Month: July 2020

A commingled fund is a portfolio consisting of assets from several accounts that are blended together. Commingled funds exist to reduce the costs of managing the constituent accounts separately.

Socially responsible investing (SRI), also known as social investment, is an investment that is considered socially responsible due to the nature of the business the company conducts. Common themes for socially responsible investments include socially conscious investing. Socially responsible investments can be made into individual companies with good social value, or through a socially conscious mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF).

External debt is the portion of a country’s debt that is borrowed from foreign lenders, including commercial banks, governments, or international financial institutions. These loans, including interest, must usually be paid in the currency in which the loan was made. To earn the needed currency, the borrowing country may sell and export goods to the lending country.

A backlog is a buildup of work that needs to be completed. The term backlog has a number of uses in accounting and finance. It may, for example, refer to a company’s sales orders waiting to be filled or a stack of financial paperwork, such as loan applications, that needs to be processed.

A decision tree is a diagram or chart that people use to determine a course of action or show a statistical probability. It forms the outline of the namesake woody plant, usually upright but sometimes lying on its side. Each branch of the decision tree represents a possible decision, outcome, or reaction. The farthest branches on the tree represent the end results.

A price level is the average of current prices across the entire spectrum of goods and services produced in the economy. In more general terms, price level refers to the price or cost of a good, service, or security in the economy.

A zero-gap condition exists when a financial institution’s interest rate-sensitive assets and liabilities are in perfect balance for a given maturity. The condition derives its name from the fact that the duration gap – or the difference in the sensitivity of an institution’s assets and liabilities to changes in interest rates – is exactly zero. Under this condition, a change in interest rates will not create any surplus or shortfall for the company, since the firm is immunized to its interest rate risk, for a given maturity. read more

Gann fans are a form of technical analysis based on the idea that the market is geometric and cyclical in nature. A Gann fan consists of a series of lines called Gann angles. These angles are superimposed over a price chart to show potential support and resistance levels. The resulting image is supposed to help technical analysts predict price changes.

A firm is a for-profit business organization—such as a corporation, limited liability company (LLC), or partnership—that provides professional services. Most firms have just one location. However, a business firm consists of one or more physical establishments, in which all fall under the same ownership and use the same employer identification number (EIN).

A duopoly is a situation where two companies together own all, or nearly all, of the market for a given product or service. A duopoly is the most basic form of oligopoly, a market dominated by a small number of companies. A duopoly can have the same impact on the market as a monopoly if the two players collude on prices or output. Collusion results in consumers paying higher prices than they would in a truly competitive market, and it is illegal under U.S. antitrust law.