A preferred stock is an ownership stake in a public company, which unlike common stock, has a higher claim on its earnings and assets. Stakeholders of preferred stock can, therefore, benefit by receiving high dividends during the good times when the corporation has made huge profits and decides to distribute the excesses to its shareholders. […]
Extrinsic value is a term from derivatives trading that measures the difference between the market price of an option and its intrinsic value. Because options are most often priced directly on mathematical models of the underlying stock’s current and historical price (the intrinsic value), the extrinsic value is a measure of the decay in value […]
Fiat currency is any government-backed legal tender that is not backed by a physical commodity. The term comes from the fact that the currency is given value based on the dictate, or ‘fiat’, of a government, and not based on some intrinsic value recognized by those who use it. Most national currencies are based on […]
Elliott Wave Theory is a technical analysis approach that is based on the belief in cycles in the mass psychology of investing. According to Elliott Wave Theory, financial markets follow a familiar pattern of successively smaller 5-3 waves, with the 5 on-trend waves being interspersed with 3 opposite-trend counter-waves. Within each wave of the larger […]
A commodity is a loose term that describes a set of primary goods with shared features. Commodities are usually natural products that are used as first-stage inputs into more complex manufactured goods. Commodities are generally seen as interchangeable within their sub-class and grade. For example, copper is one of the world’s most widely used commodities. […]
Forex is the abbreviation for foreign exchange, which is the informal market for currency trading. There are no centralized currency exchange markets, but rather a loose collection of primary and secondary currency dealers that trade in an over-the-counter (OTC) market according to both national rules and international standards and conventions. Anyone can trade in the […]
Revenue is the amount of money earned by a business from the sale of goods and services to individuals and other businesses. It is recorded in the income statement as sales. Revenue can also be earned through the use of capital or assets that are associated with the organization’s main operations before expenses and other […]
Market breadth is a concept from technical analysis that uses various comparison measures of advancing and declining company stock prices to gauge overall market sentiment. The degree to which companies are advancing relative to companies that are declining is seen as a measure of current market trends. The Theory of Market Breadth The use of […]
A market cycle is any process related to securities that is perceived to operate on a somewhat predictable and repetitive pattern. A market cycle could be related to a specific industrial sector, a subset of stocks or an interrelationship between commodities, among many other possible examples. The most well-known and accepted market cycle is the […]
Dow theory is a theory related to the general business cycle that uses Dow Jones compiled averages to interpret the strength of any proposed expansion or contraction of the market. Under this theory, if both the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and the Dow Jones Transportation Average (DJTA) are crossing new highs or lows, then […]
