Wall Street Lingo: Thousands of Investment Terms Explained Simply

by Peterson, Nora

• ISBN13: 9781601380388
• ISBN10: 1601380380
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-31
• Publisher: Atlantic Pub Co

Summary

Finally, a finance dictionary compiled with the individual investor in mind. Wall Street Lingo does more than define the terms your stockbroker, the Wall Street Journal and CNBC pitch at you it explains them in a way that traditional dictionaries can t. Where other dictionaries start at A and end at Z, Wall Street Lingo is organized in chapters, by subject. It begins where you begin with a topic that has piqued your curiosity and ends only when your curiosity has been satisfied. Have you ever wondered about the difference between CPI and PPI? In other dictionaries, you ll find the definitions 200 pages apart. Wall Street Lingo brings them together in the chapter Economics for Investors. EBITDA. Gross Profit. Net Profit. Shareholders Equity. You could waste precious time searching for explanations to help you analyze a company s financial condition. Or you can open Wall Street Lingo to the chapter Decoding Financial Statements. If you think technical analysis is only for the pros, flip to the chapter Technically Speaking for dozens of plain English translation to stock chart terms like Bollinger bands, MACD, Elliott wave theory and Bearish Divergence. It might change your mind. Whether you re an experienced investor or are exploring the market for the first time, you ll appreciate the easy-reading style and unique structure of this innovative investment tool. Over 1,000 terms individual investors need to know and understand for profitable investing Definitions organized by topic Fully indexed and cross-referenced Exhaustive list of commonly used acronyms Helpful resources, complete with websites Wall Street Lingo is an essential reference that translates the jargon used on Wall Street into direct, easy to understand, Main Street language and organizes it the way you use it. Author Nora Peterson brings more than three decades of in-the-trenches securities and futures trading experience to Wall Street Lingo. In the 1970s, she screened stocks by spending long hours pouring over binders of Value Line Investment Surveys and Standard & Poor s research reports at the library. In the 1980s, she taught herself to chart pork belly futures at a desk in her broker s office. Today she trades securities from a state-of-the-art computerized control station in her home. The shelves of her office are lined with reference books, but the one tool she could never find was a dictionary that didn t intimidate or overwhelm the everyday investor. So she wrote one.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 6
Author Biography & Dedication	p. 7
Introduction	p. 8
Market Mechanics
The Exchanges: At Home and Abroad	p. 13
Exchange Operations: Bringing Order to the Markets	p. 21
Playing Fair: Rules and Regulations	p. 32
Who's Who
The Big Wheels: Wall Street Professionals	p. 44
The Money Machines: Bankers, Economists, and World Trade	p. 49
The Money Makers: Corporations at Home and Abroad	p. 57
Investors - Big and Small	p. 62
The Industry Guard Dogs: Regulators, Enforcers, and Safety Nets	p. 68
Market Forces
Economics for Investors: The Ups and Downs of the Business Cycle	p. 74
Economic Indicators: Taking the Business Cycle Temperature	p. 88
The Long and Short of Trends, Cycles, and Crashes: Market Movement and the Indexes that Track Them	p. 105
Asset Classes
Stocks: Owning a Piece of Something Big	p. 114
Funds: Letting a Professional Make the Decisions	p. 123
Bonds: Loaning Corporations and Governments Money	p. 131
Options and Futures: Taking Bigger Chances	p. 141
Initial Public Offerings: The Darling of the 90s	p. 154
Analysis Strategies: Identifying a Good Investment When You See It
Fundamental Analysis: Cheap or Undervalued?	p. 161
Decoding Financial Statements: Seeing Beyond the Numbers	p. 173
Equity Valuations: It's All Relative	p. 182
Bond Valuations: All Debt is Not Created Equal	p. 191
Technical Analysis: Using the Past to Predict the Future	p. 198
Charting: More Than Pretty Pictures	p. 207
Investment Mechanics
Tools that Match Your Style: Starting With the Right Broker	p. 224
Orders, Quotes, and Fills: Getting the Price You Want	p. 237
Recordkeeping and Taxes: Paying the Piper	p. 247
Additional Resources
Investor Resources: Getting Help When You Need It	p. 253
Acronyms	p. 257
Conclusion	p. 263
Table of Figures	p. 264
Trademarks	p. 265
Bibliography	p. 268
Internet Resources	p. 269
Index	p. 273
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