Everything we've published
Two kinds of thing live here. A check takes one investment claim and runs it against the real evidence, with every step shown. An explainer lays out how something actually works, so the next claim is easier to judge. Every card says which one it is — that difference is the whole promise, so we never hide it.
Explainer Published 3 September 2026
Gold as an inflation hedge
What inflation does to money in a drawer, what gold is as a thing you own, and why "gold moves with inflation" and "gold keeps your purchasing power" are two different claims — both backed by research that only seems to disagree.
Read the explainer →
Check Published 26 August 2026 · Updated 2 September 2026
"Dividend is safe income."
The steady cheque is real: in nearly eighty post-war years the aggregate dividend never fell by more than about a fifth. "Safe income" rests on three more things — and the biggest one, that the cash comes on top of your capital, is the one the data does not support.
Promised 4 · proven 1 · partly 2 — fairly sure
Read the check →
Explainer Published 19 August 2026 · Updated 20 August 2026
What "the market" actually is
What a share, an exchange and an index actually are — and why the index someone picks changes the answer to "did it beat the market?" more than the fund manager does.
Read the explainer →
Nothing under that filter — try Both.
What's coming
The queue, in the order it will appear — one piece a week, alternating. Titles only, because none of these exist yet: we publish when the work holds up, not when the calendar says so.
Check Up next
"Gold protects you from inflation."
Explainer Then
Fees, in euros instead of percentages
Check Then
"This fund pays a consistent monthly income."
Explainer Then
How to read a fund factsheet
What separates a check from an explainer
It's not length or effort, it's what the piece is allowed to claim.
- A check answers one specific claim — "this fund delivers consistent monthly income," "gold protects you from inflation" — and goes through the full machinery: two readers pulling the numbers out of the sources independently, a reconciliation of every difference, and three reviewers whose job is to find what's wrong before you do. It ends with a straight answer, the Proof Stack showing how much of the promise is actually covered, and how sure we are.
- An explainer maps the terrain instead: how inflation eats a return, what interest rates move, why time horizon matters. Sourced and checked, but it isn't adjudicating anyone's promise, so it carries no Proof Stack.
How a check works
The same three steps every time — the same ones on our why-we-exist page:
- Catch the claim. We write it down exactly as it was made — "this strategy returns 1% a day," "gold protects you from inflation," "this fund delivers consistent monthly income" — with no convenient rewording.
- Ask what would prove it. A real, auditable track record. Fees and slippage included. Out-of-sample. Risk-adjusted. All the results, not the highlight reel.
- Answer it in public. We publish what the evidence shows, whichever way it points — and when a claim actually holds up, we'll say so first.
And after that
Further down the queue, in no promised order:
- Fees, in euros instead of percentages — why a number that sounds small isn't.
- Track-record and backtest claims — and how easily a great backtest is faked by accident.
- "Beat the market" newsletters — checked the way the gurus were.
- How to read a fund factsheet, and survivorship bias with the funds that vanished.