Every term is defined twice: once the way a filing would put it, and once the way somebody would explain it to you across a table. The second one is usually the one that sticks.
Showing 104 terms
A broker-provided programming interface through which a script can place, modify and query orders directly.
It removes the typing, not the thinking. Check your broker's current terms and SEBI's prevailing rules before building anything, because both have been tightened over time.
Tier 1 plus Tier 2 capital divided by risk-weighted assets — the regulatory ceiling on how much a lender may carry against its own capital.
The plate on the lorry door. All the borrowers and all the funding in the world do not raise it, so a book growing faster than capital has a dated appointment with a share issue.
Recording a cost as a balance sheet asset rather than expensing it in the current period.
The single largest lever on reported profit. Spend the same cash, show a much bigger number.
Interest directly attributable to acquiring or constructing an asset that takes a substantial period to get ready, added to the cost of that asset instead of charged against profit.
The money still leaves the bank; it simply does not appear in the finance cost line. When the asset is ready capitalisation stops, the finance cost steps up with no new borrowing, and the amount already capitalised returns as depreciation rather than interest.
A fall in value that no amount of waiting can reverse — because the business has been impaired, because the holding cannot be sold at all, or because you sold at the bottom.
The only fall that genuinely costs you money. A price that dropped and recovered took nothing but your comfort; a price that dropped because the earnings power went, or because you were forced out, is gone for good.
Return on incremental invested capital — profit growth divided by the capital added to produce it.
Historic ROCE describes the past. This describes whether compounding is still available.
Weighted average cost of capital — the blend of the cost of debt and the cost of equity, weighted by how much of each the company uses.
The formal discount rate for a DCF, which most investors reasonably simplify into a required return by business type. Running the model at three plausible rates says more than deriving one precisely.
Dividing capital between strategies or opportunities.
Fix the allocations in advance and review annually — not after a bad month.
The total capital used by a business or segment to generate its returns.
Segment result divided by segment capital employed usually reveals which division the company really is.
Profit realised on selling an asset, taxed by holding period.
Equity held over a year is taxed more favourably than under. Every switch resets the clock.
The financial-year statement a broker produces listing every sale, split into short-term and long-term with the cost basis already computed.
Your primary source at filing time and usually a two-click download. Reconcile it against the AIS before you submit anything.
Tax on profit realised from selling an asset.
A reason to trim gradually and use the annual exemption — not a reason to hold indefinitely.
How much capital a business must deploy to generate, and to grow, a rupee of revenue.
Return on capital multiplied by retention is how fast a company can grow without diluting you. Capital-light businesses compound faster because growth does not consume the profit.
The shortfall of consideration below the cost of acquisition on the transfer of a capital asset, available for set-off under prescribed rules.
It arises on a transfer, not on a collapse in value. A short-term loss can meet either kind of gain; a long-term one can meet only long-term gains.
Prioritising not losing money over maximising returns.
Reducing exposure in a bubble means underperforming visibly for a long time. There is no version that avoids that.
The cancellation of part of a company’s paid-up share capital under a tribunal-sanctioned scheme, reducing the number of shares in issue.
Unlike a split it destroys rather than divides. A price series cannot show the difference, because a cancellation is a legal act and not a transaction.
Capital spending incurred on assets not yet ready for use.
Money spent that earns nothing yet, sitting in assets and dragging return ratios down.
The final phase of a decline, marked by heavy-volume selling and widespread exhaustion.
The mood is not caution — it is disgust, and people questioning whether equity works at all.
The value of your remaining lifetime earnings, counted as an asset alongside the portfolio.
At 25 it is by far the largest holding and it is largely uncorrelated with the market, which is the real reason a young person can carry a high equity share. By 55 the ratio has inverted.
Share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding — the market’s valuation of the whole company.
The real measure of how big a company is. Share price alone tells you nothing.
Operating profit divided by the capital invested in the business.
Recalculate it including capital work in progress. If most of the return disappears, the distortion was doing the work.
Return on capital excluding goodwill and intangibles.
A legitimate operating measure that flatters serial acquirers. A management team preferring it is telling you something.
Broadly a lender’s own money — paid-up equity and reserves, less prescribed deductions — which absorbs losses first and carries a separate minimum of its own beneath the overall capital requirement.
The tier that cannot be borrowed. Subordinated debt counts towards the second tier and buys growth capacity without diluting anybody, but it never gets you here.
Current assets minus current liabilities — the capital tied up in day-to-day operations.
Negative working capital is often excellent: customers pay you before you pay suppliers.
The movement in receivables, inventory and payables, adjusted against profit on the way to operating cash flow.
Where profit recorded but not collected disappears. Profit of ₹300 crore plus ₹120 crore of depreciation, less a ₹410 crore rise in receivables, leaves about ₹10 crore of operating cash.
A sanctioned borrowing ceiling for day-to-day operations — cash credit, overdraft or a demand loan — typically reviewable periodically and repayable on demand.
A permission to borrow rather than a promise of funding, and it never appears on a repayment calendar because it has no maturity. It is worth least on the day it is needed most.
A business model requiring little fixed capital to grow.
High returns on a small balance sheet, and a book value that tells you almost nothing about what the business is worth.
A perpetual, loss-absorbing bond issued by a bank as part of its regulatory capital, ranking just above equity.
Sold on the yield and owned for the yield; designed to be written down in a crisis so that depositors are not. If it pays materially more than a bank deposit, that gap is precisely what it is paying for.
Working capital held to fund quiet months in a business with irregular income.
Not the emergency fund. Merging them means discovering during a bad quarter that the emergency fund is gone.
Capital expenditure — cash spent acquiring or maintaining long-term assets.
Growth capex builds the future; maintenance capex just stops the present from falling apart.
Taking an unused capital loss into later years to set off against future gains — up to eight years for capital losses, and a shorter window for speculative (intraday) losses.
Conditional on filing the return by the due date. A late filing forfeits the right entirely, which is an expensive way to lose money to a calendar in a year you already lost some in the market.
Profits from one division funding the losses or capital needs of another.
The sweet shop paying for the stationery shop. Visible in the segment note, invisible in the headline numbers.
Spreading capital across holdings to reduce exposure to any single one.
Most of the benefit is captured by about fifteen genuinely uncorrelated positions.
The amount actually available under a working capital limit at a point in time, recomputed against stock and receivables after prescribed margins.
It is why a sanctioned limit contracts exactly when the business contracts. The ceiling stays where it was and the money that can be drawn against it falls with the inventory and the debtors.
Market capitalisation plus total debt minus cash — the cost of acquiring the whole business.
What you would actually pay, including the debt you inherit.
The ending of the rights in an asset — shares cancelled under an approved resolution plan or a sanctioned capital reduction, for instance — which falls within the definition of a transfer.
This is what finally lets a worthless holding become a claimable loss, and it happens on a date somebody else sets. Keep the order that records it.
The nominal value assigned to a share in the company’s capital accounts, commonly ₹10, ₹5, ₹2 or ₹1 in India.
A bookkeeping figure with no relation to what the share is worth. Dividend percentages are declared against it, which is how a "300% dividend" turns out to be ₹6.
Free cash flow divided by market capitalisation.
The cash return on buying the whole company. Much harder to manipulate than earnings.
Holding enough capital that work becomes optional.
Annual spending divided by a safe withdrawal rate. A number you can check, not a feeling.
Operating cash flow minus capital expenditure.
The money genuinely available to owners after keeping the lights on.
The lag between capital being spent and the resulting revenue arriving.
The stretch where reported numbers look worst and screens mark the company down.
Whether growth is funded at returns above the cost of capital and converted into cash.
Earnings rising every year while capital earns 8% against a 12% cost is value destruction with a nice chart.
Interest actually incurred on borrowings — expensed plus capitalised, with lease and non-borrowing elements removed — divided by average gross borrowings.
Four lines of arithmetic that turn a figure everybody quotes into a question about which note to open. Too low usually means something is being built; too high usually means the year-end debt figure is lower than the debt carried through the year.
The financial or reputational reward shaping what a source produces and emphasises.
Free content is paid for by someone. Working out who, and for what, explains most of what you are shown.
A single number summarising a basket of stocks, in India generally weighted by free-float market capitalisation.
A weighted average is not the typical stock. The NIFTY can close green on a day when most of its constituents fell, because a handful of heavyweights outvote everything else.
A maintained bookkeeping number by which the aggregate weighted capitalisation of an index’s constituents is divided, adjusted whenever the basket or the share counts change so that the level stays continuous.
It is why an index does not jump when a constituent is replaced. The continuity of the line is manufactured on purpose, which is worth knowing before treating a long index chart as one measurement.
The income tax return — ITR-1 for salary alone, ITR-2 once there are capital gains from shares or funds, ITR-3 where intraday or F&O activity makes it business income.
Delivery trades produce capital gains; intraday and F&O produce business income, taxed at slab and carrying audit thresholds. A few casual intraday trades genuinely change which form you file.
Under SEBI’s definition, the 100 largest listed Indian companies by market capitalisation.
Established, liquid, well covered. Falls least in a crash.
Using borrowed money to control a larger position than your own capital would allow.
It multiplies the outcome, not your accuracy — and adds an interest bill that arrives whether you are right or not.
Using a realised capital loss to reduce taxable capital gains, under rules governing which kind of loss may offset which kind of gain.
Short-term losses are the flexible kind, offsetting both short-term and long-term gains. A long-term loss offsets only long-term.
Long-term capital gains — profits on listed equity held over twelve months, taxed at 12.5% above a ₹1.25 lakh annual exemption.
Many investors deliberately harvest gains up to the exemption limit each year.
The capital spending needed just to keep the business running at its current level.
Separate it from growth capex. One is a cost of survival, the other an investment decision.
Weighting index constituents by their free-float market capitalisation.
An unlabelled momentum strategy — it automatically holds more of whatever has risen.
Companies ranked 101 to 250 by market capitalisation under SEBI’s classification.
Proven businesses still scaling. Meaningfully more volatile than largecaps.
An index of 50 large NSE-listed companies, weighted by free-float market capitalisation.
The default measure of "the Indian market". A weighted average, so the biggest names dominate it.
Cash generated by the core business, after working-capital movements.
Compare five years of this against five years of net profit. Divergence is the red flag.
The return given up by choosing one use of capital over the next best alternative.
Money stuck in a broken thesis is not merely flat — it is missing everything else it could have been doing.
The method used for a common-control combination: assets and liabilities carried across at existing book values, with the difference taken to a capital reserve.
No goodwill arises, which is the fingerprint. A capital reserve moving instead of goodwill appearing tells you a group reshuffle happened rather than a purchase.
Total capital at risk across all open positions if every stop is hit.
The number that actually binds, not the 1% you set per trade.
Market capitalisation divided by book value.
Only compares businesses whose value sits on the balance sheet, and only means something read alongside return on equity.
The period after a public issue during which promoters may not transfer their shares under the SEBI ICDR Regulations — broadly eighteen months on the minimum promoter contribution and six months on holdings above it, with longer periods where the issue funds capital expenditure.
A shareholder who is not deciding whether to sell but is prevented from selling until a date the offer document names. The absence of selling before that date says nothing whatever about intention.
A brokerage trading its own capital rather than client money, mostly intraday and in derivatives.
Plumbing, not a signal. These desks have no directional view worth copying, and the market would work far worse without them.
A tilt towards high return on capital, low debt and stable earnings.
Works well through most conditions and lags badly in sharp recoveries from a bottom.
Rebuilding capital and process after a significant drawdown.
Restart at a quarter size and judge yourself on twenty rule-following trades, not on getting back to the old peak.
The return on equity a regulator permits an asset to earn, built into the allowed revenue alongside approved capital cost, depreciation, operations and maintenance and interest.
The commission sets a return rather than a price, so the analysis moves to the allowance and the disallowances. Regulatory lag is where the margin actually goes: between an input cost rising and a tariff order recognising it, the company funds the gap itself.
The probability that losses reduce capital to a point from which recovery is impractical.
A positive-expectancy system can still destroy an account. Position size decides which.
The share of capital you accept losing on a single idea, fixed in advance and used to derive the quantity.
One percent is the standard for most professional discretionary traders, and it takes around seventy consecutive losses to halve an account. Decide the loss first; the number of shares is arithmetic afterwards.
Assets scaled by prescribed risk weights, so that a loan against a house and an unsecured personal loan of the same size do not consume the same capital.
What a lender lends against decides how much it can lend. A change to a weight is a decision taken elsewhere that can end a growth plan without a rupee moving anywhere.
Return on capital employed — operating profit as a percentage of debt plus equity.
The honest version of ROE. It cannot be manufactured with leverage.
A court- or tribunal-sanctioned corporate reorganisation — a merger, a demerger, a reduction of capital or a composite of these — approved by the required majorities of shareholders and creditors.
The route almost every Indian group restructuring takes. Where a listed company is involved the exchanges and the securities regulator see it first, and the filed documents contain the valuation reports, the swap ratio and the appointed date.
Borrowings presented as current liabilities — cash credit and overdraft, working capital demand loans, commercial paper, and the current maturities of long-term loans sitting alongside them.
Two very different things share this caption: money that was always meant to be rolled, and a long loan whose date has arrived. Read them as one number and you misread both.
Companies ranked 251 and below by market capitalisation.
Everything else, from future compounders to shells. Thin liquidity and brutal drawdowns.
An index built on a rule other than market capitalisation.
A factor tilt in index-fund clothing. The name is marketing; the method is a published, mechanical rule you can read.
Short-term capital gains — profits on listed equity held twelve months or less, taxed at 20%.
Two extra months of patience can be worth 20% of your gain.
A dated event after which a price series stops describing the same subject — a merger, a demerger of the principal division, a rebuilt capital structure or a change of trading segment.
The chart runs straight through it because the symbol did not change. Every statistic measured across the join is a blend of two companies.
Revenue divided by assets — how much sales each rupee of assets generates.
It collapses during a capex cycle because capital arrives before revenue does.
Buying more of a falling position to reduce the average purchase price.
It concentrates capital in whatever is falling fastest. Defensible only when the price fell and the business did not.
The obstacles that prevent a new competitor from entering an industry and competing away its returns.
High returns are what attract entrants, so only a barrier stops the process. A licence, a network, a trusted brand or enormous capital qualifies; everything else is a delay.
Net worth divided by the number of shares outstanding.
The anchor of a lender’s valuation, because its assets are financial and its return is earned on the capital base. For a business whose value sits in brands or people it says very little.
A facility the lender is contractually obliged to fund for a defined period, as opposed to a limit that is reviewable and repayable on demand.
The distinction decides whether an undrawn limit belongs in a liquidity schedule at all. Most ordinary working capital limits in India are not committed, and a company that has arranged one will say so.
The cumulative effect of brokerage, taxes, spreads and slippage on returns, rising with how often the account is turned over.
An account turned over twice a month pays roughly 6% of capital a year in friction before any question of skill. Choosing a rhythm is choosing a headwind.
A lender agreeing not to act on a breach on this occasion, without giving up the right it acquired.
It was not granted free — look for what it cost, in a wider spread, security created, a dividend not declared or capital expenditure deferred. And a waiver reached after the reporting date does not move a reclassified loan back to non-current.
Tax deferred to later years, most often because tax depreciation runs ahead of book depreciation.
Ordinary in capital-intensive businesses. It reverses as the asset ages and book depreciation catches up.
The profit and loss account line containing interest on borrowings together with interest on lease liabilities, unwinding of discount on provisions and amortisation of transaction costs.
A container rather than a single item, and it excludes interest capitalised into an asset under construction. Dividing it by borrowings without reading its note gives a rate the company was never offered.
Government borrowing as a share of GDP.
A wider deficit means more government borrowing, which pushes up bond yields and competes with private borrowers for the same money. It reaches share prices through the cost of capital.
The maximum output a company’s plants are rated to produce over a period, disclosed in units rather than rupees.
The ceiling on volume growth without fresh capital expenditure. Set beside actual production it gives capacity utilisation, and beside industry-wide additions it tells you what supply is coming.
Positions opened and closed within the same trading session.
Taxed as business income at your slab rate, not as capital gains.
The proportion of a company’s shares an index treats as publicly available, used to scale its contribution to a free-float weighted index.
In a market with large promoter holdings this can be a small fraction, so a company’s index weight is often far below what its market capitalisation suggests. The company is big; the part the index counts is not.
Infrastructure Investment Trust — a listed trust owning operating infrastructure such as roads, transmission lines or pipelines, distributing the income they produce.
Its headline yield is not comparable to a fixed deposit. A concession has a finite life, so part of that generous distribution is your own capital coming back.
Land held by a developer for future projects.
Not automatically an asset. Land in the wrong location is dead capital carried at cost.
Yield on assets minus cost of funds — two rates, subtracted.
The measure a capital raise cannot flatter. Net interest margin rises when more of the book is funded by shareholders’ money; the spread, being a difference of two rates, cannot move for that reason.
Treating money differently depending on which notional pot it belongs to.
A bias, and occasionally a useful one — ring-fencing retirement capital from trading capital works.
Amounts payable to suppliers registered as micro or small enterprises, which the MSMED Act, 2006 requires to be paid within the agreed period and in any case within 45 days, and which companies must disclose separately.
An overdue MSME balance is a tax item as well as a working capital one: delayed payment carries statutory interest, and the income tax law defers the deduction to the year of actual payment where the time limit is breached. If it is biting, it shows up by name in the tax reconciliation note.
Net interest margin — net interest income divided by average interest-earning assets.
Never read it without GNPA: a rising margin earned by lending to riskier borrowers is not skill. It is also not the same number as the lending spread, because the margin counts the assets funded by the lender’s own capital, which cost nothing.
Qualified Institutional Placement — a SEBI-recognised route by which a listed company issues fresh shares to institutional buyers without a full public offer.
Quick capital for the company and dilution for you. What decides whether it was acceptable is what the money is for: funding expansion is a different matter from repaying debt created by past mistakes.
Rising prices changing the fundamentals that justified the rise.
Cheap capital funds growth, which justifies higher prices, which makes capital cheaper. It runs backwards too.
Financial statements in an offer document recast onto a single consistent accounting basis across the periods presented, and reported on by the auditors.
Built for comparability rather than for the original year’s reporting. It lets you set a rival’s margins and working capital beside a listed company on a like basis.
Revenue from stores, branches or outlets open for a full comparable period, excluding the effect of new openings and closures.
Separates a network that is expanding from one that is performing. Total growth of 21% alongside same-store growth of 2% means the growth was bought with capital expenditure.
The combining of one mutual fund scheme into another, after which unitholders hold units of the surviving scheme.
A change in fundamental attributes, so it arrives as a written notice with a no-load exit window. The waiver covers the load, not the capital gains tax, which is usually the larger number.
Systematic Withdrawal Plan — a fixed amount redeemed from a fund at regular intervals.
More tax-efficient than dividends: only the gain portion is taxed, and at capital gains rates.
Redeeming a fixed amount from a fund at regular intervals to create an income.
The alternative to an annuity: keeps the capital, keeps growth, keeps flexibility — and exposes you to the order in which returns arrive.
Exiting a position that has not moved within a set number of bars.
The rule almost nobody uses. It converts dead capital from an invisible cost into a decision.
A broken business bought on the expectation that it will be repaired.
A success might triple; a failure approaches zero slowly while absorbing more capital each time you average down. Credible ones show operating cash flow improving before profit does.
The Indian tax law's term for crypto and similar assets, taxed at a flat 30% with 1% TDS and no loss offset.
Being taxed is not the same as being regulated. The state will tax the gains; it will not help recover the capital.