The building blocks, explained one at a time

How an idea earns a write-up

1. Read the primary document. The filing, the prospectus, the holdings list, or the rate sheet itself — not a summary written by someone selling the thing.
2. Describe it in plain words. What it is and how the money moves, written so that someone meeting the term for the first time can follow it.
3. Show the arithmetic. Two or three figures, how each is calculated, and what an ordinary value looks like for comparison.
4. State what could go wrong. The assumptions behind the idea, the costs of being wrong, and the conditions under which doing nothing is the better answer.

What each issue contains

• One idea — a company, a fund, a term, or a decision — explained from the beginning
• Every term defined where it appears, in the sentence that uses it
• The two or three numbers that describe it, with the sums shown
• The assumptions it depends on, stated rather than implied
• The case against, including the fees and the ways it fails
• Full disclosure of any compensation connected to anything mentioned

What we do not cover

We do not publish trade alerts, price predictions, or anything framed as a limited window. We do not tell readers what to buy, because that requires knowing a person's income, debts, timeline, and tolerance for loss, and a mailing list cannot know those things.

We also leave alone products we cannot explain honestly in a few plain paragraphs — structures whose risks only appear in the footnotes, and schemes whose appeal rests on the reader not asking where the money comes from. If it cannot be written out clearly, it is not our beat.