All chapters

569 minutes, from the first euro invested to the crises that made history.

Chapter 1
Compound interest
Why 100 becomes 1,497
3 min
Chapter 2
Inflation
Why sleeping money loses
3 min
Chapter 3
Risk and return
You cannot have one without the other
4 min
Chapter 4
Diversification
Why you never put it all in one place
3 min
Chapter 5
Fees
1% a year, and a quarter is missing at the end
3 min
Chapter 6
A share, really
What you buy when you buy a share
4 min
Chapter 7
Tulip mania
When a flower was worth a house
4 min
Chapter 8
Autumn 2008
The crisis, explained without jargon
5 min
Chapter 9
Where it actually goes
The spending you never decided on
3 min
Chapter 10
The simple rules
The one that holds in a bad month
4 min
Chapter 11
The accounts
Four containers, four different questions
4 min
Chapter 12
The forms of debt
The most ordinary one is the dearest
4 min
Chapter 13
The real cost
The advertised rate compares nothing
4 min
Chapter 14
Getting out
The real choice is not the one you think
4 min
Chapter 15
When it goes wrong
The procedure exists, and it protects you
4 min
Chapter 16
Placing an order
The quoted price is only the first few shares
4 min
Chapter 17
The standing order
The same amount each month buys below the average
4 min
Chapter 18
The first mistakes
The four errors that look like caution
4 min
Chapter 19
Insurance: the principle
You lose on average, and you are right to buy
4 min
Chapter 20
What to insure
Three cases that ruin you, one you weigh up
4 min
Chapter 21
What not to insure
Four products, and the sum that rules them out
4 min
Chapter 22
Loan insurance
The contract you never chose, and the one you can change
4 min
Chapter 23
Your salary
Ten minutes of negotiation against thirty years
4 min
Chapter 24
The emergency fund
Three months ahead of you, and why
3 min
Chapter 25
Where to start
Your first euro, concretely
4 min
Chapter 26
Tax wrappers in France
The same investment, three different tax bills
3 min
Chapter 27
Tax wrappers elsewhere
The same idea everywhere, under other names
3 min
Chapter 28
What wrappers change
Four rules to read before you open one
3 min
Chapter 29
The wrapper trap
A good box does not save bad contents
3 min
Chapter 30
Tax on what you own
You pay when you cash in, not before
3 min
Chapter 31
Income tax
Brackets, not a single rate
3 min
Chapter 32
Adjusting legally
Pay what you owe, no more
3 min
Chapter 33
The red line
Optimising, avoiding, evading
3 min
Chapter 34
Pension systems
Who pays whose pension
3 min
Chapter 35
What to aim for
How much do you really need?
3 min
Chapter 36
The retirement calendar
Early for time, late for caution
3 min
Chapter 37
Drawing down
Turning capital into income
3 min
Chapter 38
Other sources of income
Beyond the salary
3 min
Chapter 39
The passive income myth
Money that falls while you sleep?
3 min
Chapter 40
Diversifying your income
Not betting everything on one employer
3 min
Chapter 41
Your inner relationship with money
What you learned without knowing it
3 min
Chapter 42
Money and other people
Sharing without losing yourself
3 min
Chapter 43
Enough
Knowing when you have won
3 min
Chapter 44
Deciding badly
Four states that cost a lot
3 min
Chapter 45
Bonds
Lending, and everything that comes with it
3 min
Chapter 46
Derivatives
Contracts whose price comes from elsewhere
3 min
Chapter 47
Market wrappers
What is really in the box
3 min
Chapter 48
Indices
A single number for a whole market
3 min
Chapter 49
How an index is built
The hidden rules behind the number
3 min
Chapter 50
Joining and leaving an index
Those who decide, and those who are forgotten
3 min
Chapter 51
What indices hide
An average number, very different realities
3 min
Chapter 52
The order book
What lies behind a displayed price
3 min
Chapter 53
The race for speed
When a microsecond is worth gold
3 min
Chapter 54
Where securities trade
The stock exchange is only one of the places
3 min
Chapter 55
Settlement and delivery
What happens after the click
3 min
Chapter 56
Oil
The price that shakes the world
3 min
Chapter 57
Gold
The safe haven that earns nothing
3 min
Chapter 58
Metals and harvests
The materials that tell the world's story
3 min
Chapter 59
How contracts work
The hidden cost of time
3 min
Chapter 60
What sets the price
The monthly payment, the land, households, the address
3 min
Chapter 61
Property bubbles
Four countries, the same script
3 min
Chapter 62
Property vehicles
Shares, a loan, securities, a right
3 min
Chapter 63
Leverage at home
Deposit, rate, repossession, total cost
3 min
Chapter 64
The exchange rate
The price of one currency in another
3 min
Chapter 65
Currency exposure, or not
Hedging, what it costs, and when it matters
3 min
Chapter 66
Emerging markets
A premium, paid for uncertainty
3 min
Chapter 67
Exchange rate regimes
Who decides the price of a currency
3 min
Chapter 68
The LBO
Buying a company with its own debt
3 min
Chapter 69
Venture capital
One success pays for all the failures
3 min
Chapter 70
How funds are structured
The one who manages, those who pay
3 min
Chapter 71
Criticisms of private markets
The price, the exit, the fees, the debt
3 min
Chapter 72
Measuring risk
Five numbers, none enough
3 min
Chapter 73
Fat tails
When the impossible happens often
3 min
Chapter 74
The risks we forget
The ones that do not show in the curve
3 min
Chapter 75
Leverage
Multiplying the gain, and the ruin
3 min
Chapter 76
First-order Greeks
Five letters to read an option
3 min
Chapter 77
Second-order Greeks
When the letters themselves move
3 min
Chapter 78
The performance letters
Judging a manager, not a number
3 min
Chapter 79
The ratios that judge them
A gain divided by a risk
3 min
Chapter 80
Perception biases
When the brain sees crooked
3 min
Chapter 81
Action biases
When we act crooked
3 min
Chapter 82
Mental accounts
A euro is not always a euro
3 min
Chapter 83
Crowds
When everyone follows everyone
3 min
Chapter 84
The founders
Those who made economics human
3 min
Chapter 85
The foundations
Chance, efficiency, and their limits
3 min
Chapter 86
The portfolio
When diversification becomes a calculation
3 min
Chapter 87
Options
A formula that is wrong, and indispensable
3 min
Chapter 88
The dissenters
Four voices against the bell curve
3 min
Chapter 89
Investment styles
Five families, five logics
3 min
Chapter 90
Long, short and neutral
Earning other than by following the market
3 min
Chapter 91
The mechanics
Gaining a little, often, and the question of the day it all breaks
3 min
Chapter 92
Active versus passive
The one debate the numbers settle
3 min
Chapter 93
Valuing by cash flows
What it will bring in, brought back to today
3 min
Chapter 94
Valuing by multiples
How much are you paying, compared with what?
3 min
Chapter 95
Long-term markers
Knowing where you start from
3 min
Chapter 96
The hard cases
Valuing a promise, a pebble, a unicorn
3 min
Chapter 97
Reading prices
What charts say, and what they leave out
3 min
Chapter 98
Quantitative finance
Looking for a whisper in a stadium
3 min
Chapter 99
The quant houses
Mathematicians rather than financiers
3 min
Chapter 100
Machine learning
Where the machine shines, and where it disappoints
3 min
Chapter 101
Twentieth-century bubbles
This time is different. Really?
3 min
Chapter 102
Twenty-first-century bubbles
Four new objects, one single story
3 min
Chapter 103
Anatomy of a bubble
Five acts, always in the same order
3 min
Chapter 104
Black days
The worst day does not tell what comes next
3 min
Chapter 105
Machine accidents
When the program does exactly what it was told
3 min
Chapter 106
The mechanics of a crash
Selling because you must, not because you want to
3 min
Chapter 107
Hyperinflations
When money melts in your hand
3 min
Chapter 108
Monetary regimes
What is a currency anchored to?
3 min
Chapter 109
Speculative attacks
When people bet against a promise
3 min
Chapter 110
The forms of money
Who promises, and what guarantees it?
3 min
Chapter 111
Pyramids
Paying the old with the new people's money
3 min
Chapter 112
Cooked books
A photo can be retouched
3 min
Chapter 113
Rogue traders
Doubling down to win it back
3 min
Chapter 114
Manipulation
When people cheat on the price itself
3 min
Chapter 115
Crypto frauds
A promise you cannot check
3 min
Chapter 116
The promise
Four words that should make you run
3 min
Chapter 117
The shapes of a scam
Four disguises, one mechanism
3 min
Chapter 118
Crypto scams
New tools for very old tricks
3 min
Chapter 119
Miracle courses
When the product is you
3 min
Chapter 120
The four reflexes
Two minutes worth all your savings
3 min
Chapter 121
Before money
In the beginning was debt
3 min
Chapter 122
The forms of money
From shells to banknotes
3 min
Chapter 123
The great inventions
How money stopped travelling
3 min
Chapter 124
Invisible money
From the card to the code
3 min
Chapter 125
The central bank's tools
Five levers on the price of money
3 min
Chapter 126
The yield curve
The price of time, on a single chart
3 min
Chapter 127
The faces of central banks
Four men, four crises
3 min
Chapter 128
The limits of central banks
When the lever stops responding
3 min
Chapter 129
How a bank works
Borrow short, lend long, and create money
3 min
Chapter 130
Bank runs
When everyone rushes to the counter
3 min
Chapter 131
The rules
How many losses a bank can absorb
3 min
Chapter 132
Credit
The price of doubt
3 min
Chapter 133
Who keeps watch
The money police
3 min
Chapter 134
The documents
What you must be told, and what nobody reads
3 min
Chapter 135
The selling rules
Who advises you, and who pays them
3 min
Chapter 136
What is protected, and what is not
The guarantees, and their borders
3 min
Chapter 137
The first banks
When finance learned to talk to kings
3 min
Chapter 138
Government debt
Borrow, do not repay, start again
3 min
Chapter 139
Financial weapons
When money becomes a weapon
3 min
Chapter 140
Opacity
Owning without appearing
3 min
Chapter 141
The numbers
What the big indicators really measure
3 min
Chapter 142
Cycles
Rise, overheat, fall, restart
3 min
Chapter 143
The state
Deficit, debt, and what they cost you
3 min
Chapter 144
What it changes for you
Rates, savings, jobs, prices: macro at home
3 min
Chapter 145
The three statements
Reading a company like an accountant
3 min
Chapter 146
What you read first
Four numbers before all the others
3 min
Chapter 147
The warning signs
What flashes before the bad news
3 min
Chapter 148
Words that hide
When vocabulary dresses up the accounts
3 min
Chapter 149
Measuring inequality
A single number is never enough
3 min
Chapter 150
The engines of inequality
Why gaps widen on their own
3 min
Chapter 151
Social mobility
The lift, and what blocks it
3 min
Chapter 152
The big debates
Four ideas to narrow the gaps
3 min
Chapter 153
Investing differently
Four ways to put your values into your money
3 min
Chapter 154
Green labels
ESG, taxonomy, and the art of painting things green
3 min
Chapter 155
Climate risk
When climate enters the accounts
3 min
Chapter 156
The saver's power
What your money can really change
3 min
Chapter 157
The border
Investing, speculating, gambling, hedging
3 min
Chapter 158
The forms
The same bet, in different clothes
3 min
Chapter 159
The rare-win bias
Why the very unlikely attracts us
3 min
Chapter 160
Addiction
When the screen plays with you
3 min
Chapter 161
On the market side
Four jobs, four ways of getting paid
3 min
Chapter 162
On the company side
The finance people who work from the inside
3 min
Chapter 163
On the client side
Who advises you, and who pays them
3 min
Chapter 164
In the shadows
Those who say no, count and check
3 min
Chapter 165
Ageing
Who will pay for pensions?
3 min
Chapter 166
Public debt
What makes it bearable, or not
3 min
Chapter 167
Money
Who will make tomorrow's money?
3 min
Chapter 168
Climate and AI
Two transformations, a lot of uncertainty
3 min

All chapters

Compound interest

Inflation

Risk and return

Diversification

Fees

A share, really

Tulip mania

Autumn 2008

Where it actually goes

The simple rules

The accounts

The forms of debt

The real cost

Getting out

When it goes wrong

Placing an order

The standing order

The first mistakes

Insurance: the principle

What to insure

What not to insure

Loan insurance

Your salary

The emergency fund

Where to start

Tax wrappers in France

Tax wrappers elsewhere

What wrappers change

The wrapper trap

Tax on what you own

Income tax

Adjusting legally

The red line

Pension systems

What to aim for

The retirement calendar

Drawing down

Other sources of income

The passive income myth

Diversifying your income

Your inner relationship with money

Money and other people

Enough

Deciding badly

Bonds

Derivatives

Market wrappers

Indices

How an index is built

Joining and leaving an index

What indices hide

The order book

The race for speed

Where securities trade

Settlement and delivery

Oil

Gold

Metals and harvests

How contracts work

What sets the price

Property bubbles

Property vehicles

Leverage at home

The exchange rate

Currency exposure, or not

Emerging markets

Exchange rate regimes

The LBO

Venture capital

How funds are structured

Criticisms of private markets

Measuring risk

Fat tails

The risks we forget

Leverage

First-order Greeks

Second-order Greeks

The performance letters

The ratios that judge them