Products are usually taught as a menu — here is a stock, here is a bond, here is an option. That ordering hides what is worth knowing: each family is defined by a different document, written by a different body, for a different purpose. Equities are shaped by Commission rules, government debt by the Treasury's own offering circular, listed options by the industry rulebook, funds and annuities by what the SEC tells investors, taxation by the Internal Revenue Service, futures by the Commission that regulates them. This guide reads those instruments and says, per family, what the source settles — and where a product's economics are convention no regulator publishes, it says that instead of inventing a citation. Orientation for study, not investment advice, and not affiliated with any exam body or regulator.
Each chapter opens with the short version. Tap one to read the detail.
Equity is defined by the rules built around its calendar
~3 min
The interesting part of an equity security is not the certificate but the machinery the rules attach: which securities count as penny stocks and get extra process, when an issuer may announce a record date, and the fact that a warrant is itself a security rather than a coupon attached to one.
Government debt, read from the document that actually sells it
~3 min
Treasury's uniform offering circular defines the auction in the terms a candidate is asked to reproduce. A competitive bid names a yield, discount rate or discount margin; a noncompetitive bid in a single-price auction takes whatever the highest accepted competitive rate turns out to be. That asymmetry explains most of what looks confusing about auctions.
The rulebook governs the account and the exercise, not the payoff
~2 min
The industry rulebook defines the vocabulary — aggregate exercise price, what "uncovered" means, who may approve an options account — and routes every exercise through the clearing corporation. What it does not contain is the payoff arithmetic, which no regulator publishes.
What makes a fund a registered fund
~3 min
The protections people assume are inherent to a "fund" come from one statute. A registered fund faces limits on illiquid investments, restrictions on borrowing and debt, and a duty to let investors sell at any time. A private fund faces none of those, which is why access is restricted by investor status instead.
Annuities: two phases, four flavours, one counterparty
~3 min
An annuity is a contract with an insurance company, so every promise inside it depends on that company's ability to pay. Learn the phase structure first — accumulation then payout, deferred or immediate — then the four deferred types in order of increasing risk.
The tax half is written down; the risk half mostly is not
~3 min
Holding period, wash sales and dividend character are defined precisely by the tax authority, and they are the parts of this topic with a citable answer. Portfolio risk — diversifiable risk, duration intuition, sequence of returns — is theory no government publishes, so learn it as mechanics.
Two credit stories, and the enhancement that used to hide both
~2 min
Municipal securities split into general obligation bonds, backed by the issuer's taxing power and full faith and credit, and revenue bonds, backed by a defined stream. A third case matters more than its share suggests: a conduit issue, where the credit repaying you is a private borrower's.
Futures are defined by delivery, margin and who is hedging
~3 min
The futures regulations define the terms the market runs on: the delivery month specified in the contract, margin posted at two levels by two parties, and a hedging exemption that turns on whether a position offsets a real exposure. Get those three straight and the clearing structure follows.
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