Lessons
🏦 Macro
Inflation, rates, central banks. Why everything moves.
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What money is
Shells, paper, pixels: why money works at all, and who really creates it.
- Money is a storyHumans have used shells, salt, giant stones, gold, and now numbers on a screen as money. None of these work by…
- Banks create moneyMost people never learn this: when a bank gives you a loan, it doesn't hand over someone else's savings. It…
- Two kinds of eurosThe €20 note in your pocket is central bank money, a direct claim on the ECB. The €500 in your banking app is…
- How much money exists?Economists count money in layers. Start with cash, add everyday bank accounts, then savings accounts, and you…
- Review: What money isMoney is a shared story that works while people accept it. It does three jobs: exchange, measuring stick…
Inflation
Why prices rise, who wins, who pays, and what happens when money dies.
- The basketEvery month, statisticians price a huge imaginary shopping basket (rent, bread, petrol, haircuts, phone plans)…
- Why prices risePrices rise for three big reasons. Demand-pull: too much spending chasing too few goods. Cost-push: inputs…
- Winners & losersInflation isn't just 'everything gets worse'. It quietly moves wealth from one group to another: from savers…
- When money diesGermany 1923: workers paid twice a day, spending wages before evening because prices doubled within days…
- Review: InflationCPI tracks an average basket, but your inflation depends on your own basket. Prices rise from too much demand…
Interest rates
The price of money: how one number ripples through everything you own.
- The price of moneyAn interest rate is simply a price: the price of using someone else's money for a while. Borrow €10,000 at 5%…
- Real vs nominalThe rate on the poster is the NOMINAL rate. What your money actually gains in purchasing power is the REAL…
- The yield curveLine up interest rates by loan length (3 months, 2 years, 10 years, 30 years) and you get the yield curve…
- Rates ripple everywhereChange the price of money and you change the price of nearly everything built on it. Mortgages reprice…
- Review: Interest ratesA rate is the price of money: borrowers pay it, savers earn it, risk raises it. Real rate = nominal minus…
Central banks
The people who set the price of money: their mandate, their tools, and their words.
- The mandateThe ECB's core mandate is price stability: inflation around 2% over the medium term. The US Fed carries a dual…
- The toolkitTool one is the policy rate: the interest rate banks pay to borrow central bank money, which anchors every…
- 2022: the great hikeFor a decade, money was nearly free. Then inflation surged (US CPI hit 9.1% in mid-2022, euro area over 10%…
- Central bank speakCentral bankers speak in code. 'Hawkish' means leaning toward higher rates to fight inflation; 'dovish' means…
- Boss: The money machineLoans create deposits: the engine room of the money supply. Cash from the ECB is only the small visible slice.
The business cycle
Learn the economy's heartbeat: expansion, peak, recession, recovery.
- The economy's four seasonsZoom out far enough and every economy moves in waves: a stretch of growth, a hot peak, a painful contraction…
- The dashboardNobody can see the whole economy, so we watch gauges: GDP for output, unemployment for jobs, PMI surveys for…
- When winter comesOn a chart, a recession is a red number. On the ground, it's millions of real people losing jobs, companies…
- No crystal ballAn uncomfortable fact: professional economists have missed the vast majority of recessions. IMF researchers…
- Unit review: the cycleQuick recap: the economy loops through expansion, peak, recession and recovery, on no fixed schedule. GDP and…
Currencies & FX
Why the euro in your pocket rises and falls against the rest of the world.
- Why money movesForeign exchange turns over roughly $7.5 trillion a DAY, more than global stock markets combined. A currency's…
- The dollar's throneSince 1944 the US dollar has been the world's money: central banks keep roughly 58% of their reserves in it…
- The carry tradeBorrow Japanese yen at nearly 0%, buy Mexican pesos earning 10%, pocket the difference: the famous 'carry…
- FX risk in YOUR portfolioBuy a US index fund with euros and you own two bets, whether you meant to or not: the S&P 500 AND the dollar…
- Unit review: FXRecap: currencies move on rates, trade and confidence. The dollar sits on the throne: the world saves in it…
Government debt & fiscal policy
Deficits, bond markets, and the day investors say no.
- Deficits & debtPicture government finances as a bathtub. The DEFICIT is the tap: how much borrowing pours in this year. The…
- Who buys the bondsGovernments don't borrow from a magic pot. They sell bonds to pension funds, banks, insurers and foreign…
- Debt spiralsDebt is sustainable while the economy grows faster than the interest bill. Flip that (interest compounding…
- The two leversEconomies are steered with two levers. FISCAL policy is the government's wallet: taxing and spending, voted by…
- Unit review: debtRecap: deficits are flows, debt is the stock they build. Governments borrow from voluntary lenders who can…
Global flows
Trade balances, petrodollars, and the money that flees at midnight.
- Trade balancesA trade surplus means a country exports more than it imports; a deficit means the reverse. Politicians love…
- Petrodollars to multipolarSince the 1970s, most of the world's oil has been priced and paid for in US dollars. That single convention…
- The dollar-debt trapEmerging markets often can't borrow abroad in their own currency (lenders don't trust it), so they borrow in…
- When money runsMoney is the world's most nervous tourist: it arrives slowly and leaves in a stampede. When savers and…
- Boss: The global machineGrowth broadens, overheats at the peak, contracts into recession, then heals through recovery, on no fixed…
Risk-on / risk-off
Markets have two moods. Learn what rallies, what hides, and how fast the switch flips.
- The two market moodsMarkets swing between two moods. On risk-on days money chases growth: stocks, high-yield ('junk') bonds…
- Correlations by regimeIn calm markets, stocks, bonds, property and gold wander their own paths, and diversification feels magical…
- The VIX & fear gaugesThe VIX distills S&P 500 option prices into one number: how wild traders expect the next ~30 days to be. It…
- Flight to safetyThe classic havens: US Treasuries, the dollar, gold, the Swiss franc. But shelters can leak. In March 2020…
- Unit review: the mood ringMarkets swing between risk-on (stocks, EM, crypto rally) and risk-off (bonds, dollar, gold catch the bid). The…
Rates → assets
Interest rates are financial gravity. Trace how one number reaches every asset you own.
- The discount-rate machineA promise of €100 next year is worth less than €100 today, and how much less depends on the interest rate…
- 2022: the masterclassIn 2022 the Fed sprinted from roughly 0% to over 4% in under a year, and the ECB followed. The S&P 500 fell…
- Duration is everywhereDuration isn't only for bonds. A growth stock priced on profits expected in 2035 is a long-duration asset…
- The pivot obsessionMarkets don't wait for central banks to act. They trade the future. If traders expect cuts next year, today's…
- Unit review: rate gravityRates are the discount machine: higher rates shrink the present value of future cash, and the more distant the…
Commodities & gold
Oil, gas, copper, gold: the real stuff that feeds inflation and humbles forecasters.
- Supply shocksIn 1973 OPEC embargoed oil and the price roughly quadrupled within months; Western economies got stagflation…
- Gold's strange roleGold pays no interest, no dividend, no rent. Its value rests on roughly 5,000 years of shared belief that…
- Oil → everythingOil is not a single product. It hides inside almost everything you buy: diesel moves the trucks, jet fuel the…
- Commodity cyclesA new copper mine takes roughly ten years from discovery to metal. So when prices boom, everyone invests at…
- Unit review: real stuffSupply shocks (1973 oil, 2022 gas) deliver inflation no rate hike can print away. Gold is 5,000 years of trust…
Reading the macro calendar
CPI day, Fed day, jobs day: learn to read the week's big prints like the pros do.
- The big printsA few scheduled minutes move trillions: CPI day (the inflation print), FOMC and ECB days (the rate decision…
- Expectations vs realityBefore every big print, forecasters publish a consensus, and prices already contain it. What moves markets is…
- Positioning around eventsThe Trading course taught the mechanics; here's the macro version. Before a big print, option prices inflate…
- Building a macro dashboardThree leagues of macro compress into one dashboard: policy rates and the yield curve (the price of money), CPI…
- Boss: The regime readerLeague 1's founding insight: most money is born as bank credit, not banknotes. That's why lending booms and…