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1492 terms

Glossary

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 35 terms

ROCE

Fundamental analysis

Return on capital employed — operating profit as a percentage of debt plus equity.

In plain terms

The honest version of ROE. It cannot be manufactured with leverage.

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Return on capital employed

Accounting
Also called: ROCE

Operating profit divided by the capital invested in the business.

In plain terms

Recalculate it including capital work in progress. If most of the return disappears, the distortion was doing the work.

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ROIIC

Fundamental analysis
Also called: Return on incremental capital, Incremental ROCE

Return on incremental invested capital — profit growth divided by the capital added to produce it.

In plain terms

Historic ROCE describes the past. This describes whether compounding is still available.

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Process

Risk & psychology

The repeatable set of rules governing how decisions get made.

In plain terms

The only part of a result that is genuinely yours, and the only part that compounds.

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Process discipline

Risk & psychology

Applying the same sequence of checks to every decision, including the ones you are already excited about.

In plain terms

Ticking boxes quickly to reach a decision you had already made is worse than no checklist, because it manufactures the feeling of diligence. If yours has never stopped you buying something, it is decoration.

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Process review

Risk & psychology

A periodic check of whether your approach is actually working, measured against a broad index over a sample long enough to mean something.

In plain terms

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.

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Process versus outcome

Risk & psychology

Distinguishing the quality of a decision from the quality of its result.

In plain terms

A good decision can lose and a terrible one can win. Judging yourself by results in a noisy system teaches you the wrong lessons.

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Auction settlement

Trading & orders
Also called: Auction market

The process by which the exchange sources undelivered shares through a separate auction session, in which other members offer the shortfall quantity for delivery to the original buyer.

In plain terms

An afternoon window on the settlement day, and you cannot bid in it — only members can. Whether anyone happens to offer your thin smallcap in that window is what decides between a modest loss and a close-out.

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Commoditisation

Fundamental analysis

The process by which a product becomes undifferentiated, so customers choose purely on price.

In plain terms

The end state of an industry with no barriers. Once buyers can compare on price in seconds, margin is permanently at risk however capable the operator.

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Credit bureau dispute

Regulation & tax

The process for correcting a wrong entry in a credit information report, under which the lender is asked to verify and the regulator has set periods for resolution.

In plain terms

It fixes a wrong entry, not a correct entry you dislike. The bureau reports what the lender supplies, so a real dispute is won against the lender.

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Debts Recovery Tribunal

Regulation & tax
Also called: DRT

The forum that hears challenges to enforcement measures taken under the security enforcement law, and lenders' own recovery proceedings above a threshold. Civil courts are barred from these matters.

In plain terms

The first application there matters far more than the appeal, because an appeal beyond it requires depositing a large part of the claimed debt before it will be heard.

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Fee income

Fundamental analysis

A lender’s revenue other than interest — processing charges, distribution commission and fees for services rendered.

In plain terms

A processing fee integral to the loan’s yield is folded into the effective interest rate and spread over the loan’s life; commission and service charges are earned at origination. Fee income growing much faster than the book means more of the return is being taken up front.

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Fresh issue

Market basics

New shares issued in an IPO, with proceeds going to the company.

In plain terms

Money enters the business. Contrast with an offer for sale, where it goes to existing holders.

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Gain on disposal

Accounting
Also called: Profit on sale of a business

The difference between the net proceeds of selling a business or asset and its carrying amount in the accounts.

In plain terms

Cash that belongs to you and arrives once. It sits inside total earnings per share, which is why the year of a large sale looks like the cheapest year in a decade.

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Insolvency

Regulation & tax

A formal process for resolving a company that cannot pay its debts.

In plain terms

Equity ranks last. When lenders take haircuts, there was nothing left below them.

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Normalisation of deviance

Risk & psychology

The process by which a tolerated exception becomes the standard the next exception is measured from.

In plain terms

Nobody decides to take a large risk. They take one slightly larger than last time, it is fine, and that becomes the new baseline.

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Price discovery

Technical analysis

The process by which a market works out what something is worth.

In plain terms

On unscheduled news it takes days, not minutes — the first hour is guessing against algorithms.

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Recovery

Risk & psychology

Rebuilding capital and process after a significant drawdown.

In plain terms

Restart at a quarter size and judge yourself on twenty rule-following trades, not on getting back to the old peak.

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Registrar and transfer agent

Market basics
Also called: RTA

The firm a company appoints to maintain its register of members and to process folio-level requests — dividends, transmission, dematerialisation and corporate action entitlements.

In plain terms

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.

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Reverse book building

Market basics

The price discovery process in a delisting, where public shareholders state the price at which they will sell.

In plain terms

Shareholders bid the price up rather than down. The promoter can accept or walk away.

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Sample variance

Risk & psychology

The spread of outcomes you would see from repeated draws of the same underlying process.

In plain terms

Thirty trades is thirty trades of information, however many times you reshuffle them. A small sample presented a thousand ways is still a small sample.

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Section 138 complaint

Regulation & tax
Also called: Cheque dishonour complaint

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.

In plain terms

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.

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Succession

Regulation & tax

The legal process determining who inherits property, governed in India by religion-specific personal law.

In plain terms

The Hindu Succession Act, Muslim personal law and the Indian Succession Act cover different groups. A will is what lets you decide instead of accepting the default.

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Take rate

Fundamental analysis

A platform's net revenue as a share of the gross value of the transactions it processes.

In plain terms

Rising means the platform is being paid more for what it does. Falling usually means volume is being bought with discounts, which appears in the accounts as growth.

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Trading session

Trading & orders

One occasion on which a market segment was open, from its opening procedure to its closing procedure — the unit a daily bar on a chart represents.

In plain terms

A daily candle is a session, not a day. The chart draws no gap for weekends or holidays, so anything you count in bars is counted in sessions while interest, time value and news accumulate in calendar time.

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Transmission

Market basics

The process of transferring securities to legal heirs or a nominee after the holder’s death.

In plain terms

Simple with a nomination. Without one, and for a large holding, it can require a court.

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Barriers to entry

Fundamental analysis

The obstacles that prevent a new competitor from entering an industry and competing away its returns.

In plain terms

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.

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Compulsory delisting

Regulation & tax

Removal of a company from an exchange for persistent non-compliance, with the promoters required to acquire the public shareholders’ shares at a value fixed by an independent valuer.

In plain terms

Not a sale but a recovery process, run on notices rather than on screens. The chart usually stopped months earlier, when the security was suspended.

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Contra trade

Regulation & tax

An opposite transaction by a designated person — a sale following a purchase, or the reverse — within the six-month period barred by the company’s code of conduct.

In plain terms

Buy your employer’s shares in the August window and the sale is barred well into the following year, whatever happens in between. If you need the proceeds on a date, work backwards from the bar.

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Expectations

Risk & psychology

What you believe a plan will deliver, and over what period.

In plain terms

Judge year one on whether you built a process, not on the return.

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Key Fact Statement

Regulation & tax
Also called: KFS

A standardised statement a lender must give a retail borrower before the agreement is signed, setting out the amount, tenure, charges and an all-inclusive annual percentage rate.

In plain terms

The document that exposes a processing fee deducted from the disbursal. A quoted interest rate hides it; an all-inclusive annual rate cannot.

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KYC Registration Agency

Regulation & tax
Also called: KRA

A SEBI-registered agency that holds an investor’s KYC record centrally, keyed on the PAN, and shares it with other intermediaries.

In plain terms

Five of them share records between themselves, which is why a second broker did not put you through the whole process again — and why one deficient record can block a fresh purchase everywhere at once. The status is free to check with nothing but a PAN.

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Objects of the issue

Regulation & tax

The DRHP section stating what the money raised will be used for.

In plain terms

“General corporate purposes” for a large share of proceeds is not a plan.

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Pay-out

Trading & orders
Also called: Payout, Funds pay-out

The settlement step at which funds or securities owed to you are released by the clearing corporation, one trading day after the trade.

In plain terms

Sale proceeds become genuinely withdrawable only after this. Anything the app shows you before it is a trading limit, not cash.

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Technical glitch framework

Regulation & tax

SEBI’s regime requiring brokers to report material disruptions to their trading systems within set timelines and to submit a root cause analysis afterwards.

In plain terms

It defines the event rather than leaving it to argument: a malfunction of five minutes or more in trading hours affecting login, order processing, visibility of funds or risk systems. There will be an official timeline of what happened, and your own timestamps are what let you check your account against it.

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Indian stock market glossary · Market Vidyalaya