MONK MODE · CURRICULUM
600 lessons in five blocks, written for someone who is already using leverage and was never taught how it works. Start anywhere. Nothing here tells you what to do with your money; every lesson explains a mechanism instead.
New to the line? Block 5 is the same mechanisms on a car and a house. Start there.
Block 1
What collateral, options, prices, tails and the line itself are. The hundred that were already here, unchanged.
Track 1
What collateral is, what an advance rate does, and why a one dollar shortfall does not take one dollar to fix. Start here if a maintenance rate is a new phrase.
20 lessons
Start track →
Track 2
Rights, obligations, strikes, expiries and assignment. The plumbing of a contract, before any pricing model appears.
20 lessons
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Track 3
Why an option costs anything before expiry, what the five inputs do, and what delta, gamma, theta, vega and rho each measure. Every example computed from one stated base case.
20 lessons
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Track 4
Distributions, fat tails, drawdown, Monte Carlo and path dependency. Why the order of returns is irrelevant without leverage and decisive with it.
20 lessons
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Track 5
The eight terms that move without you, one lesson each, then how a reset appears on a statement, how to recompute an interest leg by hand, and what to ask your own lender.
20 lessons
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Block 2
Why the same person borrows twice, why one name is not forty names, how the other side of the table decides, what a call actually does, where tax sits, and the public sequences.
Track 6
Why the same capable person borrows against a concentrated position twice. Anchoring, unrealised gains treated as spent, and what changes in a judgment between the month a line opens and the month it is called.
25 lessons
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Track 7
Why one name and forty names are not the same collateral, why a haircut widens with size, and what a put, a collar, a prepaid variable forward and an exchange fund each do to the number the lender computes.
25 lessons
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Track 8
The arithmetic on the other side of the table. Advance-rate schedules, concentration limits, reclassification, what discretion means in the agreement, and how a rate moves without notice.
25 lessons
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Track 9
What happens, in what order, on what clock, and who decides. How a shortfall is computed, whether a cure window exists, what the lender may sell and in what order, and why curing by sale shrinks both sides of the ratio at once.
25 lessons
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Track 10
Why borrowing is not a disposal, what a sale does to basis, how interest treatment is limited, the change in basis at death, and trust and entity mechanics. Rules described, never applied to anyone: treatment depends on circumstances and belongs with your own adviser.
25 lessons
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Track 11
Twenty-four public, widely reported episodes between 1993 and 2022. What the position was, what moved, what the sequence was, what the outcome was. The lesson in each is the sequence, not the villain.
25 lessons
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Block 3
What the outside world does to collateral, whatever the borrower does: rates, credit, correlation, volatility, and tails.
Track 12
How a policy rate reaches a borrowing cost, what a spread is, what a floating rate does month to month, and why a variable rate can move without a matching change in stated capacity.
25 lessons
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Track 13
How credit conditions tighten, what happens to funding, and why lenders get more conservative at exactly the wrong moment for a borrower.
25 lessons
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Track 14
Why diversification is measured in correlation rather than in count, and why correlations converge in a drawdown so a portfolio that looked diversified in calm markets stops being diversified when it matters.
25 lessons
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Track 15
Clustering, why quiet periods precede violent ones, realised against implied, and what a volatility spike does to a haircut.
25 lessons
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Track 16
Why normal distributions understate extremes, what a fat tail is in arithmetic, what a Monte Carlo simulation does and cannot tell you, and the difference between a risk that is priced and a risk that is not.
25 lessons
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Block 4
How to read the documents a lender produces, taught on one fictional Halden & Wren statement. Nothing here asks for a real holding.
Track 17
What each section of a facility statement is, where the terms live, how to find the index and the spread, what an interest leg is, and how to locate the maintenance threshold — taught on a supplied fictional Halden & Wren page.
25 lessons
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Track 18
Recompute a month of interest by hand, leg by leg, day count, balance and rate, and check the result against the printed figure.
25 lessons
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Track 19
How per-position advance rates are derived, why the blended number hides the concentrated one, and how to build the schedule from the documents.
25 lessons
Start track →
Track 20
Apply a drawdown, apply a haircut, apply both, compute headroom, compute the shortfall, and compute how much must be sold to cure.
25 lessons
Start track →
Track 21
What to compute monthly, what to watch between statements, and what a gap in statements means — still on the same fictional facility.
25 lessons
Start track →
Block 5
The same mechanisms on a car and a house. Start here if a pledged portfolio is not yet the loan you have.
Track 22
Price against payment, term against total interest, depreciation against amortization, and what repossession actually does. The everyday version of a line against an asset that moves.
25 lessons
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Track 23
PITI, fixed against adjustable, points, escrow, and a foreclosure clock measured in months. The house as collateral you still live in.
25 lessons
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Track 24
Cards, stacked instalments, plan loans, and a savings buffer measured in months of payments. Capacity as a month rather than as a portfolio.
25 lessons
Start track →
Track 25
The delinquency clock, charge-offs, why a car is taken in weeks and a house in months, and six public episodes. Capacity, a line and a clock, on the loans already running.
25 lessons
Start track →
Every lesson explains a mechanism. None of them tells you what to do with your money. There is no account, no email, and no record of your answers anywhere but this browser.
Educational only. Nothing here is investment, legal or tax advice, or a recommendation to enter into any transaction. Take the risk you can measure.
Your progress
0 of 600 lessons
Nothing complete yet. Progress appears here once you mark a lesson done.
Block 1 · Instruments
Block 2 · The borrower and the lender
Block 3 · Regimes
Block 4 · Your own book
Block 5 · Everyday debt
Milestones
Complete lessons to unlock the reflection.
Complete lessons to unlock the reflection.
Complete lessons to unlock the reflection.
Complete lessons to unlock the reflection.
Complete lessons to unlock the reflection.
Complete lessons to unlock the reflection.
Complete lessons to unlock the reflection.
Complete lessons to unlock the reflection.
On the same 0–1000 scale the Monk Score uses, finishing this curriculum is worth +200. You are at +0. This figure is calculated in your browser and stays there. Applying it to an actual Monk Score would need an account and a server, so it is shown here and not sent anywhere. If you already have a score in Monk Mode, add it yourself.
Practice Record
Outcome
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Quality
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A Practice Record is two columns, never one: Outcome and Quality. Outcome is what happened to the invented book's capital. Quality is how much risk the decisions carried to get there. They are not added together. A high Outcome next to a low Quality is a lucky path. Quality fades if you stop; lessons you have finished do not. Sitting out is not a record of zero. A position taken and lost is.
No invented book has been scored in this browser yet. The record stays blank until three completed runs exist.