Keentune

Investing curriculum

9 chapters
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206 concepts
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free
Everything the adaptive question bank can teach and test in Investing, from foundations through advanced practice. Work through it in order, or start practising and let the questions find your level.
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A free 14-minute primer — the mental model, the mistakes beginners make, and what to practise first.
A. Foundations: risk, return, and time
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Deploying capital expecting a return, with risk attached.
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Preserving principal vs accepting variability for growth.
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Higher expected return demands accepting more variability.
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Dispersion of outcomes as the standard risk proxy.
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Temporary decline vs capital that does not come back.
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When the money is needed governing what it can be held in.
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How quickly an asset converts to cash without loss.
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Returns earning returns over time.
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Interest on principal vs on the growing balance.
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Years to double approximated by 72 divided by the rate.
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Rate required to double in a given number of years.
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Why the first years contribute disproportionately.
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End value minus start, divided by start.
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Converting a multi-year gain to a per-year figure.
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Subtracting inflation to get purchasing-power return.
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Cash losing real value even when the balance does not fall.
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Holding cash as an active allocation decision.
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Liquidity reserve as a precondition, taught as mechanics.
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Fixed amounts at fixed intervals, and what it does and does not do.
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The tradeoff between exposure and regret.
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A good process can still produce a bad year.
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What you can afford to lose vs what you can stand.
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Why the ORDER of returns matters once you are withdrawing.
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Price change plus income, which is the number that matters.
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Why missing a handful of days changes long-run results.
B. Asset classes and instruments
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A share is ownership, with residual claim and no promised payment.
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A bond is a loan, with a contractual payment schedule.
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Bondholders are paid before shareholders.
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Voting and growth vs priority and fixed dividend.
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Cash distributed from earnings, and why it is not free money.
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Annual dividend divided by price.
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More shares at a lower price with unchanged total value.
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Share price times shares outstanding.
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Large, mid and small capitalization and their differing behavior.
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Price divided by earnings per share as a valuation ratio.
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Two styles defined by what an investor is paying for.
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Money-market instruments and short-term treasuries.
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Direct ownership vs securitized exposure.
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Real-estate trusts and their distribution requirements.
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Physical goods, and why they generate no cash flow.
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Store-of-value claims and their volatility record.
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Currency and political risk on top of market risk.
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Exchange-rate movement changing a foreign holding's return.
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Instruments whose value derives from something else.
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Calls and puts as rights, not obligations, taught as mechanics.
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Borrowed money magnifying both gain and loss.
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Borrowing against a portfolio and the margin call that follows a decline.
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Selling borrowed shares, and why the loss is unbounded.
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How these instruments work, with no endorsement implied.
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Private, illiquid vehicles and their disclosure differences.
C. Funds, indexing, and fees
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A pooled vehicle priced once daily at net asset value.
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A pooled vehicle that trades intraday like a share.
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Pricing, trading and tax-efficiency differences.
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Assets minus liabilities, divided by shares.
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An ETF's price diverging from its net asset value.
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A fund tracking a published index rather than selecting holdings.
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A rules-based list, not a portfolio someone manages.
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Tracking a benchmark vs attempting to beat it.
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Why most active funds trail their benchmark after costs.
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Annual fund cost as a percentage of assets.
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Balance times expense ratio.
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Compounding cost over decades.
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Fees compounding against you exactly as returns compound for you.
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Front-end and back-end sales charges.
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Ongoing distribution fees inside a fund.
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Assets-under-management pricing and its alternatives.
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Spread, commission and market impact inside a fund.
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How often a fund trades, and the costs it implies.
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Divergence between a fund and its index.
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A glide path that shifts allocation with a date.
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Fixed stock and bond mixes in one vehicle.
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Short-term instruments and their stability objective.
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Fixed share count, and the discount that can persist.
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The disclosure document and what an investor must read in it.
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Why the warning is regulatory rather than decorative.
D. Bonds and fixed income
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Par value, coupon, maturity and issuer.
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The contractual payment as a share of par.
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Annual coupon divided by current price.
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Total return if held to maturity, including price convergence.
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Price and yield always move in opposite directions.
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A fixed coupon reprices to match the market rate.
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Trading above or below par, and why.
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The risk that rates rise while you hold.
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Sensitivity of price to a change in rates.
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Time to repayment vs measured rate sensitivity.
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The chance the issuer does not pay.
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Investment grade and below, and what the letters denote.
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Higher coupon compensating for higher default probability.
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What a bondholder can expect if the issuer fails.
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Bills, notes and bonds by maturity.
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Inflation-indexed principal and what it protects against.
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Non-marketable government instruments and their rules.
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Government-issuer bonds and their tax treatment mechanics.
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Company debt and its position in the capital structure.
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Issuer's right to redeem early, and the risk to the holder.
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Coupons reinvested at a lower rate than the original.
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Yields plotted against maturity, and what shape signals.
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Staggered maturities managing rate and reinvestment risk.
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No maturity date, so no guaranteed return of principal.
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Interest earned between payment dates at settlement.
E. Portfolio construction and risk management
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Holding assets whose outcomes are not perfectly linked.
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A single position dominating the outcome.
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How closely two holdings move together.
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Market-wide risk that diversification cannot remove.
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Company-specific risk that diversification can remove.
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The split across classes as the dominant decision.
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Why the mix matters more than the individual picks.
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Structured questions behind an allocation.
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Shifting allocation as the horizon shortens.
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Restoring target weights after drift.
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Calendar-based vs threshold-based approaches.
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Winners growing into an unintended overweight.
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Overweighting domestic assets without a stated reason.
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Sensitivity of a holding to the overall market.
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Dispersion of returns as a volatility measure.
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Return earned per unit of volatility taken.
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Peak-to-trough decline as an experienced risk measure.
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A 50 percent loss requires a 100 percent gain to recover.
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A minimal diversified portfolio, taught as a mechanism.
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Systematic tilts and the evidence disputes around them.
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Which account type holds which asset, for tax mechanics.
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How a portfolio is drawn down, taught without a rate recommendation.
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Planning in real rather than nominal terms.
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Products that mix the two, and why that complicates both.
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Converting a balance into an income stream, taught as mechanics.
F. Accounts, taxes, and mechanics
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A taxable account with no contribution limit.
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Taxes postponed until withdrawal.
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After-tax contributions with qualified tax-free withdrawal.
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The decision is when the tax is paid, not whether.
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Workplace retirement plans and their payroll mechanics.
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Matching contributions as part of compensation.
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When employer contributions actually become yours.
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Limits exist and change annually — teach the mechanic, never the figure.
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Additional allowance above a certain age.
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Moving a plan balance without triggering tax.
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Trustee transfer vs a distribution you must redeposit.
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The mechanic and the existence of exceptions.
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Mandatory withdrawals from certain accounts.
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Tax-advantaged education savings mechanics.
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Triple-advantage mechanics under eligibility rules.
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Tax on the increase in value when realized.
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Holding period changing the applicable rate category.
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What you paid, and why records matter.
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FIFO and specific identification as lot-selection methods.
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Realizing losses to offset gains, as a mechanism.
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Repurchasing a substantially identical security too soon.
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Qualified and ordinary dividends treated differently.
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Why some fund structures distribute fewer gains.
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Why it overrides a will for these accounts.
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Individual, joint and custodial ownership mechanics.
G. Markets, trading, and market structure
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Issuance to the issuer vs trading between investors.
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How a company first sells shares to the public.
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Listed markets vs over-the-counter trading.
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Firms quoting both sides and providing liquidity.
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The gap between buying and selling price as a cost.
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Market, limit, stop and stop-limit orders.
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Speed bought at the cost of price certainty.
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Price certainty bought at the cost of execution.
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The interval between trade and transfer of ownership.
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Declaration, ex-dividend, record and payment dates.
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Why the price falls by roughly the dividend.
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What a headline index does and does not represent.
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Price-weighted, cap-weighted and equal-weighted construction.
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Conventional thresholds and their arbitrariness.
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Magnitude and speed distinctions.
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Trading halts triggered by large moves.
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How quickly prices incorporate public information.
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Why consistent outperformance is hard.
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Trading on material non-public information is illegal.
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Periodic filings as the basis of public information.
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Different services and different standards of care.
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Acting in the client's best interest, and where it applies.
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What it covers, and that it is not insurance against loss.
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Reading holdings, transactions and fees.
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Verifying a firm or professional's registration and history.
H. Behavioral finance and fraud avoidance
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Losses weighing more heavily than equal gains.
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Selling winners early and holding losers too long.
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Attempting to enter and exit at the right moments.
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Two correct decisions required, repeatedly.
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Buying what has just risen most.
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Extrapolating the last few years indefinitely.
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Following the crowd as a substitute for analysis.
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Overestimating one's own forecasting accuracy.
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Activity reducing returns through cost and error.
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Seeking only evidence that supports the position held.
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Treating your entry price as economically relevant.
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Holding to avoid realizing a decision was wrong.
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Treating identical money differently by its label.
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Overpaying for a small chance of a large payoff.
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A compelling story substituting for analysis.
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Coverage optimized for attention, not for decisions.
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Deciding rules before the emotion arrives.
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Removing repeated decisions from the path.
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Fraud exploiting membership in a shared group.
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Paying earlier investors with later investors' money.
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Returns dependent on recruitment rather than a product.
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Inflating a thin security then selling into the demand.
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Guarantees paired with high returns as the classic signal.
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Urgency and exclusivity as fraud indicators.
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Checking registration and disclosure before any transfer.
I. Company analysis: reading the financial statements
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What a company owns against what it owes, at one moment.
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Revenue, expenses and the resulting profit over a period.
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Actual cash in and out, which profit can conceal.
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Assets minus liabilities as the owners' residual claim.
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Profit attributed to each outstanding common share.
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Net income measured against the owners' capital.
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