StrikeAndYield crib sheet · information and education only

Cash Equities

Direct ownership instruments — shares and the funds that wrap them. The simplest claim on a company's future.

The shelf — 11 instruments

Easy 5

Common Stock	A fractional ownership stake in a company — with voting rights, dividend claims and unlimited upside.
Exchange-Traded Fund	A whole portfolio wrapped into one share that trades all day — the cheapest way to buy a market.
Mutual Fund	The original pooled investment: professional management, one price per day, bought at NAV.
Preferred Stock	A hybrid between a bond and a share: fixed dividends, priority over common stock, usually no vote.
REIT	Own a slice of office towers, warehouses or data centres through a share that pays out most of its rent.

Medium 5

ADR / GDR	A foreign share repackaged to trade on your home exchange, in your currency.
Closed-End Fund	A fund with a fixed share count — so the fund itself trades above or below what it owns, and the gap is the whole game.
Exchange-Traded Note	Tracks an index like an ETF, but it is a bank's promise rather than a pot of assets — and the difference only shows up on the day the bank fails.
Rights Issue	A short-dated option handed to every shareholder for free — and the one corporate action where doing nothing is the only guaranteed way to lose money.
SPAC	A listed pile of cash hunting for a company to become — with a money-back guarantee for the patient and a lottery ticket for the hopeful.

Hard 1

Leveraged & Inverse ETP

A wrapper that delivers a multiple of an index — for one day. Over any longer period it delivers something else entirely, and the gap is arithmetic rather than error.

What moves prices here

Earnings against what was expected — The surprise moves the price, not the level
The discount rate — Higher rates, lower present value — hardest on the longest-dated earnings
Risk appetite — Prices move together when it turns
Flows that are not opinions — Index inclusion, buybacks and pension rebalancing buy and sell regardless of value
Positioning and crowding — The more one-sided the book, the more violent the unwind
Liquidity of the name itself — Thin books amplify everything above

The calendar

Quarterly	Earnings season
Monthly and quarterly	Index reviews and rebalances
Third Friday, monthly	Listed option and future expiry
Dividend dates	Ex-dividend, record, payment
Annually	The general meeting and the proxy vote

Which risk decides, across the shelf

Failure mode	Decides	Share
Market	8 of 11	73%
Credit	2 of 11	18%
Liquidity	2 of 11	18%
Funding	1 of 11	9%
Operational	3 of 11	27%

Counted from the same table each product page prints. Not a rating and not a ranking: there is deliberately no total.