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 75 terms
A licensed bank required to lend largely to small borrowers and underbanked segments, supervised as a bank.
It is a bank, so the deposit insurance is identical up to the same limit. It pays more because it lacks a large cheap deposit base and lends to a riskier segment — not because the statutory cover is different.
Government-backed savings products such as PPF, SSY, SCSS and post office deposits.
SSY and PPF are tax-free; most of the rest are taxed at your slab. That gap beats any rate comparison.
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.
Funding an asset that returns cash over years with a liability repayable in months, so the borrower must return to the market repeatedly before the asset has paid for itself.
It leaves solvency untouched and hands liquidity to somebody else to decide. A company can be worth far more than it owes on every valuation and still fail on a date.
The average of the last N closing prices, plotted as a line.
Smoothing. Smoother always means slower — that trade-off has no escape.
A free complaint forum for deficiency in service by banks, non-banking financial companies and other entities the Reserve Bank regulates, available once the lender has rejected a complaint or left it unresolved for a defined period.
It addresses conduct, charges and wrong reporting. It does not waive a debt, rewrite a loan or halt lawful recovery, and filing there hoping it will is a wasted month.
A loan account showing early signs of stress, graded by how long an amount has stood overdue — 1 to 30 days, 31 to 60 days and 61 to 90 days.
The lender's early-warning ladder before an account turns non-performing. Nobody tells the borrower they are on it, and it is the window in which the widest range of options still exists.
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 Bombay Stock Exchange's platform for small and medium enterprises, running under the same lighter regime as its NSE counterpart.
The ₹1 lakh minimum lot is not a mark of quality — it is a regulatory warning label, set high deliberately to keep out investors who cannot absorb the loss.
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.
A rounded U-shaped base followed by a small, shallow drift near the rim, before a breakout above it.
The roundness is the whole point. It shows a gradual handover from impatient sellers to patient buyers, rather than a panic low that may still be retested.
Choosing a larger later reward over a smaller immediate one.
Learned by practising it — saving toward something visible — not by being told about it.
A three-candle bearish reversal: a strong green candle, a small hesitant one, then a red candle closing below the first candle's midpoint.
Conviction, hesitation, handover. Look at almost any stock that topped out badly and some version of this shape is there.
A structure that repeats at every scale, so each wave subdivides into the same pattern at a smaller degree and nests into it at a larger one.
Elliott's central claim and also its central problem. If every wave contains the same shape, almost any price action can be labelled afterwards.
A window after receiving a new insurance policy in which it may be returned for a refund of premium, less small deductions.
It exists because policies are sold quickly and read slowly. It is the one moment when walking away from a mis-sold policy costs almost nothing.
The scheme categories SEBI mandates, each specifying what a fund must hold — largecap, midcap, smallcap, flexicap, multicap, ELSS, hybrid and index among them.
The label is a legal constraint on holdings, not marketing, which is what makes thousands of schemes comparable. It also fixes the only valid comparison: same category, against the fund's own declared benchmark.
A candle with a small body near the top and a long lower wick, appearing after a decline.
Sellers pushed price down and buyers took it all back. Bullish — after confirmation.
A candle with a small body and a long lower wick appearing after an advance — the same shape as a hammer, read bearishly because of what preceded it.
The clearest demonstration that context supplies all the meaning. The candle is identical to a hammer; only the preceding trend differs, and the implication inverts.
A two-candle pattern in which a small candle sits entirely inside the body of the large candle before it.
Read it as pause, not reverse. Stalling is followed by continuation at least as often as by a turn — a reason to tighten a stop, not to open a position the other way.
A large order automatically split into smaller slices.
For size in mid-liquidity names, so you consume the book gradually rather than all at once.
The distinction between large one-directional candles with little overlap and small overlapping candles that drift.
Which direction is urgent and which is reluctant. When the corrective direction becomes the impulsive one, the trend is changing — usually before the structure formally breaks.
In Elliott Wave, a five-wave move in the direction of the larger trend, each wave subdividing into the same structure at a smaller scale.
The observation underneath is sound — trends do advance in bursts separated by corrections, with the middle push usually strongest. The numbering adds a precision that is not there.
A candle with a small body near the bottom of its range and a long upper wick, appearing after a decline.
The same shape as a shooting star, read the other way because of what came before. Cautiously bullish, and worth nothing until the next candle confirms.
The machinery — settlement guarantee, client-money segregation, ombudsman, compensation funds — that decides what happens when an intermediary fails.
Regulation does not promise returns. It promises that specific people had duties to you and that there is somewhere to go when they are not met.
A monthly disclosure by small cap and mid cap funds, in a format standardised by AMFI, showing how long the portfolio would take to liquidate alongside concentration, valuation and composition data.
Read it as an evacuation plan rather than a weather forecast. It does not say a fire is coming; it says how long the building takes to empty, which is a fact about the building and was measurable the whole time.
The smallest payment that keeps a credit card account current.
The most misleading number on an Indian statement. Paying it starts interest on the whole balance and ends the grace period on new spending.
A three-candle bullish reversal: a large red candle, a small indecisive one, then a large green one.
Panic, pause, recovery. The anatomy of most bottoms.
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.
A SEBI fund category required to hold at least 25% each in largecap, midcap and smallcap stocks.
Forced diversification across sizes. The manager is legally unable to retreat into largecaps during a smallcap crash — which is the whole difference from a flexicap.
A company registered with the Reserve Bank whose principal business is lending or investing, but which is not a bank — it sits outside the payments system and, apart from a small separately authorised category, may not accept public deposits.
Every rupee it lends was first borrowed from somebody who priced it and can decline to renew. That single fact on the liability side reorganises every ratio on the asset side.
The NSE's platform for small and medium enterprises, where a listing is vetted by the exchange rather than reviewed by SEBI directly.
An IPO in name and in reporting, under materially different rules. Analyst coverage is minimal, so promoter quality carries more weight here than anywhere else.
A return distribution in which a small number of very large outcomes pull the mean well above the median.
The shape equity returns actually take. Downside stops at −100% and upside does not, so a handful of holdings produce nearly the whole result and the typical one disappoints.
A five-year small savings scheme paying interest monthly, capped at ₹9 lakh single or ₹15 lakh joint.
The monthly cheque that complements SCSS's quarterly payout, so a household budget can actually run on it.
A scheme letting eligible professionals and small businesses declare a fixed share of receipts as income without detailed books.
Section 44ADA at 50% of gross receipts for specified professionals; 44AD at 8%, or 6% for digitally received payments.
The number of individual small shareholders on a company's register, disclosed each quarter in the shareholding pattern.
Rising sharply while institutions reduce is the shape of informed money selling to newcomers.
A continuation pattern: a long trend candle, then two to four small candles drifting back inside its range on lighter volume, then another long candle closing beyond the first one’s extreme.
The picture of a healthy pullback — shallow, unhurried and unsupported by volume, meaning nobody is willing to sell in size. The falling three methods is the same structure inside a downtrend.
Cutting position sizes after a defined drawdown, and keeping them small until performance recovers.
Not an admission that the system has stopped working. Smaller size buys you time to find out whether the environment has changed.
A candle with a small body near the bottom and a long upper wick, appearing after an advance.
Buyers ran it up and got sold into. Bearish — after confirmation.
The separate exchange segments for small and medium enterprises, with lighter vetting, far higher minimum lot sizes and much thinner post-listing liquidity than the main board.
SEBI has repeatedly flagged inflated subscription figures, circular funding of applications and post-listing manipulation here. Good companies do list; the base rate is not favourable.
Three consecutive long green candles, each opening inside the previous body and closing near its own high with small upper wicks.
Emerging from a long dull base it is a trend starting. Arriving after a two-month run, with each candle smaller than the last and upper wicks lengthening, it is the last buyers rather than the first.
The smallest increment by which a security's price may move, typically 5 paise for most Indian equities.
It sets a floor on how tight a bid-ask spread can ever be. That floor bites hardest in low-priced stocks, where one tick is a meaningful percentage.
Making small, unnecessary adjustments to a working plan out of restlessness rather than evidence.
Lifting the lid off the dal. Each look lets the steam out, and the dish takes longer and comes out worse.
The Schedule III note splitting trade payables by period outstanding from the due date, and separately between micro and small enterprise creditors and others, with disputed dues shown apart.
The disclosure that turns one balance into a story. Bargaining power keeps almost everything inside a year; a filling one-to-two-year bucket suggests the terms were taken rather than agreed.
A strategy that buys strength and sells weakness, accepting many small losses for a few large gains.
Wins a minority of its trades by design. Judging it on hit rate guarantees you will abandon it.
Unit Linked Insurance Plan — a product bundling market-linked investment with a small amount of life cover.
A costly mutual fund with a little insurance attached. Both parts are worse than buying them separately.
The Annual Information Statement on the income tax portal, listing the transactions the department already holds on record — share sales reported by your broker, dividends and interest received.
Read it before you file rather than after. A mismatch is the commonest trigger for a notice, and it is almost always clerical: an account you forgot about, or a corporate action recorded differently.
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.
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.
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.
Assets Under Management — the total money a fund or manager runs.
A very large smallcap fund cannot buy small companies meaningfully. Size constrains strategy.
The proportion of death claims an insurer settled over a year, counted by number of claims.
A count, not a measure of value or difficulty, and inflated at some insurers by large volumes of small group claims. More useful read alongside the average time taken to settle.
The portion of a long-term loan falling due within twelve months of the reporting date, stripped out of non-current borrowings and presented among current liabilities.
It is why the line labelled long-term debt gets smaller as a large repayment gets closer. A screener column built on that line ranks a company with an imminent bullet as the safer of two.
Interest a broker levies daily on a debit balance in the trading account, at a rate published in its tariff sheet.
A dormant account with a small debit quietly compounds it. Exchange margin penalties are separate and passed through in full.
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 sequence of clearing costly debt, building a buffer and insuring before investing.
The foundation under the portfolio. Skip it and the first emergency dismantles what you built.
A fund category required to hold at least 65% in equity with no constraint on market cap, leaving the mix to the manager's discretion.
The one people confuse with multicap. A flexicap manager can sit 90% in largecaps when nervous, so in a smallcap crash two funds with almost identical names behave nothing alike.
Building a behaviour into a routine so it no longer requires a decision.
The reason a small automated SIP beats a large intended one. The mechanism is the asset; the amount grows later.
The difficulty of converting an asset to cash quickly at a fair price.
A flat can take months to sell, and longer in a bad market. That is not a small footnote — it is the main risk of property.
The price movement caused by your own order relative to the quoted price.
Negligible on a small account. Past a certain size your order is part of the price.
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.
A settlement forum whose award, once the parties consent, is deemed to be a decree of a civil court, is final, and carries no right of appeal.
Lenders bring large numbers of small accounts to these sittings and often accept a reduction to close them. The finality is the point, and the reason to agree slowly.
An exchange rate regime in which the rate is set by the market but the central bank operates in it — the Reserve Bank’s stated position being that it does not target a level and acts to contain excessive volatility.
For a chart reader the consequence matters more than the intent: a stretch of unusually small ranges is not by itself evidence that the next move will be small, so volatility measured over a quiet window understates what a stop has to survive.
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.
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.
Provisions held against credit-impaired loans, divided by those loans.
How much of the recognised problem has already been paid for out of past profits. It is not immune to write-off policy: taking a fully-provided loan off both lines removes an equal amount from a smaller numerator and a larger denominator, which drags the ratio down.
Over-weighting recent events when estimating future probabilities.
Why retail money flows into smallcaps after two good years, which is structurally the worst time.
An individual investing their own money, as distinct from institutional, proprietary and promoter participants.
Small individually and very large collectively. The genuine edge is a long horizon, no redemption pressure and the freedom to hold cash — never speed or information.
A market environment in which participants favour riskier assets.
Smallcaps and high-multiple names lead. When it flips to risk-off, they lead downward.
The spread of outcomes you would see from repeated draws of the same underlying process.
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.
A bank included in the second schedule to the Reserve Bank of India Act, which gives it access to the central bank’s facilities and the clearing system.
What actually brings the prudential inspection and the deposit insurance is the banking licence, not the schedule. Small finance banks, payments banks and registered co-operative banks hold that licence; societies and nidhis do not, whatever the passbook looks like.
A government-backed scheme for those aged 60 and over, paying quarterly interest, capped at ₹30 lakh per person.
The highest rate of the small savings group, sovereign-backed. A couple can place ₹60 lakh between them.
A corporate event — demerger, buyback tender, delisting offer, rights issue or index change — that creates a mechanical mispricing independent of business quality.
The terms are published, the timeline is fixed and the outcome is largely arithmetic. They persist because they are boring, small and time-limited, which keeps large funds away.
Switching to a longer chart to justify holding a position that has hit its stop.
Converts a small planned loss into a large unplanned one, because the position size no longer matches the stop.
An outcome of a decision or policy that its authors did not anticipate.
A fee cap meant to hurt incumbents can kill their smaller competitors and leave them stronger. Several Indian regulations have worked exactly this way.
The annual central government budget, presented on 1 February, setting tax and expenditure policy for the coming financial year.
Volatility spikes for a few sessions and subsides quickly. It is a reason to size smaller, not a reason to take a direction.