Disclaimers

Research and information only

All content on this site is published for general information and research purposes only. It is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, accounting advice or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation, endorsement or solicitation to buy, sell or hold any security, fund, property, loan, insurance product, business or other asset.

Nothing here is tailored to the objectives, financial situation, risk tolerance, tax position or needs of any particular person. General information cannot be, because it does not know who is reading it.

No advisory or fiduciary relationship

We are not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, bank, credit union, insurance producer, commodity trading adviser, certified public accountant or law firm, and we are not registered with or supervised by the Securities and Exchange Commission, FINRA, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, any state securities regulator, any state insurance department or any banking regulator.

Using this site, subscribing to the digest, submitting the contact form or corresponding with us creates no advisory, fiduciary, brokerage, attorney-client, accountant-client or agency relationship of any kind. No duty of care in respect of your investments arises from anything published here.

No offer or solicitation

Nothing on this site is an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security or interest in any investment, in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be unlawful. Securities described here may not be available, registered or lawful to purchase in your jurisdiction or through your account type.

Content is written from a United States perspective and assumes United States tax and regulatory treatment unless a page says otherwise. Readers outside the United States should expect different rules on almost every point.

Third-party data may be delayed, incomplete or wrong

Market data, rates, dividend histories, fundamentals and calendars are obtained from third-party providers named on Data Sources. They are provided "as is", may be delayed, may contain errors or omissions, may be revised by the original producer, and may be interrupted.

Prices on this site are delayed and are not trading quotes. Deposit rates are national averages across institutions, not offers from any bank. Index yields describe an index of many bonds, not a bond you can purchase. Curve-derived indications for bonds are orientation, not executable prices. Verify any figure with the issuer, institution, fund sponsor or your own broker before acting on it.

Neither we nor any data provider or original producer accepts liability for errors, omissions, delays or interruptions in the data, or for any action taken in reliance on it. No data provider endorses this site or has reviewed its content.

Forward-looking statements

Some content describes what could happen: what an income stream might pay, how a structure behaves in a rising-rate environment, what typically happens to a distribution when coverage deteriorates. These are descriptions of mechanics and possibilities, not predictions, and they carry no assurance.

A forward dividend estimate on this site is arithmetic — the last regular payment multiplied by the payment frequency — and not a forecast. Any board can cut, suspend, defer or skip a distribution at any time, and companies routinely do. Past payments, past growth streaks and past yields do not indicate future results.

Calculators and illustrations

The calculators and any worked example on the site are hypothetical illustrations computed from inputs supplied by the reader. Outputs are arithmetic, not projections, and they are not personal to anyone.

Unless a calculator states otherwise, illustrations exclude taxes, transaction costs, fund expenses, advisory fees, spreads, early-withdrawal penalties, inflation, currency movements, default and the order in which returns actually arrive. Real outcomes differ from arithmetic outcomes for all of those reasons.

The income score is a screen

The income score is a 0 to 100 research screen computed from yield, payout ratio, growth streak and payment longevity, as described on Methodology. It is not a rating, is not issued by a rating agency, is not comparable to a credit rating, measures no credit or market risk, and is not a recommendation.

The same applies to every ranked or sorted table on the site. A table ordered by a number is a screen, and the position of a security in it carries no opinion about whether anyone should own it.

AI-generated content

Written reference pages on this site are drafted with the assistance of a large language model from human-authored outlines and reviewed before publication, as described on Editorial Policy. Live figures are never model-generated.

Language models make mistakes, including confident ones. Despite the review process, written content may contain errors, omissions or descriptions that have gone out of date. Where a detail matters to a decision, check it against the primary source and a qualified professional.

What the model wrote, and what it did not

Figures and explanatory material on this site are compiled partly through AI-assisted research. They are indicative rather than definitive, may contain errors or omissions, and should be verified against primary sources before they are relied on.

That clause is deliberately broad, so here is the specific position on this site. There are three categories, and they carry different weight.

Model-drafted, reviewed before publication

The Learn library and the written reference material across the site are expanded by a large language model from human-authored outlines, under a prompt that forbids advice and forbids stating any current rate, yield or price, and are read against a checklist before they go up. The process is set out in full on Editorial Policy. Review catches a great deal and does not catch everything.

Model-written live, and not reviewed before you see it

Answers from the Ask the Data assistant are generated at the moment you ask. The assistant reads rows from this site's own database through a fixed set of lookups — it never writes a query and never sees the database itself — so the figures in an answer are real stored rows. The sentences around those figures are the model's own, composed on the spot, and nobody has read them before you do. That makes an answer there the least-reviewed writing on the site, and it should be treated as a starting point rather than as a settled statement.

Never model-produced

The numbers. Every rate, price, yield, growth streak, payout ratio and income score is read from the database at render time and shown with the date it was observed. Every derived figure is arithmetic performed in code, and the arithmetic is published on Methodology. No figure anywhere on this site was written by a language model, and the generation prompt forbids stating one at all — because a fluent wrong number is more dangerous than an obviously wrong one.

What to do with that. Read the explanatory prose here as orientation: it is there to tell you what a thing is, how it pays and how it fails, so that you know which questions to ask next. Where a detail would actually change a decision — a tax characterisation, a regulatory limit, a fund's fees, a distribution's composition, the terms of a specific security — confirm it at the primary source: the issuer or fund's own documents, the institution, the published series, or a professional who can see your whole situation.

Where a figure and a sentence disagree, the figure is the one with a source and an observation date attached, and the sentence is the one to doubt. If you find prose here that is wrong or out of date, tell us — reports about written content are handled the same way as reports about a wrong number.

AI agent prompts and document templates

The AI agents section publishes prompts and document outlines intended as drafting aids: a starting structure for a note, an agreement, a lease summary, a letter or a checklist.

Do not put confidential information into a third-party AI tool without checking how that tool handles it. We do not receive, store or see anything you type into a model elsewhere.

Tax

Tax content is general, United States-focused and unavoidably simplified. It describes how a type of income is usually characterised — ordinary income, qualified dividends, return of capital, capital gains, partnership income reported on a Schedule K-1, income exempt from federal tax but not from every state tax — so that the reader knows which questions to ask.

It is not tax advice and cannot be relied on as such. Treatment depends on your bracket, your state and locality, the account the asset sits in, your holding period, your other income, the alternative minimum tax, net investment income tax, withholding on foreign dividends, and rules that change with legislation. State and local treatment is not covered.

Consult a qualified tax professional about your own situation before acting. Nothing here was written to be used, and cannot be used, to avoid tax penalties.

Legal

Descriptions of legal structures, regulatory requirements, contract terms and investor protections are general and may be out of date, incomplete, or inapplicable to your state or your facts. They are not legal advice and create no attorney-client relationship. Consult an attorney licensed in the relevant jurisdiction.

Third-party sites, advertising and affiliate links

This site links to third-party websites and displays advertising served by third-party networks. We do not control, review, endorse or accept responsibility for third-party content, products, services, privacy practices or availability, and a link is not a recommendation.

Some outbound links are affiliate links, marked "Sponsored", on which we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Affiliate and advertising relationships never change the data, the rankings or the wording of any page; the rule is set out on Editorial Policy. Any transaction you enter into with a third party is between you and that party alone.

Limitations

This site is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, timeliness, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Availability is not guaranteed and content may change without notice.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we accept no liability for any loss or damage arising from use of, or reliance on, anything published here. The full limitation, and the way these disclaimers fit together with the rest of the agreement, is in the Terms of Use.