| Accounts
Payable |
Money
a company owes for services and supplies. |
| Accounts
Receivable |
Money
a company is owed for rendering its services and products. |
| Accrued
Interest |
The
interest due on a bond since the last interest payment was made.
The buyer of the bond pays the market price plus accrued interest. |
| Acquisition |
Acquiring
control of one corporation by another. In "unfriendly" take-over
attempts, the potential buying company may offer a price well above
current market values, new securities and other inducements to stockholders.
The management of the subject company might ask for a better price
or try to join up with a third company. |
| Actual
EPS, CPS, or DPS |
Reported
annual Earnings Per Share (EPS -Trailing 12 months), cash flow (CPS)
or Dividends Per Share (DPS) for a company for the fiscal year indicated.
For companies which report on a quarterly basis, this information
will contain the sum of the actual earnings, cash flow or dividends
for the previous four quarters. For companies that report semi-annually,
the field will contain the sum of the previous two semi-annual actuals. |
| After
Hours Trading |
Investors
may trade in the After Hours Market (4:00-6:30 p.m. ET) on The Nasdaq
Stock Market. Participation by Market Makers and ECNs is strictly
voluntary and as a result may offer less liquidity and inferior prices.
Stock prices may also move more quickly in this environment. |
| ADR |
American
Depositary Receipt. A security issued by a U.S. bank in place of
the foreign shares held in trust by that bank, thereby facilitating
the trading of foreign shares in U.S. markets. |
| 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 %. -0.6 means a fund's monthly
return was 0.6 % less than would have been predicted from the change
in the market alone. |
| 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.
(see European Style
Options) |
| AMEX |
American
Stock Exchange. |
| AMEX
Composite - XAX |
The
AMEX Composite Index - (XAX) the American Stock Exchange introduced
a new AMEX Composite Index with a new ticker symbol, XAX, on January
2, 1997. The XAX is a market capitalization-weighted, price appreciation
index, and replaces the AMEX Market Value Index (XAM) which, since
its inception, has been calculated on a "total return basis" to
include the reinvestment of dividends paid by AMEX companies. The
new AMEX Composite Index is more comparable with other major indexes,
which reflect only the price appreciation of their respective components. |
| Amortization |
Accounting
for expenses or charges as applicable rather than as paid. Includes
such practices as depreciation, depletion, write-off of intangibles,
prepaid expenses and deferred charges. |
| Analyst |
A
person with expertise in evaluating financial investments; he or
she performs investment research and makes recommendations to institutional
and retail investors to buy, sell, or hold; most analysts specialize
in a single industry or business sector. |
| Announcement
Date |
The
date on which the company first made news certain public, i.e. first
time a share split was announced. |
| Annual
Report |
The
formal financial statement issued yearly by a publicly owned corporation.
The report shows assets, liabilities, revenues, expenses and earnings.
The report also shows the company's financial condition at the close
of the business year and other basic information of interest to shareholders. |
| Arbitrage |
Profiting
from differences in the price of a single security that is traded
on more than one market. |
| Arbitration |
A
low-cost alternative to settling disputes over securities transactions
in the court system. |
| Arms
Indicator |
An
advance/decline market indicator (total up volume/total down volume).
Less than 1.0 indicates bullish demand, while above 1.0 is bearish.
The index often is smoothed with a simple moving average.
|
| Ask |
The
price at which someone who owns a security offers to sell it; also
known as the asked price. (see Bid
and Asked) |
| Asset |
Anything
a person, company, or group owns or is owed, including money, investments
and property. |
| Assignment |
Notice
to an option writer that an option holder has exercised the option
and that the writer will now be required to deliver (receive) under
the terms of the contract. (see Options) |
| 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 36, then the AYZ 36 option is at-the-money. |
| Auction
Market |
The
system of trading securities through brokers or agents on an exchange.
Buyers compete with other buyers while sellers compete with other
sellers for the best price. |
| Auditor's
Report |
The
statement of the accounting firm's work and its opinion of the corporation's
financial statements, especially if they conform to the normal and
generally accepted practices of accountancy. |
| Autoregressive |
Using
previous data to predict future data. |
| Average
Daily Share Volume |
The
number of shares traded per day, averaged over a period of time,
usually one year. (see Volume) |
| 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. |
| Averages |
Various
ways of measuring the trend of securities prices, for example the
Dow Jones average of 30 industrial stocks. The prices of the 30 stocks
are totaled and then divided by a divisor that is intended to compensate
for past stock splits and stock dividends and that is changed from
time to time. As a result, point changes in the average have only
the vaguest relationship to dollar price changes in stocks included
in the average. |
