Independent student research — not an investment firm or financial advice
Prospective student contributor program
AEA Fellows is the framework for eventually opening this site to other students—to build models, investigate companies, cover market news, write newsletters, publish opinions, and explain finance without hiding behind finance vocabulary.
The honest status: this is the program design, not a claim that a cohort already exists. I have not selected fellows or opened applications yet. I am publishing the standards first so the opportunity has a real shape before it has a roster.
Why build this
AEA started as a way for me to make my own decisions visible. The next version should add something I cannot create alone: disagreement before publication, specialties beyond my own, and work useful to readers who do not arrive speaking markets.
The goal is not to imitate a bank or pretend students are already professionals. It is to practice professional habits early—clear questions, defensible sources, honest uncertainty, respectful debate, and revisions that remain on the record.
September build · pilot kit 01
Not hypothetical desk names: each brief has a bounded question, a source floor, a finished deliverable, and a review test. They are published now so the program can be judged before applications open.
Choose one covered company. Reconcile the latest 10-Q with the prior quarter and identify the one operating change the headline misses.
Build a compact revenue-to-free-cash-flow bridge with base, bear, and bull cases. Every hardcoded input must carry a note or source.
Explain a term a first-time investor meets on this site—without assuming they already know the vocabulary used to define it.
Seven publishing desks
A fellow would choose a lane, own a specific deliverable, and work with an editor or peer challenger before it reaches the site.
Initiating-coverage notes, position memos, industry maps, thesis updates, and competing cases grounded in filings and direct sources.
Open an actual example →Income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow forecasts connected by clear assumptions, with DCF, multiples, and scenarios where they actually help.
Open an actual model →Same-day news briefs and earnings reactions that separate what happened, why it matters, and what remains unknown.
Open an actual example →Evidence-led arguments on businesses, policy, technology, ethics, or markets—with the strongest counterargument included, not buried.
Open an actual example →Weekly and monthly writing that connects the individual stories, decisions, and lessons without turning every market move into a grand theory.
Open an actual example →Screeners, calculators, datasets, visualizations, and methodology notes that let a reader test a claim instead of simply trusting it.
Open an actual example →Plain-language guides on banking, credit, borrowing, saving, investing, and halal finance—built around questions people actually ask.
Open an actual example →The publication route
State the question, why it matters, and what evidence could change the answer.
Build from filings, data, direct documents, and clearly labeled secondary reporting.
Draft the article or model with assumptions and missing information visible.
Give a peer the job of finding the weak link, not just fixing commas.
Add a byline, date, sources, disclosures, and the limits of the conclusion.
Update the record when facts change. The original reasoning does not disappear.
Editorial standard
A polished conclusion is not enough. The work has to show how it got there and where it could be wrong.
Read the full Research Standards →Source before story. Link the evidence and distinguish reported fact from interpretation.
Countercase before confidence. Address the strongest serious objection.
Assumptions in daylight. Models show inputs, scenarios, and what drives the result.
Disclose tools and interests. Holdings, conflicts, data limits, and meaningful AI assistance belong beside the work.
Revision without erasure. Corrections are dated and the reason for the change stays visible.
No stock-pick theater. AEA Fellows would publish educational research, never solicit clients, capital, or trades.
Anatomy of a byline
Every standard on this page has to show up somewhere concrete, or it is decoration. This is where each one lands on the finished page.
A student piece competing for attention against professional research cannot win on speed or access. It can win on being fully auditable — every claim traceable, every weakness already named by the author rather than found by the reader.
A reader who disagrees can go to the same filing and see where the reasoning diverged. That is the whole point.
If the assumptions were visible and the countercase was fair, a wrong conclusion is a useful record rather than an embarrassment to delete.
Sourcing, disclosure and revision are the parts of professional research practice a student can genuinely practise now, without a desk or a data terminal.
Named bylines only work if the standard behind them is explicit. The structure is what makes putting your name on it a reasonable thing to do.
Where this actually is
Published so the status is checkable rather than implied. If a phase has not happened, it says so.
Desks, workflow, editorial standard, and credit terms written down in public before any student is asked to work under them.
CompleteRun the six gates against pieces already published here, to find where the process is slower or vaguer than it looks on paper.
In progressThe first three bounded assignment briefs, source floors, review tests, and byline requirements are now published in the September pilot kit.
In progressOnly once a contributor can be given real editorial support, a real countercase reviewer, and a piece worth their name.
Not startedThere is no waitlist, no interest form, and no date attached to Phase 04 — committing to one now would be inventing certainty I do not have. The honest version is that this opens when the support behind it is real, and this page will say so on the day it changes.
Before you ask
Answered as they stand today, while the program is still a framework rather than a cohort.
No. Several of the desks — community explainers, data and methods, perspective writing — are better served by someone who arrived from outside finance and still remembers which parts were confusing. What is not optional is being willing to source a claim and revise it when the evidence pushes back.
No, and I would rather say that plainly than describe it as an “opportunity.” AEA generates no revenue, solicits no capital, and has no budget. What it can offer is a named byline on work that is genuinely yours, editing that takes the work seriously, and a published record you can point to.
Honestly, I do not know yet, and that is one of the things Phase 02 exists to find out. My own filing-level pieces take several hours of reading before a word is written. Committing to a number before testing the workflow would be a guess dressed up as a policy.
I do, and that is a real limitation worth naming. I would remain responsible for the site’s publishing standard and final editorial decisions. A contributor’s conclusion would not need to match mine — disagreement published side by side is more useful than consensus — but it would need to clear the same sourcing and countercase standard.
It stays up, with a dated correction and the original reasoning intact. Nothing gets quietly deleted. That rule exists to protect contributors as much as readers — if being wrong meant erasure, nobody would take a real position in the first place.
Neither. Fellows would publish educational research under their own names. No client money, no solicitation, no trades placed on anyone’s behalf, no representation that any contributor is an adviser. The Research Standards and Disclosures pages set out the boundary.
Yes, with disclosure. The standard is the same one applied to any other tool or source: if it materially shaped the analysis, it belongs beside the work. What is not acceptable is publishing a number or a quotation neither you nor anyone else has verified against the primary document.
Nothing performative. Pick a question you would still want to answer after the first convenient answer falls apart, and write it up the way the anatomy section describes. A single finished piece of real reasoning is worth more here than a résumé.
Credit & ownership
Each contributor would receive a named byline and retain credit for the thinking, writing, and model they produced. Editing should sharpen an author’s voice, not sand it into AEA house language. I would remain responsible for the site’s publishing standard and final editorial decisions.
Applications are not open yet. The next step is to test the workflow, prepare contributor templates, and decide how the first students can be supported well enough to make the experience worth joining.
See the kind of work Fellows would build on →