Those of us who pursued the smart course of following our financial adviser's recommendations and ploughing all our cash into CDOs, oil futures, shorts, SIVs and derivatives now find ourselves in the lucky position of having all the money we'll need for the rest of our lives - provided we die by next Tuesday.

How did that happen? It happened because by the time we realised that most of these financial advisers understood leveraged CDOs (full name: collateralised debt obligations) and monoline insurance about as well as you and I understand the solution to Fermat's Last Theorem, it was way too late. How were we to know that a plausible-sounding financial instrument such as a “CDO” might, in practice, involve taking a stake in a loan to a hillbilly living in a trailer park in Arkansas?

If the brokers selling these slivers of toxic debt had little idea what it was they were dealing in, is it surprising that people in Brighton would have even less? Should they feel ashamed? Maybe. Should we be surprised? Not very. Hence these five explanations from Brighton residents of the meaning of the term “short selling”:

View One: “I imagine it would be buying something and then selling it very quickly”. View Two: “Does this mean something's on sale but only for a short time?”. View Three: “It's when people buy shares that are going down, knowing that they're going to be going back up again”. View Four: “This is when you buy a share at the lowest price and then sell it when it increases”. View Five: “It's when you sell shares during a full moon and the weather forecast predicts a chance of overnight frost”. Actually, I made up the last one. But it's no less accurate an explanation than the other four.

We should have started to suspect that something was going wrong when even financial advisers couldn't explain to us why they were investing our money in CDOs, except that they liked the acronym. But when your broker pitched you a parcel of “leveraged multiple synthetic collateralised debt obligations” you were too embarrassed to reply: “Hang on, you're trying to sell me a what?” - so we are at least partly to blame for allowing ourselves to be suckered. After all, if investing in subprime mortgages and SIVs was really so great, why wouldn't those investment bankers and hedge fund managers have kept it all for themselves?

We could ask them, only they're all at the World Economic Forum in Davos at the moment, inventing new acronyms with which to bamboozle us when they think we are ready to have the wool pulled over our eyes all over again. But next time we'll be prepared. We'll be the ones unwinding their shorts and seeing how they like it.

We asked people in Brighton what they understood by the following terms: hedge fund, derivative, sub-prime market, short selling, fiscal stimulus, arbitrage and quantitative easing. Here are their answers:

Allan Hart, 22, student

Hedge fund: dunno

Derivative: dunno

Sub-prime market: dunno

Short selling: dunno

Fiscal stimulus: dunno

Arbitrage: dunno

Quantitative easing: I'm a music student, not an economics student.

Michael Moscrop, 73, cab driver

Hedge fund: Something to do with gardens? Or people that manage other people's money and try to make a profit.

Derivative: Maybe it's a way to manage hedge funds.

Sub-prime market: Debt. And I know all about debt. I've just been declared bankrupt.

Short selling: It's when people buy shares that are going down knowing that they're going to be going back up again.

Fiscal stimulus: Never heard of it.

Arbitrage: It sounds French to me - a new type of blancmange perhaps?

Quantitative easing: Hopefully when things get better.

Leila Scacchi, 16, student

Hedge fund: No idea

Derivative: I don't know.

Sub-prime market: Sorry, I don't do any…political subjects.

Short selling: I'm more artsy.

Fiscal stimulus: Is it something to do with exercising which makes you want to give your ideas? I mean, like in our dance class, if we're making a move up, being physical and moving a lot helps the ideas come.

Arbitrage: Isn't arbitrary something or other…? I don't know what it means though. I probably should.

Quantitative easing: No idea.

Thomas Everchild, 59, graphic designer

Hedge fund: Money collected to keep the hedges going?

Derivative: I know what derivative means, but not in a financial sense. In my opinion, technical nomenclatures like this are usually used to hide what you're doing.

Sub-prime market: I wouldn't know about that. I don't know what a prime market is so I couldn't tell you what a subprime market is.

Short selling: I don't really know but I would guess that someone will be making lots of money out of it.

Fiscal stimulus: Something to do with putting money into something to make it do what you think you want it to do.

Arbitrage: It sounds like one of those words like ‘destinationalised' that American pilots use these days: “We will shortly destinationalize in New York.”

Quantitative easing: Easing can also mean lubricating. So it could mean trying to make something move faster.

Elaine Thomas, 27, tattoo parlour receptionist and medical student

Hedge fund: Well, it's obviously a fund that the Government is obviously putting in place to help businesses out of difficulty.

Derivative: The meaning of something.

Sub-prime market: I've heard this on the radio but I don't know what it means.

Short selling: Is this not meeting targets? Does it refer to companies that are in trouble and aren't selling enough?

Fiscal stimulus: I don't know what fiscal is. But I guess this must mean to get something going - like a visual aid.

Arbitrage: I think there was a band in the States called Arbitrage…

Quantitative easing: It's making something easier…helping something…or something. My head's full of med terms, not money bits and bobs.

Manuel Ares, 66, fish and chip shop worker

Hedge fund: No, I don't know.

Derivative: Never heard of it.

Sub-prime market: It's a type of mortgage but there are so many different types of mortgages and to tell you the truth, I've never had a mortgage, so I don't know about these things.

Short selling: Does this mean something's on sale but only for a short time?

Fiscal stimulus: Fishcake? You can ask me all you want about fishcakes. I understand fishcakes.

Arbitrage: I have no idea. It's best not to watch the news these days. It will just make you depressed.

Quantitative easing: I really don't know. I just cook fish and chips.

Viola Michail, 29, sweet shop assistant

Hedge fund: I recognise the phrase but I don't know what it means.

Derivative: I don't know.

Sub-prime market: Sub-prime? Like Subway? The sandwich shop?

Short selling: Short means small or little. And I know what sell means, but I don't know what they are together.

Fiscal stimulus: These are difficult words.

Arbitrage: No.

Quantitative easing: No, sorry.

John Smyth, 37, games arcade engineer

Hedge fund: I haven't heard of it but it sounds like some sort of back-up in case something happens to your money.

Derivative: This sounds like the kind of word that someone good with vocabulary would use to try and belittle someone else. It's saying, “Look at me, I'm so educated.” I'm sure it means something simple and I bet they could come up with an easier word for it.

Sub-prime market: This sounds like another posh phrase. It probably just means the stock market's crap at the moment.

Short selling: Isn't this what they did to get us in this mess? Isn't it when they bet a bank is going to go under and make a lot of money when it does?

Fiscal stimulus: Physical stimulus? I was going to say something rude. But it must be something that gets you thinking, something that gets your brain into gear.

Arbitrage: Isn't that an abbreviation of arbitration? I'm not 100 per cent sure about what that is.

Quantitative easing: It sounds like another rubbish word that's come out of this recession. It sounds like a word the Government would use to try and make things look a little bit better, when actually, they aren't.

Roseanna Macey, 24, coffee shop worker

Hedge fund: Is it a kind of fund? For money?

Derivative: The only derivative I know means to laugh at somebody. Like, you can derive someone ... no, that's not right, is it?

Sub-prime market: That must mean a market that's past it's best or not good.

Short selling: I really don't know. I know what both words mean, obviously, but not put together.

Fiscal stimulus: Something that stimulates fiscal, I guess, whatever fiscal is.

Arbitrage: I have no idea.

Quantitative easing: Does this mean making thing easier, bit by bit?

Anne Worthing, 79, retired teacher

Hedge fund: Isn't that something to do with the National Trust? I think I donated money to their hedgerow fund once.

Derivative: I've no idea, love.

Sub-prime market: Supermarket? Oh, sub-prime. No, I don't know.

Short selling: I don't suppose it's selling shorts now, is it? Is it another financial term? These are all new to me.

Fiscal stimulus: This must be either taxing us less or taxing us more because either way, someone will end up with more money and that will act as a stimulus for something or other.

Arbitrage: That's a nice sounding word - but I have no idea what it means.

Quantitative easing: I'm afraid I haven't a clue, but can I tell you about my pension?

And here is what they do mean:

Hedge funds are unregulated investment pools, usually funded by rich individuals and pension funds. To contain risk, they often “hedge”, ie, buy shares in Sainsbury's, but bet against a fall in Tesco shares.

A derivative is a bet “derived” from the performance of shares or some other asset. Futures and spread-betting, for instance. A company can buy a contract (a future) to purchase a commodity at a given price on a certain date.

The sub-prime market is the market for lending to borrowers with low incomes and poor credit histories who are deemed to be at high risk of not repaying their debts - and are therefore charged a higher rate of interest

Short selling is when speculators - often hedge funds - borrow shares, sell them and then buy them back at a lower price, before returning them to the original owner. But if the price goes up, they can face big losses, as banks did this week.

Fiscal stimulus is when a government cuts taxes or raises spending - or both - to boost demand in the economy.

Arbitrage is when someone profits from a price imbalance between two markets by buying in the cheaper and selling in the more expensive. Ticket-touting, for example.

Governments can use quantitative easing to increase the amount of money in the economy. This is done by buying assets, such as bonds, in what is called an open market operation.