Learning Paths

Eighty-seven products is an atlas, not a syllabus. These four paths put them in an order that builds — each page assumes only what came before it. Read the Beginner level of each product on a first pass; return for Intermediate and Advanced when the shape is familiar. 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 Exam: fifteen 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.