A way of thinking.Not a way of starting out.
Field guides to the parts of the market everyone assumes you already understand: how each is put together, what it has done before, and the few relationships that drive most of the movement.
The research leads. Each guide picks up the market the research assumed you already knew. If fixed income is a subject you nod along to rather than one you could argue about, you are the reader.
That which cannot be made simpler.
A bond tells you the answer in advance — dated cash, a fixed amount. The work is deciding what that answer is worth today, and whether it will be paid. Fixed income is where the arithmetic is simple and the judgement is not.
The bonds that lost three quarters of their value without missing a payment.
What it pays, when it repays, who is promising, and where you stand if they fail.
You are paid only for the difference between what happens and what was assumed.
The long bond at five per cent, and what its price quietly assumes about inflation.
Live markets
Worked against what is happening now
Every idea is put through the market as it stands, with the date on it. When an example ages, the guide says so.
Historical precedent
What it has done before
Dated episodes, not theory. The cycles, and the certainty that ended them. Pattern recognition, not prediction.
Structure
How it is actually put together
Who issues. Who intermediates. Who is obliged to buy. The plumbing, because the plumbing is where the surprises come from.
Relationships
What moves with what
Price to yield. Government to corporate. Spread to cycle. A few links explain most of the movement, and they are the part worth learning.
Guide One is free, in full.
All four parts on the site now, no email, nothing to fill in. Leave an email and Guide Two comes to you the day it publishes, along with the research that runs between. Issue One of Beyond Institutional Thinking is free too.
One subscription, both strands. One argues about a company or a bond; the other explains the market it belongs to. £15 a month, or £150 a year. Cancel any time.