Credit Pro
Institutional credit-analyst training: 5 Cs, leverage and coverage metrics, covenant taxonomy, recovery analysis, capital structure, distressed debt, BDC and private-credit fluency, and the 10-K reading muscle that anchors all of it.
Who it’s for: Working credit analysts, leveraged-finance associates, distressed-debt PMs, BDC portfolio managers, and the analysts who cover them.
Start this track → — no account needed; the lessons are free.
Reading SEC Filings: A Field Guide
- The 10-K: A Field Guide to the Annual Report — How to read a 10-K as a year-over-year diff: Risk Factors, MD&A, critical accounting policies, and why the audited footnotes outrank the narrative sections.
- Reading 13D, 13G, and Form 4: Ownership and Insider Filings — 13D vs 13G vs Form 4, decoded: who files each, on what deadline, and how to track activist stakes and insider trades straight from the filings.
Understanding Bonds and Fixed Income
- Capital Structure: Who Gets Paid First? — The capital-structure priority ladder from secured debt to equity, typical recovery rates by seniority, and who actually gets paid in a Chapter 7 liquidation.
- What Is a Bond? — What is a bond? A bond is a loan to a company or government that pays you fixed interest (the coupon) and returns your principal at maturity. Explained simply.
- Price vs Yield: The Seesaw Relationship — Why bond prices and yields always move in opposite directions, how a 5% bond reprices as rates change, and the yield-to-maturity approximation formula.
- Duration: Measuring Interest Rate Risk — What bond duration measures, how to estimate a price change from a one-point rate move, and why 30-year Treasuries swing far more than 2-year notes.
- SOFR: The Rate That Replaced LIBOR — What SOFR is, why it replaced LIBOR after the rate-fixing scandal, how floating-rate loans price at SOFR plus a spread, and overnight versus Term SOFR.
- Credit Spreads: Pricing Default Risk — What a credit spread is, typical spreads by rating, and why widening spreads are a leading indicator of stress -- your pay for taking default risk.
Credit Analysis Fundamentals
- The Five Cs of Credit Analysis — The five Cs credit analysts weigh -- character, capacity, capital, collateral, conditions -- and why lending's capped upside makes the analysis asymmetric.
- Key Credit Metrics: Leverage, Coverage, and Liquidity — Leverage, coverage, and liquidity metrics with strong-to-danger thresholds, why trajectory beats the snapshot, and five hidden items that understate debt.
- Credit Deterioration: The Warning Signs — The warning signs before default, ranked by severity -- why a revolver draw paired with a dividend cut is the worst pair, and what non-accrual status means.
- Altman Z-Score: Quantifying Bankruptcy Risk — The five ratios inside the Altman Z-Score, how the safe, grey, and distress zones are read, and why the EBIT-to-assets term carries the heaviest weight.
- Covenant Taxonomy: Reading an Indenture by Purpose — The four covenant families and the specific risk each defends against, incurrence versus maintenance tests, and how to read an indenture in twenty minutes.
- Recovery Analysis: What Do You Get If They Default? — How recovery varies by seniority, liquidation versus restructuring outcomes, and the expected-loss math: default probability times loss given default.
Advanced Fixed Income
- Convexity: When Duration Is Not Enough — What convexity adds to duration, why the curved price-yield relationship pays in both rate directions, and why mortgage-backed securities carry it negative.
- Structured Credit: CLOs, MBS, and ABS — How tranching turns loan pools into CLOs, MBS, and ABS, why a CLO AAA out-yields a corporate AAA on complexity premium, and how correlated defaults broke the 2008 models.
- Distressed Debt Investing — Buying bonds at 30-60 cents on the dollar: recovery value versus purchase price, the priority waterfall, and why the analysis is as much legal as financial.
Derivatives Beyond Options
- Credit Default Swaps: Insurance on Bonds — How a credit default swap insures a bond against default, why CDS spreads read like real-time credit ratings, and why widening spreads often lead downgrades by months.
BDC Investing -- Public Access to Private Credit
- What is a Business Development Company? — What a business development company is: a public fund lending to mid-sized private firms, why the 90% payout rule drives high yields, and how those dividends are taxed.
- Reading a BDC's Schedule of Investments — How to read a BDC schedule of investments: what par minus fair value says about expected losses, where a loan sits in the capital stack, and what a unitranche really is.
- Yield Decomposition -- Is the Dividend Safe? — Is a BDC dividend safe? Split the yield into its three sources, check NII coverage against the payout, and learn why PIK income inside the yield is a warning sign.
- Non-Accruals -- The #1 Credit Metric — Non-accruals are the #1 BDC credit metric: what non-accrual status means, the normal/warning/crisis benchmarks, and why the rate of change matters more than the level.
- Leverage and Regulatory Limits — How the 1940 Act caps BDC leverage, what the 2018 change to 150% asset coverage allowed, and how debt magnifies both yield and NAV losses when credit turns.
Restructuring & Distressed Investing
- Beyond the Z-Score: Multi-Signal Distress Detection — Why one distress metric misses: layering EBITDA decline, rising leverage, and CDS widening -- and why markets lead rating agencies by six to twelve months.
- Chapter 11 Mechanics for Investors — How Chapter 11 works for investors: the automatic stay, plan confirmation, and the two windows -- filing panic and plan negotiation -- where money is made.