Market Relationships
How Credit Spreads Influence Equity Volatility
Credit markets and equity markets are pricing the same companies. When they disagree about risk, credit is usually the one worth listening to.
Wiki learning path
Market Structure and Indicators
Learn how liquidity, positioning, market mechanics and relationships between assets help explain price movements.
35 guides. Start with the introductory topics; follow related links inside each guide.
Market Indicators
What Is the VIX Term Structure?
The VIX tells you what the market fears about the next month. The curve tells you whether that fear is ordinary background anxiety or an emergency.
Market Relationships
Geopolitical Risk Premiums
Markets price conflict through a handful of instruments — and the premium usually fades long before the situation does.
Market Mechanics
Order Flow Toxicity vs Crowd Sentiment
Sentiment explains why a lot of people want to trade. Toxicity explains why the people on the other side suddenly refuse to — which is how orderly markets become disorderly ones.
Market Indicators
What Is the VIX?
VIX is an option-derived measure of expected S&P 500 volatility over a constant 30-day horizon. It is not a crash probability.
Market Indicators
Treasury Yields Explained
Treasury yields are the interest rate the US government pays to borrow money, and they quietly set the price of money for everything else — mortgages, corporate debt, and stock valuations included.
Market Indicators
Dollar Index (DXY)
The Dollar Index measures the US dollar's value against a basket of major foreign currencies, and its swings ripple through stocks, commodities, and emerging markets far beyond the currency desk.
Market Indicators
Why Gold Moves
Gold pays no interest and produces no earnings, so its price is set almost entirely by what investors think will happen to real interest rates, the dollar, and risk.
Market Indicators
Why Oil Moves
Oil sits at the intersection of physical supply, global growth, and geopolitics, which is why it can swing harder and faster than almost any other major asset.
Market Indicators
Why Bitcoin Moves
Bitcoin trades less like a traditional currency and more like a liquidity-sensitive risk asset — its price responds to global money conditions, regulation, institutional flows, and shifting sentiment.
Market Indicators
Put/Call Ratio Explained
The put/call ratio compares how many bearish put options are being traded against bullish calls, giving a quick read on market sentiment — and at extremes, it often means the opposite of what it looks like.
Market Indicators
Market Breadth
Market breadth measures how many stocks are actually participating in a move, not just what the headline index is doing — and the gap between the two can reveal a rally on shaky footing.
Market Indicators
Credit Spreads
A credit spread is the extra yield companies must pay over safe Treasury debt to borrow money — and when that gap widens, it's usually the bond market's earliest sign of rising economic stress.
Market Indicators
Market Volatility
Volatility measures how fast and how far prices move, not whether they're moving up or down — and understanding that distinction is the key to not confusing volatility with risk.
Market Relationships
Market Relationships
No market moves in isolation. Stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities are wired together — and understanding those wires explains moves that look random on their own.
Market Relationships
Why Bonds Drive Stocks
Every stock price is a bet on future cash flows discounted back to today and the bond market sets the discount rate.
Market Relationships
Why Higher Yields Hurt Growth Stocks
Growth stocks price in profits that arrive years from now, which makes them the most exposed corner of the market to a rising discount rate.
Market Relationships
Why Banks Benefit from Higher Rates
Banks make their core profit on the spread between what they pay for money and what they charge for it, a spread that widens, up to a point, as rates rise.
Market Relationships
Why Utilities Fall When Rates Rise
Utilities pay steady, bond-like dividends, which means they trade like bonds, competing directly with Treasurys for income-seeking capital.
Market Relationships
Why Gold Tracks Real Yields
Gold pays no interest, so its true competition isn't cash it's what an inflation-protected bond yields after inflation is stripped out.
Market Relationships
Why Oil Drives Inflation
Energy is an input to almost everything, which is why a sustained move in oil prices shows up in inflation data long after the headline barrel price stops making news.
Market Relationships
Why Semiconductor Stocks Lead Markets
Chips go into nearly everything built today, which makes semiconductor demand one of the earliest tells that an economic or tech cycle is turning.
Market Relationships
Why Shipping Stocks Lead Global Trade
Freight rates move on real cargo bookings happening today, which is why shipping markets often price a slowdown or rebound in global trade before the official statistics catch up.
Market Relationships
Why Small Caps Outperform
Small companies carry more risk than large ones, and in the right part of the cycle, investors get paid extra for taking that risk on.
Market Relationships
Why Defensive Stocks Outperform
When the outlook turns uncertain, investors pay a premium for companies whose sales don't depend on the economy cooperating.
Market Mechanics
What Is Market Liquidity?
Liquidity is what lets you turn an asset into cash, or cash into an asset, without moving the price against yourself. When it dries up, everything else in a market gets harder.
Market Mechanics
Volume vs Liquidity: What's the Difference?
Volume tells you how much traded. Liquidity tells you how easily it traded. Confusing the two is one of the most common mistakes new traders make.
Market Mechanics
Market Makers: How They Work
Market makers are the standing counterparties who quote both sides of a trade, all day, so that anyone else can buy or sell almost instantly. Here's how they actually make money doing it.
Market Mechanics
How Price Discovery Works
Every price on a ticker is the momentary result of buyers and sellers disagreeing and then settling. That ongoing negotiation, repeated millions of times a day, is what markets call price discovery.
Market Mechanics
Support and Resistance Explained
Support and resistance are the price levels where buying or selling pressure has repeatedly shown up before, and traders watch them because crowds tend to remember.
Market Mechanics
Why Stock Market Gaps Happen
A gap is a jump between one session's close and the next session's open, with no trading in between, the market's way of catching up on everything that happened while it was shut.
Market Mechanics
Trading Halts Explained
Exchanges occasionally stop trading altogether, not to hide bad news, but to give the market a moment to reset when prices move faster than information can be absorbed.
Market Mechanics
Short Selling Explained
Short selling flips the usual order of a trade, sell first, buy later, letting traders profit when a price falls. It also carries a risk profile unlike almost anything else in investing.
Market Mechanics
Short Squeeze Explained
A short squeeze happens when rising prices force short sellers to buy back shares just to limit their losses, and that forced buying pushes the price up even further.
Market Mechanics
Margin Calls Explained
Borrowing money to invest can amplify gains, and a margin call is the moment that same leverage turns against you, forcing a decision under time pressure.