Leverage is an investment technique in which you use a small amount of your own money, and borrow the rest to make an investment of much larger value. In that way, leverage gives you significant financial power. If you borrow 90% of the cost of a home, you are using leverage to buy a much more expensive property than you could have afforded by paying with your own cash.
Archive for the ‘Level 1’ Category
Leverage is…
Friday, August 21st, 2009Market Share is…
Friday, August 21st, 2009Market share is the percentage of total industry sales that a company controls. It describes the strength of a company. If there are 50 greeting cards sold every year and your card company sells 40 of them, you have an 80% market share of the greeting card industry. Well done!
Production is…
Thursday, August 20th, 2009Production is the creation, harvest, or refining of a good or idea, which is then usually put up for sale (car production, for example). In other words, it is the “output” of our economy.
Analysis is…
Thursday, August 20th, 2009Analysis is a detailed examination of the composition or structure of something (a stock portfolio, for example). In general, the better the analysis, the greater the confidence in the financial choices you make.
Discounting is…
Thursday, August 20th, 2009Discounting is the process of figuring out how much money you need to invest now to have a certain amount of money in the future. It’s the opposite of compounding, through which you figure out how much a certain amount invested now will be worth in the future. Let’s say you want to have $100 dollars in 5 years. Discounting would tell you how much money you’d need to invest now to reach that goal.
An Emerging Market is…
Thursday, August 20th, 2009An emerging market is a financial sector or economy that isn’t quite as developed as that of, say, the United States or Western Europe, but that is experiencing rapid growth. Some emerging markets, especially Brazil, Russia, India, and China (collectively known as BRIC), are quickly becoming major world economic players.
Volatility is…
Thursday, August 20th, 2009A Glamour Stock is…
Thursday, August 20th, 2009A glamour stock is a stock that is popular among investors because it has consistently high growth and earnings and because its price is rising very quickly.
A Weighted Average is…
Thursday, August 20th, 2009A weighted average is an average (or mean) in which each factor is multiplied by a number that reflects its importance. For example, imagine you have 20 shares of Company A that are each worth $10, and 30 shares of Company B that are each worth $5. When you want to find out the average price of each of your shares, you would multiply the number of A shares you own (20) by their value ($10) (=$200), then do the same for Company B (30 × $5 = $150). Add these two values together ($200 + $150 = $350), and divide by the total number of shares (20 + 30 = 50). Your weighted average, then is $350 ÷ 50, or $7.
Wall Street is…
Thursday, August 20th, 2009Wall Street is literally a street in New York City where the New York Stock Exchange and many major financial institutions are located. The term “Wall Street” is often used to refer to the investment community in general.