Month: September 2020

In technical analysis, a horizontal line is often drawn on a price chart to highlight areas of support or resistance.

Taxation is a term for when a taxing authority, usually a government, levies or imposes a tax. The term taxation applies to all types of involuntary levies, from income to capital gains to estate taxes. Though taxation can be a noun or verb, it is usually referred to as an act; the resulting revenue is usually called taxes.

Earnings before tax (EBT) measures a company’s financial performance. It is a calculation of a firm’s earnings before taxes are taken out. The calculation is revenue minus expenses, excluding taxes. EBT is a line item on a company’s income statement. It shows a company’s earnings with the cost of goods sold (COGS), interest, depreciation, general and administrative expenses, and other operating expenses deducted from gross sales.

Preference shares, more commonly referred to as preferred stock, are shares of a company’s stock with dividends that are paid out to shareholders before common stock dividends are issued. If the company enters bankruptcy, preferred stockholders are entitled to be paid from company assets before common stockholders. Most preference shares have a fixed dividend, while common stocks generally do not. Preferred stock shareholders also typically do not hold any voting rights, but common shareholders usually do. read more

Empire building is the act of attempting to increase the size and scope of an individual or organization’s power and influence. In the corporate world, this is seen at the intra-company level when managers or executives are more concerned with expanding their business units, their staffing levels and the dollar value of assets under their control than they are with developing and implementing ways to benefit shareholders.

Green chip stocks are shares of companies whose primary business is beneficial to the environment. Green chip stocks are likely to be concentrated in areas such as alternative energy, pollution control, carbon abatement and recycling. While the term is derived from “blue chip,” which refers to a stock that is an industry leader and consistently profitable, a typical green chip may have profitability challenges and a financial structure that is less stable than that of a blue chip. But despite these issues, green chip stocks may attract significant interest from investors who care about environmentally-friendly market leaders. read more

A stock-keeping unit (SKU) is a scannable bar code, most often seen printed on product labels in a retail store. The label allows vendors to automatically track the movement of inventory. The SKU is composed of an alphanumeric combination of eight-or-so characters. The characters are a code that the price, product details, and the manufacturer. SKUs may also be applied to intangible but billable products, such as units of repair time in an auto body shop or warranties.

A savings account is an interest-bearing deposit account held at a bank or other financial institution. Though these accounts typically pay a modest interest rate, their safety and reliability make them a great option for parking cash you want available for short-term needs.

Compound interest (or compounding interest) is interest calculated on the initial principal, which also includes all of the accumulated interest from previous periods on a deposit or loan. Thought to have originated in 17th century Italy, compound interest can be thought of as interest on interest, and will make a sum grow at a faster rate than simple interest, which is calculated only on the principal amount.

Pork-barrel politics is the legislator’s practice of slipping funding for a local project into a budget. The project may have nothing to do with the bill and may benefit only the legislator’s home district. Before a bill gets to a vote, pork-barreling has often greatly inflated its costs through the addition of various legislators’ pet projects.