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 22 terms
Return on assets — net profit as a percentage of total assets.
Unlike ROE it cannot be lifted by swapping equity for debt, because the borrowed money still sits in the asset base. Most informative for banks and lenders, where the assets are the business.
Holding most of a portfolio in broad index funds with a smaller actively chosen portion.
Lets you find out whether you can pick stocks without your outcome depending on it.
The stated approach determining how much profit is returned to shareholders.
In a PSU it may follow the promoter’s fiscal calendar rather than the business’s reinvestment needs.
An approach that starts from the expectations embedded in a price rather than from a valuation forecast.
Turns "is this a good company?" into "can this company grow 25% a year for ten years?" — a far more answerable question.
A schedule, set in advance, for reducing the equity share of a portfolio as a goal date approaches.
It lowers the expected amount and narrows the range of amounts. Written down years ahead it is a rule; decided in the moment it is a market call.
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.
Liberalised Remittance Scheme — the RBI facility under which a resident individual may remit up to an annual limit abroad, including to buy foreign shares.
The direct route out of India. It brings tax collected at source on the remittance and a separate foreign-asset schedule in your return, with meaningful penalties for leaving that blank.
A periodic check of whether your approach is actually working, measured against a broad index over a sample long enough to mean something.
The failure is not underperforming; it is continuing for years without ever measuring. Ten hours a week for 1% of outperformance on a small portfolio is a poor hourly rate.
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 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.
Motor cover for death, injury or property damage caused to somebody else — compulsory by statute for every vehicle on a public road.
For death and injury there is no ceiling: the award is computed from the deceased’s earnings, prospects, dependants and age, and has nothing to do with the value of your car. Lapse it and that award is enforced against you.
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.
The hours an investing approach genuinely requires to be done properly.
Choosing direct stocks and giving them mutual-fund hours is the most common personal-finance failure.
The erosion of an option’s premium as expiry approaches, since the time and uncertainty the premium pays for are steadily running out.
It produces a falling chart in a market that is doing nothing, which is why a decay and a breakdown look identical on a premium chart. It accelerates close to expiry.
A cost that rises and falls broadly in proportion to output or sales.
Raw materials and freight. Double the sales, double the spend, and the margin barely moves.
A single combined feed of every trade in a security across all venues — a feature of United States market structure with no Indian equivalent.
India has no combined national print. Each exchange broadcasts its own trades, so the volume figure you read belongs to one venue rather than to the market.
A reversal pattern where price fails twice at the same level, confirmed only when the low between the two peaks breaks.
Calling it while price is still approaching an old high is one of the more reliable ways to short a strong uptrend. Until the intervening low goes, this is a test of resistance.
Any charge, lien or pledge over shares that restricts the holder's free disposal of them.
The word SEBI uses in the disclosure. Pledges are the common case; the category is broader.
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.
A breadth measure: the share of stocks in a universe trading above their own 200-day moving average.
Above 70% is a broad bull market; below 25% is washout territory, where major bottoms have tended to form.
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.
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.