Month: July 2020

A Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefit (GLWB) is a rider to a variable annuity contract that allows for withdrawals, either regular or occasional, to be made from an annuity during the accumulation phase without penalty. The annuitant pays for the GLWB rider with additional fees that are added to the total value of the annuity contract. The amount of money that is allowed to be withdrawn is a percentage of the total value of the annuity.

Hard skills are learned abilities acquired and enhanced through practice, repetition, and education. Hard skills are important because they increase employee productivity and efficiency and subsequently improve employee satisfaction. However, hard skills alone don’t translate into business success as employees also need to employ other skills, such as soft skills, that contribute to customer satisfaction.

Breadth indicators are mathematical formulas that measure the number of advancing and declining stocks, and/or their volume, to calculate the participation in a stock index’s price movements. By evaluating how many stocks are increasing or decreasing in price, and how much volume these stocks are trading, breadth indicators help in confirming stock index price trends, or can warn of impending price reversals.

A smurf is a money launderer or someone who seeks to evade scrutiny from government agencies by breaking up a transaction involving a large amount of money into smaller transactions below the reporting threshold. Smurfing involves depositing illegally gained money into bank accounts for under-the-radar transfer in the near future.

Deregulation is the reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry, usually enacted to create more competition within the industry. Over the years the struggle between proponents of regulation and proponents of no government intervention have shifted market conditions. Finance has historically been one of the most heavily scrutinized industries in the United States.

Active management is the use of a human element, such as a single manager, co-managers or a team of managers, to actively manage a fund’s portfolio. Active managers rely on analytical research, forecasts, and their own judgment and experience in making investment decisions on what securities to buy, hold and sell. The opposite of active management is passive management, better known as indexing.”

Forecasting is a technique that uses historical data as inputs to make informed estimates that are predictive in determining the direction of future trends. Businesses utilize forecasting to determine how to allocate their budgets or plan for anticipated expenses for an upcoming period of time. This is typically based on the projected demand for the goods and services offered.

An inflationary gap is a macroeconomic concept that describes the difference between the current level of real gross domestic product (GDP) and the anticipated GDP that would be experienced if an economy is at full employment. This is also referred to as the potential GDP. For the gap to be considered inflationary, the current real GDP must be the higher of the two metrics.

Companies use the price-to-book ratio (P/B ratio) to compare a firm’s market capitalization to its book value. It’s calculated by dividing the company’s stock price per share by its book value per share (BVPS). An asset’s book value is equal to its carrying value on the balance sheet, and companies calculate it netting the asset against its accumulated depreciation.

The return on average capital employed (ROACE) is a financial ratio that shows profitability versus the investments a company has made in itself. This metric differs from the related return on capital employed (ROCE) calculation, in that it takes the averages of the opening and closing capital for a period of time, as opposed to only the capital figure at the end of the period.