Econ Major
Undergrad economics reading list shaped like a four-course sequence — Micro, Macro, Money & Banking, and an applied capstone. Mankiw-flavored, builds intuition before introducing markets.
Who it’s for: College students enrolled in or recently finished an economics undergrad; lifelong learners who want the academic-econ frame rather than the practitioner frame.
Start this track → — no account needed; the lessons are free.
Microeconomics for Investors
- Supply, Demand & Market Prices — How supply and demand set stock prices: why prices move on buyer eagerness rather than headcounts, what volume reveals, and reading elasticity from a price hike.
- Elasticity: Why Some Companies Have Pricing Power — Price elasticity and pricing power: why inelastic demand lets a company raise prices and grow revenue, with streaming, airline, and luxury-watch cases worked.
- Opportunity Cost: The Hidden Price of Every Investment — Opportunity cost in investing: the return on the best alternative forgone, the net shortfall versus your benchmark, and comparing total return to total return.
- Costs of Production: Reading a Company's Margin Structure — Fixed versus variable costs and operating leverage: why high fixed costs make software margins soar with volume, and why gross margin sets a quality ceiling.
- Perfect Competition: Why Commodity Businesses Struggle — Why commodity businesses struggle: perfect competition competes profits away, and why a 4x P/E on a cyclical producer often marks the cycle peak, not a bargain.
- Monopoly Power: The Economics Behind Competitive Moats — The five sources of a competitive moat -- network effects, switching costs, cost advantages, intangibles, efficient scale -- and why regulators become the risk.
- Monopolistic Competition: Brand Value and Differentiation — Monopolistic competition explained: how brand differentiation earns pricing power between commodity and monopoly, and why a brand premium widens gross margin.
- Time Value of Money: Why a Dollar Today Beats a Dollar Later — The present-value formula behind every valuation: why $1,000 arriving in ten years is worth about $463 today at an 8% discount rate, and how DCF builds on it.
- Externalities: ESG Risks and Regulatory Costs — Externalities as investment risk: how unpriced harms become sudden regulatory costs, and why ESG analysis matters even for non-ethical investors.
- From Economics to Stock Analysis — Five economic questions to ask about any company -- pricing power, cost structure, industry attractiveness, moat, regulation -- and where to check each one.
Macroeconomics for Investors
- Inflation: What It Is and Why It Matters — How inflation erodes real returns: CPI versus PCE, why the Fed targets 2% and watches core PCE, and computing real return by subtracting inflation from yield.
- The Fed and Interest Rates: How Policy Moves Markets — How Fed rate moves ripple through markets: the transmission from fed funds to Treasury yields, mortgages, and stock valuations, plus winners in each regime.
- The Yield Curve, in Plain English — Reading the Treasury yield curve: what 2-year and 10-year yields signal, why inversion precedes recessions, and the 6-24 month lag that makes it a signal.
- GDP: What the Economy Actually Produces — GDP explained through its formula: C + I + G plus net exports, real versus nominal growth, the GDP deflator, and why inventory-driven quarters tend to reverse.
- The Business Cycle: Timing the Economic Seasons — The four business-cycle phases -- expansion, peak, contraction, trough -- which sectors fit each, and why leading indicators warn before employment breaks.
- Fiscal Policy: Government Spending, Taxes, and Deficits — How government spending and taxes move markets: stimulus versus austerity, why stimulus at full employment fuels inflation, and the tug-of-war with the Fed.
- The Fed’s Advanced Toolkit: QE, QT, and Forward Guidance — The Fed's unconventional toolkit: how QE injects liquidity and QT drains it, why forward guidance moves markets before any action, and what balance-sheet size signals.
- Trade, Exchange Rates, and the Dollar — How dollar strength hits earnings: currency translation risk for multinationals, who wins from a strong or weak dollar, and why FX is the hidden variable abroad.
- Financial Crises: How Economies Break Down — The five phases of a financial crisis, from credit boom to panic and policy response, and why widening credit spreads warn earlier than the stock market does.