I'm still discovering the many dimensions involved in these instruments.

Personally, even though I understand the mechanics of warrants, and options, I stay away from them. I've never been able to work for me. My investing (I don't do trading) is deliberately limited to common and preferred stocks.

Regarding numeracy, one of the shortcomings of modern education--K-12 and beyond--is the too ubiquitous use of calculators and spreadsheets from the start. That skips over teaching why those numbers work that way; arithmetic becomes a black box, which means far to often that the person doesn't even have a clear idea of what numbers to enter in order to get a useful answer.

Back to investing: lots of folks chase after the last decimal of yield--and in looking for perfection, they actually lose money or miss out altogether. I worked for two senior officers in my time in the USAF. One's mantra was "Never pass up a chance to collect data;" the other's was "Don't let better be the enemy of good enough." And mine, a variation on the two: "Freeze the design, and go to production. These other ideas can go into the next Change Order." But don't neglect to continue the work of improving what you have.

My suggestion: learn to do exponents and learn how to do estimations and rounding. I was with a friend in a store helping her find some carpeting or area rugs for her home. My daughter happened to work there, and she was waiting on us. As we converted price per sq ft (sq yd?) to the total cost of the area my friend wanted covered, my daughter used her pocket calculator, and I used powers of 10 and some estimation/rounding, and I got answers as fast as my daughter did on her calculator, and always my answers were within a $.25 of her exact answer. Aside from that cheap parlor trick, that kind of facility can be useful in nearly any endeavor--including investing, with this caveat: don't let the speed of the estimated calculations push you into moving too fast with your money. Think about what you're doing, which you already are, and have a plan first. Don't jump on today's Can't Miss deal that'll disappear "soon." Think about its ramifications, shortfalls, likelihood of the promised returns. Then pass it up. There'll always be another Can't Miss deal the next day.

Eric Hines