Every lesson, theme by theme
Foundations: what you own, and what happens when you buy
Start from nothing. What a share actually is, why its price moves, and everything that happens in the seconds and days after you press buy.
- 1.1
What you actually own when you buy a share
A share is a slice of a real business, not a ticker on a screen.
- 1.2
Where shares are bought and sold
What an exchange is, who's on the other side of your trade, and what a broker does.
- 1.3
Why the price moves
The price is what two people agreed on a second ago — not what the company is worth.
- 1.4
Market order vs limit order
The two ways of saying "buy", and what each one gives up.
- 1.5
Why the price you saw isn't the price you got
Spread, slippage, and the seconds between click and fill.
- 1.6
You bought a share and you're already down
The spread explains almost all of it. Nothing has gone wrong.
- 1.7
Why your trade takes days to settle
Trade date, settlement date, and why the cash doesn't move the instant you do.
- 1.8
Fractional shares — what you actually own
Owning 0.34 of a share, and what that does to dividends and voting.
- 1.9
Nominee accounts: who actually holds your shares
Why your name isn't on the share register, and what that does and doesn't mean.
- 1.10
Compounding, plainly
The one bit of maths that makes long horizons behave differently from short ones.
- 1.11
Why prices move while the market is shut
LSE hours, overnight news, and the gap you see at the open.
Dividends: where the cash comes from
The cash itself: who decides it, when it lands, and what that percentage sitting next to it is really measuring.
- 2.1
What a dividend actually is
Where the cash comes from, who decides it, and when it lands in your account.
- 2.2
Ex-date, record date, payment date — the full timeline
Four dates, in order, with the one that actually decides whether you get paid.
- 2.3
Your portfolio dropped on the ex-div date
The price fell by roughly the dividend. Nothing went wrong.
- 2.4
What that yield percentage really means
Yield moves every time the price moves. Yield on cost never does.
- 2.5
Trailing vs forward yield
One is history, one is an estimate. The app uses both, in different places.
- 2.6
What actually happens when a dividend is reinvested
The mechanics of turning cash back into shares, and what that does to your cost basis.
- 2.7
Why some companies pay quarterly and some twice a year
Interim and final dividends, and what that does to your income calendar.
- 2.8
Special vs regular dividends
A one-off is not a raise. How to spot one before it inflates your numbers.
- 2.9
Scrip dividends and share alternatives
Being paid in shares instead of cash, and what you're actually choosing.
- 2.10
Setting an income target that means something
Turning "more income" into a number the dashboard can track.
- 2.11
Why a tenner a month in dividends is a real milestone
The first income that arrives without you doing anything.
Dividend durability: can they keep paying it
Two numbers separate a comfortable dividend from a stretched one. A third tells you whether the company is paying you out of somewhere else.
- 3.1
Can they actually keep paying it?
The two numbers that separate a comfortable dividend from a stretched one.
- 3.2
What dividend cover means
How many times over the earnings could pay the dividend, and why 2× is the shorthand.
- 3.3
Earnings-based vs cash-based payout ratios
Profit is an opinion, cash is a fact. Two payout ratios, two different answers.
- 3.4
Growth streaks and what they do to a board
A decade of raises takes a business that plans ahead — and can make a board defend the streak past the point of sense.
- 3.5
The yield trap
When a yield spikes because the price fell, the market is telling you something.
- 3.6
What has historically followed a dividend cut
What the record shows, with the source on screen.
- 3.7
How to read a dividend history chart
Years of payments on one chart, and the three shapes worth recognising.
- 3.8
Debt and the dividend
The dividend competes with the interest bill. Who wins is not a mystery.
- 3.9
How the dividend safety score is built
Exactly what goes into the number on your health score — and what it can't see.
Reading a company: fundamentals and valuation
The numbers behind the dividend. Enough accounting to read a company's results without pretending to be an analyst.
- 4.1
The three statements, in one lesson
What each one is for, in the order you'd actually read them.
- 4.2
Earnings per share, and what dilutes it
Profit divided by shares — and why the second number keeps changing.
- 4.3
What a P/E ratio does and doesn't tell you
A price relative to profit. Useful between similar companies, misleading between different ones.
- 4.4
Revenue, margin, and where profit comes from
The gap between selling a lot and making money.
- 4.5
Free cash flow, the honest number
What's left after running the business and maintaining it. This is what pays you.
- 4.6
Debt: gearing, interest cover, covenants
How much of the business belongs to lenders before it belongs to you.
- 4.7
Buybacks: the other way of returning cash
Fewer shares, same profit. Why some companies prefer it to a dividend.
- 4.8
Reading a results announcement without reading all of it
Where the actual news sits in twelve pages of RNS.
- 4.9
What a moat is, and how people argue about it
The reason a company can keep earning above-average returns — and why it's an argument, not a metric.
- 4.10
Sectors, and why they behave differently
Cyclical, defensive, and where dividend investors tend to end up.
Funds, ETFs and trackers
Owning a thousand companies through one line on your dashboard: what the wrapper is doing, what it costs you, and where it can quietly differ from the index.
- 5.1
Fund, ETF, investment trust — three wrappers, one idea
All three pool money. The differences are in how you buy and sell them.
- 5.2
Accumulation vs income units
The same fund, two share classes, two very different dashboards.
- 5.3
What's actually inside a global tracker, by weight
The top ten, the country split, and how concentrated "global" turns out to be.
- 5.4
Active and passive, factually
What each one is doing with your money — described, not ranked.
- 5.5
What an ETF's distribution yield actually is
Not the same as a share's dividend yield, and not the same as what you'll receive.
- 5.6
Physical vs synthetic replication
Owning the shares, versus a contract that promises the return.
- 5.7
What tracking error means
The gap between the index and the fund that follows it.
- 5.8
Why an ETF's price can drift from its NAV
The share price and the value of the holdings are two different numbers.
- 5.9
Investment trusts: discounts, gearing, revenue reserves
Three features shares and open-ended funds simply don't have.
- 5.10
Domicile, UCITS and reporting status
Why the country an ETF is registered in shows up on your tax return.
Beyond equities: bonds, cash, property, commodities
Everything in a portfolio that isn't a share, and what each one is actually for.
- 6.1
What a bond actually is
You're the lender, not the owner. Everything else follows from that.
- 6.2
Why bond prices fall when rates rise
The one relationship that explains most bond news.
- 6.3
Government, corporate, high yield
Same instrument, three very different questions about getting paid back.
- 6.4
Bond funds vs individual bonds
A bond matures. A bond fund never does.
- 6.5
Cash, and the real return after inflation
The safest holding still has a way of losing.
- 6.6
REITs: property income without a mortgage
What a REIT must pay out, and why its dividend is taxed differently.
- 6.7
Gold and commodities
No earnings, no dividend, no cash flow. What they're actually there for.
- 6.8
Infrastructure, renewables and other income trusts
Long contracts, inflation linkage, and where the income comes from.
- 6.9
Private assets, VCTs and EIS — the illiquid end
Tax reliefs attached to holdings you may not be able to sell.
- 6.10
How asset classes have behaved differently
What the record shows about them moving together — and not.
The speculative edge: crypto, leverage and derivatives
Instruments that can lose more than you put in, and instruments with nothing behind them. What each one is, mechanically, and exactly how it goes wrong.
- 7.1
What a derivative is
A contract whose value comes from something else. That's the whole idea.
- 7.2
Options: calls, puts, and what the buyer owns
A right, not an obligation — and a ticking clock.
- 7.3
What writing an option obliges you to do
The other side of the contract, where the losses aren't capped.
- 7.4
CFDs and spread betting in the UK
What the product is, and what the required risk warning is actually telling you.
- 7.5
Margin and leverage: how losses multiply
Borrowing to invest, and the mechanics of a margin call.
- 7.6
Leveraged and inverse ETFs, and why they decay
Designed to track one day. Held for a year, they do something else entirely.
- 7.7
Short selling: borrowing what you don't own
Profiting from a fall, with a loss that has no ceiling.
- 7.8
Crypto: what a token is, and what stands behind it
No earnings, no issuer obligation, no cash flow. What's left.
- 7.9
Crypto custody, exchanges, and what isn't protected
Who holds the keys, and what happens when the exchange doesn't.
- 7.10
Stablecoins, staking and "yield"
Why the word yield here means something different from a dividend yield.
- 7.11
Why the FCA restricts some of these products
The rules, and the reasoning behind them.
Building a portfolio
Twenty holdings in one sector isn't diversified — it's one bet, twenty ways. How to see the shape of what you own.
- 8.1
Don't keep all your acorns in one tree
How spread out is spread out enough — and how to spot a lopsided portfolio.
- 8.2
Thirty holdings can still be one bet
Counting holdings measures the wrong thing.
- 8.3
What correlation looks like on a chart
Two lines that move together, and what that costs you.
- 8.4
What concentration risk actually means
The winner that grew fastest is now your biggest risk.
- 8.5
Home bias: why UK investors hold so much UK
Familiarity, dividends, and an accidental currency bet.
- 8.6
Asset allocation: the decision that does most of the work
The split between kinds of things you own, before which things you own.
- 8.7
Position sizing without a formula
Why "how much" is a question about consequences, not maths.
- 8.8
Rebalancing explained without the jargon
Trimming what grew, topping up what didn't, back toward your targets.
- 8.9
Lump sum vs regular contributions
What each approach does mechanically. Described, not recommended.
- 8.10
What the portfolio health score is measuring
The four inputs behind the number, and what each one can't see.
Risk: the different ways of losing
Risk and loss are not the same word. The several different things that can go wrong, and which of them the app can actually show you.
- 9.1
Risk and loss are not the same word
One is what might happen. The other already did.
- 9.2
Drawdown vs volatility — two different fears
One measures the bumps, the other measures the hole.
- 9.3
What your maximum drawdown number is telling you
The worst peak-to-trough on record, and how long it took to come back.
- 9.4
What beta measures — and what it doesn't
Sensitivity to the market. Not safety, not quality, not risk in general.
- 9.5
Permanent loss vs temporary decline
A price that recovered and a business that didn't look identical on the way down.
- 9.6
Currency risk when you own overseas shares
The share went up. Your currency went the other way.
- 9.7
Inflation: the risk that doesn't show on the chart
Your portfolio grew. Whether it grew enough is a different number.
- 9.8
Sequence risk: why the order of returns matters
The same average return, in a different order, ends somewhere else entirely.
- 9.9
Single-company risk: suspensions, delistings, insolvency
What actually happens to ordinary shareholders when a company fails.
- 9.10
Liquidity: what happens when you can't sell
Thin markets, wide spreads, and funds that close the door.
Measuring performance honestly
Whether you're actually doing well, using the number that includes the awkward parts.
- 10.1
Reviewing a real portfolio, week by week
The weekly series, and the three numbers it keeps coming back to.
- 10.2
Total return vs price return
Judging a dividend portfolio on price alone flatters the wrong holdings.
- 10.3
What your cost basis is, and why it moves
Buying in stages, fees, and the corporate action that rewrites it.
- 10.4
Unrealised vs realised gain
A gain on the screen and a gain in your pocket are taxed very differently.
- 10.5
CAGR vs total return
Why the smaller number is the honest one.
- 10.6
Time-weighted vs money-weighted return
One judges the portfolio. The other judges your timing.
- 10.7
What benchmarking against an index proves
Beating an index over a year proves less than it feels like.
- 10.8
Survivorship bias in every backtest you've seen
The companies that failed left the index, and left the chart.
- 10.9
Reading your AI portfolio report
What the report looked at, what it didn't, and what it isn't.
- 10.10
Why two apps show different returns for the same portfolio
Same holdings, different method, different answer. Neither is broken.
Costs, tax and wrappers (UK)
The two deductions nobody chooses and everybody pays. What each one is, mechanically, in UK terms.
- 11.1
OCF, TER, AMC — three acronyms, one idea
Three names for what a fund takes before you see a return.
- 11.2
What a platform fee costs over a decade
A percentage that sounds small, worked through over ten years.
- 11.3
Dealing charges and regular investing
What each trade costs, and why frequency matters more than size.
- 11.4
The FX fee you didn't notice on your US trades
Buying a dollar stock costs you twice — once for the share, once for the dollars.
- 11.5
Stamp duty on UK share purchases
The tax you pay for buying, not for winning.
- 11.6
ISA vs general investment account, factually
Two accounts, two sets of rules. The differences, not the decision.
- 11.7
ISA vs SIPP — the mechanical differences
Relief on the way in, or freedom on the way out.
- 11.8
The UK dividend allowance
How much dividend income falls outside tax, and what happens above it.
- 11.9
The capital gains allowance
The gain you can realise before CGT applies.
- 11.10
US withholding tax and the W-8BEN
Why a US dividend arrives smaller, and the form that halves the gap.
- 11.11
Bed and ISA — what the process involves
Selling and rebuying inside a wrapper: the steps, and the gap in between.
- 11.12
What happens to your investments if your broker fails
Client assets, ring-fencing, and where FSCS actually applies.
Behaviour: the investor in the mirror
The part of investing that isn't about companies. Why the same portfolio produces different results in different hands.
- 12.1
Losing hurts twice as much as winning feels good
The asymmetry behind many bad selling decisions.
- 12.2
What checking daily does to your decision-making
More information, worse decisions. The mechanism is well documented.
- 12.3
Recency bias — why last month feels like forever
The most recent thing feels like the most likely thing.
- 12.4
The gap between fund returns and investor returns
The fund returned one number. The people in it returned another.
- 12.5
Confirmation bias and the research you didn't do
Looking for reasons you were right is not research.
- 12.6
Anchoring on your buy price
The market does not know what you paid, and does not care.
- 12.7
FOMO and why the story arrives before the numbers
By the time it's a narrative, the price has often moved already.
- 12.8
Overconfidence and how often you trade
The more certain you feel, the more it tends to cost.
- 12.9
Writing down why you bought something
The cheapest tool in investing, and the least used.
- 12.10
What your investor persona is actually for
It shapes what the app shows you first. It never decides what you can do.