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 108 terms
An order by a tax officer determining the income or liability of an assessee for a period, and raising a demand where the officer disagrees with the return.
The first rung of a long ladder. First-authority demands are frequently reduced on appeal, which is why large ones sit in contingent liabilities rather than as provisions.
The average of the last N closing prices, plotted as a line.
Smoothing. Smoother always means slower — that trade-off has no escape.
A demat account category for small holdings, carrying nil or reduced annual maintenance charges up to prescribed value thresholds.
Available only to someone holding a single demat account as sole or first holder, so it is not a way to make a spare second account cheap. The thresholds have been revised more than once, so check the current ones.
The first step in enforcing a security interest — a notice calling on the borrower to discharge the full liability within sixty days, after which the lender may take possession.
It demands the entire recalled debt, not the instalments that were missed. Clearing the arrear is worth doing and does not by itself answer the notice.
A dematerialised account that holds your securities electronically at a depository.
Your share locker. The broker is only the key, not the locker.
Converting physical share certificates into electronic holdings recorded by a depository.
It ended the era when ownership was a document in a cupboard that could be forged, torn, lost or rejected weeks after the trade.
The organiser of a chit, who runs the monthly auction, collects instalments, pays out the prize and takes a commission from the discount.
In a registered chit the foreman lodges a security deposit and the commission is capped. In an informal committee the same role carries the same money and none of the safeguards.
A move on unusually low volume, suggesting no real participation behind it.
The move had no fuel. Common just before a failed breakout.
Sales to customers who already own the product and are replacing a worn-out or obsolete unit, rather than buying for the first time.
Steadier and far slower than first-time demand. In a fully penetrated category it is most of what is left, and its size is set by the installed base and how long the product lasts.
Risk from the whole market that diversification cannot remove.
Beta measures your exposure to it. A high-beta portfolio carries it without borrowing.
Trading from written, mechanical rules that produce the same decision every time the same conditions occur.
A system scanning 200 stocks does not get tired at stock 140. What it cannot do is supply an edge that the rules did not already have.
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.
The lock-in on shares allotted to anchor investors in a public issue, released in two tranches — 50% at 30 days from allotment and the remainder at 90 days.
Split in two deliberately, so the entire anchor book could not become saleable on a single day. Both dates are arithmetic from the allotment date, which makes this the least private information in the market.
Closing a demat account and moving its entire contents to another account of the same holder in one instruction.
Normally free, because the account is being shut. The clean route when you are leaving a broker entirely.
The mental demand a decision places on someone under pressure and time constraint, under which trained experts reliably skip steps.
The reason checklists exist. What gets missed is never the thing you did not know — it is the thing you know perfectly well and are too excited to check.
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 long boom-and-bust pattern in commodity prices driven by capacity lagging demand.
High prices invite new supply, which arrives late and crushes prices. Then nobody invests, and it repeats.
A single statement covering mutual fund and demat holdings across providers.
The most useful document most Indian investors have never opened. It finds the folios you forgot.
Restating historical per-share figures for bonus issues, splits, rights issues and similar events so that a per-share series remains continuous.
Bonuses and splits divide by a simple factor. A rights issue priced below the market contains an element of bonus, so it needs a computed factor rather than a divisor.
The number of days an instalment or amount has remained unpaid, counted from the due date the lender fixed and reported month by month to the credit information companies.
The count runs from the due date, not from the day anybody telephoned you, and it does not reset because later instalments are being paid.
A business whose demand holds up regardless of the economy.
FMCG, pharma, utilities. Steadier earnings, higher multiples, lags in recoveries.
The number of shares that actually move between demat accounts at settlement, after same-day client-level netting.
The absolute figure behind delivery percentage. Read it against its own recent average, because the percentage moves whenever turnover moves.
A trade where shares are actually transferred into your demat account and held.
Actually owning the shares, rather than betting on a same-day move.
Share of the day’s traded volume that was actually delivered into demat accounts.
Separates real buying from intraday churn. An 8% move on 12% delivery means almost nobody wanted to own it.
SMS and email notifications sent by NSDL or CDSL on every demat debit.
An independent channel that works even if the broker app is compromised. Turn them on.
The systematic allocation of an asset’s cost across its estimated useful life.
The estimate is management’s. Extend asset lives and profit rises, with no change to cash.
The bank account details held for you — by your depository participant for demat holdings, or on the folio at the registrar — into which dividends and redemptions are credited.
It does not follow you when you change banks, and it lives in a different place for every folio. A dividend that fails to arrive is usually this record rather than the company.
A flat fee charged by the depository participant each time shares are debited from a demat account.
Charged per stock per day, not per share. It punishes small and fragmented positions hardest.
The idea that self-control draws on a limited resource, so discipline weakens across a long sequence of demanding decisions.
The experimental evidence is contested, but the practical implication stands without it: a rule decided in advance needs no willpower at the moment willpower is scarcest.
How much demand changes when price changes.
Low elasticity means you can raise prices and keep the customer. That is pricing power in one word.
A moving average that weights the newest bar by 2 ÷ (N + 1) and everything before it by the remainder, so older data fades rather than being dropped.
It never fully forgets anything, which is why one bar into a new session it is still nine-tenths yesterday. A simple average drops the oldest bar outright instead — a cliff rather than a fade.
Systematically buying characteristics — momentum, value, quality — rather than picking stocks.
Mechanical by design. Overriding the rule is where the edge disappears.
The time remaining before a particular goal needs the money.
Money needed within five years does not belong in equity, and money not needed for fifteen probably should be — applied goal by goal rather than by any formula based on your age.
A depository statement listing every security in a demat account.
Start an annual review from the statements, not from memory — memory omits exactly what is worth finding.
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.
The growth rate a current market price mathematically assumes.
Turns “is this worth ₹1,840?” into “can it grow 19% for a decade?” — a question you can research.
An exchange-traded fund listed on an Indian exchange that tracks an overseas index, bought through an ordinary demat account.
The simplest of the three routes abroad. Liquidity can be thin, and the price sometimes trades at a noticeable premium to what it holds.
What would remain for shareholders if the assets were sold off and every liability settled — assets at realisable prices, not book values.
A floor rather than a valuation. Useful where the assets could actually be sold; close to meaningless for a business whose value walks out of the building each evening.
Moving Average Convergence Divergence — the gap between a fast and a slow EMA, plus a signal line and histogram.
Two averages arguing. The histogram turns first and is the most useful part.
A demand for additional funds when collateral behind a leveraged position falls below the required level.
Pay up or the broker sells for you — usually at the worst price, in the falling market that caused the call.
The arrangement, in force since September 2020, under which shares offered as collateral stay in the investor’s own demat account and are pledged in favour of the broker rather than transferred to it.
Brought in after brokers were found misusing client securities, so the protection is real. The cost is that releasing the pledge before a sale is now your operational problem — an unreleased pledge is a short delivery even though the shares are visibly in your account.
Total borrowings minus cash and cash equivalents — the borrowing that would remain if the company used its spare cash to repay lenders.
The bridge between the price of the shares and the price of the business. A company with more cash than debt has negative net debt.
The bottom line of the income statement — what remains for shareholders after all costs, interest, tax and exceptional items.
Check what is inside it before applying any multiple. A one-off gain from selling a factory spends once and inflates the figure for exactly one year.
A loan account on which an amount has remained overdue beyond the prescribed period — ninety days for most loans — requiring the lender to make a provision against it out of its own profits.
The line past which a lender's posture changes from collection to enforcement. It is also the gate to the statutory power to sell a mortgaged asset.
A movement of securities between demat accounts instructed directly at the depository, without any exchange trade.
Charged per holding, and the reason recorded on the instruction matters — a move between your own accounts is a different thing from a gift or a private sale.
A party who quietly accumulates a position in an illiquid stock and then manufactures the demand needed to distribute it.
The scheme needs thin turnover, because a large holding cannot be sold into a liquid stock without moving the price. The promotion exists to create the buyers.
Systematically overestimating the reliability of your own judgement.
Bull markets manufacture it, and position sizes grow to match the feeling rather than the evidence.
Selling part of a position while retaining the remainder.
Reduces volatility and expectancy together. Worth it only if it lets you hold the rest calmly.
A written authority for one person to act on another’s behalf — in broking, the version that lets a broker operate your demat account.
In broking, prefer the narrower DDPI, which permits debits only for settlement, over a broad POA. In family finance, know the limit: Indian agency law treats an agent’s authority as ending if the person who granted it becomes of unsound mind, so an ordinary POA is generally understood not to survive the loss of mental capacity — the very case families buy one for.
The chit member who takes the pot in a given month, after which they continue paying every remaining instalment but cannot bid again.
Taking the prize early is borrowing. The discount accepted is the interest, and it is never written down as a rate.
Accumulating an illiquid stock, promoting it to create buyers, then selling into that demand.
It needs thin liquidity to work. A loud tip on a stock with tiny turnover means you are the exit.
A third party engaged by a lender to pursue collection, whose conduct remains the responsibility of the lender that engaged it.
Arguing with the agent achieves nothing. The complaint lies against the regulated lender, which cannot answer it by disclaiming the agency it appointed.
The company’s statutory list of who owns its shares, maintained through its registrar; dematerialised shares appear in it in the depository’s name.
The entry is the ownership and the certificate is only evidence of it. Losing the paper does not lose the shares, and holding the paper does not let you sell them.
The firm a company appoints to maintain its register of members and to process folio-level requests — dividends, transmission, dematerialisation and corporate action entitlements.
For anything held in physical form this is your counterparty, not your broker. A handful of these firms maintain the registers of most listed Indian companies.
A claim on what remains after all other obligations are met.
That is what a share is. In a healthy company it is the point; in a failing one it is why you get nothing.
A tradeable right to subscribe to a rights issue, credited to your demat account.
It has real value. Letting it lapse dilutes you and pays you nothing.
The criminal proceeding available where a cheque is dishonoured for want of funds, after a written demand and a fifteen-day period in which the drawer may pay.
Pay inside the fifteen days and no offence is made out. Refusing the registered letter does not stop the clock — it removes the fifteen days.
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.
A nine-period EMA of the MACD line, used as the trigger for MACD crossovers.
The classic MACD signal, and a late one. It whipsaws badly in ranging markets, which is precisely why the zero-line filter exists.
Systematic Investment Plan — a fixed amount invested automatically at fixed intervals.
Its real benefit is behavioural: the money goes in before you can talk yourself out of it.
Systematic Transfer Plan — moving a fixed amount from one fund to another at intervals.
The sensible way to deploy a lumpsum into equity instead of putting it all in on one day.
A permanent fall in demand or economics that no recovery in the cycle will reverse.
The river moved, rather than the rain failing. Waiting is the most expensive possible response.
The risk that demand moves to a different product or technology that meets the same need.
It shows up in who wins the incremental sale, not in total market share. Share can look stable for years while the whole increment goes elsewhere.
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.
A permanent, structural fall in demand for a product or service, as distinct from a cyclical downturn that reverses.
The question is never whether the decline is real but how fast it is and whether it is accelerating, because the rate sits in the denominator of the valuation.
Accepting deposits outside every regulated category, banned outright by a 2019 Act that lists the deposit schemes which remain lawful.
The Act lets authorities attach assets and repay depositors through designated courts. Worth knowing it exists, and worth knowing that recovery is a fraction and takes years.
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.
The level at which the MACD line reads zero — the point where the 12-period EMA crosses the 26-period EMA.
Take bullish crossovers only above it and bearish ones only below. That single filter removes a large share of losing signals for the cost of a handful of good ones.
An option giving its buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy the underlying at a set price by expiry.
The buyer's maximum loss is the premium, which is the whole appeal. The seller collects that premium and carries the entire remaining risk — the half most beginners never look at.
A revision to a judgement about an uncertain amount — a useful life, a residual value, a provision rate — applied prospectively from the date of the change.
Nobody restates anything, so the whole effect lands in one year’s growth rate while both years remain individually correct. The revision itself moves no cash.
The liquidity-risk disclosure bucketing financial liabilities by when they fall contractually due, stated on undiscounted cash flows including future interest.
The one place a company sets out, in its own words, what the next twelve months demand in cash. Because it is undiscounted it will not tie to the balance sheet, and that is the design rather than an error.
Illegal off-market trading where an operator never routes orders to the exchange.
No contract note, no demat entry, no legal recourse if they refuse to pay.
Whether a price series is accurate and consistently adjusted.
A common and silent reason backtests look remarkable and cannot be reproduced live.
Repaying debts in order of interest rate, highest first.
Mathematically the cheapest way out of debt. Clear the 42% card before the 9% home loan, every time.
A condition in a loan agreement that the borrower must maintain, such as a maximum leverage ratio.
Breach one and the lender can demand repayment early. Rating reports state the thresholds explicitly.
The reduction from the chit value that a subscriber accepts in order to take the pot in the current month.
It is the price of moving to the front of the queue, and after the foreman takes commission it is shared among everyone still waiting — which is where their return comes from.
Electronic voting on company resolutions through NSDL or CDSL, open for a window before the meeting.
Takes a few minutes and requires no attendance. The notice arrives by email at whatever address your depository has.
A management call following results, including an unscripted analyst question session.
Skip the prepared remarks. The Q&A is where management answers what they did not choose.
Employees’ Provident Fund — a mandatory retirement savings scheme for salaried employees.
The investment most Indians own before they open a demat account. Count it as the debt part of your allocation.
Exchange-Traded Fund — an index fund that trades on the exchange like a share.
Needs a demat account and buys at a live price rather than end-of-day NAV.
A US dollar-settled futures contract on the Nifty 50, traded on NSE International Exchange at GIFT City, and formerly listed in Singapore as SGX Nifty.
The number every 8:30 am bulletin opens with. Compare it against its own level at 3:30 pm yesterday rather than against the Nifty cash close, and the basis cancels out — what remains is the genuine overnight change. It says nothing about any individual stock.
The proportion 0.618, which consecutive Fibonacci ratios converge on, and the source of the 61.8% retracement level.
No mathematical constant governs a share price. The level works because a great many traders and algorithms place orders there — a genuine reason, simply not a mystical one.
Aiming to bound the damage from behaviour you cannot stop, rather than aiming at abstinence you are unlikely to obtain.
With a relative who will not stop trading, the achievable objectives are that the borrowing stops growing, the household essentials sit out of reach, and you remain the person they ring on the bad day.
A fall in the number of participants in an industry as capacity is retired, acquired or resolved through insolvency, leaving the survivors facing less competition.
The tell that it is actually working is that realisations stop falling before volumes recover — price discipline needs only a decision, demand needs a cycle.
The twelve-character code, beginning with the country code IN, that identifies a security in the depository system.
What your demat account actually holds is a quantity against an ISIN. The symbol is a label for screens; this is what settlement moves.
A formula for the position size that maximises long-run growth given a known edge.
Mathematically correct and far too aggressive in practice, because you never know your edge that precisely.
The price of borrowing stock through SLB, quoted in rupees per share for the tenure and published daily by the exchange.
Divide it by the share price to get the cost as a percentage of the position, then weigh that against the move you expect. India publishes no short interest report, so a fee that has moved from a few paise to several rupees is the clearest public evidence that borrowing demand has risen.
The period within which a claim must be brought — three years for an ordinary money claim, and considerably longer for enforcement against mortgaged property.
It bars the remedy, not the debt: the demand and the credit record both survive it. An acknowledgement in writing, or on the statute's terms a part payment, can start it running again — but only where it is made before the period has already expired.
A deadline created by whoever is selling, rather than by any mechanism of the market — a closing launch price, an offer valid until month-end, a rate approved only today.
The test is one sentence: what specifically is worse for me if I decide in six weeks? If the answer is only a different price on a product that remains available, there is no deadline.
The share of the potential buyers in a market who already own the product.
Growth while penetration rises is a market being populated. Once it is high, demand tends towards the installed base divided by the product’s life, plus new households and upgrades.
A tariff determined by an electricity regulatory commission for a control period spanning several years rather than annually.
It puts the next revision on a published calendar, with draft regulations and objections available months before the order. Between control periods the risk is not demand — it is that a cost is disallowed or the permitted return is trimmed.
The degree to which a company’s profit changes for a given change in revenue, set by its ratio of fixed to variable costs.
The cinema versus the caterer. High fixed costs mean a 10% sales rise can be a 40% profit rise — and a 10% fall can be a warning.
An IPO receiving applications for more shares than are on offer, reported as a multiple of the issue size.
Read it by category, never by the headline. QIB demand is the informative number, and a large multiple on a small issue is easy to generate while saying almost nothing about the business.
Buying one stock and shorting a related one, betting only that the gap between them narrows rather than on either's direction.
A spread widens either because the market is temporarily wrong or because something genuinely changed, and the two look identical on a chart. In India the short leg usually forces the trade into futures, which is why it remains largely institutional.
The part of India's insolvency code dealing with individuals, brought into force at the time of writing only for a narrow class — personal guarantors to corporate debtors — and not for ordinary borrowers.
No modern personal-bankruptcy discharge is available to an ordinary Indian borrower. Older insolvency legislation remains unrepealed but is slow and very rarely used. A live area of policy, and one to check rather than assume.
The value of units a developer has sold in a period.
The genuine measure of demand for a developer, unlike the profit line.
Imagining an outcome as certain in order to generate more specific explanations for it.
“What could go wrong?” invites reassurance. “It failed — explain it” demands a mechanism.
Resubmitting or modifying an existing KYC record through an intermediary, to correct a deficiency or refresh the details held.
Done once with any one broker, AMC or registrar, and it propagates to the rest. The step most often left half finished is the mobile and email OTP, which is what the whole framework hangs on.
A predictable pattern of stronger and weaker periods within a year.
Q4 is frequently the strongest Indian quarter, so a strong March is normal rather than remarkable.
A deduction of up to ₹50,000 on deposit interest for senior citizens, under the old tax regime.
Five times the ₹10,000 everyone else gets under 80TTA — and one of the remaining reasons a retired person may still prefer the old regime.
One customer, plant, product or regulator whose loss would break the business.
Ask what remains if the largest single dependency disappeared. Size accordingly.
A manipulative practice of placing a large visible order with no intention of it being filled, in order to influence others, then cancelling it as price approaches.
The reason visible depth is not evidence of demand. Resting orders are intentions rather than commitments, and they can vanish in microseconds.
The price at which an option holder may buy or sell the underlying, fixed when the contract is listed.
A given strike in a given expiry is a distinct instrument with a start date and an end date. The same strike number next month is a different contract with different time remaining and different liquidity.
An exchange halting trading in a security — for compliance failures, pending a scheme, or awaiting clarification — with no fixed guarantee that it will be revoked.
The market ends and the ownership does not. The shares stay in your demat account and there is no way to sell them until it is lifted.
Amounts owed to suppliers for goods and services received in the ordinary course of business.
Funding with no interest line, no covenant and no credit rating, and none of it appears in borrowings, net debt to EBITDA or debt-to-equity. It is repayable on demand in the only sense that matters: the supplier can stop supplying.
Changing the order in which joint holders’ names are recorded against a holding, without changing who the holders are.
One of the few things still done on a physical folio, and a routine reason a dematerialisation request is rejected when the demat account lists the same two names the other way round.
An oscillator showing where the close sits within the recent trading range, scaled inversely.
Mathematically almost identical to Stochastic %K. If you already have one on the chart, the other adds nothing.
A loan the lender has removed from its own books as unrecoverable — an accounting decision, not a release of the borrower.
The debt survives it, the lender may still pursue it, and such portfolios are routinely sold on. Which is why a demand arrives years later from a firm you have never dealt with.