Fixed Income — in plain English
Bonds are how the world borrows — governments, companies, even your mortgage. This curriculum splits fixed income the way real desks do, into two tracks: Rates — what money costs across time, and how curves, swaps and vol move a book — and Credit — lending with the risk of not getting paid back, from corporate bonds through loans, securitized products, CLOs, converts and CDS. Every lesson has a live calculator: change an input and watch price, risk, or cashflows move. No quant background needed.
📈 Rates track
Bonds, curves, swaps, options & vol — then risk, margin and capital. 16 modules.
🏢 Credit track
Corporates, loans, mortgages, ABS, CLOs, converts, CDS & indices. 13 modules.
Rates
What money costs across time. Start here if you're new — the credit track builds on these foundations.
Core
Bonds, curves and the instruments that price money across time.
- 💵Module 1Available
What is a bond?
A bond is an IOU with a payment schedule. Its price is just the sum of its future payments, discounted to today.
🎛 Live bond pricer
- 📈Module 2Available
The yield curve
Par vs zero rates, bootstrapping, and discount factors — how the market prices money across time.
🎛 Curve builder
- ⚖️Module 3Available
Interest-rate risk
DV01, duration, convexity and key-rate durations — how much a bond moves when rates change, and where.
🎛 Risk playground
- 🏦Module 7Available
Repo & financing
The repo market, haircuts, leverage and carry — how bond investors borrow to amplify returns.
🎛 Repo calculator
- 🔁Module 8Available
Interest-rate swaps (SOFR)
Fixed vs floating, the par swap rate, swap value and DV01 — the market's main rate-hedging tool.
🎛 Swap pricer
- 🎚️Module 9Available
Swaptions & the Greeks
Options on swaps, priced with Black's formula, plus delta, vega, gamma and theta.
🎛 Swaption pricer
- 😊Module 10Available
SABR & the vol smile
Why implied vol varies by strike, and how alpha, beta, rho and nu shape the smile/skew.
🎛 SABR smile
Risk, capital & counterparty
How a rates book is measured, margined and capitalized.
- 🎲Module 6Available
Portfolio risk (VaR)
Value-at-Risk, Expected Shortfall and diversification — how much a bond book could lose on a bad day.
🎛 VaR lab
- 🧮Module 13Available
Real-time P&L attribution
Split a desk's daily P&L into carry, rates, convexity and spread — and spot when the model is missing something.
🎛 Attribution waterfall
- 🚦Module 20Available
Backtesting & VaR limits
Validate a risk model: count VaR exceptions and read the Basel traffic light that drives the capital multiplier.
🎛 Backtest simulator
- 📡Module 14Available
Counterparty exposure & PFE
Simulate a swap's future value to get Expected Exposure and 95% Potential Future Exposure — the counterparty-risk hump.
🎛 Exposure simulator
- 💳Module 15Available
CVA
The price of counterparty default risk: expected exposure × default probability × loss given default.
🎛 CVA calculator
- 🧾Module 16Available
The XVA family
CVA, DVA, FVA, MVA and KVA — the adjustments that turn a clean price into the one you're really quoted.
🎛 XVA waterfall
- ⚖️Module 17Available
Initial margin & ISDA SIMM
How risk sensitivities, risk weights and correlations set the initial margin two banks must post.
🎛 SIMM calculator
- 🏛️Module 18Available
RWA & capital (SA-CCR)
Counterparty capital: exposure at default → risk-weighted assets → capital, the basis for KVA.
🎛 SA-CCR calculator
- 📐Module 19Available
FRTB & market-risk capital
The sensitivities method under three correlation scenarios, Expected Shortfall and non-modellable risk factors.
🎛 FRTB calculator
Credit
Every credit instrument is a different packaging of the same two questions: will they pay? And what will the market pay you for bearing that doubt? Two lenses apply to all of them — the slow default lens (probability × loss, cushions, break-evens) and the fast mark-to-market lens (CS01 × spread moves = daily P&L, even with zero defaults).
Cash credit
Lending money and bearing the risk of not getting it back — will they pay, and what does the market pay you for the doubt?
- 🏢Module 24Available
Corporate bonds: IG vs HY
The base case of all credit — investment grade vs high yield, spread ≈ default × loss, and where DV01 hands over to CS01 and JTD.
🎛 Spread decomposer
- 🔬Module 4Available
Credit spreads: Z-spread & CS01
Z-spread, spread DV01 (CS01), and carry & roll-down — the mechanics of getting paid for credit risk.
🎛 Spread explorer
- 🧾Module 25Available
Leveraged loans
Floating-rate senior-secured credit — no duration, all default-and-recovery risk. The collateral every CLO starts from.
🎛 Loan economics lab
- 🛡️Module 11Available
CDS & hazard rates
Default protection, hazard rates, survival probability and the fair CDS spread.
🎛 CDS pricer
- 🌐Module 29Available
Credit indices & tranches
CDX and iTraxx — the macro hedge of credit — plus index tranches, correlation risk and the CDS-cash basis.
🎛 Index tranche loss lab
Securitized credit
Pools of loans repackaged into bonds — mortgages, consumer credit and CLOs.
- 🏠Module 12Available
MBS, OAS & negative convexity
Prepayment, why gains cap as rates fall, and the option-adjusted spread that pays you for it.
🎛 MBS vs bond
- 🏬Module 26Available
CMBS & commercial mortgage credit
Prepayment locked out, so it's pure credit — DSCR, LTV, and the balloon refi at maturity (hello, office maturity wall).
🎛 DSCR / LTV / balloon lab
- 🚗Module 27Available
ABS: consumer & specialty credit
Autos, cards and esoteric collateral — delinquency roll-rates racing the deal's credit enhancement.
🎛 Roll-rate lab
- 🧱Module 5Available
Structured credit / CLOs
Tranching, the payment waterfall, coverage tests and subordination — how cash flows down (and losses up).
🎛 CLO waterfall simulator
Hybrids & the credit desk
Where credit meets equity, and how a real desk runs the book.
- 🔀Module 28Available
Convertible bonds
A bond floor plus an equity call — busted, balanced or equity-like — and the convert-arb trade that monetizes the optionality.
🎛 Convertible regimes lab
- ⚠️Module 23Available
Credit risk across instruments
PD, LGD, expected loss, CS01 and jump-to-default — how credit risk is computed for bonds, convertibles and credit derivatives.
🎛 Credit-risk calculator
- 🏛️Module 21Available
Credit desk: oversight, alpha & controls
How a multi-manager fund runs a credit book with CLOs: mandate limits, alpha-series analytics, audit controls and CLO risk.
🎛 Mandate, alpha & CLO labs
- 🤖Module 22Available
Machine learning: predicting bad trades
A transparent ML early-warning layer that scores each trade's probability of turning negative — trained live, fully explainable.
🎛 Trade risk radar
The cross-cutting risk map
One table to hold in your head: what dominates each instrument's risk, the metric that measures it, and its convexity story.
| Instrument | Dominant risk | Key metrics | Convexity story |
|---|---|---|---|
| IG corporate | Rates + spread | DV01, CS01, OAS | Mild (calls) |
| HY corporate | Spread + default | CS01, JTD | Negative (callable) |
| Leveraged loan | Default / recovery | CDR, recovery, DM | Capped upside (prepayable) |
| Agency MBS | Prepayment | OAS, eff. duration | Negative (refi option) |
| Non-agency RMBS | Prepay + credit | Severity, roll rates, OAS | Negative + credit |
| CMBS | Credit + balloon | DSCR, LTV | Positive (call-protected) |
| ABS | Consumer credit | Roll rates, enhancement | Short / amortizing |
| CLO debt | Spread + cushion | CS01, OC cushion, MVOC | Kinked at attach |
| CLO equity | Everything, levered | Excess spread, IRR, NAV | First-loss residual |
| Convertible | Equity vol + credit | Delta / gamma / vega, floor | Positive (long option) |
| CDS | Spread + JTD | CS01, JTD, basis | Linear-ish per name |
The hedging web that ties it together: loans and bonds hedge with CDS/CDX · MBS hedges with rates and swaptions · converts hedge with stock plus CDS · CLO tranches hedge with CDX HY — and everything aggregates in one risk engine.
New to fixed income? Start with Module 1
Price a real bond yourself — it's simpler than it sounds. Coming for credit? Jump straight to corporate bonds.
Educational analysis, not investment advice. Calculations validated against a reference pricing engine.