Month: June 2020

The Morningstar Sustainability Rating is a reliable and objective way for investors to see how approximately 20,000 mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are meeting environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) challenges.

Insider information is a fact about a public company’s plans or finances that has not yet been revealed to shareholders and that could give an unfair advantage to its possessors if acted upon. Buying or selling stock based on insider information can be a criminal offense.

A bearish engulfing pattern is a technical chart pattern that signals lower prices to come. The pattern consists of an up (white or green) candlestick followed by a large down (black or red) candlestick that eclipses or engulfs the smaller up candle. The pattern can be important because it shows sellers have overtaken the buyers and are pushing the price more aggressively down (down candle) than the buyers were able to push it up (up candle).

The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone. The American Dream is achieved through sacrifice, risk-taking, and hard work, rather than by chance.

The short run is a concept that states that, within a certain period in the future, at least one input is fixed while others are variable. In economics, it expresses the idea that an economy behaves differently depending on the length of time it has to react to certain stimuli. The short run does not refer to a specific duration of time but rather is unique to the firm, industry or economic variable being studied.

High-net-worth individual (HNWI) is a person or family with liquid assets above a certain figure. The term is often used by the financial services industry. Although there is no precise definition of how rich someone must be to fit into this category, high net worth is generally quoted in terms of having liquid assets of a particular number. The exact amount differs by financial institution and region but could range from people with a net wealth of 6- to 7- or more figures.

An asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) is a short-term investment vehicle with a maturity date that is typically between 90 and 270 days. A bank or other financial institution typically issues the security itself. The notes are backed by the company’s physical assets such as trade receivables. Companies will use an asset-backed commercial paper to fund short-term financing needs.

Michael Bloomberg is a billionaire businessman, publisher, and philanthropist, and a former three-term mayor of New York City. The founder and owner of Bloomberg LP, he is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of $45 billion as of January 2019, according to Forbes. On November 24, 2019, Bloomberg entered the 2020 race for president of the United States as a Democrat.

An outside director is a member of a company’s board of directors who is not an employee or stakeholder in the company. Outside directors are paid an annual retainer fee in the form of cash, benefits and/or stock options. Corporate governance standards require public companies to have a certain number or percentage of outside directors on their boards. In theory outside directors are more likely to provide unbiased opinions.

Top-down investing is an investment analysis approach that involves looking first at the macro picture of the economy, and then looking at the smaller factors in finer detail. After looking at the big-picture conditions around the world, analysts next examine the general market conditions followed by particular industrial sectors to select those that are forecast to outperform the market. From this point, they further analyze the stocks of specific companies to choose potentially successful ones as investments by looking last at a particular company’s fundamentals. Top-down approaches prioritize macroeconomic or market-level factors most. read more