Financial and Business Terms - from Bus to Buy
Monday, May 25, 2009
- Business cycle: Repetitive cycles of economic expansion and recession.
- Business failure: A business that has terminated with a loss to creditors.
- Business risk: The risk that the cash flow of an issuer will be impaired because of adverse economic conditions, making it difficult for the issuer to meet its operating expenses.
- Butterfly shift: A non-parallel shift in the yield curve involving the height of the curve.
- Buy: To purchase an asset; taking a long position.
- Buy in: To cover, offset or close out a short position. Related: evening up, liquidation.
- Buy limit order: A conditional trading order that indicates a security may be purchased only at the designated price or lower. Related: Sell limit order.
- Buy on close: To buy at the end of the trading session at a price within the closing range.
- Buy on margin: A transaction in which an investor borrows to buy additional shares, using the shares themselves as collateral.
- Buy on opening: To buy at the beginning of a trading session at a price within the opening range.
- Buy-and-hold strategy: A passive investment strategy with no active buying and selling of stocks from the time the portfolio is created until the end of the investment horizon.
- Buydowns: Mortgages in which monthly payments consist of principal and interest, with portions of these payments during the early period of the loan being provided by a third party to reduce the borrower's monthly payments.
- Buying the index: Purchasing the stocks in the S&P 500 in the same proportion as the index to achieve the same return.
- Buyout: Purchase of a controlling interest (or percent of shares) of a company's stock. A leveraged buy-out is done with borrowed money.
- Buy-back: Another term for a repo.
- Buy-side analyst: A financial analyst employed by a non-brokerage firm, typically one of the larger money management firms that purchase securities on their own accounts.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 10:54 AM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Bra to Bro
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
- Bracket: A term signifying the extent an underwriter's commitment in a new issue, e.g., major bracket or minor bracket.
- Brady bonds: Bonds issued by emerging countries under a debt reduction plan.
- Branch: An operation in a foreign country incorporated in the home country.
- Break: A rapid and sharp price decline.
- Break-even analysis: An analysis of the level of sales at which a project would make zero profit.
- Break-even lease payment: The lease payment at which a party to a prospective lease is indifferent between entering and not entering into the lease arrangement.
- Break-even tax rate: The tax rate at which a party to a prospective transaction is indifferent between entering into and not entering into the transaction.
- Breakout: A rise in a security's price above a resistance level (commonly its previous high price) or drop below a level of support (commonly the former lowest price.) A breakout is taken to signify a continuing move in the same direction. Can be used by technical analysts as a buy or sell indicator.
- Bridge financing: Interim financing of one sort or another used to solidify a position until more permanent financing is arranged.
- Broker: An individual who is paid a commission for executing customer orders. Either a floor broker who executes orders on the floor of the exchange, or an upstairs broker who handles retail customers and their orders.
- Brokered market: A market where an intermediary offers search services to buyers and sellers.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 10:08 AM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Boo to Bou
Friday, May 15, 2009
- Book cash: A firm's cash balance as reported in its financial statements. Also called ledger cash.
- Book profit: The cumulative book income plus any gain or loss on disposition of the assets on termination of the SAT.
- Book runner: The managing underwriter for a new issue. The book runner maintains the book of securities sold.
- Book value: A company's book value is its total assets minus intangible assets and liabilities, such as debt. A company's book value might be more or less than its market value.
- Book value: per share The ratio of stockholder equity to the average number of common shares. Book value per share should not be thought of as an indicator of economic worth, since it reflects accounting valuation (and not necessarily market valuation).
- Book-entry securities: The Treasury and federal agencies are moving to a book-entry system in which securities are not represented by engraved pieces of paper but are maintained in computerized records at the Fed in the names of member banks, which in turn keep records of the securities they own as well as those they are holding for customers. In the case of other securities where a book-entry has developed, engraved securities do exist somewhere in quite a few cases. These securities do not move from holder to holder but are usually kept in a central clearinghouse or by another agent.
- Bootstrapping: A process of creating a theoretical spot rate curve , using one yield projection as the basis for the yield of the next maturity.
- Borrow: To obtain or receive money on loan with the promise or understanding that it will be repaid.
- Borrower fallout: In the mortgage pipeline, the risk that prospective borrowers of loans committed to be closed will elect to withdraw from the contract.
- Bottom-up equity management style: A management style that de-emphasizes the significance of economic and market cycles, focusing instead on the analysis of individual stocks.
- Bought deal: Security issue where one or two underwriters buy the entire issue.
- Bourse: A term of French origin used to refer to stock markets.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 1:24 PM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Bog to Bon
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
- Bogey: The return an investment manager is compared to for performance evaluation.
- Bond: Bonds are debt and are issued for a period of more than one year. The U.S. government, local governments, water districts, companies and many other types of institutions sell bonds. When an investor buys bonds, he or she is lending money. The seller of the bond agrees to repay the principal amount of the loan at a specified time. Interest-bearing bonds pay interest periodically.
- Bond agreement: A contract for privately placed debt.
- Bond covenant: A contractual provision in a bond indenture. A positive covenant requires certain actions, and a negative covenant limits certain actions.
- Bond equivalent yield: Bond yield calculated on an annual percentage rate method. Differs from annual effective yield.
- Bond indenture: The contract that sets forth the promises of a corporate bond issuer and the rights of investors.
- Bond indexing: Designing a portfolio so that its performance will match the performance of some bond index.
- Bond points: A conventional unit of measure for bond prices set at $10 and equivalent to 1% of the $100 face value of the bond. A price of 80 means that the bond is selling at 80% of its face, or par value.
- Bond value: With respect to convertible bonds, the value the security would have if it were not convertible apart from the conversion option.
- Bond-equivalent basis: The method used for computing the bond-equivalent yield.
- Bond-equivalent yield: The annualized yield to maturity computed by doubling the semiannual yield.
- BONDPAR: A system that monitors and evaluates the performance of a fixed-income portfolio , as well as the individual securities held in the portfolio. BONDPAR decomposes the return into those elements beyond the manager's control--such as the interest rate environment and client-imposed duration policy constraints--and those that the management process contributes to, such as interest rate management, sector/quality allocations, and individual bond selection.
- Boning: Charging a lot more for an asset than it's worth.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 4:50 PM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Bi to Bl
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
- Bid price: This is the quoted bid, or the highest price an investor is willing to pay to buy a security. Practically speaking, this is the available price at which an investor can sell shares of stock.
- Bid-asked spread: The difference between the bid and asked prices.
- Bidder: A firm or person that wants to buy a firm or security.
- Big Bang: The term applied to the liberalization in 1986 of the London Stock Exchange in which trading was automated with the use of computers.
- Big Board: A nickname for the New York Stock Exchange. Also known as The Exchange. More than 2,000 common and preferred stocks are traded. Founded in 1792, the NYSE is the oldest exchange in the United States, and the largest. It is located on Wall Street in New York City.
- Bill of exchange: General term for a document demanding payment.
- Bill of lading: A contract between the exporter and a transportation company in which the latter agrees to transport the goods under specified conditions which limit its liability. It is the exporter's receipt for the goods as well as proof that goods have been or will be received.
- Binomial option: pricing model An option pricing model in which the underlying asset can take on only two possible, discrete values in the next time period for each value that it can take on in the preceding time period.
- Black market: An illegal market.
- Black-Scholes option-pricing model: A model for pricing call options based on arbitrage arguments that uses the stock price, the exercise price, the risk-free interest rate, the time to expiration, and the standard deviation of the stock return.
- Blanket inventory lien: A secured loan that gives the lender a lien against all the borrower's inventories.
- Block house: Brokerage firms that help to find potential buyers or sellers of large block trades.
- Block trade: A large trading order, defined on the New York Stock Exchange as an order that consists of 10,000 shares of a given stock or a total market value of $200,000 or more.
- Block voting: A group of shareholders banding together to vote their shares in a single block.
- Blocked currency: A currency that is not freely convertible to other currencies due to exchange controls.
- Blow-off top: A steep and rapid increase in price followed by a steep and rapid drop. This is an indicator seen in charts and used in technical analysis of stock price and market trends.
- Blue-chip company: Large and creditworthy company.
- Blue-sky laws: State laws covering the issue and trading of securities.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 11:13 AM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Beg to Bet
Saturday, May 9, 2009
- Beggar-thy-neighbor: An international trade policy of competitive devaluations and increased protective barriers where one country seeks to gain at the expense of its trading partners.
- Beggar-thy-neighbor devaluation: A devaluation that is designed to cheapen a nation's currency and thereby increase its exports at other countries' expense and reduce imports. Such devaluations often lead to trade wars.
- Benchmark: The performance of a predetermined set of securities, for comparison purposes. Such sets may be based on published indexes or may be customized to suit an investment strategy.
- Benchmark error: Use of an inappropriate proxy for the true market portfolio.
- Benchmark interest rate Also called the base interest rate: It is the minimum interest rate investors will demand for investing in a non-Treasury security. It is also tied to the yield to maturity offered on a comparable-maturity Treasury security that was most recently issued ("on-the-run").
- Benchmark issues: Also called on-the-run or current coupon issues or bellwether issues. In the secondary market, it's the most recently auctioned Treasury issues for each maturity.
- Best-efforts sale: A method of securities distribution/ underwriting in which the securities firm agrees to sell as much of the offering as possible and return any unsold shares to the issuer. As opposed to a guaranteed or fixed price sale, where the underwriter agrees to sell a specific number of shares (with the securities firm holding any unsold shares in its own account if necessary).
- Best-interests-of-creditors test: The requirement that a claim holder voting against a plan of reorganization must receive at least as much as he would have if the debtor were liquidated.
- Beta (Mutual Funds): The measure of a fund's or stocks risk in relation to the market. A beta of 0.7 means the fund's total return is likely to move up or down 70% of the market change; 1.3 means total return is likely to move up or down 30% more than the market. Beta is referred to as an index of the systematic risk due to general market conditions that cannot be diversified away.
- Beta equation (Mutual Funds):
The beta of a fund is determined as follows:
[(n) (sum of (xy)) ]-[ (sum of x) (sum of y)]
[(n) (sum of (xx)) ]-[ (sum of x) (sum of x)]
where: n = # of observations (36 months)
x = rate of return for the S&P 500 Index
y = rate of return for the fund - Beta equation (Stocks) :
The beta of a stock is determined as follows: [(n) (sum of (xy)) ]-[(sum of x) (sum of y)] [(n) (sum of (xx)) ]-[(sum of x) (sum of x)] where: n = # of observations (24-60 months) x = rate of return for the S&P 500 Index y = rate of return for the stock
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 1:00 PM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Bas to Bef
Friday, May 8, 2009
- Base probability of loss: The probability of not achieving a portfolio expected return.
- Basic balance: In a balance of payments, the basic balance is the net balance of the combination of the current account and the capital account.
- Basic business strategies: Key strategies a firm intends to pursue in carrying out its business plan.
- Basic IRR rule: Accept the project if IRR is greater than the discount rate; reject the project is lower than the discount rate.
- Basis: Regarding a futures contract, the difference between the cash price and the futures price observed in the market. Also, it is the price an investor pays for a security plus any out-of-pocket expenses. It is used to determine capital gains or losses for tax purposes when the stock is sold.
- Basis point: In the bond market, the smallest measure used for quoting yields is a basis point. Each percentage point of yield in bonds equals 100 basis points. Basis points also are used for interest rates. An interest rate of 5% is 50 basis points greater than an interest rate of 4.5%.
- Basis price: Price expressed in terms of yield to maturity or annual rate of return.
- Basis risk: The uncertainty about the basis at the time a hedge may be lifted. Hedging substitutes basis risk for price risk.
- Basket options: Packages that involve the exchange of more than two currencies against a base currency at expiration. The basket option buyer purchases the right, but not the obligation, to receive designated currencies in exchange for a base currency, either at the prevailing spot market rate or at a prearranged rate of exchange. A basket option is generally used by multinational corporations with multicurrency cash flows since it is generally cheaper to buy an option on a basket of currencies than to buy individual options on each of the currencies that make up the basket.
- Bear: An investor who believes a stock or the overall market will decline. A bear market is a prolonged period of falling stock prices, usually by 20% or more.
- Bearer bond: bonds that are not registered on the books of the issuer. Such bonds are held in physical form by the owner, who receives interest payments by physically detaching coupons from the bond certificate and delivering them to the paying agent.
- Bear market: Any market in which prices are in a declining trend.
- Bear raid: A situation in which large traders sell positions with the intention of driving prices down.
- Before-tax profit margin: The ratio of net income before taxes to net sales.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 12:07 PM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Ban to Bar
Thursday, May 7, 2009
- Bank collection float: The time that elapses between when a check is deposited into a bank account and when the funds are available to the depositor, during which period the bank is collecting payment from the payer's bank.
- Bank discount basis: A convention used for quoting bids and offers for treasury bills in terms of annualized yield , based on a 360-day year.
- Bank draft: A draft addressed to a bank.
- Bank line: Line of credit granted by a bank to a customer.
- Bank wire: A computer message system linking major banks. It is used not for effecting payments, but as a mechanism to advise the receiving bank of some action that has occurred, e.g. the payment by a customer of funds into that bank's account.
- Banker's acceptance: A short-term credit investment created by a non-financial firm and guaranteed by a bank as to payment. Acceptances are traded at discounts from face value in the secondary market. These instruments have been a popular investment for money market funds. They are commonly used in international transactions.
- Bank for International Settlements (BIS): An international bank headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, which serves as a forum for monetary cooperation among several European central banks, the Bank of Japan, and the Bankruptcy State of being unable to pay debts. Thus, the ownership of the firm's assets is transferred from the stockholders to the bondholders.
- Bankruptcy cost view: The argument that expected indirect and direct bankruptcy costs offset the other benefits from leverage so that the optimal amount of leverage is less than 100% debt finaning.
- Bankruptcy risk: The risk that a firm will be unable to meet its debt obligations. Also referred to as default or insolvency risk.
- Bankruptcy view: The argument that expected bankruptcy costs preclude firms from being financed entirely with debt.
- Bar: Slang for one million dollars.
- Barbell strategy: A strategy in which the maturities of the securities included in the portfolio are concentrated at two extremes.
- Bargain-purchase-price option: Gives the lessee the option to purchase the asset at a price below fair market value when the lease expires.
- BARRA's performance analysis (PERFAN): A method developed by BARRA, a consulting firm in Berkeley, Calif. It is commonly used by institutional investors applying performance attribution analysis to evaluate their money managers' performances.
- Barrier options: Contracts with trigger points that, when crossed, automatically generate buying or selling of other options. These are very exotic options.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 1:49 PM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Bac to Bal
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
- Back fee: The fee paid on the extension date if the buyer wishes to continue the option.
- Back office: Brokerage house clerical operations that support, but do not include, the trading of stocks and other securities. Includes all written confirmation and settlement of trades, record keeping and regulatory compliance.
- Back-end loan fund: A mutual fund that charges investors a fee to sell (redeem) shares, often ranging from 4% to 6%. Some back-end load funds impose a full commission if the shares are redeemed within a designated time, such as one year. The commission decreases the longer the investor holds the shares. The formal name for the back-end load is the contingent deferred sales charge, or CDSC.
- Back-to-back financing: An intercompany loan channeled through a bank.
- Back-to-back loan: A loan in which two companies in separate countries borrow each other's currency for a specific time period and repay the other's currency at an agreed upon maturity.
- Back-up: (1) When bond yields and prices fall, the market is said to back-up. (2) When an investor swaps out of one security into another of shorter current maturity he is said to back up.
- Backwardation: A market condition in which futures prices are lower in the distant delivery months than in the nearest delivery month. This situation may occur in when the costs of storing the product until eventual delivery are effectively subtracted from the price today. The opposite of contango.
- Baker Plan: A plan by U.S. Treasury Secretary James Baker under which 15 principal middle-income debtor countries (the Baker 15) would undertake growth-oriented structural reforms, to be supported by increased financing from the World Bank and continued lending from commercial banks.
- Balance of payments: A statistical compilation formulated by a sovereign nation of all economic transactions between residents of that nation and residents of all other nations during a stipulated period of time, usually a calendar year.
- Balance of trade: Net flow of goods (exports minus imports) between countries.
- Balance sheet: Also called the statement of financial condition, it is a summary of the assets, liabilities, and owners' equity.
- Balance sheet identity: Total Assets = Total Liabilities + Total Stockholders' Equity
- Balanced fund: An investment company that invests in stocks and bonds. The same as a balanced mutual fund.
- Balanced mutual fund: This is a fund that buys common stock, preferred stock and bonds. The same as a balanced fund.
- Balloon maturity: Any large principal payment due at maturity for a bond or loan with or without a a sinking fund requirement.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 4:37 PM,
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Financial and Business terms - From Av to Aw
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
- Availability float: Cheques deposited by a company that have not yet been cleared.
- Average: An arithmetic mean of selected stocks intended to represent the behavior of the market or some component of it. One good example is the widely quoted Dow Jones Industrial Average, which adds the current prices of the 30 DJIA's stocks, and divides the results by a predetermined number, the divisor.
- Average accounting return: The average project earnings after taxes and depreciation divided by the average book value of the investment during its life.
- Average age of accounts receivable The weighted-average age of all of the firm's outstanding invoices.
- Average collection period, or days' receivables: The ratio of accounts receivables to sales, or the total amount of credit extended per dollar of daily sales (average AR/sales * 365).
- Average cost of capital: A firm's required payout to the bondholders and to the stockholders expressed as a percentage of capital contributed to the firm. Average cost of capital is computed by dividing the total required cost of capital by the total amount of contributed capital.
- Average life Also referred to as the weighted-average life (WAL): The average number of years that each dollar of unpaid principal due on the mortgage remains outstanding. Average life is computed as the weighted average time to the receipt of all future cash flows, using as the weights the dollar amounts of the principal paydowns.
- Average maturity: The average time to maturity of securities held by a mutual fund. Changes in interest rates have greater impact on funds with longer average life.
- Average (across-day) measures: An estimation of price that uses the average or representative price of a large number of trades.
- Average rate of return (ARR): The ratio of the average cash inflow to the amount invested.
- Average tax rate: Taxes as a fraction of income; total taxes divided by total taxable income.
- Away: A trade, quote, or market that does not originate with the dealer in question, e.g., "the bid is 98-10 away from me."
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 9:00 PM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from At to Au
Saturday, May 2, 2009
- Attribute bias: The tendency of stocks preferred by the dividend discount model to share certain equity attributes such as low price-earnings ratios, high dividend yield, high book-value ratio or membership in a particular industry sector.
- Auction markets: Markets in which the prevailing price is determined through the free interaction of prospective buyers and sellers, as on the floor of the stock exchange.
- Auction rate preferred stock (ARPS): Floating rate preferred stock, the dividend on which is adjusted every seven weeks through a Dutch auction.
- Auditor's report: A section of an annual report containing the auditor's opinion about the veracity of the financial statements.
- Authorized shares: Number of shares authorized for issuance by a firm's corporate charter.
- Autocorrelation: The correlation of a variable with itself over successive time intervals.
- Automated Clearing House (ACH): A collection of 32 regional electronic interbank networks used to process transactions electronically with a guaranteed one-day bank collection float.
- Automatic stay: The restricting of liability holders from collection efforts of collateral seizure, which is automatically imposed when a firm files for bankruptcy under Chapter 11.
Autoregressive Using past data to predict future data.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 12:38 PM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Ar to As
- Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT): An alternative model to the capital asset pricing model developed by Stephen Ross and based purely on arbitrage arguments.
- Arbitrageurs: People who search for and exploit arbitrage opportunities.
- Arithmetic average: (mean) rate of return Arithmetic mean return. Arithmetic mean return An average of the subperiod returns, calculated by summing the subperiod returns and dividing by he number of subperiods.
- Arms index: Also known as a trading index (TRIN)= (number of advancing issues)/ (number of declining issues) (Total up volume )/ (total down volume). An advance/decline market indicator. Less than 1.0 indicates bullish demand, while above 1.0 is bearish. The index often is smoothed with a simple moving average.
- Arm's length price: The price at which a willing buyer and a willing unrelated seller would freely agree to transact.
- ARMs Adjustable rate mortgage: A mortgage that features predetermined adjustments of the loan interest rate at regular intervals based on an established index. The interest rate is adjusted at each interval to a rate equivalent to the index value plus a predetermined spread, or margin, over the index, usually subject to per-interval and to life-of-loan interest rate and/or payment rate caps.
- Articles of incorporation: Legal document establishing a corporation and its structure and purpose.
- Asian currency units (ACUs): Dollar deposits held in Singapore or other Asian centers.
- Asian option: Option based on the average price of the asset during the life of the option.
- Ask: This is the quoted ask, or the lowest price an investor will accept to sell a stock. Practically speaking, this is the quoted offer at which an investor can buy shares of stock; also called the offer price.
- Ask price: A dealer's price to sell a security; also called the offer price. Asset Any possession that has value in an exchange.
- Asset/equity ratio: The ratio of total assets to stockholder equity. Asset/liability management Also called surplus management, the task of managing funds of a financial institution to accomplish the two goals of a financial institution: (1) to earn an adequate return on funds invested and (2) to maintain a comfortable surplus of assets beyond liabilities.
- Asset activity ratios: Ratios that measure how effectively the firm is managing its assets.
- Asset allocation decision: The decision regarding how an institution's funds should be distributed among the major classes of assets in which it may invest.
- Asset-backed security: A security that is collateralized by loans, leases, receivables, or installment contracts on personal property, not real estate.
- Asset-based financing: Methods of financing in which lenders and equity investors look principally to the cash flow from a particular asset or set of assets for a return on, and the return of, their financing.
- Asset classes: Categories of assets, such as stocks, bonds, real estate and foreign securities.
- Asset-coverage test: A bond indenture restriction that permits additional borrowing on if the ratio of assets to debt does not fall below a specified minimum.
- Asset for asset swap: Creditors exchange the debt of one defaulting borrower for the debt of another defaulting borrower.
- Asset pricing model: A model for determining the required rate of return on an asset. Asset substitution A firm's investing in assets that are riskier than those that the debtholders expected. Asset substitution problem Arises when the stockholders substitute riskier assets for the firm's existing assets and expropriate value from the debtholders.
- Asset swap: An interest rate swap used to alter the cash flow characteristics of an institution's assets so as to provide a better match with its iabilities. Asset turnover The ratio of net sales to total assets.
- Asset pricing model: A model, such as the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), that determines the required rate of return on a particular asset.
- Assets: A firm's productive resources.
- Assets requirements: A common element of a financial plan that describes projected capital spending and the proposed uses of net working capital.
- Assignment: The receipt of an exercise notice by an options writer that requires the writer to sell (in the case of a call) or purchase (in the case of a put) the underlying security at the specified strike price.
- Asymmetry: A lack of equivalence between two things, such as the unequal tax treatment of interest expense and dividend payments.
- Asymmetric information: Information that is known to some people but not to other people.
- Asymmetric taxes: A situation wherein participants in a transaction have different net tax rates.
- At-the-money: An option is at-the-money if the strike price of the option is equal to the market price of the underlying security. For example, if xyz stock is trading at 54, then the xyz 54 option is at-the-money.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 10:48 AM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Bub to Bun
- Bubble theory: Security prices sometimes move wildly above their true values.
- Buck: Slang for one million dollars.
- Budget: A detailed schedule of financial activity, such as an advertising budget, a sales budget, or a capital budget.
- Budget deficit: The amount by which government spending exceeds government revenues.
- Builder buydown loan: A mortgage loan on newly developed property that the builder subsidizes during the early years of the development. The builder uses cash to buy down the mortgage rate to a lower level than the prevailing market loan rate for some period of time. The typical buydown is 3% of the interest-rate amount for the first year, 2% for the second year, and 1% for the third year (also referred to as a 3-2-1 buydown).
- Bull: An investor who thinks the market will rise.
- Bull-bear bond: Bond whose principal repayment is linked to the price of another security. The bonds are issued in two tranches: in the first tranche repayment increases with the price of the other security, and in the second tranche repayment decreases with the price of the other security.
- Bull CD, Bear CD: A bull CD pays its holder a specified percentage of the increase in return on a specified market index while guaranteeing a minimum rate of return. A bear CD pays the holder a fraction of any fall in a given market index.
- Bull market: Any market in which prices are in an upward trend.
- Bull spread: A spread strategy in which an investor buys an out-of-the-money put option, financing it by selling an out-of-the money call option on the same underlying.
- Bulldog bond: Foreign bond issue made in London.
- Bulldog market: The foreign market in the United Kingdom.
- Bullet contract: A guaranteed investment contract purchased with a single (one-shot) premium.
- Bullet loan: A bank term loan that calls for no amortization.
- Bullet strategy: A strategy in which a portfolio is constructed so that the maturities of its securities are highly concentrated at one point on the yield curve.
- Bullish, bearish: Words used to describe investor attitudes. Bullish refers to an optimistic outlook while bearish means a pessimistic outlook.
- Bundling, unbundling: A trend allowing creation of securities either by combining primitive and derivative securities into one composite hybrid or by separating returns on an asset into classes.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 9:04 AM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from An to Ap
Thursday, April 30, 2009
- Analyst: Employee of a brokerage or fund management house who studies companies and makes buy-and-sell recommendations on their stocks. Most specialize in a specific industry.
- Announcement date: Date on which particular news concerning a given company is announced to the public. Used in event studies, which researchers use to evaluate the economic impact of events of interest.
- Annual fund operating expenses For investment companies, the management fee and "other expenses," including the expenses for maintaining shareholder records, providing shareholders with financial statements, and providing custodial and accounting services. For 12b-1 funds, selling and marketing costs are included.
- Annual percentage rate (APR): The periodic rate times the number of periods in a year. For example, a 5% quarterly return has an APR of 20%.
- Annual percentage yield (APY): The effective, or true, annual rate of return. The APY is the rate actually earned or paid in one year, taking into account the affect of compounding. The APY is calculated by taking one plus the periodic rate and raising it to the number of periods in a year. For example, a 1% per month rate has an APY of 12.68%.
- Annual report: Yearly record of a publicly held company's financial condition. It includes a description of the firm's operations, its balance sheet and income statement. SEC rules require that it be distributed to all shareholders. A more detailed version is called a 10-K.
- Annualized gain If stock X appreciates 1.5% in one month, the annualized gain for that sock over a twelve month period is 12*1.5% = 18%. Compounded over the twelve month period, the gain is (1.015)^12 = 19.6%.
- Annualized holding period return: The annual rate of return that when compounded t times, would have given the same t-period holding return as actually occurred from period 1 to period t.
- Annuity: A regular periodic payment made by an insurance company to a policyholder for a specified period of time.
- Annuity due: An annuity with n payments, wherein the first payment is made at time t = 0 and the last payment is made at time t = n - 1.
- Annuity factor: Present value of $1 paid for each of t periods.
- Annuity in arrears: An annuity with a first payment on full period hence, rather than immediately.
- Anticipation: Arrangements whereby customers who pay before the final date may be entitled to deduct a normal rate of interest.
- Antidilutive effect: Result of a transaction that increases earnings per common share (e.g. by decreasing thenumber of shares outstanding).
- Appraisal ratio: The signal-to-noise ratio of an analyst's forecasts. The ratio of alpha to residual standard deviation.
- Appraisal rights: A right of shareholders in a merger to demand the payment of a fair price for their shares, as determined independently.
- Appropriation request: Formal request for funds for capital investment project.
- Arbitrage: The simultaneous buying and selling of a security at two different prices in two different markets, resulting in profits without risk. Perfectly efficient markets present no arbitrage opportunities. Perfectly efficient markets seldom exist.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 3:13 PM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Al to Am
Thursday, April 23, 2009
- All equity rate: The discount rate that reflects only the business risks of a project and abstracts from the effects of financing.
- All-or-none underwriting: An arrangement whereby a security issue is canceled if the underwriter is unable to re-sell the entire issue.
- Alpha: A measure of selection risk (also known as residual risk) of a mutual fund in relation to the market. A positive alpha is the extra return awarded to the investor for taking a risk, instead of accepting the market return. For example, an alpha of 0.4 means the fund outperformed the market-based return estimate by 0.4%. An alpha of -0.6 means a fund's monthly return was 0.6% less than would have been predicted from the change in the market alone. In a Jensen Index, it is factor to represent the portfolio's performance that diverges from its beta, representing a measure of the manager's performance.
Alpha equationThe alpha of a fund is determined as follows:
[ (sum of y) -((b)(sum of x)) ] / n
where: n =number of observations (36 months)
b = beta of the fund
x = rate of return for the S&P 500
y = rate of return for the fund - Alternative mortgage instruments: Variations of mortgage instruments such as adjustable-rate and variable-rate mortgages, graduated-payment mortgages, reverse-annuity mortgages, and several seldom-used variations.
- American Depositary Receipts (ADRs): Certificates issued by a U.S. depositary bank, representing foreign shares held by the bank, usually by a branch or correspondent in the country of issue. One ADR may represent a portion of a foreign share, one share or a bundle of shares of a foreign corporation. If the ADR's are "sponsored," the corporation provides financial information and other assistance to the bank and may subsidize the administration of the ADRs. "Unsponsored" ADRs do not receive such assistance. ADRs carry the same currency, political and economic risks as the underlying foreign share; the prices of the two, adjusted for the SDR/ordinary ratio, are kept essentially identical by arbitrage. American depositary shares(ADSs) are a similar form of certification.
- American option: An option that may be exercised at any time up to and including the expiration date.
- American shares: Securities certificates issued in the U.S. by a transfer agent acting on behalf of the foreign issuer. The certificates represent claims to foreign equities.
- American Stock Exchange (AMEX): The second-largest stock exchange in the United States. It trades mostly in small-to medium-sized companies.
- American-style option: An option contract that can be exercised at any time between the date of purchase and the expiration date. Most exchange-traded options are American style.
- Amortization: The repayment of a loan by installments.
- Amortization factor: The pool factor implied by the scheduled amortization assuming no prepayemts.
- Amortizing interest rate swap: Swap in which the principal or national amount rises (falls) as interest rates rise (decline).
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 11:03 AM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from Ad to Ag
Thursday, April 16, 2009
- Additional hedge :A protection against borrower fallout risk in the mortgage pipeline.
- Adjustable rate preferred stock (ARPS) :Publicly traded issues that may be collateralized by mortgages and MBSs.
- Adjusted present value (APV) The net present value analysis of an asset if financed solely by equity (present value of un-levered cash flows), plus the present value of any financing decisions (levered cash flows). In other words, the various tax shields provided by the deductibility of interest and the benefits of other investment tax credits are calculated separately. This analysis is often used for highly leveraged transactions such as a leverage buy-out.
- Advance commitment: A promise to sell an asset before the seller has lined up purchase of the asset. This seller can offset risk by purchasing a futures contract to fix the sales price.
- Adverse selection: A situation in which market participation is a negative signal.
- Affirmative covenant: A bond covenant that specifies certain actions the firm must take.
- After-tax profit margin: The ratio of net income to net sales.
- After-tax real rate of return: Money after-tax rate of return minus the inflation rate.
- Agency bank: A form of organization commonly used by foreign banks to enter the U.S. market. An agency bank cannot accept deposits or extend loans in its own name; it acts as agent for the parent bank.
- Agency basis: A means of compensating the broker of a program trade solely on the basis of commission established through bids submitted by various brokerage firms.
- Agency incentive arrangement: A means of compensating the broker of a program trade using benchmark prices for issues to be traded in determining commissions or fees.
- Agency cost view: The argument that specifies that the various agency costs create a complex environment in which total agency costs are at a minimum with some, but less than 100%, debt financing.
- Agency costs The incremental costs of having an agent make decisions for a principal.
- Agency pass-throughs: Mortgage pass-through securities whose principal and interest payments are guaranteed by government agencies, such as the Government National Mortgage Association (" Ginnie Mae "), Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (" Freddie Mac") and Federal National Mortgage Association (" Fannie Mae").
- Agency problem: Conflicts of interest among stockholders, bondholders, and managers.
- Agency theory: The analysis of principal-agent relationships, wherein one person, an agent, acts on behalf of anther person, a principal.
- Agent: The decision-maker in a principal-agent relationship.
- Aggregation Process: in corporate financial planning whereby the smaller investment proposals of each of the firm's operational units are added up and in effect treated as a big picture.
- Aging schedule: A table of accounts receivable broken down into age categories (such as 0-30 days, 30-60 days, and 60-90 days), which is used to see whether customer payments are keeping close to schedule.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 12:26 PM,
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Financial and Business Terms - from A to Ac
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
- Abandonment option:The option of terminating an investment earlier than originally planned.
- Abnormal returns:Part of the return that is not due to systematic influences (market wide influences). In other words, abnormal returns are above those predicted by the market movement alone. Related: excess returns.
- Absolute priority:Rule in bankruptcy proceedings whereby senior creditors are required to be paid in full before junior creditors receive any payment.
- Accelerated cost recovery system (ACRS):Schedule of depreciation rates allowed for tax purposes.
- Accelerated depreciation:Any depreciation method that produces larger deductions for depreciation in the early years of a project's life. Accelerated cost recovery system (ACRS), which is a depreciation schedule allowed for tax purposes, is one such example.
Accounting exposure:The change in the value of a firm's foreign currency denominated accounts due to a change in exchange rates. - Accounting earnings:Earnings of a firm as reported on its income statement.
- Accounting insolvency:Total liabilities exceed total assets. A firm with a negative net worth is insolvent on the books.
- Accounting liquidity:The ease and quickness with which assets can be converted to cash.
- Accounts payable:Money owed to suppliers.
- Accounts receivable:Money owed by customers.
- Accounts receivable turnover:The ratio of net credit sales to average accounts receivable, a measure of how quickly customers pay their bills.
- Accretion (of a discount) :In portfolio accounting, a straight-line accumulation of capital gains on discount bond in anticipation of receipt of par at maturity.
- Accrual bond :A bond on which interest accrues, but is not paid to the investor during the time of accrual. The amount of accrued interest is added to the remaining principal of the bond and is paid at maturity.
- Accrued interest :The accumulated coupon interest earned but not yet paid to the seller of a bond by thebuyer (unless the bond is in default).
- Accumulated Benefit Obligation (ABO) :An approximate measure of the liability of a plan in the event of a termination at the date the calculation is performed. Related: projected benefit obligation.
- Acid-test ratio :Also called the quick ratio, the ratio of current assets minus inventories, accruals, and prepaid items to current liabilities.
- Acquiree :A firm that is being acquired.
- Acquirer :A firm or individual that is acquiring something.
- Acquisition of assets :A merger or consolidation in which an acquirer purchases the selling firm's assets.
- Acquisition of stock :A merger or consolidation in which an acquirer purchases the acquiree's stock.
- Act of state doctrine :This doctrine says that a nation is sovereign within its own borders and its domestic actions may not be questioned in the courts of another nation.
- Active :A market in which there is much trading.
- Active portfolio strategy :A strategy that uses available information and forecasting techniques to seek a better performance than a portfolio that is simply diversified broadly.
- Actuals :The physical commodity underlying a futures contract. Cash commodity, physical.
Labels: Financial and Business Terms / Dictionary
posted @ 1:48 PM,
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