How markets actually work

This course explains how markets actually work at the mechanical level: order books, spreads, adverse selection, settlement plumbing, and how the major trading firms make money. The course is complete at forty-three lessons — M0 — How markets actually work (eight), M1 — Market microstructure (seven), M2 — Quantitative finance fundamentals (seven), M3 — Statistics of returns (seven), M4 — Macro & rates (six), M5 — The industry & the firms (five) and M6 — Reading the news (three). M6 is a standing habit rather than a body of knowledge, so its three lessons set up a practice to continue indefinitely rather than something to finish. M0 favours intuition first, then names a canonical source for optional depth; the later modules derive their central results — Glosten–Milgrom’s spread, Kyle’s λ, Black–Scholes by replication, the delta-hedged volatility P&L — rather than only describing them, and M3 works throughout from real S&P 500 data rather than illustration. Every lesson ends with a “pub test” — can you explain the idea clearly to a stranger?