Learning Finance

A structured journey through finance, economics, and financial mathematics — built by an engineer who loves markets.

Two tracks are fully readable now. Everything else is in progress.

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Vertical Entry Points

Opinionated reading paths for specific topics — start here if you have a concrete question rather than wanting to read the whole curriculum.

• Understanding Pump.fun — from zero to understanding the full business in ~10 articles

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Track A — Market Microstructure ✓

Start here if you want to formalise what you absorbed at Goldman. No prerequisites. Read in order.

1. The Fundamental Problem of Trading
2. Order Books and Trading Venues
3. Spread Decomposition
4. Glosten-Milgrom: Adverse Selection
5. Ho-Stoll: Inventory Risk
6. Kyle’s Lambda: Price Impact

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Track B — DeFi and MEV ✓

The on-chain frontier — same microstructure intuitions, different mechanics. Can be read in parallel with Track A or after it.

DeFi Markets

1. Stablecoins: The Reserve Problem
2. Stablecoin Economics: The Best Business Nobody Talks About
3. DEX Design Constraints
4. Constant-Product AMM
5. Impermanent Loss
6. LP Profitability
7. Bonding Curves
8. PumpSwap
9. On-Chain Data Infrastructure

MEV

1. MEV Fundamentals
2. Sandwich Attacks
3. Protection Strategies

Case Study

• The pump.fun Economy

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Track C — Mathematical Foundations (in progress)

The formal probability and stochastic calculus that underpins pricing theory. Required before derivatives pricing and term structure models.

Probability Theory — read in order

1. Sample Spaces and σ-Algebras ✓
2. Probability Measures and Axioms (draft)
3. Random Variables and Distributions (draft)
4. Joint Distributions and Independence (draft)
5. Expectation, Variance, and MGFs (draft)
6. Conditional Expectation (draft)
7. Law of Large Numbers and CLT (draft)

Statistics — not yet written

Stochastic Processes — not yet written

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Modules Coming Next (stubs only)

These topics have outlines but no articles yet. Track C is the prerequisite for all of them.

Module	Topic	Requires
1	Fixed Income	Track C
2	Derivatives Pricing	Track C
4	Credit Risk	Track C
4	Structured Products	Module 4
4	Debt Capital Markets	Module 4
5	Portfolio Theory	Track C
7	Macroeconomics	independent

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Full Curriculum

See curriculum for the complete module map, dependency graph, and MIT OCW course links.