TellHawk Academy
Learn the markets, then the tools.
4 academies, 131 modules and 597 lessons in three levels, with hands-on labs, timed exams and a certificate for each level you complete.
- 4academies
- 131modules
- 597lessons
- 97hands-on labs
- 12certificates
- 189library links
How it works
- Read the lessons. Each module has short lessons, with sources named where a lesson states a fact, and practice quizzes with explanations. A few modules are open on the Free plan; the rest are part of Pro.
- Do the labs (Pro). Labs can be required before an exam attempt.
- Pass the exam (Pro). Every level ends with a timed exam drawn from a larger question bank.
- Earn the certificate (Pro). A passed level issues a certificate with its own credential ID that anyone can check on tellhawk.com/verify.
Each academy has three levels: Foundations, Practitioner and Professional. Plans and prices are on the Pricing page.
What is free, and what is Pro
The Academy is part of the paid plans. The Free plan opens a small taster of each academy so you can see how it works before you decide.
Free taster, currently: 9 modules with 40 lessons and their practice quizzes, out of 131 modules and 597 lessons in all.
- Terminal Academy: What the Terminal is (and is not); Glossary: 150+ terms you will meet
- TellHawk Trader Academy: New to markets: a plain-language start; What trading is (and is not); Trading glossary A to Z
- ProofRunner Academy: New to markets: a plain-words start; Prop firms and evaluations; The ProofRunner glossary
- Markets and Economics Theory: Scarcity, Choice and Incentives
Pro (a Pro plan for the Terminal, Trader or ProofRunner) opens everything else: every remaining lesson and practice quiz, all of the hands-on labs, the timed exams and new certificates.
Locked modules still show their titles and what they cover, and the lesson text and questions are not sent to Free accounts. Certificates you have already earned stay yours and keep verifying on tellhawk.com/verify, and the public learning library below stays open to everyone. The free taster can change, so this page says "currently"; see the Pricing page for what each plan includes.
Academy
Terminal Academy
Learn to research from official records: filings, insider and fund data, short interest, macro releases and honest testing.
35 modules, 149 lessons, 37 labs, 3 certificate levels.
Foundations12 modules · 49 lessons · 8 labs
Start from zero: what the Terminal is, how markets and filings work, how to read a Ticker Report, how to tell evidence from hype, with a plain-language track and a glossary of 300+ terms.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 222, 60 minutes, pass mark 70%. Up to 3 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail. 4 required labs to finish first.
Certificate. TellHawk Terminal Academy: Foundations. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Complete the Foundations required labs
- Pass the Foundations exam
What it covers
What the Terminal is (and is not) Free taster
Start here: what TellHawk Terminal collects, how its sections are organised, what Free and Pro mean, and why every block carries a source and a date.
- What the Terminal is, and what it is not
- A map of the Terminal: groups and sections
- Free and Pro: what each plan covers and why
- Dates, freshness and the difference between "not covered" and zero
- Lab Lab: compute the age of three Terminal blocks
Markets in plain words
A short, plain-language start for anyone new to markets: what a market is, what a stock is, why prices move, and how inflation changes what money can buy. Written so that a teenager can follow it. Education only, not advice.
- What is a market?
- What is a stock?
- Why prices move
- Money and inflation
Money, risk and staying safe
A plain-language guide for anyone new to markets: the difference between saving, investing and gambling, what risk really means, how to spot scams, and how to read financial news with care. Written so that a teenager can follow it. Education only, not advice.
- Saving, investing and gambling
- Risk in plain words
- Spotting scams
- Reading news with care
Markets in a nutshell
A short, accurate recap of stocks, ETFs, bonds, options, futures and crypto, how orders and exchanges work, and what spreads and liquidity mean when you read Terminal data.
- Stocks, ETFs and bonds: what you are looking at
- Options, futures and crypto: the short version
- Exchanges, brokers and order types
- Bid, ask, spread and liquidity
Reading prices and charts
Candles, volume, returns, ranges, moving averages, RSI, MACD and volatility: the price vocabulary behind the Ticker Report, the momentum figures and the regime screens.
- Candles and volume
- Returns and ranges: the arithmetic of price
- Moving averages, RSI and MACD: what the momentum figures are
- Volatility, ATR, the VIX and gaps
Filings and the public record
Why public companies, insiders and funds must file reports, how to find them on SEC EDGAR, what each common form is for, and why the filing date and the period date are different things.
- Why filings exist
- A tour of SEC EDGAR
- The forms cheat sheet
- Filing date versus period date
- Lab Lab: read a filing index on EDGAR
Reading a Ticker Report
A guided reading of the Terminal's main per-company page: the hero band, the six scorecard cards, the twelve numbered sections, the provenance table and what "not covered" means.
- Anatomy of a Ticker Report
- Price and momentum: reading section 01
- Insiders and holders: reading sections 03 and 04
- Fundamentals, scores and provenance: sections 05, 11 and 12
- Not covered, not shown, not zero
- Lab Lab: compute range position from a Ticker Report
- Lab Lab: trace one fundamentals number to its filing
Evidence and sources
How to separate checkable facts from opinion, how to read the Terminal News section without over-reading it, how to cite a source with its dates, and why a single striking example proves very little.
- Evidence versus opinion
- The Terminal News section
- Sources and dates
- Base rates and cherry-picking
- Lab Lab: trace a News headline to its filing
Risk for data readers
What risk means in plain terms, why a fall needs a larger rise to recover, how correlation affects diversification, what leverage and short selling change, and how position size and time horizon shape the damage a bad outcome can do.
- What risk is
- Drawdown and diversification
- Leverage and short selling
- Position size and time horizon
Hype and scams
How pump-and-dump schemes work, why guarantees and gurus are warning signs, how crypto pitches and impersonation scams operate, and how screens, scanners and rankings get stripped of their dates and caveats and passed around as tips.
- Pump and dump
- Gurus and guarantees
- Crypto and impersonation
- The red flag checklist
- Lab Lab: audit a fictional hype post
First tours of four screens
A guided first look at the Morning Brief, the Squeeze Scanner, Insider & Institutional and the Macro Dashboard: what each shows, how to read one row or card, which dates apply and what each screen cannot tell you.
- The Morning Brief
- A first look at the Squeeze Scanner
- A first look at Insider & Institutional
- A first look at the Macro Dashboard
- Lab Lab: check days to cover on the Squeeze Scanner
- Lab Lab: find three open-market purchases and their filing lags
Glossary: 150+ terms you will meet Free taster
A reference glossary of more than 300 market, filing, macro and research terms, grouped into four lessons with matching practice.
- Glossary A: markets, instruments and institutions
- Glossary B: orders, prices, charts and risk
- Glossary C: filings, ownership and short selling
- Glossary D: statements, macro and testing ideas
Practitioner11 modules · 50 lessons · 16 labs
Read 10-Ks and 8-Ks, Form 4 and 13F filings, short interest, quality scores and macro data; build screens, combine signals without fooling yourself and run honest backtests in the Strategy Lab.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 172, 75 minutes, pass mark 75%. Up to 3 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail. 5 required labs to finish first.
Certificate. TellHawk Terminal Academy: Practitioner. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Hold the Foundations certificate
- Complete the Practitioner required labs
- Pass the Practitioner exam
What it covers
10-K and 10-Q: reading the periodic reports
How a 10-K is organised, how to read the management discussion and the risk factors, what the notes and the auditor's report add, and how the quarterly 10-Q differs. You finish by pulling four numbers from a real 10-K and computing two ratios yourself.
- The structure of a 10-K
- MD&A and risk factors
- Notes, controls and the auditor's report
- 10-Q versus 10-K
- Lab Lab: read a 10-K and compute two ratios
8-K events: reading current reports
How to read a Form 8-K by its item numbers, how the Terminal ranks filings by severity, what a cluster of filings and an event study can and cannot show, and how the Red Flag Radar and Activist Tracker cross-reference filings without producing a score or a forecast.
- Item codes: reading an 8-K
- Corporate events and severity classes
- Clusters and event studies
- Red Flag Radar and activist filings
Insider activity: reading Form 4
How a Form 4 is built, what each transaction code means, how Rule 10b5-1 plans change the context, what clusters of insider buyers can and cannot tell you, and how the Terminal turns Form 4 lines into the Insider Filings screen and the insider conviction score.
- Anatomy of a Form 4
- Transaction codes: what each line really is
- Plans and context: Rule 10b5-1 and why a trade happened
- Clusters and limits: what several buyers can and cannot tell you
- Insider Filings Pro and the insider conviction score
- Lab Lab: the three dates of a Form 4
- Lab Lab: tally distinct buyers in a 30 day window
Fund and stake filings: 13F, 13D and 13G, and overlap
What a Form 13F shows and omits, why it is always old, how Schedules 13D and 13G differ, how the Terminal scores quarter-to-quarter fund holdings and tracks activist campaigns against a base rate, and how ETF overlap is computed.
- Form 13F basics: what a fund reports
- 13F lag and limits: always old, never complete
- Schedules 13D and 13G: large holders and activists
- Institutional conviction: scoring the change in fund holdings
- ETF overlap: when funds hold the same stocks
- Lab Lab: measure the lag of a real 13F
Short interest and squeezes
How short selling works and what Regulation SHO requires, how to compute short interest as a percent of shares and as days to cover, how the Squeeze Scanner turns them into tiers, what its own validation says about those tiers, and why FINRA daily short volume is a different measure from short interest.
- Short mechanics: borrow, locate and Regulation SHO
- Short interest as a percent and as days to cover
- Squeeze tiers: how the scanner classifies a stock
- Squeeze limits: what the tiers do not tell you
- Short volume versus short interest
- Lab Lab: compute percent and days to cover, then classify the tier
- Lab Lab: how old is the short interest you are reading?
Off-exchange data: dark pool share
What an alternative trading system is, how the Terminal turns FINRA weekly ATS volume into a dark pool share of trading, how the trend and leaders views are computed, and the most common ways to misread them.
- What an ATS is, and what FINRA publishes about it
- Dark pool share: the formula, the dash and the amber
- Trend and leaders: change, ATS trend and the unusual list
- Misreadings: why a high share says nothing about direction
- Lab Lab: recompute a weekly Dark Pool % from FINRA data
Quality scores: Piotroski, Altman and accruals
How to read the three statements, the Quality score, the Piotroski F-score, the Altman Z-prime screen and the accruals check in the Quality Screener, what each one cannot show, and how to verify a survivor in the 10-K.
- Statements primer: the numbers behind every score
- The Piotroski F-score: nine tests
- The Altman Z-prime balance-sheet screen
- Accruals, and what the Beneish M-score really is
- Quality Screener workflow: screen, then verify
- Lab Lab: compute Z-prime and its zone by hand
- Lab Lab: build a quality screen and record five survivors
Macro in the Terminal: releases, regimes, curve, credit and positioning
How to read the Economic Calendar and First Print, the rule-based Macro Dashboard regime, the yield curve, financial conditions and Fed balance sheet gauges, and weekly CFTC positioning, with the limits of each.
- Releases and the Economic Calendar
- First print, revisions and the z-score
- The Macro Dashboard regime label
- The curve, financial conditions and the Fed balance sheet
- CFTC positioning: net, groups and timing
- Lab Lab: compute the 10Y minus 2Y spread and classify it
- Lab Lab: measure one revision, first print against latest value
FX and crypto regimes
How to read the FX Signals and Crypto Regime screens: pair direction, the price-only score, the Kaufman efficiency ratio and ATR percent that pick a regime, and the ways a regime label gets misused.
- FX Signals: pairs, scores and what they leave out
- Crypto Regime: efficiency ratio, ATR and the regime order
- Regime misuse: three ways a label misleads
- Lab Lab: compute a Kaufman efficiency ratio from six closes
Screens, sectors and combining signals
Sector medians and relative strength, building a screen in the Terminal, combining signals without counting one thing twice, base rates, and the limits of Conviction Rankings and Cross Signals.
- Sectors and relative strength
- Building a screen with the Screener
- Combining signals without fooling yourself
- Base rates and independence in numbers
- Reading Conviction Rankings and Cross Signals
- Lab Lab: build and stress a screen
- Lab Lab: read a Cross Signals row for independence
Backtesting and the Strategy Lab
What a backtest is and is not, the biases that break it, how the Strategy Lab replays history point in time, how costs and out-of-sample splits work, and the nine evidence gates.
- What a backtest is, and what it is not
- The bias catalogue: how backtests fool people
- The Strategy Lab pipeline
- Costs, the out-of-sample split and stress tests
- The nine evidence gates
- Lab Lab: your first Strategy Lab run, read in the right order
- Lab Lab: cost-stress a result by hand
Professional12 modules · 50 lessons · 13 labs
Research like a practitioner: documented workflow, evidence grading, multiple testing, out-of-sample logic, costs, sizing, portfolio overlap, data lineage, ethics, sourced notes, backtest critiques and case studies.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 145, 90 minutes, pass mark 75%. Up to 3 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail. 4 required labs to finish first.
Certificate. TellHawk Terminal Academy: Professional. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Hold the Practitioner certificate
- Complete the Professional required labs
- Pass the Professional exam
What it covers
Research workflow
How to turn a vague market question into a testable hypothesis, keep a research log that counts every try, make a result reproducible, and hand a finding to a reviewer in a form they can check.
- From question to hypothesis
- Logging and documentation
- Reproducibility
- Review and handover
- Lab Lab: write a research log entry
Grading evidence
A source hierarchy for market research, an explicit A to D grading scale applied to Terminal blocks, how to handle sources that disagree, and why a missing signal is not the same as a null result.
- The source hierarchy
- An explicit grading scale: A to D
- When evidence conflicts
- Absence of evidence
- Lab Lab: grade five claims with the A to D scale
Multiple testing
Why every analytic choice is a hidden test, how to compute expected false positives and Bonferroni thresholds, what the Lab's deflated Sharpe does with the number of tries, how to keep an honest tally, and why replication is the real test.
- Forking paths: the tests you did not count
- Family-wise error and Bonferroni
- The deflated Sharpe ratio
- Tracking your tries
- Replication
- Lab Lab: expected false positives and the Bonferroni level
Walk-forward logic
How to split time-ordered data without leaking the future, how the Lab's machine-learning step trains walk-forward, what freezing and tracking picks can and cannot show, and why results depend on the regime they were measured in.
- Splits and the embargo
- Walk-forward testing and the Lab's machine-learning step
- Forward tracking: freeze and follow
- Regime dependence
- Lab Lab: audit a timeline for in-sample, embargoed and out-of-sample rows
Costs and capacity
How spreads, fees and slippage are priced, how turnover turns small per-trade costs into a yearly drag, why borrow is the most flattering Lab assumption, and how to compute and read the break-even cost.
- Spreads, fees and slippage
- Turnover and capacity
- Borrow and shorting costs
- Break-even cost and cost re-pricing
- Lab Lab: find the break-even cost of a result
Sizing and ruin
Expectancy and its sampling error, a derived risk-of-ruin formula for a simple bet, the Kelly criterion and why fractions of it are used, and the arithmetic and psychology of drawdowns. Education only: TellHawk sizes nothing for you.
- Expectancy revisited
- Risk of ruin
- Kelly intuition
- Drawdown arithmetic and psychology
- Lab Lab: expectancy and Kelly fraction by hand
Portfolio basics
How correlation and concentration shape portfolio risk, how ETF overlap and look-through exposure are computed from N-PORT filings, what beta and alpha mean as the Strategy Lab reports them, and how rebalancing creates turnover.
- Correlation and concentration
- Overlap and look-through
- Factor exposure: beta and alpha as the Lab reports them
- Rebalancing and turnover
- Lab Lab: two-asset portfolio variance by hand
- Lab Lab: combined exposure from two ETFs' weights
Data lineage
How the Strategy Lab keeps decisions point in time, why first prints and restatements matter, how to reconcile a Terminal number to the filing it came from, and the routine checks that catch unit, duplicate and stale-data errors.
- Point-in-time data
- Vintages, first prints and restatements
- Reconciling a Terminal number to the filing
- Data-quality checks
- Lab Lab: reconcile a Terminal value to its filing
Ethics and compliance
What material nonpublic information is, why reading public Form 4 and 13F data is legitimate while trading on non-public information is not, how to communicate research fairly, how to manage conflicts, and where US, Canadian and EU rules differ. General education, not legal advice.
- MNPI awareness: what is public, what is not
- Fair communication of research
- Conflicts of interest
- Jurisdiction differences: United States, Canada and the EU
- Lab Lab: MNPI triage on eight fictional scenarios
Writing a research note
How to structure a short sourced research note, cite filings and dates so a reader can check them, express uncertainty in numbers and plain words, and review a note against a ten-item checklist before anyone relies on it.
- Structure: answer first, evidence second, limits beside it
- Citations and dates: let the reader check you
- Uncertainty language: numbers first, words second
- The peer-review checklist
- Lab Lab: score a research note against the ten-item checklist
Critiquing a backtest
A working method for reading someone else's backtest: a red-flag list of twelve common defects, how to reconcile and reproduce a claim, how to stress and sensitivity-test it, and how to write a fair, ranked critique that states what is unknown.
- The red-flag list
- Reproducing a claim
- Stress tests and sensitivity checks
- Writing the critique
- Lab Lab: critique a fictional backtest summary
Case studies
Five worked cases, all hypothetical and labelled as such: reading a squeeze screen, an insider cluster, a restatement walkthrough, a misread macro regime and a Strategy Lab post-mortem. Each teaches a method, not an outcome.
- Hypothetical case: a squeeze screen reading
- Hypothetical case: an insider purchase cluster
- Walkthrough: a public-filing restatement
- Hypothetical case: a misread macro regime
- Post-mortem: a Strategy Lab result that missed
- Lab Lab: order and measure a hypothetical insider cluster timeline
Academy
TellHawk Trader Academy
Trading process, risk and discipline, taught with paper trading in the real Trader. General education, never advice.
34 modules, 140 lessons, 35 labs, 3 certificate levels.
Foundations12 modules · 51 lessons · 10 labs
What trading is, how markets and orders work, how to read a chart, what trading costs, why leverage is dangerous, and how to practise on paper in TellHawk Trader before any real money is involved.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 594, 60 minutes, pass mark 70%. Up to 2 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail. 10 required labs to finish first.
Certificate. TellHawk Trader Academy: Foundations. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Complete the Foundations lessons and the required labs
- Pass the Foundations exam (40 questions drawn from the bank)
What it covers
New to markets: a plain-language start Free taster
A short reading track in plain words: what a market and a stock are, why prices move, saving versus investing versus gambling, risk, spotting scams, and why to practise with fake money and involve a parent or guardian first.
- What a market and a stock are
- Why prices move
- Money, saving, investing and gambling
- Risk in plain words
- Hype, scams and social media
- Practise with fake money first, and ask a grown-up
What trading is (and is not) Free taster
Trading versus investing and time horizons; who is on the other side of your trade; why costs make active trading negative-sum for the average participant; what studies and regulators honestly say; edge, variance, luck versus skill; and a paper-first learning plan.
- Trading versus investing: horizons, goals and what each demands
- Who is on the other side, and why costs tilt the game
- Honest odds: what studies and regulators say
- Edge, variance, luck versus skill, and a learning plan
Markets, sessions and liquidity
How an order travels from your ticket to a fill; US pre-market, regular and after-hours sessions and why the gate blocks off-hours by default; bid, ask, spread, depth, volume and liquidity; and an overview of asset classes with risk warnings and what Trader supports.
- Exchanges, brokers, market makers and how an order finds a counterparty
- US market sessions, hours and why the gate blocks off-hours by default
- Bid, ask, spread, depth, volume and liquidity
- Asset classes overview, with risk warnings, and what Trader trades
Order types
Market, limit, stop, stop-limit and trailing stop orders; bracket and OCO orders; time in force and partial fills; what each risks (slippage, no-fill, gaps through stops); and how to read the Trader ticket and its risk readout.
- Market orders and limit orders: price certainty versus fill certainty
- Stop, stop-limit and trailing stop orders, and what happens in a gap
- Bracket and OCO orders, time in force, partial fills and changing orders
- The Trader ticket: reading the risk readout
- Lab Read a ticket by hand
- Lab Match six situations to the right order
Reading candlestick charts and timeframes
OHLC and candle anatomy, bar versus candle, how bigger bars are built from smaller ones, timeframes and multi-timeframe context, linear versus log scales, gaps, trend language and its limits, and a tour of the TellHawk Chart.
- OHLC data and candle anatomy
- Timeframes, how bars are built, and multi-timeframe context
- Linear versus log scales, gaps and the language of trends
- A tour of the TellHawk Chart: intervals, indicators, drawing tools and Quick Trade
- Lab Read an eight-candle sample
Support, resistance and volume
Levels as areas, breakouts and false breakouts, volume and its limits, and an honest routine for drawing levels on the TellHawk Trader Chart.
- Support and resistance: levels are areas, not lines
- Breakouts, retests and false breakouts
- Volume: what it measures, what it cannot tell you
- Drawing levels honestly: confirmation bias and a repeatable routine
Basic indicators and their limits
Moving averages, RSI with Wilder smoothing, MACD, Bollinger Bands and ATR computed by hand, and an honest look at lag, parameter tuning and indicator stacking.
- Moving averages by hand: SMA, EMA and WMA
- RSI: how it is built, and why 30 and 70 are not rules
- MACD, Bollinger Bands and ATR in brief
- The limits of indicators: lag, tuning and stacking
- Lab SMA and EMA by hand
Spread, slippage, commissions and fees
The costs of trading: spread, slippage, commissions and fees, costs measured in R, why frequency compounds them, and how gaps break stops.
- The spread and slippage: the costs you pay before commissions
- Commissions, fees and other costs of running an account
- Costs measured in R, and why frequency compounds them
- Gaps, stops and measuring the costs of your own trading
- Lab Round-trip cost and break-even move
Leverage, margin and shorting dangers
How leverage and margin magnify outcomes, margin calls and forced liquidation, short selling and unlimited loss, day-trading rules in concept, and options and futures warnings.
- Leverage and margin maths: how borrowing magnifies outcomes
- Maintenance margin, margin calls and forced liquidation
- Short selling: mechanics, unlimited loss and squeezes
- Day-trading rules, options and futures warnings, and sensible guardrails
- Lab Margin math by hand
Paper trading first and the TellHawk Trader tour
Why practice comes first, what paper trading cannot teach, a tour of each Trader tab, connecting a paper account, placing a first paper order with review-then-confirm, and reading your risk limits.
- Why paper trading comes first (and what it cannot teach)
- A tour of TellHawk Trader: what each tab is for
- Connecting a paper account and placing your first paper order
- Reading your risk limits and the gate message
- Lab Place your first paper order
- Lab Set a daily loss limit
Journal habit, emotions and scam awareness
Why a journal beats memory, what to record, how to name and manage common emotions with simple rules, how pump-and-dump and fake-guru scams work and how to spot them, and how to protect your accounts, API keys and screen.
- Why a journal, and what to record
- Emotions, biases and simple rules
- Hype, pump-and-dump and fake gurus: red flags
- Protecting your accounts, keys and screen
- Lab Log three paper trades with thesis and stop
- Lab Scam spotting: count the red flags
Trading glossary A to Z Free taster
A plain-language glossary of 227 trading terms in five themed lessons: markets and sessions, orders and execution, charts and indicators, risk and psychology, and accounts, tax and tools.
- Glossary: markets and sessions
- Glossary: orders and execution
- Glossary: charts and indicators
- Glossary: risk, performance and psychology
- Glossary: accounts, tax and tools
Practitioner11 modules · 45 lessons · 14 labs
Risk-first process: sizing from risk and stop distance, R-multiples and expectancy, drawdown and ruin maths, the pre-trade risk gate and kill switch, journaling analytics, honest strategy testing, automation safety and tax awareness.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 769, 75 minutes, pass mark 75%. Up to 2 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail. 14 required labs to finish first.
Certificate. TellHawk Trader Academy: Practitioner. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Complete the Practitioner lessons and the required labs
- Pass the Practitioner exam (40 questions drawn from the bank)
What it covers
Position sizing from risk and stop distance
Turn a risk budget and a stop price into a share count, understand rounding, caps, gaps and Kelly, and size orders in the TellHawk ticket.
- Risk per trade: the one number that sizes everything
- Whole shares, rounding and what "actual risk" means
- When the position cap binds before the risk cap does
- Stop distance, volatility and gap risk
- Kelly in outline, and sizing in the TellHawk ticket
- Lab Size a trade by hand
- Lab Place a risk-capped paper bracket order
R-multiples, expectancy and payoff
Measure every trade in units of risk, link win rate and payoff to expectancy, read the journal scoreboard definitions exactly, and convert costs and sample noise into the same language.
- R-multiples: measuring every trade in units of risk
- Win rate versus payoff: why a high hit rate can still lose
- Expectancy, profit factor and the scoreboard definitions
- Costs in R, and how much a small sample can tell you
- Lab R, expectancy and profit factor from ten printed trades
Drawdown maths, recovery asymmetry and risk of ruin
Measure drawdown the way the Journal does, learn why recovery needs grow faster than losses, compute streak odds and compounding, and build intuition for ruin and sequence risk.
- Drawdown: what it is, how it is measured, and which version the app shows
- Recovery asymmetry: why losses are harder to undo than they look
- Losing streaks: how common they are and how fast risk compounds
- Risk of ruin intuition and sequence risk
- Lab Recovery table and streak odds by hand
Loss limits, the pre-trade risk gate and the kill switch
Loss-limit arithmetic, every gate check by key, the three profiles, the kill switch and automation, what the gate cannot do, and how to use refusals.
- Loss limits: daily, weekly and monthly, and the arithmetic behind them
- Walking through every gate check
- Risk profiles, the kill switch and automation
- What the gate cannot do, and how to use refusals well
- Lab Trip the per-trade risk check on purpose
- Lab Trip the daily loss limit
- Lab Cycle the kill switch
Correlation, concentration and portfolio heat
Compute correlation by hand, add up open risk as portfolio heat, measure concentration by position, sector and theme, and stress-test how limits fit together.
- Correlation: what the number means and how to compute one
- Portfolio heat: adding up the risk you have already taken
- Concentration: single names, sectors and themes
- Stress: when correlations rise and limits bind
- Lab Compute heat and the largest position for a printed book
Trade planning, checklists and order management
A pre-trade checklist, bracket/OCO/trailing/manual exits, adjusting stops and partial exits in R, time and event rules, and the full chart-to-journal workflow with a post-trade review.
- The trade-planning checklist
- Bracket orders, OCO exits and manual exits
- Adjusting stops, partial exits and time stops
- From chart to ticket to journal: the full workflow and the review
Journaling analytics and the scoreboard
What to record, exact scoreboard definitions (break-even counts as a loss, drawdown in dollars), reading statistics at their true resolution, setup and mistake tags, weekly reviews and CSV import.
- What a journal should record, and why each field earns its place
- Reading the scoreboard honestly: exact definitions
- Sample size, thin statistics and the cherry-picking trap
- Tags, mistakes, review questions and importing a CSV
- Lab Journal three closed paper trades with stops
- Lab Reproduce the scoreboard by hand
Behavioural pitfalls: revenge trading, overtrading and FOMO
Neutral, descriptive treatment of loss aversion, the disposition effect, the three tilt flags and their exact thresholds, the arithmetic of overtrading, chasing and sizing up after a loss, and structure-based countermeasures.
- Loss aversion, the disposition effect and other patterns, in plain terms
- The tilt detector: three flags, exact thresholds and what they miss
- Overtrading, chasing and revenge trading with numbers
- Countermeasures: rules, cooling-off periods and designing friction
Rule-based strategies and testing them honestly
Entry, exit, size and stop rules; backtest basics and silent errors; costs, stress tests and benchmarks; in-sample versus out-of-sample, walk-forward and multiple testing; the four-lens validation gate and why a pass is not a promise.
- What a rule-based strategy is, and what a backtest does and does not tell you
- Costs and benchmarks: what a result has to beat
- In-sample, out-of-sample and multiple testing
- The four-lens validation gate, and why a pass is not a promise
- Lab Run a starter strategy test and read it
Automation safety and kill switches
What automation does and does not remove, paper-only deployment and the required stop, how the gate and kill switch apply to automated orders, failure modes, and the pause, stop and kill-switch controls with a review cadence.
- What automation does, and what it never removes
- Paper-only deployment, the required stop-loss and the limits that still apply
- Failure modes: how automated trading goes wrong quietly
- Pause, stop, kill switch: using the controls and keeping a review cadence
- Lab Deploy a validated strategy to paper
- Lab Pause or stop a paper strategy
Tax basics: realised gains, wash sales and superficial losses
Realised versus unrealised results, cost basis and holding periods, the US wash sale and Canadian superficial loss compared, trader status, record keeping and harvesting cautions, and exactly what the Trader Tax Export models and misses. Concepts only; not tax advice.
- Realised gains, cost basis and holding periods
- Wash sales (US) and superficial losses (Canada), compared
- Trader status, record keeping and tax-loss harvesting cautions
- The Trader Tax Export: a simplified model, and what it misses
- Lab Spot the possible wash sales in a trade table
Professional11 modules · 44 lessons · 11 labs
Process audit and review cycles, statistical thinking, overfitting and multiple testing, walk-forward and regimes, execution quality, portfolio risk, scaling, the business of trading, compliance and ethics, prop-firm rule awareness, and your own written plan and risk policy.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 542, 90 minutes, pass mark 75%. Up to 2 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail. 11 required labs to finish first.
Certificate. TellHawk Trader Academy: Professional. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Complete the Professional lessons and the required labs
- Pass the Professional exam (40 questions drawn from the bank)
What it covers
Process audit and review cycles
Separate decision quality from outcome, classify errors, compute compliance and avoidable loss, run weekly, monthly and quarterly reviews on an honest scorecard, and pre-commit to rules for pausing or retiring a setup.
- Process versus outcome: judging a decision by what you knew, not by how it ended
- Error taxonomy, checklist compliance rate and the decision log
- Review cycles and scorecards: weekly, monthly and quarterly
- Postmortems and rules for when to stop trading a setup
- Lab Write five real postmortems in the Journal
Statistical thinking: sample sizes, confidence and variance
Treat win rate and expectancy as estimates: standard errors, 95% intervals by hand and where they fail, the t-statistic and its limits, sample-size arithmetic, streaks, regime change and small-sample traps.
- Win rate as an estimate: standard error, the 95% interval and where the formula breaks
- Expectancy with a standard deviation: the t-statistic and what it can and cannot tell you
- How many trades to separate skill from luck: sample-size arithmetic and streaks
- Regime change and small-sample traps
- Lab Interval and t-statistic by hand
Overfitting, data snooping and multiple testing
See how flexibility fits noise, count trials, compute family-wise error and Bonferroni hurdles, discipline out-of-sample use, check parameter stability, and read the app's validation gate for what it does and does not establish.
- Curve fitting and degrees of freedom: how a backtest learns the noise
- Multiple testing: family-wise error, Bonferroni and raising the bar
- Out-of-sample discipline, parameter stability and simplicity
- The validation gate, the trial log and honest reporting
- Lab Multiple tests by hand
Walk-forward, regimes and robustness
Read fold stability honestly, classify regimes without hindsight, stress parameters, costs and fold boundaries, budget the paper-to-live gap, and write retirement rules before the drawdown.
- Walk-forward mechanics: folds, stability and what one blended number hides
- Regimes and change: rates, volatility, liquidity and how to classify a stretch
- Robustness checks: parameter neighbourhoods, cost stress, time shifts and the paper-to-live gap
- Decay and retirement: monitoring a live method against what you expected
- Lab Fold stability by hand
Execution quality
Measure the gap between plan and fill, weigh limit against market orders with an explicit model, understand size, liquidity and impact, and express costs in R with an execution journal.
- Implementation shortfall: measuring the gap between the plan and the fill
- Limit versus market: the trade-off between price and the chance of a fill
- Order size versus liquidity: participation, impact and capacity
- Timing, costs in R and the execution journal
- Lab Slippage audit of five printed fills
Portfolio-level risk
Aggregate open risk into budgets, compute two-asset variance and the floor of diversification, stress a book against gaps and shocks, understand leverage and tails, and design when limits should bind.
- Aggregate risk and risk budgets: from a list of trades to a book you can reason about
- Two-asset variance: the arithmetic of diversification
- Stress scenarios, gap risk, tail risk and leverage
- Exposure by sector and factor, and when limits should bind
- Lab Two-asset risk by hand
Scaling size responsibly
Scale by written rules and minimum samples, build drawdown de-risking ladders, see why martingale and streak-based sizing fail with computed numbers, and respect capacity and the psychology of larger size.
- When to scale: rules, evidence and a minimum sample, not a good week
- De-risking ladders: cutting size by rule when drawdown deepens
- Martingale versus anti-martingale: why doubling down is a trap, computed
- Capacity, liquidity and the psychology of larger size
- Lab Read a de-risking ladder
The business of trading: records, taxes, brokers and platform risk
Records and retention, trader tax status and account types as questions for a professional, SIPC and broker and platform risk including outages and key hygiene, the cost of a trading practice, and scams that target traders. Concepts only; not tax or legal advice.
- Records that survive an audit, a broker change and your own memory
- Trader tax status, business or capital, and account types
- Broker and platform risk: SIPC, outages, keys and concentration
- What a trading practice costs, and the scams that target traders
- Lab Download and file your Tax Export
Compliance and ethics
Concept-level, jurisdiction-neutral awareness of insider information, market manipulation, advice versus education, promotion and conflicts, handling other people's money and keeping records. Not legal advice.
- Insider trading and material non-public information: the concept and a decision routine
- Market manipulation and front-running: spoofing, wash trading, pump and dump
- Advice, education and registration; social-media promotion; conflicts of interest
- Other people's money, account rules, record retention and a personal compliance routine
Prop-firm challenge mechanics and why rule awareness matters
A strictly neutral guide to evaluation-style programmes: the generic ingredients, static and trailing drawdown floors worked by hand, fee economics as algebra, why rules change, and how to use the Prop Challenge tracker honestly.
- The anatomy of a prop-firm challenge: the generic structure and what each rule does
- Drawdown floors: static versus trailing, and why trailing behaves differently
- Fee economics as algebra: what you would have to achieve, and why pass probability is unknown
- Rules change: reading current terms, avoiding conduct breaches, and using the Prop Challenge tracker well
- Lab Configure the Prop Challenge tracker for a hypothetical challenge
- Lab Compute static and trailing floors by hand
Your trading plan, risk policy and hypothetical case studies
Write a nine-section trading plan and a risk policy with change control, convert limits to dollars and units of risk, learn from four clearly fictional case studies, and score your own documents.
- Your trading plan: nine sections that turn intentions into rules
- A risk policy template and change control: how to change rules without breaking them
- Fictional case studies, part 1: oversizing after a win streak and ignoring the kill switch
- Fictional case studies, part 2: an unvalidated automation, a wash-sale surprise, and your self-assessment
- Lab Apply a named risk profile and read it in dollars
Academy
ProofRunner Academy
Rule literacy and risk discipline for funded-account challenges. Education only: no advice, no promise of passing, no income claims.
28 modules, 134 lessons, 25 labs, 3 certificate levels.
Foundations9 modules · 40 lessons · 8 labs
What prop firms and evaluations are, how the rules work, what things cost, how to avoid scams and what ProofRunner can and cannot do. Includes an optional plain-words reading track for beginners and teens.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 584, 60 minutes, pass mark 70%. Up to 2 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail. 3 required labs to finish first.
Certificate. ProofRunner Academy: Foundations. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Complete the Foundations modules
- Complete the required labs
- Pass the Foundations exam
What it covers
New to markets: a plain-words start Free taster
A short reading track for beginners and teens. What trading is, what a prop firm is, how challenge rules work, and how to stay safe. Reading only: no trading, no sign-up.
- What is trading?
- What is a prop firm?
- Rules as game levels
- Money, risk and staying safe
Prop firms and evaluations Free taster
What a trading prop firm is, how an evaluation and a funded stage usually work, how firms earn money, and what demo versus live really means.
- What a prop firm is (and is not)
- Stages: from evaluation to funded
- How firms earn money
- Demo versus live
- The journey end to end
- Lab Choose a rule set in the Rule library
The core rules: target, daily loss and drawdown
The three rules every evaluation has: the profit target, the daily loss limit (hard or soft) and the drawdown floor (static, end-of-day trailing, intraday trailing, locked), and how to read the room they leave you.
- The profit target: what it is and what it is not
- Daily loss limits: hard and soft
- Drawdown: the static floor and the trailing floor
- Trailing end-of-day, trailing intraday and locked floors
- The three limits together: finding the binding room
- Lab Work out an end-of-day trailing floor by hand
Conduct rules: consistency, days, news, size and payouts
The rules that sit around the core limits: consistency, minimum trading days, news and flat-by times, contract limits and scaling, and the conditions attached to payouts and stages.
- Consistency rules: the best-day share
- Minimum trading days and what counts as a day
- News windows and flat-by times
- Contract limits, micros and scaling plans
- Payout and stage rules
Reading a firm's rules
How a rules page is built, where wording hides ambiguity, what confirmed and unverified marks mean, and how to ask a firm and track changes in writing.
- Anatomy of a rules page
- Ambiguity and edge cases
- Confirmed versus unverified
- Asking the firm and tracking changes
- Lab Read four facts from a rule set
- Lab List the unverified fields of a rule set
What an attempt really costs
The full list of costs around an evaluation, how resets and repeat attempts add up, a simple expected-spend model with its limits, and how to read pass-rate claims.
- Fees and subscriptions
- Resets and repeat attempts
- Expected cost math
- Reading pass-rate claims
- Lab Expected spend per pass
Scams, red flags and staying safe
How to spot the warning signs around funded-account offers: impossible promises, pressure, bots and account services, credential and payment traps, and how to check a company and report a problem.
- Red flags in the industry
- Pass-guaranteed and bot offers
- Accounts, payments and credentials
- Verifying and reporting
- Lab Find every red flag in an offer
A guided tour of ProofRunner
Walk through the five steps of the ProofRunner workflow, the rule library, the free simulator and the failure autopsy, and learn exactly what the tool can and cannot know.
- The guided workflow: five steps from rules to review
- The rule library: confirmed, unverified and yours
- The free simulator and the own-trades simulation
- The failure autopsy and what-if replay
- What ProofRunner cannot know
- Lab Run your first simulation
- Lab Read a failure autopsy
The ProofRunner glossary Free taster
Over 160 plain-language definitions of the words you meet in funded-account rules, futures and FX markets, orders and execution, risk statistics and ProofRunner itself.
- Glossary: rules and accounts
- Glossary: futures and markets
- Glossary: orders and execution
- Glossary: risk, statistics and ProofRunner
Practitioner10 modules · 49 lessons · 10 labs
Turn a rule set into a daily plan: risk budgets, tick values, sizing, trailing floors, consistency arithmetic, clocks, the guardian and line panel, journaling, statement import and cost tracking.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 651, 75 minutes, pass mark 75%. Up to 2 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail. 3 required labs to finish first.
Certificate. ProofRunner Academy: Practitioner. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Complete the Practitioner modules
- Complete the required labs
- Pass the Practitioner exam
What it covers
The daily plan
Turn a rule set into a written plan for one trading day: the room you really have, a risk budget per trade, a stop-for-the-day rule, and how to adjust as the day moves.
- From rules to a plan
- The daily risk budget
- Trades in a row and fractions of the room
- A plan template you can reuse
- Adjusting during the day
- Lab Build a daily risk budget for the Combine 50K
Tick values, point values, pips and lots
Convert price movement into dollars for futures and FX: tick size, tick value, point value, micros and minis, pips and lots, with every example recomputed and a method to cross-check your platform.
- Futures ticks and points
- Micros and minis
- FX pips and lots
- Verified worked examples
- Cross-checking with your platform
Position sizing from a risk budget
Turn a dollar risk budget and a stop distance into a whole number of contracts or a lot size, round the safe way, respect contract limits and scaling rules, and size FX trades in lots.
- From risk to contracts
- Stops in points
- Rounding and minimums
- Contract limits and scaling
- FX lot sizing
- Lab Contracts for a risk budget
Trailing drawdown, step by step
How an end-of-day trailing floor, an intraday trailing floor and a locked floor are computed, with full tables you can reproduce by hand and check against ProofRunner.
- End-of-day trailing, step by step
- Intraday trailing, step by step
- Locks and lock points
- The open-profit trap
- Room tables you can reproduce
Consistency rules: the best-day arithmetic
How a best-day limit is computed, why the base (total profit or profit target) changes everything, how to plan your days around it, how it interacts with minimum days, and what the arithmetic says when you are over the line.
- Best-day arithmetic
- Total profit versus profit target as the base
- Planning your days around a consistency rule
- Minimum days and consistency together
- Recovering from a consistency breach
- Lab Plan the total profit behind a best day
Clocks and calendars: sessions, flat-by, news, holidays and rollover
The time-based rules that end more attempts than people expect: which clock the firm uses, how to plan around a flat-by time, how news windows are measured, what holidays and short days change, and how contract rollover and weekends interact with the rules.
- Session clocks and time zones
- Flat-by planning
- News windows
- Holidays and short days
- Rollover and weekends
The guardian, your line and platform locks
How ProofRunner turns a proposed trade into an allow, warn or block verdict, how the "where is my line" panel shows the room left on every rule, how the platform lock cards point you to native settings, and what none of it can know.
- Guardian verdicts: allow, warn, block
- The "where is my line" panel
- Lock cards: reading "Set this lock in your platform"
- Platform-native locks, platform by platform
- What monitoring cannot know
- Lab Open the line panel and read your room
- Lab Read your platform lock cards
Journal and behaviour: logging, flags and review
What to write down about each trade, how ProofRunner's journal and its seven neutral behaviour flags work (with the arithmetic behind each), how to build pause routines that do not depend on willpower, and how to review without fooling yourself.
- What to log, and what the journal gives you
- Behaviour flags: seven neutral patterns
- Tilt routines: pauses that do not rely on willpower
- Review cadence: daily, weekly, monthly
- Lab Write a journal entry on a real trade
Import, simulate and read the autopsy
Bring a statement into ProofRunner, replay your own closed trades against a rule set, read a failure autopsy line by line, use the what-if replay honestly, and know exactly what this evidence cannot see.
- Statement import: from platform export to clean trades
- Simulate from your own trades
- Reading a failure autopsy
- The what-if replay
- Data limits: what this evidence cannot see
- Lab Find the first rule event in a statement
- Lab Run your own trades against a rule set
- Lab Run a what-if and read it honestly
Firms, costs and payouts
Compare firms by the rules that really differ, verify a rule before you build on it, keep honest cost and payout records, understand which platforms ProofRunner can and cannot connect to, and plan a payout without weakening your account.
- How firm rules really differ
- Verifying a rule with the firm
- Tracking costs and return on investment
- Platforms, connectors and what they cannot do
- Payout planning
- Lab Enter a cost and payout record and read the totals
Professional9 modules · 45 lessons · 7 labs
Stress-test a plan, understand breach probability and its limits, audit marketing claims and processes, handle drawdown, read compliance and automation policies, and build a challenge playbook.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 557, 90 minutes, pass mark 75%. Up to 2 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail. 2 required labs to finish first.
Certificate. ProofRunner Academy: Professional. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Complete the Professional modules
- Complete the required labs
- Pass the Professional exam
What it covers
Stress testing a challenge plan
How to ask "how often would this plan have failed, and how?" with Monte Carlo runs, rolling start dates and resampling, how to audit the assumptions behind any answer, and how to read ProofRunner simulator output without over-reading it.
- Monte Carlo thinking
- Rolling starts
- Resampling and its limits
- Assumption audits
- Reading simulator output
- Lab Build the model and measure the bust share
- Lab Read a rolling-start timeline
Breach probability: size, edge and time
The arithmetic and intuition behind how often a plan touches a drawdown floor: random walks and absorbing barriers, how size, win rate, reward-to-risk and trade count change the odds, and the exact ruin formula, all in a deliberately simple model.
- Random walks and floors
- Size versus bust
- Win rate and reward-to-risk
- Trade count and time
- Ruin intuition
- Lab Sweep trade size and compare bust shares
Marketing claims
Read the marketing around funded-account challenges like an auditor: survivorship, what a pass rate counts, testimonials and payout screenshots, earnings disclaimers and consumer-protection basics, and a repeatable way to weigh evidence.
- Survivorship: you only see the ones who stayed
- Pass-rate claims: what is being counted
- Testimonials and payout screenshots
- Earnings disclaimers and the law, in plain terms
- Weighing evidence: a repeatable audit
- Lab Audit a marketing page for survivorship
Process audits
Measure how you work instead of how a week ended: process metrics, rule-adherence audits, post-mortems, change control and checklists, with ProofRunner as the record keeper.
- Process metrics: measuring the work, not the week
- Rule-adherence audits against the firm rules
- Post-mortems: turning a breach or a bad stretch into a record
- Change control: altering a plan without fooling yourself
- Checklists: pre-session, pre-trade, end-of-day, weekly
Drawdown resilience
Stay inside the rules when an account is losing: the psychology of drawdown, written operating procedures, stop rules, a sane way back after a reset, and a workload that you can sustain.
- Drawdown psychology: what a shrinking floor does to decisions
- Operational procedures: when the screen, the network or the platform fails
- Stop rules: when you stop for the day, the week and the streak
- After a reset: deciding whether and how to try again
- Workload and health: building a pace you can sustain
Compliance and automation
Read automation, copy-trading and fair-play policies like a compliance analyst: what each firm says, how sure the repo is, what bots and expert advisors add in risk, and the line you never cross.
- Reading conduct policies: who says what, and how sure are you
- Automation rules by firm: reading the repo notes with their marks
- Bots and expert advisors: the added risks of letting software place orders
- Fair play and high-frequency activity: what the rules protect
- What never to do: the lines you do not cross
- Lab Compare three firms automation notes
Multiple accounts and copy trading
What changes when one set of decisions touches several funded-account attempts: copy trading mechanics, correlated breaches, what firms say about copying, account limits and per-account records.
- Copy trading and its rule risks
- Correlated breaches: when accounts fail together
- What firms say about copying and automation
- Account limits and the cost of more accounts
- Record-keeping per account
Records, taxes, ethics and privacy
Keep records that stand up, know which tax questions to bring to a qualified professional (US and Canada pointers, not advice), understand ownership and structure rules, share honestly and protect your data.
- Record-keeping that stands up
- Tax awareness: what to ask a professional (US and Canada pointers)
- Ownership, structures and the rules around them
- Ethics and sharing: honest results, honest claims
- Privacy, security and your data
The playbook: your written system
Capstone: assemble a written playbook, a dated rules register and pre-committed decision rules, then use the same discipline to critique a firm rule set and a pass-guaranteed offer.
- Playbook structure: one document that runs the work
- The rules register: dated, sourced and marked
- Decision rules: pre-committed if-then
- Critiquing a firm's rules
- Critiquing offers that promise a pass
- Lab Write your playbook
- Lab Critique a pass-guaranteed offer
Shared theory
Markets and Economics Theory
The shared theory behind every TellHawk app: economics, markets, official data, risk and research method. General education, not advice.
34 modules, 174 lessons, 3 certificate levels.
Foundations12 modules · 59 lessons
Economics, money, markets, official data, risk basics and investor protection, built from first principles.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 140, 60 minutes, pass mark 70%. Up to 3 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail.
Certificate. TellHawk Markets and Economics Theory: Foundations. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Pass the Foundations exam (70% or higher).
What it covers
Scarcity, Choice and Incentives Free taster
The starting point of all economics and of every market: resources are limited, every choice has a price in forgone alternatives, people respond to incentives, decisions are made at the margin, and trade lets specialists all end up better off.
- Scarcity and opportunity cost
- Incentives and trade-offs
- Marginal thinking
- Specialisation and gains from trade
Supply, Demand and Prices
How prices form: the demand and supply curves, equilibrium, what shifts a curve versus moves along it, how sensitive quantities are to price (elasticity), and what happens when governments or exchanges cap or floor prices.
- The demand curve
- The supply curve
- Equilibrium and shifts
- Elasticity
- Price controls, shortages and surpluses
Firms and Market Structures
How firms think about costs, how competition and concentration shape prices and profits, why markets sometimes fail (externalities, public goods) and why information gaps between buyers and sellers matter so much in finance.
- Firm costs
- Market structures
- Competition and pricing power
- Externalities and public goods
- Information asymmetry
The Macroeconomy
How economists measure the size, health and price level of a whole economy: GDP, unemployment and participation, inflation (CPI and PCE), and the difference between nominal and real numbers.
- GDP: Measuring the Size of an Economy
- Unemployment and Participation
- Inflation: CPI, PCE and HICP
- Real vs Nominal: Adjusting for Inflation
Money, Banks and Policy
What money is, how banks create credit and why the textbook money multiplier is a simplification, what central banks and governments do, and how interest rates connect to bond prices.
- What Money Is and What It Does
- Banks, Credit and the Money Multiplier
- Central Banks and Their Tools
- Fiscal Policy, Deficits and Government Debt
- Interest Rates, Yields and Bond Prices
Markets and Instruments
The main things that trade, at concept level: stocks, bonds, funds and ETFs, options and futures, currencies and crypto, and the venues, quotes, liquidity and settlement machinery that connect buyers and sellers.
- Stocks, ownership, indices and sectors
- Bonds: price, coupon yield and yield to maturity
- Funds and ETFs: NAV, premium and discount, and costs
- Options and futures: payoffs, margin and leverage
- Currencies and crypto assets: concepts and cautions
- Exchanges, market makers, order books, liquidity and settlement
Time Value and Valuation Basics
Why a dollar today is not a dollar next year: compounding, discounting, reading the basic financial statements, and what a valuation really is (a range built from assumptions, not a fact).
- Compounding, real returns and the rule of 72
- Present value: discounting a lump sum and an annuity
- Reading an income statement and balance sheet, and common ratios
- Valuation concepts: price, value and the discount rate
Risk and Return Basics
What risk means, how volatility and drawdown are measured, why diversification works only as far as correlation allows, and how expected value and base rates keep your thinking honest.
- Risk versus uncertainty, and the risk-return trade-off
- Volatility as standard deviation, and drawdown arithmetic
- Diversification and correlation with two assets
- Expected value, base rates and thinking in probabilities
Official Records and Data Sources
Learn where market and economic facts originally come from, how to find them yourself, how late and how wrong they can be, and how to cite and verify what you read.
- Primary sources: going to where the fact started
- A tour of SEC EDGAR and Canadian equivalents
- Macro and market data agencies: who publishes what
- Lag, revisions, survivorship and look-ahead bias
- Citing and verifying what you read
Scams, Fraud and Investor Protection
Recognise how pump-and-dump schemes, fake signal sellers and too-good guarantees work, check whether a firm or adviser is registered, and know what to do if you have been caught out.
- Pump-and-dump schemes: the arithmetic of who wins
- Fake gurus, signal sellers and promised returns
- Regulators and how to check registration
- Protecting yourself: habits that work
- If you have been scammed: first steps
Behaviour, Process and Ethics
Understand the predictable mental shortcuts that cost investors money, how to defend against them with process, and the ethical and fairness rules that govern anyone who works with market information.
- Cognitive biases: anchoring, sunk cost, herding and friends
- Loss aversion and overconfidence, with numbers
- Process defences: rules, journals and small samples
- Ethics and fairness in markets
New to Markets: The Plain-Language Track
Eight short lessons in everyday language: what markets and stocks are, why prices move, money and inflation, saving vs investing vs gambling, risk, scams, and how to read financial news with a skeptical eye. General education only, not advice. TellHawk accounts have an age policy: check the site's terms, and a parent or guardian must be involved where the terms require it.
- What Is a Market?
- What Is a Stock?
- Why Do Prices Move?
- Money and Inflation
- Saving, Investing and Gambling
- Risk in Plain Words
- Spotting Scams
- Reading Financial News Skeptically
Practitioner11 modules · 61 lessons
Data releases, rates, regimes, market structure, filings, short selling, insider law, risk theory and research method.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 132, 60 minutes, pass mark 70%. Up to 3 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail.
Certificate. TellHawk Markets and Economics Theory: Practitioner. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Pass the Practitioner exam (70% or higher).
What it covers
Economic Data Releases and Reactions
How the release calendar works, why markets react to the surprise rather than the number, how leading, coincident and lagging indicators differ, what revisions and seasonal adjustment do to a headline, and why reaction patterns are unstable.
- The release calendar and types of releases
- Surprise versus expectation
- Leading, coincident and lagging indicators
- Revisions and seasonal adjustment
- Reaction patterns and why they are unstable
Rates, the Curve and Central-Bank Policy
How policy rates and market expectations relate, what the shape of the yield curve does and does not tell you, how real yields and breakevens split a nominal yield, how credit spreads are built, and how to read central-bank communication at the Fed, Bank of Canada and ECB.
- Policy rates and market expectations
- Yield curve shapes and the limits of inversion
- Real yields and breakevens
- Credit spreads and their arithmetic
- Reading central-bank communication
Cycles, FX, Commodities and Global Links
The phases of the business cycle, how recessions are dated in the US, Canada and the euro area, how exchange rates and the balance of payments fit together, what moves commodities, and how economies transmit shocks to one another.
- Business-cycle phases
- Recessions: how they are dated and what indicators say
- Exchange rates and the balance of payments
- Commodities, prices and terms of trade
- Global linkages and spillovers
Macro Regimes
What a macro regime label is, how growth, inflation, liquidity and risk appetite are turned into one, exactly what the TellHawk macro dashboard and Crypto Regime compute (and do not), and how regime thinking gets misused.
- Growth and inflation quadrants
- Liquidity and financial conditions
- Risk-on and risk-off
- What the TellHawk macro dashboard computes
- The Crypto Regime screen
- How regime thinking gets misused
Market Structure
How trades actually happen: order books and spreads, market makers and venues, settlement and clearing, how indices and sectors are built, how ETFs are created and redeemed, and the mechanics of options and futures.
- Order books and spreads
- Market makers and venues
- Settlement and clearing
- Indices and sectors
- ETF creation and redemption
- Options and futures mechanics
SEC Filings in Practice
The main US public-company filings and what each is for: 10-K and 10-Q, 8-K events, proxy statements, ownership filings (13F, 13D, 13G), S-1 and IPO documents, a workflow for reading them quickly, and a Canadian comparison.
- Annual and quarterly reports (10-K and 10-Q)
- 8-K current reports
- Proxy statements and governance
- Ownership filings: 13F, 13D and 13G
- S-1 filings and IPOs
- Reading filings efficiently
- Canada note: SEDAR+, NI 51-102, early warning and SEDI
Short Selling and Squeezes
How a short sale works, what borrow and margin cost, how short interest and days to cover are computed, why squeezes happen, and the hard limits of the public short-interest data (twice-monthly, lagged, anonymous).
- Mechanics: borrow, locate, margin and unlimited loss
- Short interest: what is published, when, and as a percent of what
- Days to cover, utilisation and the cost of staying short
- Squeezes: how forced buying feeds on itself
- Data limits and lag: what the public numbers cannot show
Insider Activity and the Law
The line between legal, reported insider trading and illegal trading on material non-public information; how Form 4 works, what 10b5-1 plans change, the three dates every filing row has, and how to read insider data without overreading it.
- Legal versus illegal insider trading, and what MNPI means
- Form 4 mechanics: who files, what is in it, what to ignore
- 10b5-1 plans: scheduled trading and the cooling-off period
- Three dates and why filings lag
- Interpreting clusters without overreading
- Compliance awareness: blackouts, short-swing profits and tips
Risk Management Theory
The arithmetic behind risk: volatility and correlation, tail risk and leverage, position sizing, expectancy and ruin, Kelly intuition and stress testing. General education only, with every number recomputable by hand.
- Volatility, Correlation and Regimes
- Tail Risk, Drawdowns and Leverage
- Position Sizing Theory
- Expectancy and Risk of Ruin
- Kelly Intuition and the Danger of Overbetting
- Stress Testing and Scenario Thinking
Behavioural Finance and Process
How common biases show up in real trading, how crowds and stories mislead, and how journals, checklists and pre-set limits turn good intentions into repeatable process. General education only, with behavioural costs worked in numbers.
- Biases in Practice: Loss Aversion, Disposition and Overtrading
- Herding, Narratives and Base Rates
- Journals and Checklists
- Tilt and Behaviour in Drawdowns
Research Method
How to grade evidence, separate correlation from causation, spot backtest pitfalls, understand overfitting and multiple testing, use out-of-sample and base rates, and avoid survivorship and look-ahead, with the arithmetic for each.
- Evidence grading: how strong is this claim, really?
- Correlation versus causation, and how spurious relationships arise
- Backtest pitfalls: expectancy, costs and how results get flattered
- Overfitting and multiple testing: why the best of many looks great
- Out-of-sample testing and base rates
- Survivorship and look-ahead: two ways the data lies about time
Professional11 modules · 54 lessons
Quantitative depth: fixed income, derivatives, valuation, portfolio theory, regulation, validation and risk systems.
Exam. 40 questions drawn per attempt from a bank of 132, 75 minutes, pass mark 70%. Up to 3 attempts a day, with a 24 hours wait after a fail.
Certificate. TellHawk Markets and Economics Theory: Professional. It does not expire. We suggest refreshing after 24 months.
- Pass the Professional exam (70% or higher).
What it covers
Advanced Market Economics
Concentration and market power, strategic interaction, asymmetric information, auction design and regulatory incentives, each with a worked calculation and an explicit list of what the model assumes and where it breaks.
- Market Power and Industrial Organization
- Game Theory: Nash Equilibrium in Markets
- Information Economics: Adverse Selection and Signalling
- Auctions and Market Design
- Regulation and Incentives: Taxes, Caps and Rate Regulation
Monetary Transmission and Funding Markets
How a policy rate becomes borrowing costs, how central-bank balance sheets and repo markets move reserves and liquidity, how covered interest parity prices currencies, and how sovereign debt ratios evolve.
- The Monetary Transmission Mechanism
- QE, QT and Central Bank Balance Sheets
- Repo, Haircuts and Funding Liquidity
- FX Regimes, Covered Interest Parity and Capital Flows
- Sovereign Debt Dynamics
Fixed Income Mathematics
Bond pricing, Macaulay and modified duration, DV01, convexity, forward rates and curve construction, real yields and breakeven inflation, and the link between credit spreads and expected loss, each with recomputed numbers and stated limits.
- Price, Yield and Duration
- Convexity and the Limits of Duration
- Forward Rates and Curve Construction
- Real Rates, Breakevens and Inflation Swaps
- Credit Risk: Spreads, Default Probabilities and Expected Loss
Derivatives Theory
Payoffs and put-call parity, the Black-Scholes model and its assumptions, the Greeks, futures basis and cost of carry, and the arithmetic of dealer gamma hedging, with every number recomputed and every model limit stated.
- Payoffs and put-call parity
- Black-Scholes intuition and its assumptions
- The Greeks: delta, gamma, vega, theta and rho
- Futures, basis and cost of carry
- Gamma exposure and dealer hedging flows
Valuation in Depth
Discounted cash flow with WACC and terminal value, multiples and comparables, cash versus accrual earnings, accounting red flags and capital structure, with recomputed numerics and every model limit stated.
- DCF, WACC and the terminal value problem
- Multiples and comparables
- Quality of earnings: cash flow versus accruals
- Accounting red flags and non-GAAP measures
- Capital structure: leverage, tax shields and distress
Portfolio Theory
Mean-variance portfolios, CAPM and factor models, risk parity and rebalancing, performance attribution and transaction-cost drag, with recomputed numerics and the limits of each model.
- Mean-variance: portfolio variance with two and three assets
- CAPM, beta, Sharpe ratio and factor models
- Risk parity and rebalancing
- Performance attribution
- Transaction costs and drag
Short Interest and Squeeze Analytics
How short-interest data is produced and how late it is, what borrow cost and fails-to-deliver can and cannot tell you, how options hedging can amplify moves, how to estimate positions between reports, and how all of this gets misused. Includes a truthful walk through how the TellHawk Squeeze Scanner builds its score.
- The short-data pipeline and how TellHawk builds a squeeze score
- Borrow cost, locates and fails-to-deliver
- Gamma squeeze mechanics: dealer hedging arithmetic
- Reporting lag and estimating current short interest
- Misuse, false signals and base rates
Regulation and Compliance Awareness
A map of securities law and market-abuse rules across the US, Canada and the EU, how disclosure and short-selling regimes differ, and where information ends and advice begins. General education only: this is not legal advice, and rules change.
- Securities law basics: who regulates what
- Market abuse: insider trading, manipulation, spoofing and wash trades
- Disclosure regimes compared: US, Canada and the EU
- Short-selling rules: Regulation SHO, UMIR and the EU SSR
- Advice boundaries and recordkeeping
Quantitative Research Method
How to build a backtest that does not lie, why trying many ideas inflates the best result, how walk-forward and purged cross-validation work, why costs and capacity decide whether an edge survives, and what TellHawk validation gates do and do not prove. Includes truthful descriptions of the Strategy Lab, the core walk-forward code and ProofRunner.
- Backtest engineering: building one that does not lie
- Multiple testing and the deflated Sharpe ratio
- Walk-forward testing, cross-validation, purging and embargo
- Cost and capacity realism
- Validation gates: what TellHawk checks and what a pass means
Risk Systems
How professional risk systems measure loss (VaR, expected shortfall), probe it (scenarios and reverse stress tests), limit it (drawdown control), size bets (Kelly under uncertainty), and guard against the models themselves being wrong.
- Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall
- Scenario Analysis and Reverse Stress Testing
- Drawdown Control and Pre-Trade Limits
- Ruin and Kelly in Depth: Continuous, Fractional and Uncertain
- Model Risk and Backtesting Risk Models
Ethics, Standards and Forensics
Professional standards at concept level, a method for analysing a suspicious offer, how conflicts of interest shape advice, and how to communicate about markets and performance responsibly.
- Professional Standards and Codes of Conduct
- Scam Forensics: Analysing a Suspicious Offer
- Conflicts of Interest: Spotting, Disclosing and Managing
- Responsible Communication: Performance, Hypotheticals and Finfluencers
Optional
Plain-language reading for people new to markets
26 lessons (in Terminal Academy, TellHawk Trader Academy, ProofRunner Academy, Markets and Economics Theory) have a "new to markets" reading track: shorter sentences, and terms explained as they appear. It changes the reading level only. The exams, the pass mark and the certificates are the same.
It is not an age track. Under the Terms, using TellHawk requires being at least 18, or the age of majority where you live if that is higher.
The public learning library
189 hand-picked links to other people's material from 67 publishers, 181 of them free: 31 courses, 12 textbooks, 43 datasets, 5 glossaries, 28 regulator guides, 70 articles. Each entry says who published it, the level, the cost and the licence, and why it is useful and where it falls short.
It is link-only: we point to the original publisher and never copy their text. Links are checked from time to time, and a link can still go stale between checks. We are not affiliated with these publishers, and a listing is not an endorsement of their views.
Certificates
Each passed level gives you a printable certificate and a credential ID. Anyone you share the ID with can check it, and see its status (valid, expired or revoked), on tellhawk.com/verify. The check shows your name, the title and the issue date. It never shows scores, your email or anything else.
TellHawk Academy
Sample Learner
TellHawk Terminal Academy: Foundations
Credential ID and issue date appear here
Educational certificate issued by TellHawk. Not a professional licence, regulated qualification or investment advice, and not an indication of trading performance.
Educational certificate issued by TellHawk. Not a professional licence, regulated qualification or investment advice, and not an indication of trading performance.
Check a certificate or see the plans
Have a credential ID? Verify it in a few seconds. Want to know what is included in each plan? The Pricing page has it.