Understanding gold
Gold provokes strong opinions and little testing. This lesson examines how gold actually behaves against more than a century of data: inflation, real interest rates, the dollar, crises, supply and demand, central banks, miners and bitcoin, and above all its place in a portfolio, where twenty portfolios put a hard number on how much gold helps and where it stops helping. Read it in order or jump to any section through the table of contents.
Understanding bonds
Bonds are the backbone of the financial system and yet often the least understood of the major asset classes. This lesson builds from the ground up: what a bond really is, how coupons, prices and yields connect, and then harder ideas such as duration, credit risk, the yield curve and real versus nominal return. Read it in order or jump to any section through the table of contents.