The record runs in time order

Every agreement carries two pieces of information, a number and a time. Written side by side they form a record, and a record follows the order of time, not the size of the number. It reads from left to right — oldest on the left, newest on the right — and that is a necessity rather than a convention, because time runs one way only. The picture of such a record is called a chart; a chart adds no information of its own, it simply lets the eye take the same numbers in faster. The common misreading is to infer the road between two end numbers: if the record shows 100 on the left and 107 on the right, whether the number climbed steadily or fell and recovered is simply not in it — only two moments were written down. The rightmost number is the newest, not the largest. Risk literacy begins exactly here: knowing that you do not know the road between two numbers is the first exercise in separating what the record gives you from what you added yourself.

This content is educational information, not personalised investment advice. The chart examples are illustrative.

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