First Real Portfolio (30-Day Minimum Hold)
10 weeks · 3 milestones
Build a personal investment framework and deploy a real portfolio.
Milestone map
Milestone map
3 milestones
Before investing real money, you must be able to read what you are buying. This milestone covers the foundations: reading the three core financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement), understanding at least three valuation ratios (P/E, P/B, EV/EBITDA or similar), and applying those ratios to a real publicly traded company. The output is a one-page financial summary of a company of your choice — not a buy recommendation, just a factual summary of what the numbers say. The purpose is to establish that you can read financial statements before you make an investment decision on them.
Proof required
Submit a one-page financial summary of a real publicly traded company. The summary must include: the company name and stock ticker, a summary of its most recent income statement (revenue, gross profit, operating income, net income), key balance sheet metrics (total assets, total liabilities, equity), free cash flow from the most recent cash flow statement, and at least three valuation ratios calculated from those numbers with the formulas shown. The source of the financial data must be named.
What gets checked
- The financial data is drawn from the company's actual filed accounts (annual report, 10-K, or equivalent), not from a pre-computed data aggregator where ratios appear without formulas — the submitter must show the calculation, not just the number
- All three financial statements are represented in the summary — income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement; a summary that covers only one or two statements has not completed this milestone
- At least three valuation ratios are calculated and shown with the formula used — for example: P/E = Market Cap / Net Income = $50B / $2B = 25x; showing only the ratio number without the calculation does not demonstrate that the submitter can perform the calculation independently