The fine print of trading and investing

Editorial policy

How pages are planned, sourced, checked and corrected, and the house rules they are written to.

Last updated September 29, 2026

What gets published

Columns argue a position about a trading or investing decision and reach a call. Concept pages define one term with its formula. Answer pages take one question. The free courses teach a subject lesson by lesson, the quizzes test it on trading situations, and the calculators do the sums. Every page is planned around something readers search for, and it has to answer that fully for someone arriving cold.

Sourcing

A rule is attributed to the body that sets it, such as the Federal Reserve Board for Regulation T, FINRA for maintenance margin and its other member rules, the SEC, the IRS or the Options Clearing Corporation, and stated no further than that body states it. Where a broker or a prop firm may set its own stricter terms, the page says so and names the document where the reader will find them. Interest rates, margin rates and tax thresholds that change over time are explained by how they work, with a round hypothetical figure and a note on where the current number is published. Worked examples use hypothetical accounts and companies with every step shown. No page quotes market statistics, backtest results, win rates or study findings.

Companies, brokers and firms

Brokers, prop firms and data vendors are never named or ranked. Real companies, indexes and agencies may be named to say what they are or what they publish, never next to a price, a return, a fee or a forecast. Company figures in worked examples belong to hypothetical companies.

Independence

No company pays for coverage, and there are no affiliate links. Pages carry ads served by Google AdSense; advertisers do not choose or pay for the articles, and an ad next to a page is not a recommendation of the product in it. The privacy policy describes the ad cookies. If any of that changes, this policy will say so, and any page carrying a paid link will say so at the top.

Review and AI assistance

Pages are drafted with AI assistance. Before publication, each one is checked by a named human editor, John James, John Todora or Lovely Glorioso, and the credit at the top of the page gives that editor's name. There is no unnamed editor role: every credit points to a person. How we use AI sets out what the tools do and what the editor checks.

Corrections

Errors of fact or arithmetic are fixed on the page as soon as they are confirmed, and the updated date changes. Report one to [email protected].

House rules

Every page is written to these rules. A script fails any draft that breaks a rule marked "checked automatically"; the editor checks the rest.

  1. Start from the document the reader will actually see: the margin agreement, the statement line, the earnings release, the option chain, the firm's rule page. Say what it says, then what it means. Checked in review.
  2. Turn percentages into dollars on a hypothetical account. A reader should always be able to see what a rule costs or protects in money. Checked in review.
  3. Address the reader as "you". Examples use hypothetical accounts, companies and round figures. A real company, fund or index may be named to say what it is, never paired with a price, a return or a fee. Checked in review.
  4. Columns state the strongest case against their own call and answer it. A column that never concedes anything is a sales page. Checked in review.
  5. Every call names the conditions under which it stops holding: the account size, the market, the broker's house rule. Checked in review.
  6. No first person and no biography. Nothing is presented as lived experience: no "a trader I know", no spouse, no "the year this went wrong". Checked automatically.
  7. No "we" or "our" in articles, and no article describes the publication. Articles talk about markets, money, rules and the reader. Checked automatically.
  8. Name what a page covers instead of counting it. Numbers belong to the subject: a margin percentage, a rule value, the arithmetic of a worked example. Checked in review.
  9. Published rules are stated with the body that sets them: the Federal Reserve Board (Regulation T), FINRA, the SEC, the IRS, the OCC. Where a rule depends on a broker or a firm, the page says which line to check. Checked in review.
  10. No statistics, studies, win rates, backtest results, rates quoted as current, or market levels. A number is a formula, a published rule, or arithmetic on a hypothetical with the working shown. Checked in review.
  11. Say plainly what nobody can know in advance, with one hedge per claim at most. Checked in review.
  12. Dry wit is allowed in a heading or a closing line, never in a rule, a sum or a warning. Checked in review.
  13. Vary sentence length hard: short flat statements, long sentences that carry a chain of cause and effect past thirty words, and few in the comfortable middle. Checked automatically.
  14. No em dashes. A comma, a colon, a full stop, or a rewrite. Checked automatically.
  15. Define things by what they are. Two contrast constructions a page at most, counting "not X but Y", "rather than", "instead of" and the two-sentence version. Checked automatically.
  16. One short closing line per article at most. Sections end when the point is made. Checked automatically.
  17. Vary the opening: a clause from a document, a statement line, a sum, an order, a question the reader is asking, a flat claim. Neighboring pages never open the same way. Checked in review.

For who publishes the site, see about.