Software Testing Social Network

 Appreciation When an asset such as stock, real estate, or personal property increases in value without any improvements or modification having been made to it, that’s called appreciation.

Some personal assets, such as fine art or antiques, may appreciate over time, while others — such as electronic equipment — usually lose value, or depreciate.

Certain investments also have the potential to appreciate. A number of factors can cause an asset to appreciate, among them inflation, uniqueness, or increased demand.

 Approved charge With traditional fee-for-service health insurance, the insurance company sets an approved or allowable amount for each medical procedure or office visit.

If your bill exceeds the approved charge, the difference between the approved charge and the claim that’s submitted to the insurance company for reimbursement is considered an excess charge. You are responsible for that amount in addition to a percentage of the approved charge.

Medicare establishes approved charges for medical procedures and office visits. If you participate in Original Medicare, there’s a legal limit on what a doctor, laboratory, or other medical provider can charge in excess of the approved amount.

 Arbitrage Arbitrage is the technique of simultaneously buying at a lower price in one market and selling at a higher price in another market to make a profit on the spread between the prices.

Although the price difference may be very small, arbitrageurs, or arbs, typically trade regularly and in huge volume, so they can make sizable profits.

But the strategy, which depends on split-second timing, can also backfire if interest rates, prices, currency exchange rates, or other factors move in ways the arbitrageurs don’t anticipate.

 Arbitration Arbitration is a way to resolve conflicts between parties or individuals, and may be considered a middle ground between the more cooperative, informal nature of mediation and the more expensive, involved, and lengthy process of litigation.

Usually, when you open a brokerage account, you sign an agreement to use arbitration to resolve possible conflicts with the firm and waive the right to sue for damages in court.

Arbitration is binding, which means you can’t appeal the decision or try for a different result by going to court. Most investment-related arbitration claims are handled by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the main self-regulatory body that supervises brokers.

In arbitration, a trained impartial arbitrator or panel of arbitrators reviews the evidence, decides on the outcome, and sets any award. While arbitration is usually less expensive than litigation, arbitration and attorney fees make it a more expensive option than mediation.

 Arithmetic index An arithmetic index gives equal weight to the percentage price change of each stock that’s included in the index.

In computing the index, the percentage changes of all the stocks are added, and the total is divided by the number of stocks. The percentage price changes of large companies aren’t counted more heavily, as they are in a market-capitalization weighted index.

An arithmetic index is a more accurate measure of total stock market performance than an index that stresses relatively few high-priced or large-company stocks. However, some analysts point out that it may also produce higher total return figures than other indexing methods.

The best known arithmetic index in the United States is the one computed by Value Line, Inc., which tracks the approximately 1,700 stocks. Standard & Poor’s also calculates an arithmetic version of the S&P 500 index.

 Ask The ask price (a shortening of asked price) is the price at which a market maker or broker offers to sell a security or commodity.

The price another market maker or broker is willing to pay for that security is called the bid price, and the difference between the two prices is called the spread.

Bid and ask prices are typically reported to the media for commodities and over-the-counter (OTC) transactions. In contrast, last, or closing, prices are reported for exchange-traded and national market securities.

With open-end mutual funds, the ask price is the net asset value (NAV), or the price you get if you sell, plus the sales charge, if one applies.

 Asset Assets are everything you own that has any monetary value, plus any money you are owed.

They include money in bank accounts, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, equity in real estate, the value of your life insurance policy, and any personal property that people would pay to own.

When you figure your net worth, you subtract the amount you owe, or your liabilities, from your assets. Similarly, a company’s assets include the value of its physical plant, its inventory, and less tangible elements, such as its reputation.

 Asset allocation Asset allocation is a strategy, advocated by modern portfolio theory, for reducing risk in your investment portfolio in order to maximize return.

Specifically, asset allocation means dividing your assets among different broad categories of investments, called asset classes. Stock, bonds, and cash are examples of asset classes, as are real estate and derivatives such as options and futures contracts.

Most financial services firms suggest particular asset allocations for specific groups of clients and fine-tune those allocations for individual investors.

The asset allocation model — specifically the percentages of your investment principal allocated to each investment category you’re using — that’s appropriate for you at any given time depends on many factors, such as the goals you’re investing to achieve, how much time you have to invest, your tolerance for risk, the direction of interest rates, and the market outlook.

Ideally, you adjust or rebalance your portfolio from time to time to bring the allocation back in line with the model you’ve selected. Or, you might realign your model as your financial goals, your time frame, or the market situation changes.

 Asset class Different categories of investments are described as asset classes. Stock, bonds, and cash — including cash equivalents — are major asset classes. So are real estate, derivative investments, such as options and futures contracts, and precious metals.

When you allocate the assets in your investment portfolio, you decide what proportion of its total value will be invested in each of the different asset classes you’re including.

 Asset management account (AMA) All-in-one asset management accounts provide the financial advantages of an investment account combined with the convenience of an interest-bearing checking account.

AMAs generally offer check-writing and ATM privileges, credit cards, direct deposit, and automatic transfer between accounts, as well as access to reduced-rate loans and other perks. There are usually annual fees and minimum account requirements.

AMAs are offered by many brokerage firms and mutual fund companies, and are also known as central asset accounts (CAAs) or cash management accounts (CMAs).

 Asset-backed bond Asset-backed bonds, also known as asset-backed securities, are secured by loans or by money owed to a company for merchandise or services purchased on credit.

For example, an asset-backed bond is created when a securities firm bundles debt, such as credit card or car loans, and sells investors the right to receive the payments made on those loans.

 Assignment Assignment occurs when someone who has written, or sold, a listed option receives a notice that the option has been exercised and he or she must fulfill the terms of the contract by buying the underlying instrument if the option was a put or selling the underlying instrument if the option was a call.

Making the assignment is a two-step process. When an option listed on a US exchange is exercised, the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) notifies a member broker-dealer firm with clients who have sold options in that series that one of those clients must meet the obligation to buy or sell. The firm, in turn, selects an individual client following its particular methodology, such as chronological order of sale or random choice.

As the writer of an in-the-money option, you should expect assignment, unless you close out your position with an offsetting contract. However, there is no guarantee that you will realize a profit or avoid a loss.

Assignment also means transferring property you own, such as stock and real estate, to someone else by using the document that’s appropriate to the type of property. Similarly, property of a financially troubled entity can be assigned, or transferred, to a creditor and sold to offset losses.

 At-the-money At-the-money is another way of saying at the current price. Options whose exercise price is the same or almost the same as the current market price of the underlying stock or futures contract are considered at-the-money.

 Auction market Auction market trading, sometimes known as open outcry, is the way the major exchanges, such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), have traditionally handled buying and selling.

Brokers acting for buyers compete against each other on the exchange floor, as brokers acting for sellers do, to get the best price. While the trading can be quite intense, it is orderly because the participants adhere to exchange rules.

 Audit An audit is a professional, independent examination of a company’s financial statements and accounting documents following generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).

An IRS audit, in contrast, is an examination of a taxpayer’s return, usually to question the accuracy or acceptability of the information the return reports.

 Authorized participant An authorized participant is an institutional investor who takes part in the creation of exchange traded fund (ETF) shares.

The ETF sponsor selects authorized participants to assemble creation units, which are baskets of securities in the index that underlies the ETF. Each creation unit corresponds to a fixed number of shares in the ETF.

The authorized participant transfers the creation unit to the ETF sponsor in exchange for shares in the ETF, which can then be sold to other investors. Authorized participants may also redeem ETF shares by trading them back to the ETF sponsor for corresponding baskets of securities.

Since ETFs exchange shares only for corresponding baskets of securities and don’t buy back shares investors wish to sell, they don’t have to keep cash on hand or liquidate securities to meet redemption demands. As a result, ETFs are able to track the underlying index more closely and achieve tax efficiency.

 Automatic enrollment Your employer has the right to sign you up for your company’s 401(k) plan, in what’s known as an automatic enrollment. If you don’t want to participate, you must refuse, in writing, to be part of the plan.

In an automatic enrollment, the company determines the percentage of earnings you contribute and how your contribution is invested, choosing among a number of potential alternatives. You have the right to change either or both of those choices if you stay in the plan.

 Automatic exercise If you hold a call option, automatic exercise may occur if the contract is in-the-money by a certain amount.

In this case, an in-the-money contract is one where the strike price — the price at which you would purchase the underlying instrument if the contract were exercised — is lower than the market price of that instrument. Generally speaking, exercising your option in this situation would produce a profit on the transaction.

Certain options may be subject to automatic exercise authorized by the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) unless you instruct them otherwise. Your brokerage firm may also have an automatic exercise policy.

 Average A stock market average is a mathematical way of reporting the composite change in prices of the stocks that the average includes.

Each average is designed to reflect the general movement of the broad market or a certain segment of the market and often serves as a benchmark for the performance of individual stocks in its sphere.

A true average adds the prices of the stocks it covers and divides that amount by the number of stocks.

However, many averages are weighted, which usually means they count stocks with the largest market capitalizations more heavily than they do others. Weighting reflects the impact that the stocks of the biggest companies have on the markets and on the economy in general.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), which tracks the performance of 30 large-company stocks, is the most widely followed market average in the United States.

 Average annual yield Average annual yield is the average yearly income on an investment, expressed as a percentage.

You can calculate the average annual yield by adding all the income you received on an investment and dividing that amount by the number of years the money was invested. So if you receive $60 interest on a $1,000 bond each year for ten years, the average annual yield is 6% ($60 ÷ $1,000 = 0.06 or 6%).

 Average daily balance The average daily balance method is one of the ways that the finance charge on your credit card may be calculated.

The credit card company issuer divides the balance you owe each day by the number of days in your billing cycle and multiplies the result by the interest rate to find the finance charge for each day in the period.

If this is the method your creditor uses, the larger the payment you make and the earlier in the cycle you make it, the smaller your finance charge will be.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed