Learning Paths

An atlas is not a syllabus. These are routes through it, each in an order where every page assumes only what came before.

How to use them. Read the Beginner level of each page on a first pass and keep moving; come back for Intermediate and Advanced once the shape is familiar. Nothing here has to be read in order, and no path has to be finished.

If you want one place to start: Path 1. If you already hold something and want to understand the paperwork: Path 9.

Education only, as everywhere on this site — see the disclaimer.

Path 1 — Foundations: your first ten products

The core instruments almost everything else is built from. After these ten, nothing else in the atlas is unreadable.

  1. Common stock — ownership, the primitive everything references
  2. Government bond — lending, yield and the risk-free anchor
  3. ETF — how most people should probably own both of the above
  4. Treasury bill — cash, properly understood
  5. Corporate bond — credit risk enters the picture
  6. FX spot — currencies, the water everything swims in
  7. Equity future — your first derivative: linear, honest
  8. Equity option — asymmetry, premium and the Greeks
  9. Mutual fund & closed-end fund — wrappers and why their plumbing matters
  10. REIT — real assets in a listed wrapper

Then take the quiz on each of the category pages you've touched — and when you've walked a path or two, sit the Market ExamMedium: 15 random questions across the whole atlas.

Path 2 — The options track

From first call to volatility as an asset class. The strategy builder is your lab bench throughout — rebuild each product's payoff as you go.

  1. Equity option — calls, puts, premium, the Greeks
  2. Warrant — options as securities, with dilution
  3. Employee stock option — the option most people actually hold
  4. FX option — same machine, currency conventions
  5. Barrier option & digital option — path dependence and all-or-nothing
  6. Swaption — optionality on interest rates
  7. Variance swap — volatility itself as the underlying
  8. Crypto option — the same theory at 60 vol

Path 3 — Rates, credit & macro plumbing

The professional core: how banks, treasuries and funds move interest-rate and credit risk around — and what breaks when the plumbing clogs.

  1. T-bill → repo — cash and collateral, the system's base layer
  2. OIS — the clean policy-rate curve
  3. Interest rate swap — the workhorse; DV01 thinking
  4. FRA & STIR futures — trading the meeting-by-meeting path
  5. Basis swap — where "one interest rate" becomes several
  6. CDS → CDS index — default risk, isolated and traded
  7. Leveraged loan → CLO → CDO & tranches — securitisation, start to finish
  8. Cross-currency swap — the dollar system's pressure gauge

Path 4 — Structured products, decoded

The retail shelf, taken apart. The pattern to watch for: every "attractive" structure is funded by an option you sold without seeing the premium.

  1. Equity option — you need the raw ingredient first
  2. Discount certificate — covered call in a wrapper
  3. Reverse convertible — the sold put, with a coupon costume
  4. Bonus certificate — the barrier that voids the insurance
  5. Knock-out certificate — leverage with a trapdoor
  6. Factor certificate — leverage with a treadmill
  7. Autocallable — the structurer's flagship
  8. FX accumulator — the cautionary tale, in full

Closing exercise: for any structured product you ever encounter, name (1) the option you are implicitly selling, (2) what funds the headline benefit, and (3) the scenario the brochure doesn't chart. The four pages above teach the pattern; it generalises to the whole shelf.

Path 5 — Risk: measuring what can go wrong

Every path above teaches an instrument. This one teaches the discipline that decides whether you survive owning it. Read in order — each measure exists because the previous one was insufficient.

  1. VolatilityMedium — realised vs. implied, and why annualised numbers hide daily reality
  2. Diversification & correlationEasy — the only free lunch, and when it is withdrawn
  3. Risk measuresMedium — VaR, expected shortfall, beta, tracking error, and what each one hides
  4. Stress testing — the measure that needs no distribution at all
  5. Margin & collateralMedium — where risk becomes a same-day cash demand
  6. Portfolio practiceEasy — rebalancing bands, sequence risk, the behaviour gap

Closing exercise: take any portfolio and answer three questions — what is its 10-day 99% VaR, what does the 2022 scenario cost it, and which single holding carries the largest share of its risk? If the third answer surprises you, that is the point of the path.

Path 6 — Corporate finance & valuation

From "what discount rate?" to "what is this worth?" to "what did the company just do to my shares?". The track for anyone reading company accounts rather than trading screens.

  1. NPV & IRREasy — discounting from first principles, and the classic IRR traps
  2. Valuation & cost of capitalMedium — CAPM, WACC, the tax shield, EV/EBITDA
  3. The full DCF — and how much of the answer is one perpetuity assumption
  4. Common stock → preferred stock — the claims being valued
  5. Corporate actionsMedium — dividends, splits, buybacks, rights, spin-offs, M&A
  6. Rights issue → convertible bond — how companies actually raise capital
  7. High-yield bond → leveraged loan — the same company seen from the debt side

Path 7 — Costs, wrappers & the practice of owning things

The least glamorous path and, measured over decades, plausibly the most consequential. Nothing here is about picking well; all of it is about keeping what you picked.

  1. Costs & feesEasy — the six layers, and what a percent a year compounds into
  2. ETF vs. mutual fund vs. tracker certificate — same exposure, three legal positions
  3. Closed-end fund — when price and value are allowed to disagree
  4. Securities lending — the revenue inside your index fund, and its one real risk
  5. Market microstructureMedium — what happens between clicking Buy and owning something
  6. The withdrawal phase — where the order of returns starts to matter
  7. Savings deposit → money market fund → T-bill — the cash ladder, each step trading one comfort for one improvement

Path 8 — A history of things breaking

40 case studies in rough order of what they teach. Read after Path 5 — the mechanisms land harder once the measures that failed to catch them are familiar.

  1. Barings, 1995Easy — the controls failure, before any market risk enters
  2. Metallgesellschaft, 1993Medium — a correct hedge with the wrong cash-flow timing
  3. LTCM, 1998Medium — leverage as a time limit on being right
  4. Amaranth, 2006Medium — when your own exit is the loss
  5. Subprime, 2008Medium — one national bet, tranched and multiplied
  6. The Swiss franc floor, 2015Easy — suppressed volatility is stored volatility
  7. Volmageddon, 2018Medium — a hedge that had to buy what was destroying it
  8. Negative oil, 2020Medium — a physical constraint priced through zero
  9. Archegos, 2021Medium — leverage invisible because it was fragmented
  10. The short squeeze, 2021Easy — the week clearing margin became the story
  11. The UK LDI crisis, 2022Hard — hedging correctly and nearly failing anyway
  12. FTX, 2022Easy — custody that was not custody
  13. The AT1 write-down, 2023Medium — the hierarchy was a document all along
  14. Black Monday, 1987Easy — a crash with no news, caused by insurance that was a sell order
  15. The Asian crisis, 1997Easy — borrowing in a currency you do not earn
  16. The dot-com bust, 2000Easy — right about the technology, wrong about the price
  17. Wirecard, 2020Easy — cash that never existed, inside a blue-chip index
  18. The nickel squeeze, 2022Medium — a producer hedge became the squeezed short
  19. Silicon Valley Bank, 2023Easy — no credit risk, and gone in two days

Then take the case-studies quiz, and sit the Market ExamMedium — 275 questions in the pool, 15 dealt at random from products, concepts and crises alike.

Path 9 — Reading the documents

Every product arrives as paperwork, and the paperwork is where the terms actually live. This path is the shortest route from "I hold this" to "I know what I hold". It needs no maths and can be walked first.

  1. The key information documentEasy — three pages, one of which is a fact and two of which are models
  2. A fund factsheetEasy — forty numbers, six that decide the outcome
  3. Your own broker statementEasy — where withholding tax and FX charges actually appear
  4. A bond quoteMedium — clean, dirty, three yields and a settlement convention
  5. An option chainMedium — the screen every options trade starts from
  6. A credit ratingMedium — an ordinal opinion about one narrow question
  7. An annual reportMedium — cash flow first, notes second, narrative last
  8. A central bank statementMedium — the decision is priced; the wording is not
  9. A structured product term sheetHard — find the option you sold, then price it

Then put it to work: run a portfolio reviewEasy and size a positionEasy — the two playbooks that are methods rather than documents.

Path 10 — Choosing between two things

Most real questions are not "what is this" but "which of these two". Each page states the trade-off explicitly and says what both camps leave out.

  1. ETF vs. fund vs. certificateEasy — one exposure, three failure modes
  2. Accumulating vs. distributingEasy — same fund, two ISINs, one real difference
  3. Active vs. passiveEasy — the part that is arithmetic rather than opinion
  4. Individual bonds vs. bond fundsEasy — one matures and one does not
  5. Hedged vs. unhedgedMedium — near-settled for bonds, genuinely open for equities
  6. Fixed vs. floatingMedium — which uncertainty you would rather carry
  7. Four ways to own goldEasy — two of which behave like gold
  8. Market vs. limit ordersEasy — one trade-off underneath all of them
  9. Warrant vs. turbo vs. optionMedium — one is cleared, two are promises

Path 11 — How a company is bought and sold

The transaction half from its first idea. Nothing here trades: each page is one negotiated transaction, with its timetable, its cast and the thing that stops it. Read in this order and the seventy on the shelf stop looking like seventy separate things.

  1. What an investment bank actually doesEasy — three jobs, in plain words
  2. The M&A desk — the auction, the offer, the vote, the regulator
  3. Sell-side auction — where most of the price is actually made
  4. Recommended offer — the conditions, which are the real negotiation
  5. Hostile takeover — the same thing without the board's help
  6. Scheme vs. tender offerHard — two routes to owning all of it
  7. Cash vs. sharesEasy — the same headline price, two transactions
  8. Exchange ratio — the only number in a share deal
  9. Synergies — what has to be true for a premium to be recovered
  10. AOL Time Warner, 2000Easy — what a share-funded premium eventually costs

Path 12 — Raising money: shares, then bonds

The two capital markets desks in one route. Both answer the same question — at what price will enough people take this — and they answer it with completely different machinery.

  1. What an IPO isEasy — who is selling, and where the money goes
  2. The ECM desk — the book, the allocation, the aftermarket
  3. Primary vs. secondary sharesEasy — the most useful line in any announcement
  4. IPO — the process, and where the price is really decided
  5. Greenshoe and stabilisation — the only support that is permitted
  6. Three routes to a listingMedium — and what each one gives up
  7. Rights issue — raising money without losing your holders
  8. The DCM desk — a bond prices off a curve, not off a company
  9. Investment-grade bond issue — one morning of price discovery
  10. Bond vs. loanMedium — many lenders on standard terms, or few on negotiated ones
  11. How to read a prospectusMedium — in the order that works

Path 13 — Leverage, and what happens when it stops working

The buyout and the restructuring are one subject read in two directions. This path goes down: how the debt gets on, what it does while it is there, and who owns the company when it cannot be paid.

  1. What a leveraged buyout isMedium — in plain words, first
  2. The leveraged finance desk — a bid is a financing package with a price on it
  3. Leveraged buyout — the structure and where the return comes from
  4. Sources and uses — why the equity cheque is a plug
  5. Term loan B — the instrument, and who ends up holding it
  6. How to read a credit agreementHard — the permissions matter more than the covenants
  7. A levered retailerMedium — twelve years of paying the interest, and then the maturity
  8. The restructuring desk — where the value runs out is where ownership sits
  9. Debt for equity — the fulcrum becomes the owner
  10. In court vs. out of courtHard — one holdout is the whole reason courts are used
  11. The uptier transactionsHard — creditors against creditors

If you have a deadline rather than a curiosity

A path is read at whatever pace suits. An interview on Thursday is not. The prep section is the same material arranged around a date instead: the product round of a markets interviewMedium carries a fourteen-day route that starts with Path 1 above and ends with the market examMedium, and the desk mapMedium says which asset class to spend those evenings on. If you are not sure which seat you are aiming at, the role mapEasy works backwards from what you like doing.

Where to go after the paths

  • Step back from the products and read the analyses — 21 frameworks that hold across everything on the site, from what actually drives a return to how products fail. These are what transfers to instruments this atlas has never covered.
  • Drill the vocabulary with the flashcard deckEasy — 303 terms, graded by you, stored only on your device.
  • Rebuild every payoff you meet in the strategy builderMedium. If you cannot reconstruct a product's payoff from calls, puts and stock, you do not yet understand it.
  • Run the arithmetic yourself — all 142 calculators in one place. A claim you have not recomputed is somebody else's claim.

Information and education only. Every page, figure and calculator on this site exists to explain how financial instruments work. Nothing here is investment, tax or legal advice, a recommendation, or a valuation you can rely on. Full disclaimer