Glossary

Assets: Something you own, like a house or a stock. 

Bank: Financial magnifiers, you give them $1, they lend out 90 cents. 

Bonds:  A loan.

Bottoms: Market jargon, when a financial market declines no further. 

Buying: purchasing an asset.

Bounced: A market that has hit a bottom and is on the way up. 

Capital: cash or your assets.

Checks: A mechanism to deliver money. 

Commodities: generally a key economic input that can’t be further reduced, like oil, copper or wheat. 

Consumer/consumption: the person who is buying goods and services. 

Corporate: a company, can be private or public (a company that issues stock). 

Crash: sudden and significant decline in the value of a market.

Credit: a loan extended.  

Debt: Money owed. 

Declines: price falls in value since the time of purchase.

Equity: ownership in a company, the same as a share. 

Exports: what a country sells. 

Economies: the sum total of all activity including that of households, companies and the government. 

Futures: a financial contract whereby the buyer receives the right to receive an asset in the future. So a buyer of wheat receives wheat in the future. 

Fed: the US central bank, the entity that prints money. 

Hedge: an investment that is made in order to reduce the risk of price movements in an asset. 

Buy and hold: passive investing, meaning owning a portfolio that does not take a view on whether stocks or bonds will rise or fall.

Hyperinflation: prices of goods and services rise uncontrollably over a period of time

Illiquid: something that can’t easily be sold, like a house. 

Industry: a specific sector in the economy. 

Inflation: the rate of change in the price of a pile of consumer goods. 

Interest: price to borrow money. 

Investing/investment/investor: The activity of a saver buying assets in the hope of appreciation. 

Issued: offering securities in order to raise funds from investors.

Liquidity: the ease at which an asset or security can be converted into cash.

Liability: obligations that must be paid in the future, the same as a debt. 

Loan: the came as credit. 

Macro/geopolitical: looking at life through the lens of growth, inflation and relative monetary policy with an eye toward global political shifts. 

Margins: the rate of change in the percent of profit in a company. 

Markets: financial markets, the price at which those that want capital and those that offer capital meet. 

Marxist: someone who believes in the philosophy of Karl Marx, who thought that capitalism was fundamentally unstable because the incentives of the owners were such that they would make the life of their employees so miserable that the employees would eventually overthrow the owner. 

Middle-man: a person who stands in the middle of a transaction, like a real estate broker or a stock broker. 

Outsource: moving production to a cheaper location. 

Portfolio: collection of investments and holdings designed to both produce a positive expected return and balance each other out to reduce risk. 

Profit: the difference between the amount earned and amount spent

S&P: stock market index of the top 500 stocks. 

Quarter: a reporting unit in a year. 

Risk: possibility of losing almost an individual investment or, more specifically, the expected volatility on portfolio in year.

Security: tradable financial asset.

Sell: liquidating an asset in exchange for cash.

Settlement: the difference between when an asset is sold and when the money is available. 

Share: units of ownership in a company.

Short: sell an asset with the expectations that its price will fall. 

Soviet: literally a meeting group, short hand for the Soviet Union, a Moscow based authoritarian political structure in force from 1917-1991. 

Spread: the difference between two yields.

Tightening: reduction in amount of money created. 

Trade: short-hand for foreign trade. 

Trader: someone who makes their money speculating in financial markets. 

Wages: salary.

Value: market jargon for a type of investing that buys assets where prices are depressed relative to plant, equipment and other hard assets. 

Western: ideas relating to Western Europe and the US including the Enlightenment, separation of Church and State, Democracy and basic human rights.