Insights

Clear, rigorous writing on the ideas that move markets — and the exams that test them.

The charterThe CFA charter, the career it opens, and the faster way throughWhat the charter actually is, why it still moves careers, and why most candidates study it the hard way — when the method matters more than the hours.Read it · 3 min →

Exam essentials

Exam coverageInitiating coverage: the CFA Level I examPass rates have stabilized above their decade trend. The scarce input is method, not hours. Our estimates, catalysts, and risks.Read →Exam deep diveOne and done: the case for passing CFA Level I on the first attemptThe exam is hard but not a lottery — the binding constraint is method, not hours. A deep dive through the pass-rate data and our Difficulty Index, with the strategy that follows.Read →Exam strategyWhere to spend your hours: a study-time allocation for CFA Level IYour scarce resource is time, not knowledge. The Difficulty Index turned into an overweight / equal-weight / underweight map of where to spend it.Read →Exam strategyWhat score do you actually need to pass CFA Level I?There is no published passing score. What the Minimum Passing Score is, what can and cannot be known about it, and the practical target to aim for.Read →Exam coverageThe 2027 CFA Level I curriculum changes: what moves, and who should care2026 is unchanged from 2025; 2027 brings a Quant overhaul, an Equities rebuild, an Ethics restructure, and — as reported — GIPS gone. What is confirmed vs reported, and whether it should change when you sit.Read →Exam strategyHow many hours does CFA Level I really take?More than the 300 you have heard — successful candidates commonly log 350 to 400, more without a finance background. Why a lot of those hours are wasted, and how a question-first method reaches readiness in fewer of them.Read →QuantWhat a Powerball jackpot teaches about the time value of moneyWhen a Powerball winner takes the cash instead of the annuity, they are doing CFA exam math. The same five variables run a third of the quantitative paper — and the spine of fixed income.Read →FRAWeWork's pitch said one thing — its financial statements said anotherWeWork's own filing said it lost $1.9 billion on $1.8 billion of revenue. The pitch said something else. Reading the three statements as one system is how you tell which story is true.Read →EquityMeta paid no dividend for twelve years — so how do you value a stock?For twelve years Meta paid no dividend — so how was anyone valuing it? The answer is the two-model split every analyst carries, and the exam tests both.Read →EthicsWiretaps, a fallen hedge-fund titan, and the line between research and a tipThe FBI had thousands of his phone calls. Raj Rajaratnam got 11 years — then the longest insider-trading sentence in US history. The line he crossed is the exact line the exam makes you find.Read →

Markets, explained

Market noteThe Fed held — but the dot plot flipped from cuts to hikesJune 2026's FOMC kept rates steady while its projections turned hawkish. What changed, the risks, and the Level I monetary-policy lesson.Read →Market noteNvidia's beat-and-raise: why "record" still has to clear the barA record quarter that beat consensus and guidance — and a raised outlook. The reported-vs-consensus-vs-guidance table, the risks, and the Level I lesson.Read →Market noteOil's round trip: how a war premium appears — and disappearsBrent spiked above $100 on a supply shock and round-tripped most of the way back — and backwardation in the futures curve flagged it as temporary. A commodities and derivatives lesson.Read →Market noteWhat's actually priced into the 10-year TreasuryAt ~4.45% the yield is not one number but three — an expected real rate, expected inflation, and a term premium. Pulling them apart is term-structure analysis.Read →Market noteThe dollar's rate trade: why a hawkish Fed lifts the greenbackThe dollar hit a one-year high as the Fed turned hawkish and other central banks held. The rate-differential driver of exchange rates — and the textbook parity puzzle inside it.Read →Market noteThe thin cushion: corporate credit spreads near record lowsHigh-yield bonds pay barely 2.8 points of spread over Treasuries — near the lowest since 2007. What a credit spread is, why a tight spread is a thin cushion, and the Level I credit-risk lesson.Read →Fixed IncomeMoody's took away America's last AAA rating — so why didn't Treasury yields care?In May 2025 the United States lost its last perfect credit rating. The bond market barely flinched — and that gap, between the rating and the market's own verdict, is the whole of credit risk on CFA Level I.Read →FRAMichael Burry says Big Tech stretched the life of its AI chips. Here's the accounting behind the fight.In late 2025 the investor who shorted the housing bubble took aim at a single line on the income statement: depreciation. The fight is really about an assumption every CFA candidate learns to set — useful life.Read →EconomicsThe Fed cut from 5.5% to 3.75% — what that one rate actually moves across the economyBetween 2024 and late 2025 the Federal Reserve took its policy rate down more than a point and a half. Behind that single number is the transmission mechanism — and the long lag — that CFA Level I asks you to know cold.Read →AlternativesWalgreens left the stock market in 2025 — here is what happens to it inside a private-equity fundIn August 2025 a pharmacy chain more than a century old stopped trading and went private. The structure that now owns it — and the J-curve its new owners face — is straight off the CFA Level I Alternatives syllabus.Read →Portfolio ManagementTen companies are 40% of the S&P 500 — so how diversified are you, really?The largest US index is more concentrated than at any point in history — past even the dot-com peak. And it matters because of the first idea in portfolio theory: diversification.Read →Corporate IssuersMeta is sitting on a cash pile — so why did it just borrow $30 billion?In 2025 the most profitable companies in the world borrowed over $120 billion to build AI — many of them flush with cash. The reason is the heart of corporate finance: the cost of capital.Read →AlternativesGold produces no cash and pays no dividend — and in 2025 it beat the S&P 500Gold rose 44% in 2025 to a record $4,550 an ounce. It has no earnings, no coupon, no cash flow to discount — so what exactly were investors buying?Read →DerivativesThe swap that cost banks $10 billion: the Archegos blow-up, explainedIn about two days of spring 2021, a fund most people had never heard of cost the world's banks more than $10 billion. The instrument at its center sits on the curriculum — here is how it works.Read →EconomicsThe yen carry trade and the $790 billion morning it unwoundA quarter-point rate hike in Tokyo erased $790 billion before the rest of the world woke up. The trade it broke is the cleanest lesson in currency risk on the curriculum.Read →AlternativesThe crypto graveyard and the bias hiding in hedge-fund returnsThousands of cryptocurrencies launched in the 2017 boom; most are worthless now, and you never hear about them. That blind spot inflates every track record you read.Read →Fixed IncomeHow a rate hike broke Silicon Valley Bank: duration risk, in real lifeSilicon Valley Bank held billions in the safest bonds in the world — then rates rose, and their market value fell. Duration is the number that measured the danger, and the exam tests it directly.Read →EquityGameStop, a 2,700% squeeze, and what an "efficient market" really meansIn January 2021 a dying retailer's stock rose 2,700% in three weeks, and a multibillion-dollar hedge fund nearly went under. The exam has a framework for exactly this — and for why it could not last.Read →EquitySpaceX IPO'd at $1.75 trillion. Morningstar says it's worth $780 billion. Who's right?Days into the largest IPO in history, SpaceX trades near three times the per-share value Morningstar's analysts can justify — and the options market is pricing 120% volatility on the disagreement. That gap is the whole of equity valuation.Read →AlternativesCircle's stablecoin is pinned to $1 — its stock is pinned to interest ratesAmerica's first publicly traded stablecoin issuer popped 168% on day one. But the digital dollar it sells is backed by Treasury bills — so its profits live or die by the Fed.Read →FRAThe same invoice, pledged twice: how First Brands hid $5 billion off its balance sheetAn auto-parts supplier went bankrupt in 2025 with $11 billion of debt — half of it nowhere on its balance sheet. The tricks that hid it are the exact red flags the exam trains you to spot.Read →
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