When it comes to finance, a lot of times it comes off as like condescending.

When it comes to finance, a lot of times it comes off as like condescending. Like you aren't smart enough to understand what it is that I actually do, so I'm just going to tell you this blanket umbrella term or think that you don't care enough to actually understand what I really do in the day-to-day. So let's go through my new series explaining what the different subdivisions in finance are. First and foremost, let's go through what a hedge fund actually does and what the members of a hedge fund are doing during the day-to-day. So a hedge fund is a pool of money and the people who work at a hedge fund manage that pool of money. It's typically for accredited investors, aka people who understand actually how risky it is. And that boils down to what they're doing in the day-to-day, right? So what are they doing? So with this money that they're managing, they are making bets. Just like someone could bet on a sports game or something of that nature, they are betting on financial markets. They are betting if the market will go up or down. So they can bet for it or against it. This differs from a lot of other areas because typically people will make investments hoping the market goes up. Most people make money when markets go up. Hedge funds can make money either way based on where they're betting and what exactly they're betting. In addition to this, this is where the kind of math element comes into hedge funds. They can protect themselves and essentially make it so if I go bet person A that the market is going to go up, we make that bet, I can also go bet person B that the market will go down at maybe a lesser rate, so I'm protected either way. I hope that option A occurs and that it goes up and that I'm going to make my money from this, but if it doesn't, I'm still protected in option B. And there's a small fee associated with, you know, having to make that bet at all, say in option B, but either way I'm then protected. They are reading the news every day probably to start the day to understand what is going on in different industries, what are the major headlines of the day, etc. They're keeping up with companies' earnings reports and analyzing those financials in depth. And then on top of that, they're likely talking to industry experts and putting in a lot of extra research and work to understand exactly what's going on to have the most tailored predictions possible because they get paid to be right, not paid to be optimistic.