Fools are investors who have learned enough about investing to take charge of their financial future, picking stocks on their own after researching the companies. Fools have learned how to outperform the market. A full-service broker not only executes your stock buy or sell orders but also gives you advice, recommending which stocks you should buy or sell. These brokers charge much higher commissions than discount brokers and Fools think you should make your own decisions and use the discount brokers. Merrill Lynch, for example, is a full-service broker.
Index funds are mutual funds which are set up to mimic or copy particular groups of companies.
They buy and hold whatever stocks are in the index that they're based on. Once it goes public, shares of the company will trade through stock markets and exchanges. There can be a lot of investor interest and excitement over IPOs. Interest is what a borrower pays to a lender in exchange for the use of the borrowed money. So if you deposit money in a bank, you're really lending the bank your money, and the bank pays you interest for it.