Learn Hub
Plain-English explainers about how the stock market works. Definitional, neutral, no investment advice.
Corporate actions
Will a stock split? How to tell if a stock is likely to split
How to tell if a stock is likely to split: who decides a split and why, the mechanical signals that precede a forward split, why a split is never guaranteed, and how the split-likelihood signal works.
Stock split ratios explained: 2:1, 1:10, 51:50, 2000:1973
Plain-English guide to every kind of stock split ratio: forward (2:1, 10:1), reverse (1:10), fractional stock-dividend splits (51:50, 103:100) and spin-off chart-stitching ratios (Disney 2000:1973).
Stock dividends vs cash dividends explained
Why some companies pay shareholders in extra shares instead of cash, and why those distributions show up as 51:50 or 103:100 fractional splits in corporate-actions tables.
Spin-offs explained: how the parent share price adjusts
How a corporate spin-off works, what shareholders receive, why the parent share drops on the ex-date, and how data vendors record chart-stitching ratios like 2000:1973.
Cumulative stock split multiplier explained
Cumulative split multiplier on stock-split tables: the running product formula, what reverse splits do, and how to read very large multiples.
Ex-dividend, record & payment dates explained
The four dividend dates — declaration, ex-dividend, record, payment — and the rule that decides whether you receive the next payout based on when you bought the share.
Valuation & fundamentals
P/E ratio explained: trailing vs forward, normal ranges
P/E ratio explained: the formula, trailing vs forward multiples, typical sector ranges, and why a high P/E is not automatically overvaluation.
EPS explained: basic vs diluted earnings per share
How earnings per share is calculated, why analysts focus on diluted EPS, the role of preferred dividends, and how share buybacks lift EPS without changing the business.
Gross, operating & net profit margin explained
The three profit margins — gross, operating, net — what each excludes, the formulas, why industry-typical ranges differ, and how margin differs from markup.
SG&A expense explained: selling, general & administrative
What selling, general & administrative (SG&A) includes on the income statement, the SG&A-to-revenue ratio for peer comparison, and how SG&A differs from COGS and R&D.
Market capitalization explained: small to mega cap
Market capitalization: formula, size buckets (small to mega), free-float vs full cap, enterprise value difference, and the trillion-dollar club.
Financial statement analysis
Forecasting & valuation
Analyst estimate revisions explained
Why analysts revise EPS and revenue estimates between reports, what upward vs downward revision momentum signals, and how to read a "now / 30 / 60 / 90 days ago" revision trend.
Smart Consensus explained: accuracy-weighted crowd forecasts
How a crowd forecast can beat a simple average by weighting each contributor by their difficulty-adjusted track record — and why the weighting only activates after enough resolved estimates.
Beat-the-Street scoring explained
How prediction XP rewards both raw accuracy (scaled by difficulty) and beating the Wall Street consensus (scaled by how credible that consensus is) — and why low-coverage names pay for accuracy, not for beating a thin Street.
Fair value methodology explained: DCF, exit multiple, Graham
The four valuation methods behind a multi-method fair value — discounted cash flow, exit multiple, analyst target and the Graham number — and why combining them into a range beats any single point estimate.
Margin of safety explained
What margin of safety means, how it is calculated from price versus fair value, and why a larger discount to intrinsic value cushions the risk of being wrong.
Rule of 40 explained: growth + margin ≥ 40
The Rule of 40 formula for software companies: revenue growth % plus FCF margin %, why 40 is the threshold, the FCF vs EBITDA variant, the $15–20M ARR scale caveat, and its limitations.
Returns & market mechanics
Total return vs price return explained
Why dividends compound over decades, the difference between split-adjusted and dividend-adjusted closes, and why long-horizon return numbers diverge so dramatically.
Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) explained
CAGR formula, why CAGR is not the same as arithmetic average return, the link to the Rule of 72, and reference points for long-run market and economic growth.
Daily green & red streaks explained
How a session is classified as green, red or neutral, why we use a ±0.01% dead zone on dividend-adjusted returns, and what streaks do and do not measure.
Dividend Capture Strategy Explained
When dividend capture works, when it doesn't, and the math: the ex-dividend price drop, the 61-day tax rule, and the three risks that erode the strategy in practice.