern Internet. The online world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. While itâs often confused with the Internet itself, the web is actually just the most common means of accessing data online in the form of websites and hyperlinks.