Editorial policy

What gets published

Four kinds of page: trading tips that argue a position about reading market data, reference pages on the metrics a quote page shows, step-by-step guides to research tasks, and buyer's guides for research tools. Each page is planned around a question readers search for, and it has to answer that question completely for someone arriving cold.

Sourcing

Formulas follow their standard definitions. Rules are attributed to the body that sets them, usually the SEC or FINRA, and stated only as far as that body states them; where practice varies between platforms, the page says so and tells you where to check. Worked examples use hypothetical companies with round numbers and every step shown. No page quotes market statistics or study findings, and no page attaches figures to a real company.

Independence

No company pays for coverage. The buyer's guides name no provider and rank nothing: they explain what to test and give you a scorecard to fill in yourself. There are no affiliate links. If that ever changes, pages carrying them will say so at the top. The site carries advertising through Google AdSense; the ads are placed by Google, advertisers have no say over what is written, and no page is written around an advertiser.

Review and AI assistance

Articles are drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by the person named at the top of each page before publication. How we use AI sets out what the tools do and what the review covers.

Corrections

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

House rules

These are the rules every article is written to. The ones marked "checked automatically" are enforced by a script that fails a draft that breaks them; the others are checked in review.

1. Lead with the number or the field on the screen. When a page explains a metric, it works one example through with every step shown, so the reader can redo it with a real stock. Checked in review.
2. Address the reader as "you". Examples use hypothetical companies (Company A, a retailer, a software firm) with round illustrative figures. Real tickers are never paired with numbers. Checked in review.
3. No first person singular and no biography. Nothing is presented as lived experience: no spouse, colleagues, or "the year this went wrong". Checked automatically.
4. No "we" in articles. The pages talk about the market and the reader, never about the publication. Checked in review.
5. Say what a number can show and what it cannot, once, where it matters. One hedge per claim at most. Where nobody knows, say so and move on. Checked in review.
6. No statistics, studies, success rates or market levels. Numbers are either a formula, a published rule named with its source (SEC, FINRA, IRS), or illustrative arithmetic with the working shown. Checked in review.
7. Every tip says where it stops applying. Some push hard and concede in a sentence; others weigh both sides and end on a condition. Checked in review.
8. Vary sentence length hard: plenty of short sentences, a real share of long ones that carry a chain of reasoning past thirty words, and few in the middle. Checked automatically.
9. No em dashes. A comma, a colon, a full stop, or a rewrite. Checked automatically.
10. 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.
11. One short aphoristic closing line per article at most. Sections end when the point is made. Checked automatically.
12. No data vendor, broker or platform names. Describe the feature and where to find it. US spelling and US market conventions. Checked in review.
13. Vary the opening: a number on a screen, a flat claim, the question as typed, a formula, a filing, or a situation the reader is in. Neighboring pages never open the same way. Checked in review.

For what the site is and who publishes it, see about.