Investor Foundations Blueprint
What makes a business good, how to read one from its statements, and what it might be worth. The free starting point for everything else here.
Most people start investing by learning about markets. That is backwards. Markets are a mechanism for pricing businesses, and you cannot judge a price without a view on the thing being priced.
This Blueprint starts with the business. What makes one good. How the three financial statements describe it, and where they hide things. What cash flow actually is, as distinct from profit. How valuation works, and why every valuation is an argument rather than an answer.
It is free, it takes about four weeks at a few hours a week, and it is the prerequisite in spirit for every other Blueprint on the platform.
By the end you will be able to
- Read an income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement together, rather than one at a time
- Tell the difference between a business that earns its returns and one that borrows them
- Work out what a company actually converts into cash, and what it has to reinvest to stand still
- Build and defend a simple valuation, and say plainly what it assumes
- Write down a thesis in a form you can be held to later
Curriculum
Before any statement or model: what you are looking at, and what separates a good business from a busy one.
The income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement as one document, plus what each is best at hiding.
Valuation as an argument you make and defend, not a number you look up.
Turning analysis into a thesis you can be held to, and the habits that keep you honest.