Learn

Start where you are. Move at your own pace.

161 lessons across 10 stages, in order. Nothing assumes prior knowledge, nothing is dumbed down, and every lesson is cross-linked from the articles that use the concept — so you never have to leave the site to understand a sentence.

01Start hereAbout 70 minutes

The vocabulary everything else assumes you already have.

What is a stock?5 min Market capitalisation4 min Revenue vs. profit5 min The P/E ratio6 min Compound growth6 min How markets actually work6 min Understanding an earnings report7 min What an ETF is6 min Mutual funds5 min Order types5 min Brokers and custody5 min Stock splits4 min Dividends6 min

02Money, in practiceAbout 45 minutes

The decisions almost everyone faces, before any of this touches a stock market.

The emergency fund5 min Debt, and the arithmetic of paying it off6 min Credit scores5 min Renting and buying, as arithmetic7 min How a mortgage actually works6 min What insurance is for5 min Tax wrappers and why they exist5 min What inflation actually is6 min

03Understand companiesAbout 40 minutes

How to read what a business is actually doing.

Free cash flow6 min The income statement6 min The balance sheet6 min The cash flow statement6 min Margins5 min Debt and leverage6 min Valuation methods7 min

04Reading the accountsAbout 90 minutes

The filings, once you know which numbers involved a judgement.

Stock-based compensation6 min Return on capital7 min Working capital6 min Depreciation and amortisation6 min Goodwill and impairment6 min Inventory accounting6 min Deferred revenue5 min Leases, and the debt that was hidden5 min Segment reporting5 min Share buybacks6 min Adjusted earnings6 min The effective tax rate5 min What an auditor actually does5 min Related-party transactions5 min Accounting red flags7 min Reading the footnotes6 min

05Understand marketsAbout 80 minutes

The machinery that sets the price of everything else.

Interest rates and why they move everything7 min What CPI measures — and what it doesn't6 min Treasury yields and the curve7 min How the Fed actually works7 min Recessions6 min Market cycles6 min What a bond actually is6 min Liquidity5 min What “the market” usually means6 min Short selling6 min IPOs6 min Commodities6 min REITs and property6 min

06How markets are plumbedAbout 35 minutes

What happens between pressing buy and owning the thing.

Market makers5 min Clearing and settlement5 min Corporate actions6 min What happens in a bankruptcy6 min Futures6 min Currencies and exchange rates6 min

08Options, from scratchAbout 90 minutes

Explained from nothing, with no jargon assumed and no enthusiasm sold.

What an option is6 min Calls6 min Puts6 min Strike, expiry and premium5 min In, at and out of the money5 min Intrinsic value and time value6 min Buying versus writing7 min Why most options expire worthless6 min Exercise and assignment6 min The Greeks7 min Implied volatility6 min Covered calls6 min Cash-secured puts6 min Spreads6 min So should you trade options?6 min

09Crypto, from first principlesAbout 295 minutes

How the machinery works, what was actually built, and what went wrong — with dates you can check.

What a cryptocurrency actually is6 min The double-spend problem5 min The attempts before Bitcoin6 min What the whitepaper actually says6 min What “trustless” really means5 min What a blockchain is6 min Hashing, without the mathematics5 min Keys, addresses and signatures6 min Proof of work6 min Mining, difficulty and the arms race6 min Proof of stake6 min Consensus and finality5 min Nodes, clients and who enforces the rules5 min Forks, hard and soft5 min The supply schedule6 min How a Bitcoin transaction works6 min The scaling debate6 min The Lightning Network5 min Bitcoin as an asset7 min What Ethereum added6 min Smart contracts6 min Gas and fees5 min The DAO and the fork6 min The Merge and the upgrades since5 min Layer 2 and rollups6 min The blockchain trilemma5 min What DeFi is6 min Automated market makers6 min Impermanent loss6 min Lending and liquidation6 min Stablecoins7 min Oracles5 min MEV6 min Wallets and self-custody6 min Seed phrases5 min Exchanges, centralised and decentralised6 min Bridges and cross-chain risk5 min Crypto ETFs and institutional access5 min The early history6 min Mt. Gox5 min The ICO boom5 min DeFi summer and NFTs5 min The collapses of 20227 min Tokenomics6 min Valuing crypto6 min On-chain analysis6 min Crypto market structure6 min Crypto regulation6 min Fraud patterns6 min The energy question5 min Central bank digital currencies5 min So should you own any of this?6 min

10Become a better investorAbout 60 minutes

The part that decides your outcome more than stock selection does.

Risk, drawdowns, and what you can actually hold7 min Diversification6 min Position sizing5 min Loss aversion and FOMO6 min Valuation discipline6 min Thinking in decades6 min Volatility is not risk5 min Expense ratios5 min Nominal and real returns5 min Survivorship bias5 min Spotting investment scams6 min

How we teach

Every calculation is shown

Arithmetic is worked through on the page, never asserted. Where a figure comes from a company filing or a statistical agency it is named and dated; where it is a made-up example chosen to show the mechanism, the lesson says so on the same line.

Assumptions stated

Where a lesson simplifies — a constant return, a flat inflation rate — it says so on the same line, not in a footnote.

Linked from the news

When an article mentions free cash flow, the phrase links here. Reading the news should make you better at reading the news.