Counterpoint Global Insights (Consilient Observer)

Michael Mauboussin has spent decades turning the corporate finance taught in business school into tools practitioners can use, and his papers with Dan Callahan at Morgan Stanley's Counterpoint Global are the current home of that work. Each paper takes one question, such as how to calculate return on invested capital, how to measure a moat, how companies allocate capital or who is on the other side of a trade, and works through it with definitions, worked examples, base rates from large datasets and an extensive bibliography.

What sets them apart is rigor without jargon. The ROIC paper walks through Microsoft's numbers step by step and covers how to treat intangible investment. Measuring the Moat (104 pages) is a full framework for industry analysis and competitive advantage. Capital Allocation (88 pages) reviews the empirical record on M&A, buybacks, dividends and capex. Others cover probability, base rates, drawdowns and valuation multiples.

Read them as a course: ROIC first, then Measuring the Moat, then Capital Allocation. Keep the PDFs as references, and use the bibliographies to go further.