Playbooks
The rest of this site explains what instruments are and why they work. These pages do something different: they walk through the documents and screens you actually face, line by line, in the order that works — what to read first, what to ignore, and what is missing on purpose. Education only, as everywhere here — see the disclaimer.
The badges say how much a page assumes: Start here nothing beyond plain English · Some background helps one concept from elsewhere on the site · Assumes the mechanics written for someone already inside the market.
The library
- How to Read a Fund FactsheetStart heretwo pages, forty numbers, six that decide the outcome. Identifiers, the cost floor, concentration, tracking difference, and why performance comes last.
- How to Read a Structured Product Term SheetAssumes the mechanicsthe one method that works on every structure: find the option you sold, price it independently, and read the scenario the brochure does not chart.
- How to Read an Option ChainSome background helpswhich of the columns carry information, how to spot a stale quote, what open interest really says, and how to read the skew straight off the screen.
- How to Read a Bond QuoteSome background helpsclean versus dirty price, which of the four yields is shown, day-count conventions that silently change the answer, and comparing two bonds honestly.
- How to Read a Key Information DocumentStart herethree regulated pages, one of which is a fact and two of which are models. What the 1–7 risk indicator does and does not measure.
- How to Read Financial StatementsSome background helpswhy to start with cash flow, what ties the three statements together, and the reconciliations that reveal the most.
- How to Think About an AllocationStart herenot what to hold, but how to reason about a mix: what each sleeve is for, why risk shares differ from capital shares, and a five-sleeve calculator with the correlation input that decides everything.
- How to Size a PositionStart herethe inversion that fixes most of it: start from the loss you can accept and derive the size, never the reverse.
- How to Read an Annual ReportSome background helpsthree hundred pages of which twelve decide everything. Cash flow first, notes second, narrative last, and the four notes worth reading before anything else.
- How to Read a Credit RatingSome background helpsan ordinal opinion about one narrow question. Issuer versus issue, what notching reveals, and what a rating deliberately excludes.
- How to Read a Central Bank StatementSome background helpsthe decision is already priced. Read the diff, the vote split and what the press conference declined to repeat.
- How to Read a Broker StatementStart herefour sections, of which most people read one. Where withholding tax, FX conversion and cash interest actually appear.
- How to Run a Portfolio ReviewStart herea structured pass in an order designed so the boring findings surface first, because that is where the money is.
What these have in common
- Read in the order that works, not the order printed. Every document on this list puts its marketing first and its most decisive number in the middle.
- One number usually dominates. The dividend treatment on a certificate, the maturity schedule on a balance sheet, the bid-ask on an illiquid option — find it and most of the analysis is done.
- What is absent is information. A factsheet that omits turnover, a term sheet that does not chart the flat market, a KID that cannot tell you what the alternative pays — the gaps are consistent and they are not accidents.
- Recompute rather than accept. Every playbook links to the calculator that settles its central question in under a minute.
Once the documents are readable, the comparisons put two products side by side, and the learning paths put everything in a teachable order.