The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:

Finance

Finance

"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...

– addresses the ways in which individuals, businesses and organizations raise, allocate and use monetary resources

Factors of production

In economics, factors of production means inputs and finished goods means output. Input determines the quantity of output i.e. output depends upon input. Input is the starting point and output is the end point of production process and such input-output relationship is called a production function...

 over time, taking into account the risks entailed in their projects.

Overview

The word finance may incorporate any of the following:

• The study of money
  Money
  Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...
  
   and other asset
  Asset
  In financial accounting, assets are economic resources. Anything tangible or intangible that is capable of being owned or controlled to produce value and that is held to have positive economic value is considered an asset...
  
  s
• The management
  Corporate finance
  Corporate finance is the area of finance dealing with monetary decisions that business enterprises make and the tools and analysis used to make these decisions. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize shareholder value while managing the firm's financial risks...
  
   and control of those assets
• Profiling and managing project risks
  Risk management
  Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the realization of opportunities...
  
  

Fundamental financial concepts

• Finance
  Finance
  "Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
  
   an overview
  • Arbitrage
    Arbitrage
    In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices...
    
    
  • Capital (economics)
    Capital (economics)
    In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. The capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process...
    
    
  • Capital asset pricing model
    Capital asset pricing model
    In finance, the capital asset pricing model is used to determine a theoretically appropriate required rate of return of an asset, if that asset is to be added to an already well-diversified portfolio, given that asset's non-diversifiable risk...
    
    
  • Cash flow
    Cash flow
    Cash flow is the movement of money into or out of a business, project, or financial product. It is usually measured during a specified, finite period of time. Measurement of cash flow can be used for calculating other parameters that give information on a company's value and situation.Cash flow...
    
    
  • Cash flow matching
  • Debt
    Debt
    A debt is an obligation owed by one party to a second party, the creditor; usually this refers to assets granted by the creditor to the debtor, but the term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on economic value.A debt is created when a...
    
    
    • Default
      Default (finance)
      In finance, default occurs when a debtor has not met his or her legal obligations according to the debt contract, e.g. has not made a scheduled payment, or has violated a loan covenant of the debt contract. A default is the failure to pay back a loan. Default may occur if the debtor is either...
      
      
    • Consumer debt
      Consumer debt
      In economics, consumer debt is outstanding debt of consumers, as opposed to businesses or governments. In macroeconomic terms, it is debt which is used to fund consumption rather than investment...
      
      
    • Debt consolidation
      Debt consolidation
      Debt consolidation entails taking out one loan to pay off many others. This is often done to secure a lower interest rate, secure a fixed interest rate or for the convenience of servicing only one loan....
      
      
    • Debt settlement
      Debt settlement
      Debt settlement, also known as debt arbitration, debt negotiation or credit settlement, is an approach to debt reduction in which the debtor and creditor agree on a reduced balance that will be regarded as payment in full....
      
      
    • Credit counseling
      Credit counseling
      Credit counseling is a process that involves offering education to consumers about how to avoid incurring debts that cannot be repaid through establishing an effective Debt Management Plan and Budget...
      
      
    • Bankruptcy
      Bankruptcy
      Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
      
      
    • Debt diet
      Debt Diet
      The Debt Diet refers to a debt management plan made popular by a multi-part series for The Oprah Winfrey Show, first airing on February 17, 2006. In the series, Oprah Winfrey teamed up with financial experts Jean Chatzky, Glinda Bridgforth and David Bach to create a step-by-step plan demonstrating...
      
      
    • Debt-snowball method
      Debt-snowball method
      The debt-snowball method is a debt reduction strategy, whereby one who owes on more than one account pays off the accounts starting with the smallest balances first while paying the minimum on larger debts...
      
      
  • Discounted cash flow
    Discounted cash flow
    In finance, discounted cash flow analysis is a method of valuing a project, company, or asset using the concepts of the time value of money...
    
    
  • Financial capital
    Financial capital
    Financial capital can refer to money used by entrepreneurs and businesses to buy what they need to make their products or provide their services or to that sector of the economy based on its operation, i.e. retail, corporate, investment banking, etc....
    
    
    • Funding
      Funding
      Funding is the act of providing resources, usually in form of money , or other values such as effort or time , for a project, a person, a business or any other private or public institutions...
      
      
  • Financial modeling
    Financial modeling
    Financial modeling is the task of building an abstract representation of a financial decision making situation. This is a mathematical model designed to represent the performance of a financial asset or a portfolio, of a business, a project, or any other investment...
    
    
  • Entrepreneur
    Entrepreneur
    An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
    
    
    • Entrepreneurship
      Entrepreneurship
      Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur, which can be defined as "one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods". This may result in new organizations or may be part of revitalizing mature organizations in response...
      
      
  • Fixed income analysis
    Fixed income analysis
    Fixed income analysis is the valuation of fixed income or debt securities, and the analysis of their interest rate risk, credit risk, and likely price behavior in hedging portfolios...
    
    
  • Gap financing
    Gap financing
    Gap Financing is a term mostly associated with mortgage loans or property loans. It is an interim loan given to finance the difference between the floor loan and the maximum permanent loan as committed....
    
    
  • Hedge
    Hedge (finance)
    A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses that may be incurred by a companion investment.A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insurance, forward contracts, swaps, options, many types of...
    
    
    • Basis risk
      Basis risk
      Basis risk in finance is the risk associated with imperfect hedging using futures. It could arise because of the difference between the asset whose price is to be hedged and the asset underlying the derivative, or because of a mismatch between the expiration date of the futures and the actual...
      
      
  • Interest rate
    Interest rate
    An interest rate is the rate at which interest is paid by a borrower for the use of money that they borrow from a lender. For example, a small company borrows capital from a bank to buy new assets for their business, and in return the lender receives interest at a predetermined interest rate for...
    
    
    • Risk-free interest rate
      Risk-free interest rate
      Risk-free interest rate is the theoretical rate of return of an investment with no risk of financial loss. The risk-free rate represents the interest that an investor would expect from an absolutely risk-free investment over a given period of time....
      
      
    • Term structure of interest rates
  • Short rate model
    Short rate model
    In the context of interest rate derivatives, a short-rate model is a mathematical model that describes the future evolution of interest rates by describing the future evolution of the short rate, usually written r_t \,.-The short rate:...
    
    
    • Vasicek model
      Vasicek model
      In finance, the Vasicek model is a mathematical model describing the evolution of interest rates. It is a type of "one-factor model" as it describes interest rate movements as driven by only one source of market risk...
      
      
    • Cox–Ingersoll–Ross model
    • Hull–White model
    • Chen model
      Chen model
      In finance, the Chen model is a mathematical model describing the evolution of interest rates. It is a type of "three-factor model" as it describes interest rate movements as driven by three sources of market risk...
      
      
    • Black–Derman–Toy model
  • Interest
    Interest
    Interest is a fee paid by a borrower of assets to the owner as a form of compensation for the use of the assets. It is most commonly the price paid for the use of borrowed money, or money earned by deposited funds....
    
    
    • Effective interest rate
      Effective interest rate
      The effective interest rate, effective annual interest rate, annual equivalent rate or simply effective rate is the interest rate on a loan or financial product restated from the nominal interest rate as an interest rate with annual compound interest payable in arrears.It is used to compare the...
      
      
    • Nominal interest rate
      Nominal interest rate
      In finance and economics nominal interest rate or nominal rate of interest refers to the rate of interest before adjustment for inflation ; or, for interest rates "as stated" without adjustment for the full effect of compounding...
      
      
    • Interest rate basis
    • Fisher equation
      Fisher equation
      The Fisher equation in financial mathematics and economics estimates the relationship between nominal and real interest rates under inflation....
      
      
    • Crowding out
      Crowding out (economics)
      In economics, crowding out occurs when Expansionary Fiscal Policy causes interest rates to rise, thereby reducing private spending. That means increase in government spending crowds out investment spending....
      
      
    • Annual percentage rate
      Annual percentage rate
      The term annual percentage rate , also called nominal APR, and the term effective APR, also called EAR, describe the interest rate for a whole year , rather than just a monthly fee/rate, as applied on a loan, mortgage loan, credit card, etc. It is a finance charge expressed as an annual rate...
      
      
    • Interest coverage ratio
  • Investment
    Investment
    Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...
    
    
    • Foreign direct investment
      Foreign direct investment
      Foreign direct investment or foreign investment refers to the net inflows of investment to acquire a lasting management interest in an enterprise operating in an economy other than that of the investor.. It is the sum of equity capital,other long-term capital, and short-term capital as shown in...
      
      
    • Gold as an investment
      Gold as an investment
      Of all the precious metals, gold is the most popular as an investment. Investors generally buy gold as a hedge or harbor against economic, political, or social fiat currency crises...
      
      
    • Over-investing
      Over-investing
      Over-investing in finance, particularly personal finance, refers to the practice of investing more into an asset than what that asset is worth on the open market...
      
      
  • Leverage
  • Long (finance)
    Long (finance)
    In finance, a long position in a security, such as a stock or a bond, or equivalently to be long in a security, means the holder of the position owns the security and will profit if the price of the security goes up. Going long is the more conventional practice of investing and is contrasted with...
    
    
  • Liquidity
  • Margin (finance)
    Margin (finance)
    In finance, a margin is collateral that the holder of a financial instrument has to deposit to cover some or all of the credit risk of their counterparty...
    
    
  • Mark to market
    Mark to market
    Mark-to-market or fair value accounting refers to accounting for the fair value of an asset or liability based on the current market price of the asset or liability, or for similar assets and liabilities, or based on another objectively assessed "fair" value...
    
    
  • Market Impact
    Market impact
    In financial markets, market impact is the effect that a market participant has when it buys or sells an asset. It is the extent to which the buying or selling moves the price against the buyer or seller, i.e. upward when buying and downward when selling...
    
    
  • Medium of exchange
    Medium of exchange
    A medium of exchange is an intermediary used in trade to avoid the inconveniences of a pure barter system.By contrast, as William Stanley Jevons argued, in a barter system there must be a coincidence of wants before two people can trade – one must want exactly what the other has to offer, when and...
    
    
  • Microcredit
    Microcredit
    Microcredit is the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit...
    
    
  • Money creation
    Money creation
    In economics, money creation is the process by which the money supply of a country or a monetary region is increased due to some reason. There are two principal stages of money creation. First, the central bank introduces new money into the economy by purchasing financial assets or lending money...
    
    
  • Money
    Money
    Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...
    
    
    • Currency
      Currency
      In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
      
      
    • Coin
      Coin
      A coin is a piece of hard material that is standardized in weight, is produced in large quantities in order to facilitate trade, and primarily can be used as a legal tender token for commerce in the designated country, region, or territory....
      
      
    • Banknote
      Banknote
      A banknote is a kind of negotiable instrument, a promissory note made by a bank payable to the bearer on demand, used as money, and in many jurisdictions is legal tender. In addition to coins, banknotes make up the cash or bearer forms of all modern fiat money...
      
      
    • Counterfeit
      Counterfeit
      To counterfeit means to illegally imitate something. Counterfeit products are often produced with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product...
      
      
  • Portfolio
    Portfolio (finance)
    Portfolio is a financial term denoting a collection of investments held by an investment company, hedge fund, financial institution or individual.-Definition:The term portfolio refers to any collection of financial assets such as stocks, bonds and cash...
    
    
    • Modern portfolio theory
      Modern portfolio theory
      Modern portfolio theory is a theory of investment which attempts to maximize portfolio expected return for a given amount of portfolio risk, or equivalently minimize risk for a given level of expected return, by carefully choosing the proportions of various assets...
      
      
    • Mutual fund separation theorem
      Mutual fund separation theorem
      In portfolio theory, a mutual fund separation theorem, mutual fund theorem, or separation theorem is a theorem stating that, under certain conditions, any investor's optimal portfolio can be constructed by holding each of certain mutual funds in appropriate ratios, where the number of mutual funds...
      
      
  • Reference rate
    Reference rate
    A reference rate is a rate that determines pay-offs in a financial contract and that is outside the control of the parties to the contract. It is often some form of LIBOR rate, but it can take many forms, such as a consumer price index, a house price index or an unemployment rate...
    
    
    • Reset
      Reset (finance)
      Reset also known as fixing is a generic concept in the financial markets, meaning the determination and recording of a reference rate, usually in order to calculate the settlement value of a periodic payment schedule between two parties....
      
      
  • Return
    • Absolute return
      Absolute return
      The absolute return or simply return is a measure of the gain or loss on an investment portfolio expressed as a percentage of invested capital. The adjective absolute is used to stress the distinction with the relative return measures often used by long-only equity funds, i.e...
      
      
    • Investment performance
      Investment performance
      Investment performance is the return on an investment portfolio. The investment portfolio can contain a single asset or multiple assets. The investment performance is measured over a specific period of time and in a specific currency....
      
      
    • Relative return
      Relative return
      Relative return is a measure of the return of an investment portfolio relative to a theoretical passive reference portfolio or benchmark.In active portfolio management, the aim is to maximize the relative return...
      
      
  • Right-financing
    Right-financing
    The concept of right-financing was coined by English political economist Dr. Peter Middlebrook to highlight the importance of adopting the appropriate policy, institutional and financial support mechanisms to maximize sustainable returns on both public and private investments over time...
    
    
  • Risk
    Risk
    Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity will lead to a loss . The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome exists . Potential losses themselves may also be called "risks"...
    
    
    • Risk management
      Risk management
      Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the realization of opportunities...
      
      
    • Risk measure
      Risk measure
      A Risk measure is used to determine the amount of an asset or set of assets to be kept in reserve. The purpose of this reserve is to make the risks taken by financial institutions, such as banks and insurance companies, acceptable to the regulator...
      
      
      • Coherent risk measure
        Coherent risk measure
        In the field of financial economics there are a number of ways that risk can be defined; to clarify the concept theoreticians have described a number of properties that a risk measure might or might not have...
        
        
      • Spectral risk measure
        Spectral risk measure
        A Spectral risk measure is a risk measure given as a weighted average of outcomes where bad outcomes are, typically, included with larger weights. A spectral risk measure is a function of portfolio returns and outputs the amount of the numeraire to be kept in reserve. A spectral risk measure is...
        
        
      • Value at Risk
        Value at risk
        In financial mathematics and financial risk management, Value at Risk is a widely used risk measure of the risk of loss on a specific portfolio of financial assets...
        
        
  • Scenario analysis
    Scenario analysis
    Scenario analysis is a process of analyzing possible future events by considering alternative possible outcomes . Thus, the scenario analysis, which is a main method of projections, does not try to show one exact picture of the future. Instead, it presents consciously several alternative future...
    
    
  • Short (finance)
  • Speculation
    Speculation
    In finance, speculation is a financial action that does not promise safety of the initial investment along with the return on the principal sum...
    
    
    • Day trading
      Day trading
      Day trading refers to the practice of buying and selling financial instruments within the same trading day such that all positions are usually closed before the market close for the trading day...
      
      
  • Position trader
  • Spread trade
    Spread trade
    In finance, a spread trade is the simultaneous purchase of one security and sale of a related security, called legs, as a unit. Spread trades are usually executed with options or futures contracts as the legs, but other securities are sometimes used...
    
    
  • Standard of deferred payment
    Standard of deferred payment
    A standard of deferred payment is the accepted way, in a given market, to settle a debt – a unit in which debts are denominated. It is one of the defining functions of money; for example, while the gold standard reigned, gold or any currency convertible to gold at a fixed rate constituted such a...
    
    
  • Store of value
    Store of value
    A recognized form of exchange can be a form of money or currency, a commodity like gold, or financial capital. To act as a store of value, these forms must be able to be saved and retrieved at a later time, and be predictably useful when retrieved....
    
    
  • Time horizon
    Time horizon
    A time horizon, also known as a planning horizon, is a fixed point of time in the future at which point certain processes will be evaluated or assumed to end. It is necessary in an accounting, finance or risk management regime to assign such a fixed horizon time so that alternatives can be...
    
    
  • Time value of money
    Time value of money
    The time value of money is the value of money figuring in a given amount of interest earned over a given amount of time. The time value of money is the central concept in finance theory....
    
    
    • Discounting
    • Present value
      Present value
      Present value, also known as present discounted value, is the value on a given date of a future payment or series of future payments, discounted to reflect the time value of money and other factors such as investment risk...
      
      
    • Future value
      Future value
      Future value is the value of an asset at a specific date. It measures the nominal future sum of money that a given sum of money is "worth" at a specified time in the future assuming a certain interest rate, or more generally, rate of return; it is the present value multiplied by the accumulation...
      
      
    • Net present value
      Net present value
      In finance, the net present value or net present worth of a time series of cash flows, both incoming and outgoing, is defined as the sum of the present values of the individual cash flows of the same entity...
      
      
    • Internal rate of return
      Internal rate of return
      The internal rate of return is a rate of return used in capital budgeting to measure and compare the profitability of investments. It is also called the discounted cash flow rate of return or the rate of return . In the context of savings and loans the IRR is also called the effective interest rate...
      
      
    • Modified internal rate of return
      Modified Internal Rate of Return
      The modified internal rate of return is a financial measure of an investment's attractiveness. It is used in capital budgeting to rank alternative investments of equal size...
      
      
    • Annuity
      Annuity (finance theory)
      The term annuity is used in finance theory to refer to any terminating stream of fixed payments over a specified period of time. This usage is most commonly seen in discussions of finance, usually in connection with the valuation of the stream of payments, taking into account time value of money...
      
      
    • Perpetuity
      Perpetuity
      A perpetuity is an annuity that has no end, or a stream of cash payments that continues forever. There are few actual perpetuities in existence...
      
      
  • Unit of account
    Unit of account
    A unit of account is a standard monetary unit of measurement of value/cost of goods, services, or assets. It is one of three well-known functions of money. It lends meaning to profits, losses, liability, or assets....
    
    
  • Volatility
    Volatility (finance)
    In finance, volatility is a measure for variation of price of a financial instrument over time. Historic volatility is derived from time series of past market prices...
    
    
  • Yield
  • Yield curve
    Yield curve
    In finance, the yield curve is the relation between the interest rate and the time to maturity, known as the "term", of the debt for a given borrower in a given currency. For example, the U.S. dollar interest rates paid on U.S...
    
    

History

• Tulip mania
  Tulip mania
  Tulip mania or tulipomania was a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed...
  
   1620s/1630s
• South Sea Bubble & Mississippi Company
  Mississippi Company
  The "Mississippi Company" became the "Company of the West" and expanded as the "Company of the Indies" .-The Banque Royale:...
  
   1710s; see also Stock market bubble
  Stock market bubble
  A stock market bubble is a type of economic bubble taking place in stock markets when market participants drive stock prices above their value in relation to some system of stock valuation....
  
  
• Vix Pervenit
  Vix Pervenit
  Vix Pervenit: On Usury and Other Dishonest Profit was an encyclical, promulgated by Pope Benedict XIV on November 1, 1745, which condemned the practice of charging interest on loans as usury. Because the encyclical was addressed to the Bishops of Italy, it is generally not considered ex cathedra...
  
   1745, on usury and other dishonest profit
• Panic of 1837
  Panic of 1837
  The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis or market correction in the United States built on a speculative fever. The end of the Second Bank of the United States had produced a period of runaway inflation, but on May 10, 1837 in New York City, every bank began to accept payment only in specie ,...
  
  
• Railway mania
  Railway Mania
  The Railway Mania was an instance of speculative frenzy in Britain in the 1840s. It followed a common pattern: as the price of railway shares increased, more and more money was poured in by speculators, until the inevitable collapse...
  
   1840s
• Erie War
  Erie War
  The Erie War was a 19th century conflict between American financiers for control of the Erie Railroad, which operated in several American states and connected New York to Chicago....
  
   1860s
• Long Depression
  Long Depression
  The Long Depression was a worldwide economic crisis, felt most heavily in Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing strong economic growth fueled by the Second Industrial Revolution in the decade following the American Civil War. At the time, the episode was labeled the Great...
  
   1873 to 1896
• Post-WWI hyperinflation; see Hyperinflation
  Hyperinflation
  In economics, hyperinflation is inflation that is very high or out of control. While the real values of the specific economic items generally stay the same in terms of relatively stable foreign currencies, in hyperinflationary conditions the general price level within a specific economy increases...
  
   and Inflation in the Weimar Republic
  Inflation in the Weimar Republic
  The hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic was a three year period of hyperinflation in Germany between June 1921 and July 1924.- Analysis :...
  
  
• Wall Street Crash 1929
• Great Depression
  Great Depression
  The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
  
   1930s
• 1973 oil crisis
  1973 oil crisis
  The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...
  
  
• 1979 energy crisis
  1979 energy crisis
  The 1979 oil crisis in the United States occurred in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Amid massive protests, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled his country in early 1979 and the Ayatollah Khomeini soon became the new leader of Iran. Protests severely disrupted the Iranian oil...
  
  
• Savings and Loan Crisis
  Savings and Loan crisis
  The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of about 747 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States...
  
   1980s
• Black Monday
  Black Monday (1987)
  In finance, Black Monday refers to Monday October 19, 1987, when stock markets around the world crashed, shedding a huge value in a very short time. The crash began in Hong Kong and spread west to Europe, hitting the United States after other markets had already declined by a significant margin...
  
   1987
• Asian financial crisis 1990s
• Dot-com bubble
  Dot-com bubble
  The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
  
   1995-2001
• Stock market downturn of 2002
  Stock market downturn of 2002
  The stock market downturn of 2002 is the sharp drop in stock prices during 2002 in stock exchanges across the United States, Canada, Asia, and Europe...
  
  
• United States housing bubble
  United States housing bubble
  The United States housing bubble is an economic bubble affecting many parts of the United States housing market in over half of American states. Housing prices peaked in early 2006, started to decline in 2006 and 2007, and may not yet have hit bottom as of 2011. On December 30, 2008 the...
  
  
• Financial crisis of 2007–2010

Accounting (financial record keeping)

Main articles: Accounting

Accountancy

Accountancy is the process of communicating financial information about a business entity to users such as shareholders and managers. The communication is generally in the form of financial statements that show in money terms the economic resources under the control of management; the art lies in...

 and List of accounting topics

• Auditing
• Accounting software
  Accounting software
  Accounting software is application software that records and processes accounting transactions within functional modules such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, and trial balance. It functions as an accounting information system...
  
  
• Book keeping
• FASB
• Financial accountancy
  Financial accountancy
  Financial accountancy is the field of accountancy concerned with the preparation of financial statements for decision makers, such as stockholders, suppliers, banks, employees, government agencies, owners, and other stakeholders...
  
  
  • Financial statements
    Financial statements
    A financial statement is a formal record of the financial activities of a business, person, or other entity. In British English—including United Kingdom company law—a financial statement is often referred to as an account, although the term financial statement is also used, particularly by...
    
    
    • Balance sheet
      Balance sheet
      In financial accounting, a balance sheet or statement of financial position is a summary of the financial balances of a sole proprietorship, a business partnership or a company. Assets, liabilities and ownership equity are listed as of a specific date, such as the end of its financial year. A...
      
      
    • Cash flow statement
      Cash flow statement
      In financial accounting, a cash flow statement, also known as statement of cash flows or funds flow statement, is a financial statement that shows how changes in balance sheet accounts and income affect cash and cash equivalents, and breaks the analysis down to operating, investing, and financing...
      
      
    • Income statement
      Income statement
      Income statement is a company's financial statement that indicates how the revenue Income statement (also referred to as profit and loss statement (P&L), statement of financial performance, earnings statement, operating statement or statement of operations) is a company's financial statement that...
      
      
• Management accounting
  Management accounting
  Management accounting or managerial accounting is concerned with the provisions and use of accounting information to managers within organizations, to provide them with the basis to make informed business decisions that will allow them to be better equipped in their management and control...
  
  
• Philosophy of Accounting
  Philosophy of accounting
  The philosophy of accounting is the conceptual framework for the professional preparation and auditing of financial statements and accounts. The issues which arise include the difficulty of establishing a true and fair value of an enterprise and its assets; the moral basis of disclosure and...
  
  
• Working capital
  Working capital
  Working capital is a financial metric which represents operating liquidity available to a business, organization or other entity, including governmental entity. Along with fixed assets such as plant and equipment, working capital is considered a part of operating capital. Net working capital is...
  
  

Banking

• Anonymous banking
• Automatic teller machine
• Deposit
  Deposit account
  A deposit account is a current account, savings account, or other type of bank account, at a banking institution that allows money to be deposited and withdrawn by the account holder. These transactions are recorded on the bank's books, and the resulting balance is recorded as a liability for the...
  
  
• Deposit creation multiplier
• International Bank Account Number
  International Bank Account Number
  The International Bank Account Number is an international standard for identifying bank accounts across national borders with a minimal risk of propagating transcription errors. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Banking Standards , and was later adopted as an international...
  
  
• Loan
  Loan
  A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower....
  
  
  • Pre-qualification
    Pre-qualification
    Pre-qualification is a term of art in retail finance, and means that a loan officer has taken some information from the borrower, and made a tentative ....
    
    
  • Pre-approval
    Pre-approval
    In lending, pre-approval has two meanings:1. The first is that a lender, via public or proprietary information, feels that a potential borrower is completely credit worthy enough for a certain credit product, and approaches the potential customer with a guarantee that should they want that product,...
    
    
  • Subprime
• Withdrawal
  Withdrawal
  Withdrawal can refer to any sort of separation, but is most commonly used to describe the group of symptoms that occurs upon the abrupt discontinuation/separation or a decrease in dosage of the intake of medications, recreational drugs, and alcohol...
  
  

Corporate finance

• Balance sheet analysis
  • Financial ratio
    Financial ratio
    A financial ratio is a relative magnitude of two selected numerical values taken from an enterprise's financial statements. Often used in accounting, there are many standard ratios used to try to evaluate the overall financial condition of a corporation or other organization...
    
    
• Business plan
  Business plan
  A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals....
  
  
• Capital budgeting
  Capital budgeting
  Capital budgeting is the planning process used to determine whether an organization's long term investments such as new machinery, replacement machinery, new plants, new products, and research development projects are worth pursuing...
  
  
  • Capital investment decisions
  • The investment decision
    • Business valuation
      Business valuation
      Business valuation is a process and a set of procedures used to estimate the economic value of an owner’s interest in a business. Valuation is used by financial market participants to determine the price they are willing to pay or receive to consummate a sale of a business...
      
      
    • Stock valuation
      Stock valuation
      In financial markets, stock valuation is the method of calculating theoretical values of companies and their stocks. The main use of these methods is to predict future market prices, or more generally potential market prices, and thus to profit from price movement – stocks that are judged...
      
      
    • Fundamental analysis
      Fundamental analysis
      Fundamental analysis of a business involves analyzing its financial statements and health, its management and competitive advantages, and its competitors and markets. When applied to futures and forex, it focuses on the overall state of the economy, interest rates, production, earnings, and...
      
      
    • Real option
      Real option
      Real options valuation, also often termed Real options analysis, applies option valuation techniques to capital budgeting decisions. A real option itself, is the right — but not the obligation — to undertake some business decision; typically the option to make, abandon, expand, or contract a...
      
      s
    • Valuation topics
    • Fisher separation theorem
      Fisher separation theorem
      In economics, the Fisher separation theorem asserts that the objective of a corporation will be the maximization of its present value, regardless of the preferences of its shareholders. The theorem therefore separates management's "productive opportunities" from the entrepreneur's "market...
      
      
  • The financing decision
    • Capital structure
      Capital structure
      In finance, capital structure refers to the way a corporation finances its assets through some combination of equity, debt, or hybrid securities. A firm's capital structure is then the composition or 'structure' of its liabilities. For example, a firm that sells $20 billion in equity and $80...
      
      
    • Cost of capital
      Cost of capital
      The cost of capital is a term used in the field of financial investment to refer to the cost of a company's funds , or, from an investor's point of view "the shareholder's required return on a portfolio of all the company's existing securities"...
      
      
    • Weighted average cost of capital
      Weighted average cost of capital
      The weighted average cost of capital is the rate that a company is expected to pay on average to all its security holders to finance its assets....
      
      
    • Modigliani-Miller theorem
      Modigliani-Miller theorem
      The Modigliani–Miller theorem forms the basis for modern thinking on capital structure. The basic theorem states that, under a certain market price process , in the absence of taxes, bankruptcy costs, agency costs, and asymmetric information, and in an efficient market, the value of a firm is...
      
      
  • The Dividend Decision
    The Dividend Decision
    The Dividend Decision is a decision made by the directors of a company. It relates to the amount and timing of any cash payments made to the company's stockholders. The decision is an important one for the firm as it may influence its capital structure and stock price...
    
    
    • Dividend
      Dividend
      Dividends are payments made by a corporation to its shareholder members. It is the portion of corporate profits paid out to stockholders. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, that money can be put to two uses: it can either be re-invested in the business , or it can be distributed to...
      
      
    • Dividend tax
      Dividend tax
      A dividend tax is an income tax on dividend payments to the stockholders of a company.-Collection:In many jurisdictions, the government requires the company to withhold at least the standard tax, paying this to the national revenue authorities and paying out only the balance to the...
      
      
    • Dividend yield
      Dividend yield
      The dividend yield or the dividend-price ratio on a company stock is the company's total annual dividend payments divided by its market capitalization, or the dividend per share, divided by the price per share. It is often expressed as a percentage...
      
      
    • Modigliani-Miller theorem
      Modigliani-Miller theorem
      The Modigliani–Miller theorem forms the basis for modern thinking on capital structure. The basic theorem states that, under a certain market price process , in the absence of taxes, bankruptcy costs, agency costs, and asymmetric information, and in an efficient market, the value of a firm is...
      
      
• Corporate action
  Corporate action
  A corporate action is an event initiated by a public company that affects the securities issued by the company. Some corporate actions such as a dividend or coupon payment may have a direct financial impact on the shareholders or bondholders; another example is a call of a debt security...
  
  
• Managerial finance
  Managerial finance
  Managerial finance is the branch of finance that concerns itself with the managerial significance of finance techniques. It is focused on assessment rather than technique....
  
  
  • Management accounting
    Management accounting
    Management accounting or managerial accounting is concerned with the provisions and use of accounting information to managers within organizations, to provide them with the basis to make informed business decisions that will allow them to be better equipped in their management and control...
    
    
• Mergers and acquisitions
  Mergers and acquisitions
  Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
  
  
  • leveraged buyout
    Leveraged buyout
    A leveraged buyout occurs when an investor, typically financial sponsor, acquires a controlling interest in a company's equity and where a significant percentage of the purchase price is financed through leverage...
    
    
  • takeover
    Takeover
    In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company by another . In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to the acquisition of a private company.- Friendly takeovers :Before a bidder makes an offer for another...
    
    
  • corporate raid
    Corporate raid
    A corporate raid is an American English business term for buying a large interest in a corporation and then using voting rights to enact measures directed at increasing the share value...
    
    
• Real option
  Real option
  Real options valuation, also often termed Real options analysis, applies option valuation techniques to capital budgeting decisions. A real option itself, is the right — but not the obligation — to undertake some business decision; typically the option to make, abandon, expand, or contract a...
  
  s
• Return on investment
  Return on investment
  Return on investment is one way of considering profits in relation to capital invested. Return on assets , return on net assets , return on capital and return on invested capital are similar measures with variations on how “investment” is defined.Marketing not only influences net profits but also...
  
  
  • Return on assets
  • Return on equity
    Return on equity
    Return on equity measures the rate of return on the ownership interest of the common stock owners. It measures a firm's efficiency at generating profits from every unit of shareholders' equity . ROE shows how well a company uses investment funds to generate earnings growth...
    
    
  • Return on capital
• Working capital management
  • cash conversion cycle
    Cash conversion cycle
    In management accounting, the Cash Conversion Cycle measures how long a firm will be deprived of cash if it increases its investment in resources in order to expand customer sales. It is thus a measure of the liquidity risk entailed by growth...
    
    
  • Return on capital
  • Economic value added
    Economic value added
    In corporate finance, Economic Value Added or EVA, a registered trademark of Stern Stewart & Co., is an estimate of a firm's economic profit – being the value created in excess of the required return of the company's investors . Quite simply, EVA is the profit earned by the firm less the cost of...
    
    
  • Just In Time
  • Economic order quantity
    Economic order quantity
    Economic order quantity is the level of inventory that minimizes total inventory holding costs and ordering costs. It is one of the oldest classical production scheduling models. The framework used to determine this order quantity is also known as Wilson EOQ Model or Wilson Formula. The model was...
    
    
  • Discounts and allowances
    Discounts and allowances
    Discounts and allowances are reductions to a basic price of goods or services.They can occur anywhere in the distribution channel, modifying either the manufacturer's list price , the retail price , or the list price Discounts and allowances are reductions to a basic price of goods or services.They...
    
    
  • Factoring (trade)

Investment management

• Fund management
  • Active management
    Active management
    Active management refers to a portfolio management strategy where the manager makes specific investments with the goal of outperforming an investment benchmark index...
    
    
  • Efficient market hypothesis
    Efficient market hypothesis
    In finance, the efficient-market hypothesis asserts that financial markets are "informationally efficient". That is, one cannot consistently achieve returns in excess of average market returns on a risk-adjusted basis, given the information available at the time the investment is made.There are...
    
    
  • Portfolio
    Portfolio (finance)
    Portfolio is a financial term denoting a collection of investments held by an investment company, hedge fund, financial institution or individual.-Definition:The term portfolio refers to any collection of financial assets such as stocks, bonds and cash...
    
    
  • Modern portfolio theory
    Modern portfolio theory
    Modern portfolio theory is a theory of investment which attempts to maximize portfolio expected return for a given amount of portfolio risk, or equivalently minimize risk for a given level of expected return, by carefully choosing the proportions of various assets...
    
    
    • Capital asset pricing model
      Capital asset pricing model
      In finance, the capital asset pricing model is used to determine a theoretically appropriate required rate of return of an asset, if that asset is to be added to an already well-diversified portfolio, given that asset's non-diversifiable risk...
      
      
  • Arbitrage pricing theory
    Arbitrage pricing theory
    In finance, arbitrage pricing theory is a general theory of asset pricing that holds that the expected return of a financial asset can be modeled as a linear function of various macro-economic factors or theoretical market indices, where sensitivity to changes in each factor is represented by a...
    
    
  • Passive management
    Passive management
    Passive management is a financial strategy in which an investor invests in accordance with a pre-determined strategy that doesn't entail any forecasting...
    
    
    • Index fund
      Index fund
      An index fund or index tracker is a collective investment scheme that aims to replicate the movements of an index of a specific financial market, or a set of rules of ownership that are held constant, regardless of market conditions.-Tracking:Tracking can be achieved by trying to hold all of the...
      
      
  • Activist shareholder
    Activist shareholder
    An activist shareholder uses an equity stake in a corporation to put public pressure on its management. The goals of activist shareholders range from financial to non-financial...
    
    
  • Mutual fund
    Mutual fund
    A mutual fund is a professionally managed type of collective investment scheme that pools money from many investors to buy stocks, bonds, short-term money market instruments, and/or other securities.- Overview :...
    
    
    • Open-end fund
      Open-end fund
      An open-end fund is a collective investment scheme which can issue and redeem shares at any time. An investor will generally purchase shares in the fund directly from the fund itself rather than from the existing shareholders...
      
      
    • Closed-end fund
      Closed-end fund
      A closed-end fund is a collective investment scheme with a limited number of shares. It is called a closed-end fund because new shares are rarely issued once the fund has launched, and because shares are not normally redeemable for cash or securities until the fund liquidates.Typically an...
      
      
    • List of mutual-fund families
  • Financial engineering
    • Long-Term Capital Management
      Long-Term Capital Management
      Long-Term Capital Management L.P. was a speculative hedge fund based in Greenwich, Connecticut that utilized absolute-return trading strategies combined with high leverage...
      
      
  • Hedge fund
    Hedge fund
    A hedge fund is a private pool of capital actively managed by an investment adviser. Hedge funds are only open for investment to a limited number of accredited or qualified investors who meet criteria set by regulators. These investors can be institutions, such as pension funds, university...
    
    
  • Hedge
    Hedge (finance)
    A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses that may be incurred by a companion investment.A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insurance, forward contracts, swaps, options, many types of...
    
    

Personal finance

• 529 plan
  529 plan
  A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged investment vehicle in the United States designed to encourage saving for the future higher education expenses of a designated beneficiary.- Overview :529 plans are named after section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code...
  
   (college savings)
• Asset Allocation
  Asset allocation
  Asset allocation is an investment strategy that attempts to balance risk versus reward by adjusting the percentage of each asset in an investment portfolio according to the investors risk tolerance, goals and investment time frame.-Description:...
  
  
  • Asset location
    Asset location
    Asset location is a term used in personal finance to refer to how investors distribute their investments across savings vehicles including taxable, tax-deferred and tax-exempt accounts , grantor retainer annuity trusts, generation-skipping trusts, charitable remainder trusts or charitable lead...
    
    
• Budget
  Budget
  A budget is a financial plan and a list of all planned expenses and revenues. It is a plan for saving, borrowing and spending. A budget is an important concept in microeconomics, which uses a budget line to illustrate the trade-offs between two or more goods...
  
  
• Coverdell Education Savings Account
  Coverdell Education Savings Account
  A Coverdell Education Savings Account , is a tax-advantaged investment account in the United States designed to encourage savings to cover future education expenses A Coverdell Education Savings Account (also known as an Education Savings Account, a Coverdell ESA, a Coverdell Account, or just an...
  
   (Coverdell ESAs, formerly known as Education IRAs)
• Credit and debt
  • Credit card
    Credit card
    A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a system of payment. It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for these goods and services...
    
    
  • Debt consolidation
    Debt consolidation
    Debt consolidation entails taking out one loan to pay off many others. This is often done to secure a lower interest rate, secure a fixed interest rate or for the convenience of servicing only one loan....
    
    
  • Mortgage loan
    Mortgage loan
    A mortgage loan is a loan secured by real property through the use of a mortgage note which evidences the existence of the loan and the encumbrance of that realty through the granting of a mortgage which secures the loan...
    
    
    • Continuous-repayment mortgage
      Continuous-repayment mortgage
      Analogous to continuous compounding, a continuous annuity is an ordinary annuity in which the payment interval is narrowed indefinitely. A continuous repayment mortgage is a mortgage loan paid by means of a continuous annuity....
      
      
• Debit card
  Debit card
  A debit card is a plastic card that provides the cardholder electronic access to his or her bank account/s at a financial institution...
  
  
• Direct deposit
• Employment contract
  Employment contract
  A contract of employment is a category of contract used in labour law to attribute right and responsibilities between parties to a bargain.On the one end stands an "employee" who is "employed" by an "employer". It has arisen out of the old master-servant law, used before the 20th century...
  
  
  • Commission
    Commission (remuneration)
    The payment of commission as remuneration for services rendered or products sold is a common way to reward sales people. Payments often will be calculated on the basis of a percentage of the goods sold...
    
    
  • Employee stock option
    Employee stock option
    An employee stock option is a call option on the common stock of a company, issued as a form of non-cash compensation. Restrictions on the option attempt to align the holder's interest with those of the business shareholders. If the company's stock rises, holders of options generally experience a...
    
    
  • Employee or fringe benefit
    Employee benefit
    Employee benefits and benefits in kind are various non-wage compensations provided to employees in addition to their normal wages or salaries...
    
    
  • Health insurance
    Health insurance
    Health insurance is insurance against the risk of incurring medical expenses among individuals. By estimating the overall risk of health care expenses among a targeted group, an insurer can develop a routine finance structure, such as a monthly premium or payroll tax, to ensure that money is...
    
    
  • Paycheck
    Payroll
    In a company, payroll is the sum of all financial records of salaries for an employee, wages, bonuses and deductions. In accounting, payroll refers to the amount paid to employees for services they provided during a certain period of time. Payroll plays a major role in a company for several reasons...
    
    
  • Salary
    Salary
    A salary is a form of periodic payment from an employer to an employee, which may be specified in an employment contract. It is contrasted with piece wages, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis....
    
    
  • Wage
    Wage
    A wage is a compensation, usually financial, received by workers in exchange for their labor.Compensation in terms of wages is given to workers and compensation in terms of salary is given to employees...
    
    
• Financial literacy
  Financial literacy
  Financial literacy is the ability to understand finance. More specifically, it refers to the set of skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make informed and effective decisions through their understanding of finances...
  
  
• Insurance
  Insurance
  In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
  
  
• Predatory lending
  Predatory lending
  Predatory lending describes unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent practices of some lenders during the loan origination process. While there are no legal definitions in the United States for predatory lending, an audit report on predatory lending from the office of inspector general of the FDIC broadly...
  
  
• Retirement plan
  • 401(a)
  • 401(k)
    401(k)
    A 401 is a type of retirement savings account in the United States, which takes its name from subsection of the Internal Revenue Code . A contributor can begin to withdraw funds after reaching the age of 59 1/2 years...
    
    
  • 403(b)
    403(b)
    A 403 plan, also known as a tax-sheltered annuity, is a tax-advantaged retirement savings plan available for public education organizations, some non-profit employers , cooperative hospital service organizations, and self-employed ministers in the United States...
    
    
  • 457 plan
    457 plan
    The 457 plan is a type of non-qualified tax advantaged deferred-compensation retirement plan that is available for governmental and certain non-governmental employers in the United States. The employer provides the plan and the employee defers compensation into it on a pre-tax basis...
    
    
  • Keogh plan
  • Individual Retirement Account
    Individual Retirement Account
    An individual retirement arrangement is the blanket term for a form of retirement plan that provides tax advantages for retirement savings in the United States...
    
    
    • Roth IRA
      Roth IRA
      A Roth IRA is a special type of retirement plan under US law that is generally not taxed, provided certain conditions are met. The tax law of the United States allows a tax reduction on a limited amount of saving for retirement. The Roth IRA is named for its chief legislative sponsor, Senator...
      
      
    • Traditional IRA
      Traditional IRA
      Established by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, . A Traditional IRA is an individual retirement account in the United States...
      
      
    • SEP IRA
      SEP IRA
      A Simplified Employee Pension Individual Retirement Arrangement is a variation of the Individual Retirement Account used in the United States. SEP IRAs are adopted by business owners to provide retirement benefits for the business owners and their employees. There are no significant administration...
      
      
    • SIMPLE IRA
      SIMPLE IRA
      A SIMPLE IRA, or "Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees Individual Retirement Account", is a type of tax-deferred employer-provided retirement plan in the United States that allows employees to set aside money and invest it to grow for later use. Specifically, it is a type of Individual...
      
      
  • Pension
    Pension
    In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...
    
    
• Social security
  Social security
  Social security is primarily a social insurance program providing social protection or protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment and others. Social security may refer to:...
  
  
• Tax advantage
  Tax advantage
  Tax advantage refers to the economic bonus which applies to certain accounts or investments that are, by statute, tax-reduced, tax-deferred, or tax-free...
  
  
• Wealth
  Wealth
  Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem...
  
  
• Comparison of accounting software
  Comparison of accounting software
  The following comparison of accounting software documents the various features and differences between different professional accounting software and personal finance packages.- Free and open source software :- Proprietary software :...
  
  
• Personal financial management
• Investment club
  Investment club
  An investment club is a group of individuals who meet on a regular basis for the purpose of pooling money and retail investing. The invested sums can be $30 to $100 per month. For certain type of club pooling money is not mandatory...
  
  
• Collective investment scheme
  Collective investment scheme
  A collective investment scheme is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group...
  
  

Public finance

• Central bank
  Central bank
  A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is a public institution that usually issues the currency, regulates the money supply, and controls the interest rates in a country. Central banks often also oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries...
  
  
• Federal Reserve
• Fractional-reserve banking
  Fractional-reserve banking
  Fractional-reserve banking is a form of banking where banks maintain reserves that are only a fraction of the customer's deposits. Funds deposited into a bank are mostly lent out, and a bank keeps only a fraction of the quantity of deposits as reserves...
  
  
  • Deposit creation multiplier
• Tax
  Tax
  To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
  
  
  • Capital gains tax
    Capital gains tax
    A capital gains tax is a tax charged on capital gains, the profit realized on the sale of a non-inventory asset that was purchased at a lower price. The most common capital gains are realized from the sale of stocks, bonds, precious metals and property...
    
    
  • Estate tax (and inheritance tax
    Inheritance tax
    An inheritance tax or estate tax is a levy paid by a person who inherits money or property or a tax on the estate of a person who has died...
    
    )
  • Gift tax
    Gift tax
    A gift tax is a tax imposed on the gratuitous transfer of ownership of property. The United States Internal Revenue Service says a gift is "Any transfer to an individual, either directly or indirectly, where full consideration is not received in return."When a taxable gift in the form of cash,...
    
    
  • Income tax
    Income tax
    An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
    
    
  • Inheritance tax
    Inheritance tax
    An inheritance tax or estate tax is a levy paid by a person who inherits money or property or a tax on the estate of a person who has died...
    
    
  • Payroll tax
    Payroll tax
    Payroll tax generally refers to two different kinds of similar taxes. The first kind is a tax that employers are required to withhold from employees' wages, also known as withholding tax, pay-as-you-earn tax , or pay-as-you-go tax...
    
    
  • Property tax
    Property tax
    A property tax is an ad valorem levy on the value of property that the owner is required to pay. The tax is levied by the governing authority of the jurisdiction in which the property is located; it may be paid to a national government, a federated state or a municipality...
    
     (including land value tax
    Land value tax
    A land value tax is a levy on the unimproved value of land. It is an ad valorem tax on land that disregards the value of buildings, personal property and other improvements...
    
    )
  • Sales tax
    Sales tax
    A sales tax is a tax, usually paid by the consumer at the point of purchase, itemized separately from the base price, for certain goods and services. The tax amount is usually calculated by applying a percentage rate to the taxable price of a sale....
    
     (including value added tax
    Value added tax
    A value added tax or value-added tax is a form of consumption tax. From the perspective of the buyer, it is a tax on the purchase price. From that of the seller, it is a tax only on the "value added" to a product, material or service, from an accounting point of view, by this stage of its...
    
    , excise tax, and use tax
    Use tax
    A use tax is a type of excise tax levied in the United States. It is assessed upon otherwise "tax free" tangible personal property purchased by a resident of the assessing state for use, storage or consumption of goods in that state , regardless of where the purchase took place...
    
    )
  • Transfer tax
    Transfer tax
    A transfer tax is a tax on the passing of title to property from one person to another.In a narrow legal sense, a transfer tax is essentially a transaction fee imposed on the transfer of title to property. This kind of tax is typically imposed where there is a legal requirement for registration of...
    
     (including stamp duty
    Stamp duty
    Stamp duty is a tax that is levied on documents. Historically, this included the majority of legal documents such as cheques, receipts, military commissions, marriage licences and land transactions. A physical stamp had to be attached to or impressed upon the document to denote that stamp duty...
    
    )
  • Tax advantage
    Tax advantage
    Tax advantage refers to the economic bonus which applies to certain accounts or investments that are, by statute, tax-reduced, tax-deferred, or tax-free...
    
    
  • Tax, tariff and trade
    Tax, tariff and trade
    The tax, tariff and trade laws of a political region, state or trade bloc determine which form of consumption and production tend to be encouraged or discouraged...
    
    
• crowding out
  Crowding out (economics)
  In economics, crowding out occurs when Expansionary Fiscal Policy causes interest rates to rise, thereby reducing private spending. That means increase in government spending crowds out investment spending....
  
  
• Industrial policy
  Industrial policy
  The Industrial Policy plan of a nation, sometimes shortened IP, "denotes a nation's declared, official, total strategic effort to influence sectoral development and, thus, national industry portfolio." These interventionist measures comprise "policies that stimulate specific activities and promote...
  
  
• Agricultural policy
  Agricultural policy
  Agricultural policy describes a set of laws relating to domestic agriculture and imports of foreign agricultural products. Governments usually implement agricultural policies with the goal of achieving a specific outcome in the domestic agricultural product markets...
  
  
• Currency union
  Currency union
  A currency union is where two or more states share the same currency, though without there necessarily having any further integration such as an Economic and Monetary Union, which has in addition a customs union and a single market.There are three types of currency unions:#Informal - unilateral...
  
  
• Monetary reform
  Monetary reform
  Monetary reform describes any movement or theory that proposes a different system of supplying money and financing the economy from the current system.Monetary reformers may advocate any of the following, among other proposals:...
  
  

Insurance

• Actuarial science
  Actuarial science
  Actuarial science is the discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in the insurance and finance industries. Actuaries are professionals who are qualified in this field through education and experience...
  
  
• Annuities
• Catastrophe modeling
  Catastrophe modeling
  Catastrophe modeling is the process of using computer-assisted calculations to estimate the losses that could be sustained due to a catastrophic event such as a hurricane or earthquake...
  
  
• Earthquake loss
• Extended coverage
  Extended coverage
  Extended coverage is a term used in the property insurance business. All insurance policies have exclusions - specific causes of loss that are not covered by the insurance company. An Extended coverage endorsement was a common extension of property insurance beyond coverage for fire and lightning...
  
  
• Insurable interest
  Insurable interest
  Insurable interest exists when an insured person derives a financial or other kind of benefit from the continuous existence of the insured object...
  
  
• Insurable risk
  Insurable risk
  An insurable risk is a risk that meets the ideal criteria for efficient insurance. The concept of insurable risk underlies nearly all insurance decisions.For a risk to be insurable, several things need to be true:...
  
  
• Insurance
  Insurance
  In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
  
  
  • Health insurance
    Health insurance
    Health insurance is insurance against the risk of incurring medical expenses among individuals. By estimating the overall risk of health care expenses among a targeted group, an insurer can develop a routine finance structure, such as a monthly premium or payroll tax, to ensure that money is...
    
    
    • Injury cover
      Injury cover
      Injury cover may refer to the act of receiving or claiming compensation for work related injuries.It also may be used in conjunction with:Health Insurance - A form of group insurance, where individuals pay premiums or taxes in order to help protect themselves from high or unexpected healthcare...
      
      
    • Disability insurance
      Disability insurance
      Disability Insurance, often called DI or disability income insurance, is a form of insurance that insures the beneficiary's earned income against the risk that a disability will make working uncomfortable , painful , or impossible...
      
      
    • Flexible spending account
      Flexible spending account
      A flexible spending account , also known as a flexible spending arrangement, is one of a number of tax-advantaged financial accounts that can be set up through a cafeteria plan of an employer in the United States...
      
      
    • Health savings account
      Health savings account
      A health savings account is a tax-advantaged medical savings account available to taxpayers in the United States who are enrolled in a high-deductible health plan . The funds contributed to an account are not subject to federal income tax at the time of deposit. Unlike a flexible spending account...
      
      
    • Long term care insurance
      Long term care insurance
      Long-term care insurance , an insurance product sold in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, helps provide for the cost of long-term care beyond a predetermined period...
      
      
    • Medical savings account
      Medical savings account
      Medical savings account refers to an account in which tax-deferred deposits can be made for medical expenses.-In Singapore:Medisave was introduced in April 1984 as a national medical savings system for Singaporeans...
      
      
  • Life insurance
    Life insurance
    Life insurance is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death of the insured person. Depending on the contract, other events such as terminal illness or critical illness may also trigger...
    
    
    • Life insurance tax shelter
      Life insurance tax shelter
      A life insurance tax shelter uses investments in life insurance to protect income or assets from tax liabilities. Life insurance proceeds are not taxable in many jurisdictions...
      
      
    • Permanent life insurance
      Permanent life insurance
      Permanent life insurance is a form of life insurance such as whole life or endowment, where the policy is for the life of the insured, the payout is assured at the end of the policy and the policy accrues cash value....
      
      
    • Term life insurance
      Term life insurance
      Term life insurance or term assurance is life insurance which provides coverage at a fixed rate of payments for a limited period of time, the relevant term. After that period expires coverage at the previous rate of premiums is no longer guaranteed and the client must either forgo coverage or...
      
      
    • Universal life insurance
      Universal life insurance
      Universal life insurance is a type of permanent life insurance based on a cash value. That is, the policy is established with the insurer where premium payments above the cost of insurance are credited to the cash value of the policy...
      
      
    • Variable universal life insurance
      Variable universal life insurance
      Variable Universal Life Insurance is a type of life insurance that builds a cash value. In a VUL, the cash value can be invested in a wide variety of separate accounts, similar to mutual funds, and the choice of which of the available separate accounts to use is entirely up to the contract owner...
      
      
    • Whole life insurance
      Whole life insurance
      Whole Life Insurance, or Whole of Life Assurance , is a life insurance policy that remains in force for the insured's whole life and requires premiums to be paid every year into the policy.-History:...
      
      
  • Property insurance
    Property insurance
    Property insurance provides protection against most risks to property, such as fire, theft and some weather damage. This includes specialized forms of insurance such as fire insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, home insurance or boiler insurance. Property is insured in two main...
    
    
    • Auto insurance
    • Boiler insurance
      Boiler insurance
      Boiler insurance is a type of insurance that covers repairs and in some cases the replacement of a home boiler. It can also cover other parts of the central heating system and even plumbing and electrics.-Types of boiler cover:...
      
      
    • Earthquake insurance
      Earthquake insurance
      Earthquake insurance is a form of property insurance that pays the policyholder in the event of an earthquake that causes damage to the property...
      
      
    • Home insurance
      Home insurance
      Home insurance, also commonly called hazard insurance or homeowner's insurance , is the type of property insurance that covers private homes...
      
      
    • Title insurance
      Title insurance
      Title insurance is a form of indemnity insurance predominantly found in the United States which insures against financial loss from defects in title to real property and from the invalidity or unenforceability of mortgage liens. Title insurance is principally a product developed and sold in the...
      
      
    • Pet insurance
      Pet insurance
      Pet health insurance pays the veterinary costs if one's pet becomes ill or is injured in an accident. Some policies will also pay out when the pet dies, or if it's lost or stolen....
      
      
  • Casualty insurance
    Casualty insurance
    Casualty insurance, often equated to liability insurance, is used to describe an area of insurance not directly concerned with life insurance, health insurance, or property insurance. It is mainly used to describe the liability coverage of an individual or organization's for negligent acts or...
    
    
    • Fidelity bond
      Fidelity bond
      A fidelity bond is a form of insurance protection that covers policyholders for losses that they incur as a result of fraudulent acts by specified individuals. It usually insures a business for losses caused by the dishonest acts of its employees....
      
      
    • Liability insurance
      Liability insurance
      Liability insurance is a part of the general insurance system of risk financing to protect the purchaser from the risks of liabilities imposed by lawsuits and similar claims. It protects the insured in the event he or she is sued for claims that come within the coverage of the insurance policy...
      
      
    • Political risk insurance
      Political risk insurance
      Political risk insurance is a type of insurance that can be taken out by businesses, of any size, against political risk—the risk that revolution or other political conditions will result in a loss....
      
      
    • Surety bond
      Surety bond
      A surety bond is a promise to pay one party a certain amount if a second party fails to meet some obligation, such as fulfilling the terms of a contract...
      
      
    • Terrorism insurance
      Terrorism insurance
      Terrorism insurance is insurance purchased by property owners to cover their potential losses and liabilities that might occur due to terrorist activities....
      
      
  • Credit insurance
    Credit insurance
    Credit insurance is a term used to describe both business credit insurance and consumer credit insurance, e.g., credit life insurance, credit disability insurance Credit insurance is a term used to describe both business credit insurance (a.k.a. trade credit insurance) and consumer credit...
    
    
  • Reinsurance
    Reinsurance
    Reinsurance is insurance that is purchased by an insurance company from another insurance company as a means of risk management...
    
    
  • Self insurance
    Self insurance
    Self insurance is a risk management method in which a calculated amount of money is set aside to compensate for the potential future loss.If self insurance is approached as a serious risk management technique, money is set aside using actuarial and insurance information and the law of large numbers...
    
    
  • Travel insurance
    Travel insurance
    Travel insurance is insurance that is intended to cover medical expenses, financial default of travel suppliers, and other losses incurred while traveling, either within one's own country, or internationally...
    
    
• Insurance contract
  Insurance contract
  In insurance, the insurance policy is a contract between the insurer and the insured, known as the policyholder, which determines the claims which the insurer is legally required to pay. In exchange for payment, known as the premium, the insurer pays for damages to the insured which are caused by...
  
  
• Risk Retention Group
  Risk Retention Group
  A Risk Retention Group is a type of insurance company. The way that an RRG is different than a "traditional" insurance company is that each of its policy holders are also stockholders...
  
  

Economics and finance

• Economic growth
  Economic growth
  In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
  
  
• Financial economics
  Financial economics
  Financial Economics is the branch of economics concerned with "the allocation and deployment of economic resources, both spatially and across time, in an uncertain environment"....
  
  
• Mathematical economics
  Mathematical economics
  Mathematical economics is the application of mathematical methods to represent economic theories and analyze problems posed in economics. It allows formulation and derivation of key relationships in a theory with clarity, generality, rigor, and simplicity...
  
  
• Managerial economics
  Managerial economics
  Managerial economics as defined by Edwin Mansfield is "concerned with application of economic concepts and economic analysis to the problems of formulating rational managerial decision." It is sometimes referred to as business economics and is a branch of economics that applies microeconomic...
  
  
• Utility theory

Time value of money

• Present value
  Present value
  Present value, also known as present discounted value, is the value on a given date of a future payment or series of future payments, discounted to reflect the time value of money and other factors such as investment risk...
  
  
• Future value
  Future value
  Future value is the value of an asset at a specific date. It measures the nominal future sum of money that a given sum of money is "worth" at a specified time in the future assuming a certain interest rate, or more generally, rate of return; it is the present value multiplied by the accumulation...
  
  
• Discounting
• Net present value
  Net present value
  In finance, the net present value or net present worth of a time series of cash flows, both incoming and outgoing, is defined as the sum of the present values of the individual cash flows of the same entity...
  
  
• Internal rate of return
  Internal rate of return
  The internal rate of return is a rate of return used in capital budgeting to measure and compare the profitability of investments. It is also called the discounted cash flow rate of return or the rate of return . In the context of savings and loans the IRR is also called the effective interest rate...
  
  
• Annuity
  Annuity (finance theory)
  The term annuity is used in finance theory to refer to any terminating stream of fixed payments over a specified period of time. This usage is most commonly seen in discussions of finance, usually in connection with the valuation of the stream of payments, taking into account time value of money...
  
  
• Perpetuity
  Perpetuity
  A perpetuity is an annuity that has no end, or a stream of cash payments that continues forever. There are few actual perpetuities in existence...
  
  

Mathematical tools

• Probability
  Probability
  Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...
  
  
  • Probability distribution
    Probability distribution
    In probability theory, a probability mass, probability density, or probability distribution is a function that describes the probability of a random variable taking certain values....
    
    
    • Binomial distribution
    • Log-normal distribution
    • Poisson distribution
      Poisson distribution
      In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution is a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time and/or space if these events occur with a known average rate and independently of the time since...
      
      

• Stochastic calculus
  Stochastic calculus
  Stochastic calculus is a branch of mathematics that operates on stochastic processes. It allows a consistent theory of integration to be defined for integrals of stochastic processes with respect to stochastic processes...
  
  
  • Brownian motion
    Brownian motion
    Brownian motion or pedesis is the presumably random drifting of particles suspended in a fluid or the mathematical model used to describe such random movements, which is often called a particle theory.The mathematical model of Brownian motion has several real-world applications...
    
    
    • Geometric Brownian motion
      Geometric Brownian motion
      A geometric Brownian motion is a continuous-time stochastic process in which the logarithm of the randomly varying quantity follows a Brownian motion, also called a Wiener process...
      
      
  • Cameron–Martin theorem
  • Feynman–Kac formula
  • Girsanov's theorem
  • Itô's lemma
    Ito's lemma
    In mathematics, Itō's lemma is used in Itō stochastic calculus to find the differential of a function of a particular type of stochastic process. It is named after its discoverer, Kiyoshi Itō...
    
    
  • Martingale representation theorem
    Martingale representation theorem
    In probability theory, the martingale representation theorem states that a random variable which is measurable with respect to the filtration generated by a Brownian motion can be written in terms of an Itô integral with respect to this Brownian motion....
    
    
  • Radon–Nikodym derivative
  • Stochastic differential equations
  • Stochastic process
    Stochastic process
    In probability theory, a stochastic process , or sometimes random process, is the counterpart to a deterministic process...
    
    
    • Jump process
      Jump process
      A jump process is a type of stochastic process that has discrete movements, called jumps, rather than small continuous movements.In physics, jump processes result in diffusion...
      
      
    • Lévy process
      Lévy process
      In probability theory, a Lévy process, named after the French mathematician Paul Lévy, is any continuous-time stochastic process that starts at 0, admits càdlàg modification and has "stationary independent increments" — this phrase will be explained below...
      
      
    • Markov process
      Markov process
      In probability theory and statistics, a Markov process, named after the Russian mathematician Andrey Markov, is a time-varying random phenomenon for which a specific property holds...
      
      
    • Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process
    • Wiener process
      Wiener process
      In mathematics, the Wiener process is a continuous-time stochastic process named in honor of Norbert Wiener. It is often called standard Brownian motion, after Robert Brown...
      
      

• Monte Carlo method
  Monte Carlo method
  Monte Carlo methods are a class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to compute their results. Monte Carlo methods are often used in computer simulations of physical and mathematical systems...
  
  s
  • Low-discrepancy sequence
    Low-discrepancy sequence
    In mathematics, a low-discrepancy sequence is a sequence with the property that for all values of N, its subsequence x1, ..., xN has a low discrepancy....
    
    
  • Monte Carlo integration
  • Quasi-Monte Carlo method
    Quasi-Monte Carlo method
    In numerical analysis, a quasi-Monte Carlo method is a method for the computation of an integral that is based on low-discrepancy sequences...
    
    
  • Random number generation
    Random number generation
    A random number generator ) is a computational or physical device designed to generate a sequence of numbers or symbols that lack any pattern, i.e. appear random....
    
    

• Partial differential equation
  Partial differential equation
  In mathematics, partial differential equations are a type of differential equation, i.e., a relation involving an unknown function of several independent variables and their partial derivatives with respect to those variables...
  
  s
  • Finite difference method
    Finite difference method
    In mathematics, finite-difference methods are numerical methods for approximating the solutions to differential equations using finite difference equations to approximate derivatives.- Derivation from Taylor's polynomial :...
    
    
  • Heat equation
    Heat equation
    The heat equation is an important partial differential equation which describes the distribution of heat in a given region over time...
    
    
  • Numerical partial differential equations
    Numerical partial differential equations
    Numerical partial differential equations is the branch of numerical analysis that studies the numerical solution of partial differential equations .Numerical techniques for solving PDEs include the following:...
    
    
    • Crank–Nicolson method
    • Finite difference method: Numerical analysis

• Volatility
  Volatility (finance)
  In finance, volatility is a measure for variation of price of a financial instrument over time. Historic volatility is derived from time series of past market prices...
  
  
  • ARCH model
  • GARCH model
  • Stochastic volatility
    Stochastic volatility
    Stochastic volatility models are used in the field of mathematical finance to evaluate derivative securities, such as options. The name derives from the models' treatment of the underlying security's volatility as a random process, governed by state variables such as the price level of the...
    
    

Derivatives pricing

Main article: Derivatives pricing

• Rational pricing
  Rational pricing
  Rational pricing is the assumption in financial economics that asset prices will reflect the arbitrage-free price of the asset as any deviation from this price will be "arbitraged away"...
  
   assumptions
  • Risk neutral valuation
    Risk-neutral measure
    In mathematical finance, a risk-neutral measure, is a prototypical case of an equivalent martingale measure. It is heavily used in the pricing of financial derivatives due to the fundamental theorem of asset pricing, which implies that in a complete market a derivative's price is the discounted...
    
    
  • Arbitrage free pricing

• Forward contract
  Forward contract
  In finance, a forward contract or simply a forward is a non-standardized contract between two parties to buy or sell an asset at a specified future time at a price agreed today. This is in contrast to a spot contract, which is an agreement to buy or sell an asset today. It costs nothing to enter a...
  
  
  • Forward contract pricing

• Futures
  Futures contract
  In finance, a futures contract is a standardized contract between two parties to exchange a specified asset of standardized quantity and quality for a price agreed today with delivery occurring at a specified future date, the delivery date. The contracts are traded on a futures exchange...
  
  
  • Futures contract pricing

• Options
  Option (finance)
  In finance, an option is a derivative financial instrument that specifies a contract between two parties for a future transaction on an asset at a reference price. The buyer of the option gains the right, but not the obligation, to engage in that transaction, while the seller incurs the...
  
   (and Real option
  Real option
  Real options valuation, also often termed Real options analysis, applies option valuation techniques to capital budgeting decisions. A real option itself, is the right — but not the obligation — to undertake some business decision; typically the option to make, abandon, expand, or contract a...
  
  s)
  • Black–Scholes formula
  • Black model
    Black model
    The Black model is a variant of the Black–Scholes option pricing model. Its primary applications are for pricing bond options, interest rate caps / floors, and swaptions...
    
    
  • Binomial options model
  • Finite difference methods for option pricing
    Finite difference methods for option pricing
    Finite difference methods for option pricing are numerical methods used in mathematical finance for the valuation of options. Finite difference methods were first applied to option pricing by Eduardo Schwartz in 1977....
    
    
  • The Greeks
  • Monte Carlo methods for option pricing
    • Monte Carlo methods in finance
      Monte Carlo methods in finance
      Monte Carlo methods are used in finance and mathematical finance to value and analyze instruments, portfolios and investments by simulating the various sources of uncertainty affecting their value, and then determining their average value over the range of resultant outcomes. This is usually done...
      
      
    • Quasi-Monte Carlo methods in finance
  • Trinomial tree
    Trinomial Tree
    The Trinomial tree is a lattice based computational model used in financial mathematics to price options. It was developed by Phelim Boyle in 1986. It is an extension of the Binomial options pricing model, and is conceptually similar...
    
    
  • Volatility
    Volatility (finance)
    In finance, volatility is a measure for variation of price of a financial instrument over time. Historic volatility is derived from time series of past market prices...
    
    
    • Implied volatility
      Implied volatility
      In financial mathematics, the implied volatility of an option contract is the volatility of the price of the underlying security that is implied by the market price of the option based on an option pricing model. In other words, it is the volatility that, when used in a particular pricing model,...
      
      
    • Historical volatility
      Volatility (finance)
      In finance, volatility is a measure for variation of price of a financial instrument over time. Historic volatility is derived from time series of past market prices...
      
      
    • Stochastic volatility
      Stochastic volatility
      Stochastic volatility models are used in the field of mathematical finance to evaluate derivative securities, such as options. The name derives from the models' treatment of the underlying security's volatility as a random process, governed by state variables such as the price level of the...
      
      
    • Volatility smile
      Volatility Smile
      In finance, the volatility smile is a long-observed pattern in which at-the-money options tend to have lower implied volatilities than in- or out-of-the-money options. The pattern displays different characteristics for different markets and results from the probability of extreme moves...
      
      
      • Volatility surface
      • SABR volatility model
        SABR Volatility Model
        In mathematical finance, the SABR model is a stochastic volatility model, which attempts to capture the volatility smile in derivatives markets. The name stands for "Stochastic Alpha, Beta, Rho", referring to the parameters of the model. The SABR model is widely used by practitioners in the...
        
        

• Swaps
  Swap (finance)
  In finance, a swap is a derivative in which counterparties exchange certain benefits of one party's financial instrument for those of the other party's financial instrument. The benefits in question depend on the type of financial instruments involved...
  
  
  • Swap valuation

• Interest rate derivative
  Interest rate derivative
  An interest rate derivative is a derivative where the underlying asset is the right to pay or receive a notional amount of money at a given interest rate...
  
  s (bond option
  Bond option
  In finance, a bond option is an option to buy or sell a bond at a certain price on or before the option expiry date. These instruments are typically traded OTC....
  
  s, swaption
  Swaption
  A swaption is an option granting its owner the right but not the obligation to enter into an underlying swap. Although options can be traded on a variety of swaps, the term "swaption" typically refers to options on interest rate swaps....
  
  s, caps and floors
  Interest rate cap and floor
  An interest rate cap is a derivative in which the buyer receives payments at the end of each period in which the interest rate exceeds the agreed strike price...
  
  , and others)
  • Black model
    Black model
    The Black model is a variant of the Black–Scholes option pricing model. Its primary applications are for pricing bond options, interest rate caps / floors, and swaptions...
    
    
    • caps and floors
    • swaptions
    • Bond options
  • Short-rate models
    • Rendleman-Bartter model
      Rendleman-Bartter model
      The Rendleman-Bartter model in finance is a short rate model describing the evolution of interest rates. It is a "one factor model" as it describes interest rate movements as driven by only one source of market risk. It can be used in the valuation of interest rate derivatives...
      
      
    • Vasicek model
      Vasicek model
      In finance, the Vasicek model is a mathematical model describing the evolution of interest rates. It is a type of "one-factor model" as it describes interest rate movements as driven by only one source of market risk...
      
      
    • Ho-Lee model
      Ho-Lee model
      In financial mathematics, the Ho–Lee model is a short rate model used in the pricing of bond options, swaptions and other interest rate derivatives, and in modeling future interest rates. It is the simplest model that can be calibrated to market data, by implying the form of \theta_t from market...
      
      
    • Hull–White model
    • Cox–Ingersoll–Ross model
    • Black–Karasinski model
      Black–Karasinski model
      In financial mathematics, the Black–Karasinski model is a mathematical model of the term structure of interest rates; see short rate model. It is a one-factor model as it describes interest rate movements as driven by a single source of randomness....
      
      
    • Black–Derman–Toy model
    • Kalotay-Williams-Fabozzi model
    • Longstaff-Schwartz model
    • Chen model
      Chen model
      In finance, the Chen model is a mathematical model describing the evolution of interest rates. It is a type of "three-factor model" as it describes interest rate movements as driven by three sources of market risk...
      
      
  • Forward rate
    Forward rate
    The forward rate is the future yield on a bond. It is calculated using the yield curve. For example, the yield on a three-month Treasury bill six months from now is a forward rate.-Forward rate calculation:...
    
    -based models
    • LIBOR market model
      LIBOR Market Model
      The LIBOR market model, also known as the BGM Model , is a financial model of interest rates...
      
       (also called: Brace–Gatarek–Musiela Model, BGM)
    • Heath–Jarrow–Morton Model (HJM)

Constraint finance

• Environmental finance
  Environmental finance
  Environmental Finance is the use of various financial instruments to protect the environment. The field is part of both environmental economics and the conservation movement....
  
  
• Feminist economics
  Feminist economics
  Feminist economics broadly refers to a developing branch of economics that applies feminist lenses to economics. Research under this heading is often interdisciplinary or heterodox...
  
  
• Green economics
• Islamic economics
  Islamic economics
  Islamic economics refers to the body of Islamic studies literature that "identifies and promotes an economic order that conforms to Islamic scripture and traditions," and in the economic world an interest-free Islamic banking system, grounded in Sharia's condemnation of interest...
  
  
• Uneconomic growth
  Uneconomic growth
  Uneconomic growth, in human development theory, welfare economics , and some forms of ecological economics, is economic growth that reflects or creates a decline in the quality of life. The concept is attributed to the economist Herman Daly, though other theorists can also be credited for the...
  
  
• Value of Earth
  Value of Earth
  In green economics, value of Earth is the ultimate in ecosystem valuation, and important to value of life calculations. It begins with the simple problem that if the Earth ceases to support life, and human life does not continue elsewhere, all economic activity will also cease.-Methods of...
  
  
• Value of life
  Value of life
  The potency of life is an economic value assigned to life in general, or to specific living organisms. In social and political sciences, it is the marginal cost of death prevention in a certain class of circumstances. As such, it is a statistical term, the cost of reducing the number of deaths by...
  
  

Market and instruments

• Capital market
  Capital market
  A capital market is a market for securities , where business enterprises and governments can raise long-term funds. It is defined as a market in which money is provided for periods longer than a year, as the raising of short-term funds takes place on other markets...
  
  s
• Securities
  Security (finance)
  A security is generally a fungible, negotiable financial instrument representing financial value. Securities are broadly categorized into:* debt securities ,* equity securities, e.g., common stocks; and,...
  
  
• Financial markets
• Primary market
  Primary market
  The primary market is that part of the capital markets that deals with the issuance of new securities. Companies, governments or public sector institutions can obtain funding through the sale of a new stock or bond issue. This is typically done through a syndicate of securities dealers. The process...
  
  
• Initial public offering
  Initial public offering
  An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
  
  
• Aftermarket
• Free market
  Free market
  A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
  
  
• Bull market
• Bear market
• Bear market rally
• Market maker
  Market maker
  A market maker is a company, or an individual, that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a financial instrument or commodity held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the bid-offer spread, or turn. From a market microstructure theory standpoint, market makers are net sellers of an option to be...
  
  
• Dow Jones Industrial Average
  Dow Jones Industrial Average
  The Dow Jones Industrial Average , also called the Industrial Average, the Dow Jones, the Dow 30, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index, and one of several indices created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder Charles Dow...
  
  
• Nasdaq
  NASDAQ
  The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
  
  
• List of stock exchanges
• List of stock market indices
• List of corporations by market capitalization
• Value Line Composite Index
  Value Line Composite Index
  The Value Line Composite Index is composed of all of the companies that are included in the Value Line Investment Survey.There are currently 1,626 companies included in the index that are publicly listed on the following exchanges:...
  
  

Equity market

• Stock market
  Stock market
  A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...
  
  
• Stock
  Stock
  The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...
  
  
• Common stock
  Common stock
  Common stock is a form of corporate equity ownership, a type of security. It is called "common" to distinguish it from preferred stock. In the event of bankruptcy, common stock investors receive their funds after preferred stock holders, bondholders, creditors, etc...
  
  
• Preferred stock
  Preferred stock
  Preferred stock, also called preferred shares, preference shares, or simply preferreds, is a special equity security that has properties of both an equity and a debt instrument and is generally considered a hybrid instrument...
  
  
• Treasury stock
  Treasury stock
  A treasury stock or reacquired stock is stock which is bought back by the issuing company, reducing the amount of outstanding stock on the open market ....
  
  
• Equity investment
• Index investing
• Private Equity
  Private equity
  Private equity, in finance, is an asset class consisting of equity securities in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange....
  
  
• Financial reports and statements
• Fundamental analysis
  Fundamental analysis
  Fundamental analysis of a business involves analyzing its financial statements and health, its management and competitive advantages, and its competitors and markets. When applied to futures and forex, it focuses on the overall state of the economy, interest rates, production, earnings, and...
  
  
• Dividend
  Dividend
  Dividends are payments made by a corporation to its shareholder members. It is the portion of corporate profits paid out to stockholders. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, that money can be put to two uses: it can either be re-invested in the business , or it can be distributed to...
  
  
• Dividend yield
  Dividend yield
  The dividend yield or the dividend-price ratio on a company stock is the company's total annual dividend payments divided by its market capitalization, or the dividend per share, divided by the price per share. It is often expressed as a percentage...
  
  
• Stock split
  Stock split
  A stock split or stock divide increases the number of shares in a public company. The price is adjusted such that the before and after market capitalization of the company remains the same and dilution does not occur. Options and warrants are included....
  
  

Equity valuation

• Dow Theory
  Dow Theory
  The Dow theory on stock price movement is a form of technical analysis that includes some aspects of sector rotation. The theory was derived from 255 Wall Street Journal editorials written by Charles H. Dow , journalist, founder and first editor of the Wall Street Journal and co-founder of Dow...
  
  
• Elliott Wave Theory
• Economic value added
  Economic value added
  In corporate finance, Economic Value Added or EVA, a registered trademark of Stern Stewart & Co., is an estimate of a firm's economic profit – being the value created in excess of the required return of the company's investors . Quite simply, EVA is the profit earned by the firm less the cost of...
  
  
• Fibonacci retracement
  Fibonacci retracement
  In finance, Fibonacci retracements is a method of technical analysis for determining support and resistance levels. They are named after their use of the Fibonacci sequence...
  
  
• Gordon model
  Gordon model
  The Gordon growth model is a variant of the discounted cash flow model, a method for valuing a stock or business. Often used to provide difficult-to-resolve valuation issues for litigation, tax planning, and business transactions that don't have an explicit market value. It is named after Myron J....
  
  
• Growth stock
  Growth stock
  In finance, a growth stock is a stockof a company that generates substantial and sustainable positive cash flow and whose revenues and earnings are expected to increase at a faster rate than the average company within the same industry...
  
  
• Mergers and acquisitions
  Mergers and acquisitions
  Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
  
  
• Leveraged buyout
  Leveraged buyout
  A leveraged buyout occurs when an investor, typically financial sponsor, acquires a controlling interest in a company's equity and where a significant percentage of the purchase price is financed through leverage...
  
  
• Takeover
  Takeover
  In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company by another . In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to the acquisition of a private company.- Friendly takeovers :Before a bidder makes an offer for another...
  
  
• Corporate raid
  Corporate raid
  A corporate raid is an American English business term for buying a large interest in a corporation and then using voting rights to enact measures directed at increasing the share value...
  
  
• PE ratio
• Market capitalization
  Market capitalization
  Market capitalization is a measurement of the value of the ownership interest that shareholders hold in a business enterprise. It is equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding of a publicly traded company...
  
  
• Income per share
• Stock valuation
  Stock valuation
  In financial markets, stock valuation is the method of calculating theoretical values of companies and their stocks. The main use of these methods is to predict future market prices, or more generally potential market prices, and thus to profit from price movement – stocks that are judged...
  
  
• Technical analysis
  Technical analysis
  In finance, technical analysis is security analysis discipline for forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. Behavioral economics and quantitative analysis incorporate technical analysis, which being an aspect of active management stands...
  
  
• Chart patterns
  Chart patterns
  A chart pattern is a pattern that is formed within a chart when prices are graphed. In stock and commodity markets trading, chart pattern studies play a large role during technical analysis. When data is plotted there is usually a pattern which naturally occurs and repeats over a period of time...
  
  
• V-trend

Investment theory

• Behavioral finance
  Behavioral finance
  Behavioral economics and its related area of study, behavioral finance, use social, cognitive and emotional factors in understanding the economic decisions of individuals and institutions performing economic functions, including consumers, borrowers and investors, and their effects on market...
  
  
• Dead cat bounce
  Dead cat bounce
  In economics, a dead cat bounce is a small, brief recovery in the price of a declining stock. Derived from the idea that "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height", the phrase, which originated on Wall Street, is also popularly used to any case where a subject experiences a brief...
  
  
• Efficient market hypothesis
  Efficient market hypothesis
  In finance, the efficient-market hypothesis asserts that financial markets are "informationally efficient". That is, one cannot consistently achieve returns in excess of average market returns on a risk-adjusted basis, given the information available at the time the investment is made.There are...
  
  
• Market microstructure
  Market microstructure
  Market microstructure is a branch of finance concerned with the details of how exchange occurs in markets. While the theory of market microstructure applies to the exchange of real or financial assets, more evidence is available on the microstructure of financial markets due to the availability of...
  
  
• Stock market crash
  Stock market crash
  A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a significant cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic as much as by underlying economic factors...
  
  
• Stock market bubble
  Stock market bubble
  A stock market bubble is a type of economic bubble taking place in stock markets when market participants drive stock prices above their value in relation to some system of stock valuation....
  
  
• January effect
  January effect
  The January effect is a calendar-related anomaly in the financial market where financial security prices increase in the month of January. This creates an opportunity for investors to buy stock for lower prices before January and sell them after their value increases.Therefore, the main...
  
  
• Mark Twain effect
  Mark Twain effect
  In some stock markets, the Mark Twain effect is the phenomenon of stock returns in October being lower than in other months. The name comes from the following quotation in Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson: "October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks...
  
  
• Quantitative behavioral finance
  Quantitative behavioral finance
  Quantitative behavioral finance is a new discipline that uses mathematical and statistical methodology to understand behavioral biases in conjunction with valuation. Some of this endeavor has been led by Gunduz Caginalp and collaborators including Vernon L...
  
  
• Quantitative analyst
  Quantitative analyst
  A quantitative analyst is a person who works in finance using numerical or quantitative techniques. Similar work is done in most other modern industries, but the work is not always called quantitative analysis...
  
  
• Statistical arbitrage
  Statistical arbitrage
  In the world of finance and investments, statistical arbitrage is used in two related but distinct ways:* In academic literature, "statistical arbitrage" is opposed to arbitrage. In deterministic arbitrage, a sure profit can be obtained from being long some securities and short others...
  
  

Bond market

• Bond (finance)
  Bond (finance)
  In finance, a bond is a debt security, in which the authorized issuer owes the holders a debt and, depending on the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay interest to use and/or to repay the principal at a later date, termed maturity...
  
  
• Zero-coupon bond
• Junk bonds
• Convertible bond
  Convertible bond
  In finance, a convertible note is a type of bond that the holder can convert into shares of common stock in the issuing company or cash of equal value, at an agreed-upon price. It is a hybrid security with debt- and equity-like features...
  
  
• Accrual bond
  Accrual bond
  An accrual bond is a fixed-interest bond that is issued at its face value and repaid at the end of the maturity period together with the accrued interest. In Germany, the accrued interest is compounded. In contrast to zero-coupon bonds, accrual bonds have a clearly stated coupon rate....
  
  
• Municipal bond
  Municipal bond
  A municipal bond is a bond issued by a city or other local government, or their agencies. Potential issuers of municipal bonds includes cities, counties, redevelopment agencies, special-purpose districts, school districts, public utility districts, publicly owned airports and seaports, and any...
  
  
• Sovereign bond
• Bond valuation
  Bond valuation
  Bond valuation is the determination of the fair price of a bond. As with any security or capital investment, the theoretical fair value of a bond is the present value of the stream of cash flows it is expected to generate. Hence, the value of a bond is obtained by discounting the bond's expected...
  
  
  • Yield to maturity
    Yield to maturity
    The Yield to maturity or redemption yield of a bond or other fixed-interest security, such as gilts, is the internal rate of return earned by an investor who buys the bond today at the market price, assuming that the bond will be held until maturity, and that all coupon and principal payments...
    
    
  • Bond duration
    Bond duration
    In finance, the duration of a financial asset that consists of fixed cash flows, for example a bond, is the weighted average of the times until those fixed cash flows are received....
    
    
  • Bond convexity
    Bond convexity
    In finance, convexity is a measure of the sensitivity of the duration of a bond to changes in interest rates, the second derivative of the price of the bond with respect to interest rates . In general, the higher the convexity, the more sensitive the bond price is to decreasing interest rates and...
    
    
• Fixed income
  Fixed income
  Fixed income refers to any type of investment that is not equity, which obligates the borrower/issuer to make payments on a fixed schedule, even if the number of the payments may be variable....
  
  

Money market

• Repurchase agreement
  Repurchase agreement
  A repurchase agreement, also known as a repo, RP, or sale and repurchase agreement, is the sale of securities together with an agreement for the seller to buy back the securities at a later date. The repurchase price should be greater than the original sale price, the difference effectively...
  
  
• International Money Market
• Currency
  Currency
  In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
  
  
• Exchange rate
  Exchange rate
  In finance, an exchange rate between two currencies is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another. It is also regarded as the value of one country’s currency in terms of another currency...
  
  
• International currency codes
  ISO 4217
  ISO 4217 is a standard published by the International Standards Organization, which delineates currency designators, country codes , and references to minor units in three tables:* Table A.1 – Current currency & funds code list...
  
  
• Table of historical exchange rates
  Table of historical exchange rates
  Listed below is a table of historical exchange rates relative to the U.S. dollar, at present the most widely traded currency in the world. An exchange rate represents the value of one currency in another. An exchange rate between two currencies fluctuates over time. The value of a currency relative...
  
  

Commodity market

• Commodity
  Commodity
  In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services....
  
  
  • Asset
    Asset
    In financial accounting, assets are economic resources. Anything tangible or intangible that is capable of being owned or controlled to produce value and that is held to have positive economic value is considered an asset...
    
    
  • Commodity Futures Trading Commission
    Commodity Futures Trading Commission
    The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates futures and option markets....
    
    
  • Day trading
    Day trading
    Day trading refers to the practice of buying and selling financial instruments within the same trading day such that all positions are usually closed before the market close for the trading day...
    
    
  • Drawdowns
    Drawdown (economics)
    The Drawdown is the measure of the decline from a historical peak in some variable ....
    
    
  • Forfaiting
    Forfaiting
    In trade finance, forfaiting involves the purchasing of receivables from exporters. The forfaiter takes on all risks involved with the receivables.Where are the independent and verifiable cites for this? Links? The forfaiting operation is a transaction-based operation involving the sale of one of...
    
    
  • Fundamental analysis
    Fundamental analysis
    Fundamental analysis of a business involves analyzing its financial statements and health, its management and competitive advantages, and its competitors and markets. When applied to futures and forex, it focuses on the overall state of the economy, interest rates, production, earnings, and...
    
    
  • Futures contract
    Futures contract
    In finance, a futures contract is a standardized contract between two parties to exchange a specified asset of standardized quantity and quality for a price agreed today with delivery occurring at a specified future date, the delivery date. The contracts are traded on a futures exchange...
    
    
  • Fungibility
    Fungibility
    Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution, such as crude oil, wheat, precious metals or currencies...
    
    
  • Gold as an investment
    Gold as an investment
    Of all the precious metals, gold is the most popular as an investment. Investors generally buy gold as a hedge or harbor against economic, political, or social fiat currency crises...
    
    
  • Hedging
    Hedge (finance)
    A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses that may be incurred by a companion investment.A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insurance, forward contracts, swaps, options, many types of...
    
    
  • Jesse Lauriston Livermore
    Jesse Lauriston Livermore
    Jesse Lauriston Livermore , also known as the Boy Plunger and "Great Bear of Wall Street", was an early 20th century stock trader...
    
    
  • List of traded commodities
  • Ownership equity
    Ownership equity
    In accounting and finance, equity is the residual claim or interest of the most junior class of investors in assets, after all liabilities are paid. If liability exceeds assets, negative equity exists...
    
    
  • Position trader
  • Risk (Futures)
  • Seasonal traders
  • Seasonal spread trading
    Seasonal spread trading
    Seasonal spread traders are spread traders that take advantage of seasonal patterns by holding long and short positions in futures contracts simultaneously in the same or a related commodity markets...
    
    
  • Slippage
  • Speculation
    Speculation
    In finance, speculation is a financial action that does not promise safety of the initial investment along with the return on the principal sum...
    
    
  • Spread trade
    Spread trade
    In finance, a spread trade is the simultaneous purchase of one security and sale of a related security, called legs, as a unit. Spread trades are usually executed with options or futures contracts as the legs, but other securities are sometimes used...
    
    
  • Technical analysis
    Technical analysis
    In finance, technical analysis is security analysis discipline for forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. Behavioral economics and quantitative analysis incorporate technical analysis, which being an aspect of active management stands...
    
    
    • Breakout
      Breakout (technical analysis)
      A breakout is when prices pass through and stay through an area of support or resistance. On the technical analysis chart a break out occurs when price of a stock or commodity exits an area pattern....
      
      
    • Bear market
    • Bottom (technical analysis)
      Bottom (technical analysis)
      A bottom is an event in technical analysis, where prices reach a low, then a lower low, and then a higher low.The first low signifies the pressure from selling was greater than the pressure from buying. The second lower low suggests that selling still had more pressure than the buying...
      
      
    • Bull market
    • MACD
      MACD
      MACD is a technical analysis indicator created by Gerald Appel in the late 1970s. It is used to spot changes in the strength, direction, momentum, and duration of a trend in a stock's price....
      
      
    • Moving average
    • Open Interest
      Open interest (futures)
      Open interest is the number of "open" contracts of derivatives like futures and options that have a time limit after which they expire. Open interest in a derivative is the sum of all contracts that have not expired, been exercised or physically delivered....
      
      
    • Parabolic SAR
      Parabolic SAR
      In the field of technical analysis, Parabolic SAR is a method devised by J. Welles Wilder, Jr., to find trends in market prices or securities...
      
      
    • Point and figure charts
    • Resistance
    • RSI
      Relative strength index
      The Relative Strength Index is a technical indicator used in the technical analysis of financial markets. It is intended to chart the current and historical strength or weakness of a stock or market based on the closing prices of a recent trading period...
      
      
    • Stochastic oscillator
      Stochastic oscillator
      In technical analysis of securities trading, the stochastic oscillator is a momentum indicator that uses support and resistance levels. Dr. George Lane promoted this indicator in the 1950s. The term stochastic refers to the location of a current price in relation to its price range over a period...
      
      
    • Stop loss
    • Support
      Support (technical analysis)
      Support and resistance is a concept in technical analysis that the movement of the price of a security will tend to stop and reverse at certain predetermined price levels.- Support :...
      
      
    • Top (technical analysis)
      Top (technical analysis)
      In technical analysis, a top is an event in which a security's market price reaches a high, then a higher high, and then a lower high.The first high signifies the pressure from buying was greater than the pressure from selling. The second higher high suggests that buying still had more pressure...
      
      
  • Trade
    Trade
    Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
    
    
  • Trend
    Market trend
    A market trend is a putative tendency of a financial market to move in a particular direction over time. These trends are classified as secular for long time frames, primary for medium time frames, and secondary for short time frames...
    
    

Derivatives market

• Derivative (finance)
  Derivative (finance)
  A derivative instrument is a contract between two parties that specifies conditions—in particular, dates and the resulting values of the underlying variables—under which payments, or payoffs, are to be made between the parties.Under U.S...
  
  
• (see also Financial mathematics topics; Derivatives pricing)
• Underlying instrument

Futures markets and contracts

• Backwardation
  Backwardation
  Normal backwardation, also sometimes called backwardation, is the market condition wherein the price of a forward or futures contract is trading below the expected spot price at contract maturity. The resulting futures or forward curve would typically be downward sloping , since contracts for...
  
  
• Contango
  Contango
  Contango is the market condition wherein the price of a forward or futures contract is trading above the expected spot price at contract maturity. The resulting futures or forward curve would typically be upward sloping , since contracts for further dates would typically trade at even higher prices...
  
  
• Futures contract
  Futures contract
  In finance, a futures contract is a standardized contract between two parties to exchange a specified asset of standardized quantity and quality for a price agreed today with delivery occurring at a specified future date, the delivery date. The contracts are traded on a futures exchange...
  
  
  • Currency futures
  • Financial futures
  • Interest rate futures
  • Futures exchange
    Futures exchange
    A futures exchange or futures market is a central financial exchange where people can trade standardized futures contracts; that is, a contract to buy specific quantities of a commodity or financial instrument at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future. These types of...
    
    

Option markets and contracts

• Option
  Option (finance)
  In finance, an option is a derivative financial instrument that specifies a contract between two parties for a future transaction on an asset at a reference price. The buyer of the option gains the right, but not the obligation, to engage in that transaction, while the seller incurs the...
  
  s
  • Stock option
    • Box spread
      Box spread
      In options trading, a box spread is a combination of positions that has a certain payoff, considered to be simply "delta neutral interest rate position"...
      
      
    • Call option
      Call option
      A call option, often simply labeled a "call", is a financial contract between two parties, the buyer and the seller of this type of option. The buyer of the call option has the right, but not the obligation to buy an agreed quantity of a particular commodity or financial instrument from the seller...
      
      
    • Put option
      Put option
      A put or put option is a contract between two parties to exchange an asset, the underlying, at a specified price, the strike, by a predetermined date, the expiry or maturity...
      
      
    • Strike price
      Strike price
      In options, the strike price is a key variable in a derivatives contract between two parties. Where the contract requires delivery of the underlying instrument, the trade will be at the strike price, regardless of the spot price of the underlying instrument at that time.Formally, the strike...
      
      
    • Put-call parity
    • The Greeks
    • Black–Scholes formula
    • Black model
      Black model
      The Black model is a variant of the Black–Scholes option pricing model. Its primary applications are for pricing bond options, interest rate caps / floors, and swaptions...
      
      
    • Binomial options model
    • Implied volatility
      Implied volatility
      In financial mathematics, the implied volatility of an option contract is the volatility of the price of the underlying security that is implied by the market price of the option based on an option pricing model. In other words, it is the volatility that, when used in a particular pricing model,...
      
      
    • Option time value
      Option time value
      In finance, the time value of an option is the premium a rational investor would pay over its current exercise value , based on its potential to increase in value before expiring. This probability is always greater than zero, thus an option is always worth more than its current exercise value...
      
      
    • Moneyness
      Moneyness
      In finance, moneyness is a measure of the degree to which a derivative is likely to have positive monetary value at its expiration, in the risk-neutral measure. It can be measured in percentage probability, or in standard deviations....
      
      
      • At-the-money
      • In-the-money
      • Out-of-the-money
    • Straddle
      Straddle
      In finance, a straddle is an investment strategy involving the purchase or sale of particular option derivatives that allows the holder to profit based on how much the price of the underlying security moves, regardless of the direction of price movement...
      
      
    • Option style
      Option style
      In finance, the style or family of an option is a general term denoting the class into which the option falls, usually defined by the dates on which the option may be exercised. The vast majority of options are either European or American options. These options - as well as others where the...
      
      
      • Vanilla option
      • Exotic option
        Exotic option
        In finance, an exotic option is a derivative which has features making it more complex than commonly traded products . These products are usually traded over-the-counter , or are embedded in structured notes....
        
        
      • Binary option
        Binary option
        In finance, a binary option is a type of option where the payoff is either some fixed amount of some asset or nothing at all. The two main types of binary options are the cash-or-nothing binary option and the asset-or-nothing binary option...
        
        
      • European option
        • Interest rate floor
        • Interest rate cap
      • Bermudan option
      • American option
      • Quanto option
      • Asian option
        Asian option
        An Asian option is a special type of option contract. For Asian options the payoff is determined by the average underlying price over some pre-set period of time...
        
        
    • Employee stock option
      Employee stock option
      An employee stock option is a call option on the common stock of a company, issued as a form of non-cash compensation. Restrictions on the option attempt to align the holder's interest with those of the business shareholders. If the company's stock rises, holders of options generally experience a...
      
      
  • Warrants
    Warrant (finance)
    In finance, a warrant is a security that entitles the holder to buy the underlying stock of the issuing company at a fixed exercise price until the expiry date....
    
    
  • Foreign exchange option
    Foreign exchange option
    In finance, a foreign-exchange option is a derivative financial instrument that gives the owner the right but not the obligation to exchange money denominated in one currency into another currency at a pre-agreed exchange rate on a specified date.The FX options market is the deepest, largest and...
    
    
  • Interest rate option
    Interest rate option
    Interest rate option is a derivative financial instrument.Interest Rate Options are a form of Exchange Traded Derivative whose underlying value is the rate on various Financial Interest rates,including treasury bills, and bonds. The exchange of these is monitored and facilitated by the CME Group.An...
    
    s
  • Bond option
    Bond option
    In finance, a bond option is an option to buy or sell a bond at a certain price on or before the option expiry date. These instruments are typically traded OTC....
    
    s
  • Real option
    Real option
    Real options valuation, also often termed Real options analysis, applies option valuation techniques to capital budgeting decisions. A real option itself, is the right — but not the obligation — to undertake some business decision; typically the option to make, abandon, expand, or contract a...
    
    s
  • Options on futures

Swap markets and contracts

• Swap (finance)
  Swap (finance)
  In finance, a swap is a derivative in which counterparties exchange certain benefits of one party's financial instrument for those of the other party's financial instrument. The benefits in question depend on the type of financial instruments involved...
  
  
  • Interest rate swap
    Interest rate swap
    An interest rate swap is a popular and highly liquid financial derivative instrument in which two parties agree to exchange interest rate cash flows, based on a specified notional amount from a fixed rate to a floating rate or from one floating rate to another...
    
    
  • Basis swap
    Basis swap
    A basis swap is an interest rate swap which involves the exchange of two floating rate financial instruments. A basis swap functions as a floating-floating interest rate swap under which the floating rate payments are referenced to different bases....
    
    
  • Asset swap
    Asset swap
    An asset swap is an exchange of tangible assets for intangible assets or vice versa. Since it is a swap of assets, the procedure takes place on the active side of the balance sheet and has no impact on the latter in regards to volume...
    
    
  • Forex swap
    Forex swap
    In finance, a forex swap is a simultaneous purchase and sale of identical amounts of one currency for another with two different value dates .; see Foreign exchange derivative.-Structure:...
    
    
  • Stock swap
    Stock swap
    A stock swap, also known as a share swap, is a business takeover or acquisition in which the acquiring company uses its own stock to pay for the acquired company. Each shareholder of the newly acquired company receives a certain number of shares of the acquiring company's stock for each share of...
    
    
  • Equity swaps
  • Currency swap
    Currency swap
    A currency swap is a foreign-exchange agreement between two parties to exchange aspects of a loan in one currency for equivalent aspects of an equal in net present value loan in another currency; see foreign exchange derivative. Currency swaps are motivated by comparative advantage...
    
    
  • Variance swap
    Variance swap
    A variance swap is an over-the-counter financial derivative that allows one to speculate on or hedge risks associated with the magnitude of movement, i.e. volatility, of some underlying product, like an exchange rate, interest rate, or stock index....
    
    

see: Swap (finance)

Swap (finance)

In finance, a swap is a derivative in which counterparties exchange certain benefits of one party's financial instrument for those of the other party's financial instrument. The benefits in question depend on the type of financial instruments involved...

Equity derivatives

• Contract for difference
  Contract for difference
  In finance, a contract for difference is a contract between two parties, typically described as "buyer" and "seller", stipulating that the buyer will pay to the seller the difference between the current value of an asset and its value at contract time...
  
   (CFD)
• Exchange-traded fund
  Exchange-traded fund
  An exchange-traded fund is an investment fund traded on stock exchanges, much like stocks. An ETF holds assets such as stocks, commodities, or bonds, and trades close to its net asset value over the course of the trading day. Most ETFs track an index, such as the S&P 500 or MSCI EAFE...
  
   (ETF)
  • Closed-end fund
    Closed-end fund
    A closed-end fund is a collective investment scheme with a limited number of shares. It is called a closed-end fund because new shares are rarely issued once the fund has launched, and because shares are not normally redeemable for cash or securities until the fund liquidates.Typically an...
    
    
  • Inverse exchange-traded fund
    Inverse exchange-traded fund
    An inverse exchange-traded fund is an exchange-traded fund , traded on a public stock market, which is designed to perform as the inverse of whatever index or benchmark it is designed to track...
    
    
• Equity options
• Equity swap
  Equity swap
  An equity swap is a financial derivative contract where a set of future cash flows are agreed to be exchanged between two counterparties at set dates in the future. The two cash flows are usually referred to as "legs" of the swap; one of these "legs" is usually pegged to a floating rate such as...
  
  
• Real estate investment trust
  Real estate investment trust
  A real estate investment trust or REIT is a tax designation for a corporate entity investing in real estate. The purpose of this designation is to reduce or eliminate corporate tax. In return, REITs are required to distribute 90% of their taxable income into the hands of investors...
  
   (REIT)
• Warrants
  Warrant (finance)
  In finance, a warrant is a security that entitles the holder to buy the underlying stock of the issuing company at a fixed exercise price until the expiry date....
  
  
  • Covered warrant
    Covered warrant
    In finance a covered warrant is a type of warrant that has been issued without an accompanying bond or equity...
    
    

Interest rate derivatives

• LIBOR
• Forward rate agreement
  Forward rate agreement
  In finance, a forward rate agreement is a forward contract, an over-the-counter contract between parties that determines the rate of interest, or the currency exchange rate, to be paid or received on an obligation beginning at a future start date. The contract will determine the rates to be used...
  
  
• Interest rate swap
  Interest rate swap
  An interest rate swap is a popular and highly liquid financial derivative instrument in which two parties agree to exchange interest rate cash flows, based on a specified notional amount from a fixed rate to a floating rate or from one floating rate to another...
  
  
• Interest rate cap
• Exotic interest rate option
• Bond option
  Bond option
  In finance, a bond option is an option to buy or sell a bond at a certain price on or before the option expiry date. These instruments are typically traded OTC....
  
  
• Interest rate future
  Interest rate future
  An interest rate futures is a financial derivative with an interest-bearing instrument as the underlying asset.Examples include Treasury-bill futures, Treasury-bond futures and Eurodollar futures....
  
  
• Money market
  Money market
  The money market is a component of the financial markets for assets involved in short-term borrowing and lending with original maturities of one year or shorter time frames. Trading in the money markets involves Treasury bills, commercial paper, bankers' acceptances, certificates of deposit,...
  
   instruments
• Range accrual
  Range accrual
  In finance, a range accrual is a type of derivative product very popular among structured-note investors. It is estimated that more than USD 160 billions of Range Accrual indexed on interest rates only have been sold to investors since 2004...
  
   Swaps/Notes/Bonds
• In-arrears Swap
• Constant maturity swap
  Constant maturity swap
  A constant maturity swap, also known as a CMS, is a swap that allows the purchaser to fix the duration of received flows on a swap.The floating leg of an interest rate swap typically resets against a published index...
  
   (CMS) or constant treasury swap (CTS) derivatives (swaps, caps, floors)
• Interest rate Swaption
  Swaption
  A swaption is an option granting its owner the right but not the obligation to enter into an underlying swap. Although options can be traded on a variety of swaps, the term "swaption" typically refers to options on interest rate swaps....
  
  
• Bermudan swaptions
• Cross currency swaptions
• Power Reverse Dual Currency note (PRDC or Turbo)
• Target redemption note (TARN)
• CMS steepener
• Snowball
• Inverse floater
• Strips of Collateralized mortgage obligation
  Collateralized mortgage obligation
  A collateralized mortgage obligation is a type of financial debt vehicle that was first created in 1983 by the investment banks Salomon Brothers and First Boston for U.S. mortgage lender Freddie Mac. A collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO) is a type of financial debt vehicle that was first...
  
  
• Ratchet caps and floors

Credit derivatives

• Credit default swap
  Credit default swap
  A credit default swap is similar to a traditional insurance policy, in as much as it obliges the seller of the CDS to compensate the buyer in the event of loan default...
  
  
• Collateralized debt obligation
  Collateralized debt obligation
  Collateralized debt obligations are a type of structured asset-backed security with multiple "tranches" that are issued by special purpose entities and collateralized by debt obligations including bonds and loans. Each tranche offers a varying degree of risk and return so as to meet investor demand...
  
  
• Credit default option
  Credit default option
  In finance, a default option, credit default swaption or credit default option is an option to buy protection or sell protection as a credit default swap on a specific reference credit with a specific maturity...
  
  
• Total return swap
  Total return swap
  Total return swap, or TRS , or total rate of return swap, or TRORS, is a financial contract that transfers both the credit risk and market risk of an underlying asset.- Contract definition :...
  
  
• Securitization
  Securitization
  Securitization is the financial practice of pooling various types of contractual debt such as residential mortgages, commercial mortgages, auto loans or credit card debt obligations and selling said consolidated debt as bonds, pass-through securities, or Collateralized mortgage obligation , to...
  
  

Foreign exchange derivative

• Foreign exchange option
  Foreign exchange option
  In finance, a foreign-exchange option is a derivative financial instrument that gives the owner the right but not the obligation to exchange money denominated in one currency into another currency at a pre-agreed exchange rate on a specified date.The FX options market is the deepest, largest and...
  
  
• Currency future
  Currency future
  A currency future, also FX future or foreign exchange future, is a futures contract to exchange one currency for another at a specified date in the future at a price that is fixed on the purchase date; see Foreign exchange derivative. Typically, one of the currencies is the US dollar...
  
  
• Forex swap
  Forex swap
  In finance, a forex swap is a simultaneous purchase and sale of identical amounts of one currency for another with two different value dates .; see Foreign exchange derivative.-Structure:...
  
  
• Foreign exchange hedge
  Foreign exchange hedge
  A foreign exchange hedge is a method used by companies to eliminate or hedge foreign exchange risk resulting from transactions in foreign currencies . This is done using either the cash flow or the fair value method...
  
  
• Binary option: Foreign exchange

Financial regulation

• Corporate governance
  Corporate governance
  Corporate governance is a number of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions which have impact on the way a company is controlled...
  
  
• Financial regulation
  Financial regulation
  Financial regulation is a form of regulation or supervision, which subjects financial institutions to certain requirements, restrictions and guidelines, aiming to maintain the integrity of the financial system...
  
  
  • Bank regulation
    Bank regulation
    Bank regulations are a form of government regulation which subject banks to certain requirements, restrictions and guidelines. This regulatory structure creates transparency between banking institutions and the individuals and corporations with whom they conduct business, among other things...
    
    
    • Banking license
      Banking license
      Under most jurisdictions, a banking license is a prerequisite for a financial institution that wants to provide banking services, such as taking deposits from the general public....
      
      
• License
  License
  The verb license or grant licence means to give permission. The noun license or licence refers to that permission as well as to the document recording that permission.A license may be granted by a party to another party as an element of an agreement...
  
  

Designations and accreditation

• Certified Financial Planner
  Certified Financial Planner
  The Certified Financial Planner designation is a professional certification mark for financial planners conferred by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc...
  
  
• Chartered Financial Analyst
  Chartered Financial Analyst
  The Chartered Financial Analyst Program is a graduate level self-study program offered by the CFA Institute to investment and financial professionals...
  
  
  • CFA Institute
    CFA Institute
    CFA Institute is headquartered in the United States of America at Charlottesville, Virginia, with offices in Hong Kong and London. Formerly known as the Association for Investment Management and Research , CFA Institute awards the Chartered Financial Analyst designation...
    
    
• Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst
  Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst
  Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst is a professional designation offered by the CAIA Association to investment professionals who complete a course of study and pass two examinations. The "alternative investments" industry is characterized as dealing with asset classes and investments other...
  
  
• Professional Risk Manager
• Chartered Financial Consultant
• Canadian Securities Institute
  Canadian Securities Institute
  CSI Global Education Inc. is a Canadian financial services education company that provides courses and credentials for financial services professionals across all pillars of the financial services industry...
  
  
• Independent Financial Adviser
  Independent Financial Adviser
  Independent Financial Advisers or IFAs are professionals who offer independent advice on financial matters to their clients and recommend suitable financial products from the whole of the market...
  
  
  • Chartered Insurance Institute
    Chartered Insurance Institute
    The Chartered Insurance Institute is a United Kingdom based professional organisation for those working in the insurance and financial services industries....
    
    
• Financial Risk Manager
  Financial Risk Manager
  The Financial Risk Manager designation is an international professional certification offered by the Global Association of Risk Professionals...
  
  
• Chartered Accountant
  Chartered Accountant
  Chartered Accountants were the first accountants to form a professional body, initially established in Britain in 1854. The Edinburgh Society of Accountants , the Glasgow Institute of Accountants and Actuaries and the Aberdeen Society of Accountants were each granted a royal charter almost from...
  
  

Fraud

• Forex scam
  Forex scam
  Foreign exchange fraud is any trading scheme used to defraud traders by convincing them that they can expect to gain a high profit by trading in the foreign exchange market. Currency trading "has become the fraud du jour" as of early 2008, according to Michael Dunn of the U.S...
  
  
• Insider trading
  Insider trading
  Insider trading is the trading of a corporation's stock or other securities by individuals with potential access to non-public information about the company...
  
  
• Legal origins theory
  Legal origins theory
  In economics, the legal origins theory states that many aspects of a country's economic state of development are the result of their legal system, most of all where a particular country received its law from...
  
  
• Petition mill
  Petition mill
  A petition mill is a fraud in which the perpetrator poses as a financial advisor, sometimes as a credit counselor or paralegal, filing hastily-prepared bankruptcy documents in the name of victims who come to the advisor as clients...
  
  
• Ponzi scheme
  Ponzi scheme
  A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation...
  
  

Industry bodies

• International Swaps and Derivatives Association
  International Swaps and Derivatives Association
  The International Swaps and Derivatives Association is a trade organization of participants in the market for over-the-counter derivatives....
  
  
• National Association of Securities Dealers

International

• Bank for International Settlements
  Bank for International Settlements
  The Bank for International Settlements is an intergovernmental organization of central banks which "fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks." It is not accountable to any national government...
  
  
• International Organization of Securities Commissions
  International Organization of Securities Commissions
  The International Organization of Securities Commissions is an association of organisations that regulate the world’s securities and futures markets....
  
  
• Security Commission
  Security Commission
  The Security Commission is a UK non-departmental public body established in 1964 to investigate breaches of security in the public sector.Current members are:*The Rt Hon Lady Justice Butler-Sloss, DBE...
  
  
• Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
  Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
  The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is a committee of banking supervisory authorities that was established by the central bank governors of the Group of Ten countries in 1975. It provides a forum for regular cooperation on banking supervisory matters. Its objective is to enhance...
  
  
• Basel Accords – Basel I
  Basel I
  Basel I is the round of deliberations by central bankers from around the world, and in 1988, the Basel Committee in Basel, Switzerland, published a set of minimal capital requirements for banks. This is also known as the 1988 Basel Accord, and was enforced by law in the Group of Ten countries...
  
  , Basel II
  Basel II
  Basel II is the second of the Basel Accords, which are recommendations on banking laws and regulations issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision...
  
  
• International Association of Insurance Supervisors
  International Association of Insurance Supervisors
  The International Association of Insurance Supervisors is an international organisation that brings together the world's insurance supervisors and regulators.-History:The IAIS was created in 1994...
  
  
• International Accounting Standards Board
  International Accounting Standards Board
  The International Accounting Standards Board is an independent, privately funded accounting standard-setter based in London, England.The IASB was founded on April 1, 2001 as the successor to the International Accounting Standards Committee...
  
  

European Union

• European Securities Committee
  European Securities Committee
  The European Securities Committee advises the European Commission in the field of securities.The ESC held its first meeting in September 2001. It is run by the European Commission and usually meets each month...
  
   (EU
  European Union
  The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
  
  )
• Committee of European Securities Regulators
  Committee of European Securities Regulators
  The Committee of European Securities Regulators was an independent committee of European Securities regulators established by European Commission on June 6 of 2001...
  
   (EU
  European Union
  The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
  
  )

United States

• Commodity Futures Trading Commission
  Commodity Futures Trading Commission
  The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates futures and option markets....
  
  
• Federal Reserve
• Federal Trade Commission
  Federal Trade Commission
  The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...
  
  
• Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board
  Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board
  The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, often referred to as the MSRB, writes investor protection rules and other rules regulating broker-dealers and banks in the United States municipal securities market, including tax-exempt and taxable municipal bonds, municipal notes, and other securities...
  
  
• Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
  Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
  The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is a US federal agency established by the National Currency Act of 1863 and serves to charter, regulate, and supervise all national banks and the federal branches and agencies of foreign banks in the United States...
  
  
• Securities and Exchange Commission

United States legislation

• Glass–Steagall Act (US)
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
  Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
  The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act , also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, is an act of the 106th United States Congress...
  
   (US)
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act
  Sarbanes-Oxley Act
  The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 , also known as the 'Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act' and 'Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act' and commonly called Sarbanes–Oxley, Sarbox or SOX, is a United States federal law enacted on July 30, 2002, which...
  
   (US)
• Securities Act of 1933
  Securities Act of 1933
  Congress enacted the Securities Act of 1933 , in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929 and during the ensuing Great Depression...
  
   (US)
• Securities Exchange Act of 1934
  Securities Exchange Act of 1934
  The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 , , codified at et seq., is a law governing the secondary trading of securities in the United States of America. It was a sweeping piece of legislation...
  
   (US)
• Investment Advisers Act of 1940
  Investment Advisers Act of 1940
  The Investment Advisers Act of 1940, codified at through , is a United States federal law that was created to regulate the actions of investment advisers as defined by the law.-Overview:The law provides in part:-Contents:...
  
   (US)
• USA PATRIOT Act
  USA PATRIOT Act
  The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of the U.S. Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001...
  
  

Valuation

• Value (economics)
  Value (economics)
  An economic value is the worth of a good or service as determined by the market.The economic value of a good or service has puzzled economists since the beginning of the discipline. First, economists tried to estimate the value of a good to an individual alone, and extend that definition to goods...
  
  
• Fair value
  Fair value
  Fair value, also called fair price , is a concept used in accounting and economics, defined as a rational and unbiased estimate of the potential market price of a good, service, or asset, taking into account such objective factors as:* acquisition/production/distribution costs, replacement costs,...
  
  
• Intrinsic value
  Intrinsic value (finance)
  In finance, intrinsic value refers to the value of a security which is intrinsic to or contained in the security itself. It is also frequently called fundamental value. It is ordinarily calculated by summing the future income generated by the asset, and discounting it to the present value...
  
  
• "The Theory of Investment Value"

Discounted cash flow valuation

• Cash flow
  Cash flow
  Cash flow is the movement of money into or out of a business, project, or financial product. It is usually measured during a specified, finite period of time. Measurement of cash flow can be used for calculating other parameters that give information on a company's value and situation.Cash flow...
  
  
  • Operating cash flow
    Operating cash flow
    In financial accounting, operating cash flow , cash flow provided by operations or cash flow from operating activities , refers to the amount of cash a company generates from the revenues it brings in, excluding costs associated with long-term investment on capital items or investment in securities...
    
    
• Time value of money
  Time value of money
  The time value of money is the value of money figuring in a given amount of interest earned over a given amount of time. The time value of money is the central concept in finance theory....
  
  
  • Present value
    Present value
    Present value, also known as present discounted value, is the value on a given date of a future payment or series of future payments, discounted to reflect the time value of money and other factors such as investment risk...
    
    
  • Future value
    Future value
    Future value is the value of an asset at a specific date. It measures the nominal future sum of money that a given sum of money is "worth" at a specified time in the future assuming a certain interest rate, or more generally, rate of return; it is the present value multiplied by the accumulation...
    
    
  • Actualization
  • Discounting
• Bond valuation
  Bond valuation
  Bond valuation is the determination of the fair price of a bond. As with any security or capital investment, the theoretical fair value of a bond is the present value of the stream of cash flows it is expected to generate. Hence, the value of a bond is obtained by discounting the bond's expected...
  
  
  • Yield to maturity
    Yield to maturity
    The Yield to maturity or redemption yield of a bond or other fixed-interest security, such as gilts, is the internal rate of return earned by an investor who buys the bond today at the market price, assuming that the bond will be held until maturity, and that all coupon and principal payments...
    
    
  • Duration
    Bond duration
    In finance, the duration of a financial asset that consists of fixed cash flows, for example a bond, is the weighted average of the times until those fixed cash flows are received....
    
    
  • Convexity
    Bond convexity
    In finance, convexity is a measure of the sensitivity of the duration of a bond to changes in interest rates, the second derivative of the price of the bond with respect to interest rates . In general, the higher the convexity, the more sensitive the bond price is to decreasing interest rates and...
    
    
• Equity
  Stock
  The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...
  
   valuation
  • Equivalent Annual Cost
    Equivalent Annual Cost
    In finance the equivalent annual cost is the cost per year of owning and operating an asset over its entire lifespan.EAC is often used as a decision making tool in capital budgeting when comparing investment projects of unequal lifespans...
    
    
  • Net present value
    Net present value
    In finance, the net present value or net present worth of a time series of cash flows, both incoming and outgoing, is defined as the sum of the present values of the individual cash flows of the same entity...
    
    
  • Discount rate
    Discounts and allowances
    Discounts and allowances are reductions to a basic price of goods or services.They can occur anywhere in the distribution channel, modifying either the manufacturer's list price , the retail price , or the list price Discounts and allowances are reductions to a basic price of goods or services.They...
    
    
    • Capital Asset Pricing Model
      Capital asset pricing model
      In finance, the capital asset pricing model is used to determine a theoretically appropriate required rate of return of an asset, if that asset is to be added to an already well-diversified portfolio, given that asset's non-diversifiable risk...
      
      
    • Arbitrage pricing theory
      Arbitrage pricing theory
      In finance, arbitrage pricing theory is a general theory of asset pricing that holds that the expected return of a financial asset can be modeled as a linear function of various macro-economic factors or theoretical market indices, where sensitivity to changes in each factor is represented by a...
      
      
    • Cost of capital
      Cost of capital
      The cost of capital is a term used in the field of financial investment to refer to the cost of a company's funds , or, from an investor's point of view "the shareholder's required return on a portfolio of all the company's existing securities"...
      
      
    • Weighted average cost of capital
      Weighted average cost of capital
      The weighted average cost of capital is the rate that a company is expected to pay on average to all its security holders to finance its assets....
      
      
  • Fundamental analysis
    Fundamental analysis
    Fundamental analysis of a business involves analyzing its financial statements and health, its management and competitive advantages, and its competitors and markets. When applied to futures and forex, it focuses on the overall state of the economy, interest rates, production, earnings, and...
    
    
  • Stock valuation
    Stock valuation
    In financial markets, stock valuation is the method of calculating theoretical values of companies and their stocks. The main use of these methods is to predict future market prices, or more generally potential market prices, and thus to profit from price movement – stocks that are judged...
    
    
  • Business valuation
    Business valuation
    Business valuation is a process and a set of procedures used to estimate the economic value of an owner’s interest in a business. Valuation is used by financial market participants to determine the price they are willing to pay or receive to consummate a sale of a business...
    
    
  • The investment decision
  • Market value added
    Market value added
    Market Value Added is the difference between the current market value of a firm and the capital contributed by investors. If MVA is positive, the firm has added value. If it is negative, the firm has destroyed value...
    
     / Economic value added
    Economic value added
    In corporate finance, Economic Value Added or EVA, a registered trademark of Stern Stewart & Co., is an estimate of a firm's economic profit – being the value created in excess of the required return of the company's investors . Quite simply, EVA is the profit earned by the firm less the cost of...
    
    
  • Adjusted present value
    Adjusted present value
    Adjusted Present Value is a business valuation method. APV is the net present value of a project if financed solely by ownership equity plus the present value of all the benefits of financing...
    
    

Relative valuation

• Dividend yield
  Dividend yield
  The dividend yield or the dividend-price ratio on a company stock is the company's total annual dividend payments divided by its market capitalization, or the dividend per share, divided by the price per share. It is often expressed as a percentage...
  
  
• Financial ratio
  Financial ratio
  A financial ratio is a relative magnitude of two selected numerical values taken from an enterprise's financial statements. Often used in accounting, there are many standard ratios used to try to evaluate the overall financial condition of a corporation or other organization...
  
  
• Market-based valuation
  Market-based valuation
  Market-based valuation is a form of stock valuation that refers to market indicators, also called "extrinsic" criteria .- Examples of market valuation methods :...
  
  
• PE ratio
• Relative valuation
  Relative valuation
  Relative valuation is a generic term that refers to the notion of comparing the price of an asset to the market value of similar assets. In the field of securities investment, the idea has led to important practical tools, which could presumably spot pricing anomalies...
  
  
• Stock image
  Stock image
  Stock image can mean the following:* A stock image in publishing is an image that is commercially available .* A stock image in finance is a stock valuation coefficient based on the "stock profile" , as it is really or as investors perceive it...
  
  
• Stock profile

Contingent claim valuation

See derivatives pricing below.

Financial software tools

• Straight Through Processing
  Straight Through Processing
  Straight-through processing enables the entire trade process for capital markets and payment transactions to be conducted electronically without the need for re-keying or manual intervention, subject to legal and regulatory restrictions...
  
   Software
• Technical Analysis Software
• Algorithmic trading
  Algorithmic trading
  In electronic financial markets, algorithmic trading or automated trading, also known as algo trading, black-box trading or robo trading, is the use of electronic platforms for entering trading orders with an algorithm deciding on aspects of the order such as the timing, price, or quantity of the...
  
  
• List of numerical analysis software
• Comparison of numerical analysis software
  Comparison of numerical analysis software
  The following tables provide a comparison of numerical analysis software.- General :- Operating system support :The operating systems the software can run on natively .- Language features :Colors indicate features available as...
  
  

Financial institutions

Financial institution

Financial institution

In financial economics, a financial institution is an institution that provides financial services for its clients or members. Probably the most important financial service provided by financial institutions is acting as financial intermediaries...

s

• Bank
  Bank
  A bank is a financial institution that serves as a financial intermediary. The term "bank" may refer to one of several related types of entities:...
  
  
  • List of banks
    • List of banks in Canada
    • List of banks in Hong Kong
    • List of banks in Singapore
    • List of bank mergers in United States
  • Advising bank
    Advising bank
    An advising bank advises a beneficiary that a letter of credit opened by an issuing bank for an applicant is available. Advising Bank's responsibility is to authenticate the letter of credit issued by the issuer to avoid fraud...
    
    
  • Central bank
    Central bank
    A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is a public institution that usually issues the currency, regulates the money supply, and controls the interest rates in a country. Central banks often also oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries...
    
    
    • List of central banks
  • Commercial bank
    Commercial bank
    After the implementation of the Glass–Steagall Act, the U.S. Congress required that banks engage only in banking activities, whereas investment banks were limited to capital market activities. As the two no longer have to be under separate ownership under U.S...
    
    
  • Community development bank
    Community development bank
    - Community Development Banking in the United States :In the United States, community development banks are commercial banks that operate with a mission to generate economic development in low- to moderate-income geographical areas and serve residents of these communities...
    
    
  • Cooperative bank
  • Custodian bank
    Custodian bank
    A Custodian bank, or simply custodian, is a specialized financial institution responsible for safeguarding a firm's or individual's financial assets and is not likely to engage in "traditional" commercial or consumer/retail banking such as mortgage or personal lending, branch banking, personal...
    
    
  • Depository bank
    Depository bank
    A depository bank is a bank organized in the United States which provides all the stock transfer and agency services in connection with a depository receipt program...
    
    
  • Investment bank
  • Islamic banking
    Islamic banking
    Islamic banking is banking or banking activity that is consistent with the principles of Islamic law and its practical application through the development of Islamic economics. Sharia prohibits the fixed or floating payment or acceptance of specific interest or fees for loans of money...
    
    
  • Merchant bank
    Merchant bank
    A merchant bank is a financial institution which provides capital to companies in the form of share ownership instead of loans. A merchant bank also provides advisory on corporate matters to the firms they lend to....
    
    
  • Microcredit
    Microcredit
    Microcredit is the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit...
    
    
  • Mutual bank
    Mutual bank
    Mutual bank or mutual banking may refer to*Mutual savings bank*Cooperative banking*Mutualism...
    
    
  • Mutual savings bank
    Mutual savings bank
    A mutual savings bank is a financial institution chartered by a central or regional government, without capital stock, that is owned by its members who subscribe to a common fund. From this fund claims, loans, etc., are paid. Profits after deductions are shared between the members...
    
    
  • National bank
    National bank
    In banking, the term national bank carries several meanings:* especially in developing countries, a bank owned by the state* an ordinary private bank which operates nationally...
    
    
  • Offshore bank
    Offshore bank
    An offshore bank is a bank located outside the country of residence of the depositor, typically in a low tax jurisdiction that provides financial and legal advantages. These advantages typically include:...
    
    
  • Private bank
    Private bank
    Private banks are banks that are not incorporated. A private bank is owned by either an individual or a general partner with limited partner...
    
    
  • Savings bank
    Savings bank
    A savings bank is a financial institution whose primary purpose is accepting savings deposits. It may also perform some other functions.In Europe, savings banks originated in the 19th or sometimes even the 18th century. Their original objective was to provide easily accessible savings products to...
    
    
  • Swiss bank
• Bank holding company
• Building society
  Building society
  A building society is a financial institution owned by its members as a mutual organization. Building societies offer banking and related financial services, especially mortgage lending. These institutions are found in the United Kingdom and several other countries.The term "building society"...
  
  
• Broker
  Broker
  A broker is a party that arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller, and gets a commission when the deal is executed. A broker who also acts as a seller or as a buyer becomes a principal party to the deal...
  
  
  • Broker-dealer
    Broker-dealer
    A broker-dealer is a term used in United States financial services regulations. It is a natural person, a company or other organization that trades securities for its own account or on behalf of its customers....
    
    
  • Brokerage firm
    Brokerage firm
    A brokerage firm, or simply brokerage or broker in context, is a financial institution that facilitates the buying and selling of financial derivatives between a buyer and a seller...
    
    
  • Commodity broker
    Commodity broker
    A commodity broker is a firm or individual who executes orders to buy or sell commodity contracts on behalf of clients and charges them a commission. A firm or individual who trades for his own account is called a trader. Commodity contracts include futures, options, and similar financial...
    
    
  • Insurance broker
    Insurance broker
    An insurance broker finds sources for contracts of insurance on behalf of their customers. The three largest insurance brokers in the world, by revenue, are Aon, Marsh & McLennan, and Willis Group Holdings.-Purpose of insurance brokers:...
    
    
  • Investment broker
    Investment broker
    Investment brokers are individuals who bring together buyers and sellers of investments. They need a license to operate. They act on behalf of buyers and sellers of stock...
    
    
  • Online broker
  • Options broker
    Options broker
    Options brokers specialize in offering options trading, research, education and other tools to individual investors. In addition to common options trades like covered calls, option spreads, and straddles, many options brokerages offer trading in products related to options, including stocks, ETFs,...
    
    
  • Prime brokerage
    Prime brokerage
    Prime brokerage is the generic name for a bundled package of services offered by investment banks and securities firms to hedge funds and other professional investors needing the ability to borrow securities and cash to be able to invest on a netted basis and achieve an absolute return...
    
    
  • Retail broker
  • Stock broker
    Stock broker
    A stock broker or stockbroker is a regulated professional broker who buys and sells shares and other securities through market makers or Agency Only Firms on behalf of investors...
    
    
• Clearing house
  Clearing house (finance)
  A clearing house is a financial institution that provides clearing and settlement services for financial and commodities derivatives and securities transactions...
  
  
• Commercial lender
  Commercial lender
  Whilst nearly all lenders offer loans on a commercial basis the term commercial lender has differed meanings around the world.* In much of the world and especially in the UK, the phrase commercial lender refers to a lender arranging commercial loans especially commercial mortgages. In the UK it is...
  
  
• Community development financial institution
  Community development financial institution
  Community development financial institutions are financial institutions which provide credit and financial services to underserved markets and populations, primarily in the USA but also in the UK...
  
  
• Credit rating agency
  Credit rating agency
  A Credit rating agency is a company that assigns credit ratings for issuers of certain types of debt obligations as well as the debt instruments themselves...
  
  
• Credit union
  Credit union
  A credit union is a cooperative financial institution that is owned and controlled by its members and operated for the purpose of promoting thrift, providing credit at competitive rates, and providing other financial services to its members...
  
  
• Diversified financial
  Diversified financial
  The diversified financial services segment includes a range of consumer and commercially oriented companies offering a wide variety of products and services, including various lending products , insurance, and securities and investment products...
  
  
• Edge Act Corporation
  Edge Act Corporation
  An Edge Act Corporation is a corporation chartered by the Federal Reserve of the United States under the Edge Act to engage in international banking operations. The Federal Reserve Board acts upon applications by U.S. and foreign banking organizations to establish Edge corporations...
  
  
• Export Credit Agencies
  Export Credit Agencies
  An export credit agency or Investment Insurance Agency, is a private or quasi-governmental institution that act as an intermediary between national governments and exporters to issue export financing...
  
  
• Financial adviser
  Financial adviser
  A financial adviser, is a professional who renders financial services to individuals, businesses and governments. This can involve investment advice, which may include pension planning, and/or advice on life insurance and other insurances such as income protection insurance, critical illness...
  
  
• Financial intermediary
  Financial intermediary
  Financial intermediation consists of “channeling funds between surplus and deficit agents”. A financial intermediary is a financial institution that connects surplus and deficit agents...
  
  
• Financial planner
  Financial planner
  A financial planner or personal financial planner is a practicing professional who helps people deal with various personal financial issues through proper planning, which includes: cash flow management, education planning, retirement planning, investment planning, risk management and insurance...
  
  
• Futures exchange
  Futures exchange
  A futures exchange or futures market is a central financial exchange where people can trade standardized futures contracts; that is, a contract to buy specific quantities of a commodity or financial instrument at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future. These types of...
  
  
  • List of futures exchanges
• Government sponsored enterprise
• Hard money lender
  Hard money lender
  Hard money lenders are lending companies offering a specialized type of real-estate backed loan. Hard money lenders provide short-term loans that provide funding based on the value of real estate that has been collateralized for the loan...
  
  
• Independent Financial Adviser
  Independent Financial Adviser
  Independent Financial Advisers or IFAs are professionals who offer independent advice on financial matters to their clients and recommend suitable financial products from the whole of the market...
  
  
• Industrial loan company
  Industrial loan company
  An industrial loan company or industrial bank is a financial institution in the United States that lends money, and may be owned by non-financial institutions. Though such banks offer FDIC-insured deposits and are subject to FDIC and state regulator oversight, a debate exists to allow parent...
  
  
• Insurance company
• Investment adviser
• Investment company
  Investment company
  An investment company is a company whose main business is holding securities of other companies purely for investment purposes. The investment company invests money on behalf of its shareholders who in turn share in the profits and losses....
  
  
• Investment trust
  Investment trust
  An Investment trust is a form of collective investment found mostly in the United Kingdom. Investment trusts are closed-end funds and are constituted as public limited companies....
  
  
• Large and Complex Financial Institutions
  Large and Complex Financial Institutions
  Large and Complex Financial Institutions is a polite term for the bulge bracket banks. The context is that of systemic risk, a topic of particular concern to central banks, financial regulators and the Bank for International Settlements....
  
  
• Mutual fund
  Mutual fund
  A mutual fund is a professionally managed type of collective investment scheme that pools money from many investors to buy stocks, bonds, short-term money market instruments, and/or other securities.- Overview :...
  
  
• Non-banking financial company
  Non-banking financial company
  Non-bank financial companies are financial institutions that provide banking services without meeting the legal definition of a bank, i.e. one that does not hold a banking license. These institutions are not allowed to take deposits from the public. Nonetheless, all operations of these...
  
  
• Savings and loan association
  Savings and loan association
  A savings and loan association , also known as a thrift, is a financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and making mortgage and other loans...
  
  
• Stock exchange
  Stock exchange
  A stock exchange is an entity that provides services for stock brokers and traders to trade stocks, bonds, and other securities. Stock exchanges also provide facilities for issue and redemption of securities and other financial instruments, and capital events including the payment of income and...
  
  
  • List of stock exchanges
• Trust company
  Trust company
  A trust company is a corporation, especially a commercial bank, organized to perform the fiduciary of trusts and agencies. It is normally owned by one of three types of structures: an independent partnership, a bank, or a law firm, each of which specializes in being a trustee of various kinds of...
  
  

Lists

• Index of accounting articles
• Outline of business management
• Outline of marketing
  Outline of marketing
  The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to marketing:Marketing refers to the social and managerial processes by which products, services and value are exchanged in order to fulfil individuals' or group's needs and wants...
  
  
• Outline of economics
  Outline of economics
  The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to economics:Economics – analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services...
  
  
• Outline of production
• List of international trade topics
• List of information technology management topics
• List of business law topics
• List of business ethics, political economy, and philosophy of business topics
• List of business theorists

External links

• Wharton Finance Knowledge Project – aimed to offer free access to finance knowledge for students, teachers, and self-learners.
• Comprehensive site about topics of financial theory, with a focus in Corporate Finance, Valuation and Investments. Updated Data, Excel Spreadsheets and more. Prof. Aswath Damodaran
• For links to finance web sites, grouped by topic see Web Sites for Discerning Finance Students, Prof. John M. Wachowicz -
• For the introductory finance web site at the University of Arizona
  University of Arizona
  The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
  
  , studyfinance.com
• For introductory articles, a full glossary and links to resources on behavioral finance see the BF gallery
• For the law of the financial markets see SECLaw.com
• For various shared blog posts on finance see fwisp.com
• For stock market related financial definitions see TheStreet.com Glossary
• The Finance Director provides access to essential suppliers of financial services and solutions
• Middle East Banking & Finance News — ArabianBusiness.com