Academy

From never having bought a share to running the whole method on a company alone, and, for a reader who can already do that, a way back over the whole of value investing to check it. Free, no account, no email.

Starting from zero

11 courses, 92 lessons

What a share is, how a trade happens, and what costs, compounding and the index baseline do to a result. Assumed by everything below it.

Starting from zero: 11 courses, 92 lessons, in curriculum order and grouped by stage. Each course links to its own lessons.
No	Course	Lessons
Before anything else
01	Investing from zero	7
02	How a share actually trades	9
03	Bookkeeping from zero	9
04	Accrual against cash	8
Stage 2
05	The standards an investor meets	11
06	What a company must tell you	8
07	Financial mathematics	9
08	Rates, bonds and the curve	8
09	Probability for investors	8
10	Statistics and evidence	9
11	What the tax code takes	6
	Starting from zero, complete	92

Reading a company through the cycle

5 courses, 39 lessons

What a credit reading actually changes about a balance sheet: which liabilities are load bearing, what a maturity date does that a ratio cannot, and which conditions follow.

Reading a company through the cycle: 5 courses, 39 lessons, in curriculum order and grouped by stage. Each course links to its own lessons.
No	Course	Lessons
Credit in the accounts
01	Credit conditions and the accounts	8
02	The boom in a company's accounts	8
The balance sheet
03	A balance sheet when credit turns	8
04	What a downturn costs here	7
The conditions that follow
05	Guardrails that follow a reading	8
	Reading a company through the cycle, complete	39

Running it end to end

3 courses, 19 lessons

The whole method on real filings, in order, and then on a company you chose yourself, ending at a written thesis with conditions attached.

Running it end to end: 3 courses, 19 lessons, in curriculum order and grouped by stage. Each course links to its own lessons.
No	Course	Lessons
01	A cyclical, end to end	7
02	From a filing to a value	6
03	Your own company	6
	Running it end to end, complete	19

Value investing

39 courses, 285 lessons

Read the accounts, judge the business, work out what it is worth, and write down a reason that can be proved wrong.

Value investing: 39 courses, 285 lessons, in curriculum order and grouped by stage. Each course links to its own lessons.
No	Course	Lessons
Foundations
01	The value investor's mindset	7
02	Where the method came from	8
Reading a business
03	Reading financial statements	10
04	Accounting quality	9
05	Financial health	7
06	Quality and returns	8
07	Detecting manipulation	8
08	Normalising the numbers	7
09	Building a model that balances	8
Judging a business
10	Business models and moats	7
11	Management and capital allocation	8
12	Industries that need their own ratios	7
13	Credit for equity investors	7
14	Competitive strategy	8
15	Eight more industries	8
16	When the capital structure decides	8
17	Foreign companies listed here	6
Valuing a business
18	Cost of capital	5
19	Valuation	6
20	Valuation in practice	9
21	What a discount rate can be	7
22	Multiples, and why they mislead	7
23	What a DCF can and cannot settle	8
24	Valuation from the accounts	6
The practice
25	Screens and factors	7
26	Special situations	7
27	The masters: price first	7
28	The masters: quality first	7
29	Behaviour and decisions	7
30	Portfolio construction and risk	7
31	Market history for investors	7
32	The research process	7
33	The investment thesis	9
34	A company end to end	6
35	What the evidence actually shows	8
36	Seven more situations	7
37	The arithmetic of a portfolio	7
38	Why any of this can work	7
39	What you may act on	6
	Value investing, complete	285

The business cycle

15 courses, 111 lessons

The Austrian account of booms and busts, from Menger on value to the dispute over bank credit, with the objections stated as their critics state them.

The business cycle: 15 courses, 111 lessons, in curriculum order and grouped by stage. Each course links to its own lessons.
No	Course	Lessons
Origins and method
01	What the Austrian school is	7
02	Menger and subjective value	7
Capital, prices and money
03	Capital, time and interest	7
04	Prices, knowledge and the market	8
05	Money, banking and credit	9
Stage 3
06	The two interest rates	7
07	The structure of production	8
Stage 4
08	The boom	8
09	The bust	7
10	One episode, several accounts	7
11	The socialist calculation debate	7
Stage 5
12	The case against the theory	8
13	The school today	7
14	Every account of the cycle	8
15	Reading the sources yourself	6
	The business cycle, complete	111

The same arithmetic, on tonight’s market

Four of the figures these courses teach, computed from the filed accounts of every company we hold them for and rebuilt by the nightly pass. Each panel prints the formula, the number of companies behind the answer, and the date it was measured.

What the market is paying

Two ratios of price to something filed. The value track spends most of its length on what the denominators hide.

Price to earnings

Price / Earnings per Share (diluted)

Companies: 2,625
Lower quarter: 12.48x
Median: 19.84x
Upper quarter: 36.02x

Measured Oct 21, 2026 from filed accounts. Taught in What is a good P/E ratio? Every mark, and each sector.

Price to book

Price / Book Value per Share, where BVPS = Shareholders' Equity / Diluted Shares

Companies: 4,443
Lower quarter: 0.88x
Median: 1.81x
Upper quarter: 4.08x

Measured Oct 21, 2026 from filed accounts. Taught in Book value against fair value. Every mark, and each sector.

What companies can carry

How much a business owes and how far its operating income goes towards the interest on it. This is where a credit cycle shows up in filed accounts, and where these sit is a measurement of the date shown rather than a reading of what comes next.

Debt to equity

Total Debt / Shareholders' Equity

Companies: 2,320
Lower quarter: 0.16
Median: 0.57
Upper quarter: 1.28

Measured Oct 21, 2026 from filed accounts. Taught in Three ways to measure debt. Every mark, and each sector.

Interest coverage

Operating Income / Interest Expense

Companies: 1,443
Lower quarter: 2.16x
Median: 4.92x
Upper quarter: 13.24x

Measured Oct 21, 2026 from filed accounts. Every mark, and each sector.

Cross-sectional statistics computed from filed accounts held on the build date shown. A breakpoint describes where a figure sat among comparable companies, not whether any company is worth owning. This is research, not advice.

Every figure in a worked example is either a real filed number, with the company, the fiscal year and the filing named, or arithmetic on round invented inputs and labelled as such where it appears.