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 197 terms
A unit of ownership in a company, carrying a proportional claim on its profits and assets.
A legal slice of a real business. Own 1% of the shares and you own 1% of the company.
Growing faster than the market you operate in.
The most durable evidence of advantage, because it is relative and hard to fake.
The ratio at which shares of one company are exchanged for another in a merger or demerger.
Tells you how many new shares you receive. The price adjustment on the record date is arithmetic, not a loss.
The quarterly filing showing who owns a company — promoters, institutions, retail — and how much is pledged.
One page, free, filed every quarter, containing the single best early warning available on Indian mid-caps.
The total number of shares a company has issued and that are currently in existence, promoter-held and public alike.
The number that turns a share price into a company size, and turns your holding into a fraction of the business. Without it a price means nothing.
Total assets minus total liabilities — the accounting net worth attributable to shareholders.
Meaningful for banks, nearly useless for a software company.
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 shares outstanding over a period, weighted by the portion of the period each was outstanding — the denominator of earnings per share.
It is why four quarterly earnings-per-share figures do not add up to the annual one when shares were issued mid-year. Build a trailing figure from profit, then divide once.
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 company’s revenue or volume as a proportion of its industry.
Growth means little without it. Growing 18% while the industry grows 22% is losing ground.
The requirement under the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Rules that a listed company keep at least 25% of its shares with the public, a shortfall being corrected within twelve months through routes SEBI specifies.
A seller acting on a legal deadline rather than a view on value, and the gap is a subtraction anyone can do from the quarterly shareholding pattern. Listed public sector companies have repeatedly been given extended timelines that no private issuer would get.
A shareholder without control, whose interests may diverge from the majority owner’s.
When the promoter has objectives beyond the share price, this is who funds them.
Shares on which only part of the issue price has been paid, the balance being payable on later calls; they trade as a separate listed line under their own symbol and ISIN until fully paid.
The price looks like a discount to the ordinary share and is not one — the gap is the money you still owe. Once the calls are met the line converts into the fully paid share.
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.
The proportion of tendered shares a company actually accepts in a buyback.
This, not the premium, decides what you earn. A 20% premium at 15% acceptance is a 3% return.
EBITDA with further company-chosen exclusions such as one-offs, restructuring or share-based payment.
Each adjustment may be defensible; the pattern rarely is. Reconcile any self-defined measure back to an audited number.
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.
An institution allotted shares in a public issue a day before it opens to everyone else, at a price fixed in advance.
Read the names, not the amount. Reputable long-only funds anchoring a book is meaningful; a book made up of unfamiliar entities is not.
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.
The yearly meeting at which shareholders vote on accounts, directors, auditors and other resolutions.
The society meeting at scale. Most owners do not attend, and the ones who vote decide.
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.
Free additional shares issued to existing shareholders in proportion to their holding.
The same pie cut into more slices. Your wealth does not change by a single rupee.
The rise in book value per share produced by issuing new shares above the existing book value — and the fall produced by issuing below it.
Why the identical press release is different news at different prices. The same money funds the same loans; whether existing holders end up with more book per share or less depends entirely on what the new shareholders paid.
The rate at which a bank's book value per share compounds — roughly its return on equity less whatever it pays out.
Over long periods the share price tracks this far more closely than it tracks any single year of earnings.
A company repurchasing its own shares, reducing the share count.
Value-creating when the stock is cheap, value-destroying when it is expensive.
The share of a plant’s or industry’s productive capacity actually in use.
The single best test of whether a downturn is a cycle or a decline. Falling utilisation with plants shutting means cycle; capacity still arriving means decline.
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.
Current and savings account deposits as a share of a bank’s total deposits.
The cheapest money a bank can raise. Above 40% is a structural advantage.
The share of reported profit or EBITDA that becomes operating cash.
The single most useful cross-check on an income statement, and it needs two numbers you already have open.
The maximum price at which a scheduled formulation may be sold, computed by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority as the simple average of the prices to retailer of brands above a 1% share of that formulation, plus a notified 16% retailer margin.
It is revised annually against the wholesale price index — an index with no connection to what the company paid for its active ingredient. That asymmetry is the whole structural feature of price control.
An arrangement in which a finance company originates and services a loan while retaining an agreed minimum share of it, and a partner bank funds the rest from the outset.
Only the company’s own share is ever on its balance sheet, while the whole loan is generally counted in assets under management — which is one reason the two series grow at different rates.
A fixed share of every claim the policyholder must bear.
Common on cheap and senior-citizen plans. A 20% co-pay on a ₹8 lakh bill is ₹1.6 lakh out of your pocket after the premium was paid.
The share of amounts due in a month that a lender actually collected, on that lender’s own definition of both figures.
The fastest-moving number a lender publishes and the least comparable across companies, because some count arrears and prepayments in the numerator and some do not. Above 100% is a definitional artefact, not an achievement.
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.
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.
Holding a large share of a portfolio in few positions or one theme.
It raises both the best and worst outcomes. Size it so several going wrong at once is survivable.
An instrument entitling the holder to subscribe to shares later at a price fixed today, with part of the price paid upfront and the balance on exercise within the period the regulations allow.
The most forecastable dilution there is: the number of shares that will exist on conversion is public from the day the general meeting approves it.
A member with a birthright share in HUF property.
Daughters have been coparceners on the same footing as sons since 2005, married or not.
A company event that changes share count or price — split, bonus, dividend, rights, demerger.
When a chart shows a mysterious overnight halving, check announcements before forming a view.
The systems by which a company is directed and held accountable to its shareholders.
Genuinely independent directors who have demonstrably disagreed with something. A board of family friends is a formality.
Provisions made against bad loans, expressed as a share of a lender's loan book.
You want it stable and low. A spike can consume the whole of a bank's operating profit in a single year, which is why bank earnings swing so violently.
Group entities holding shares in one another, frequently in a circular arrangement.
It entrenches promoter control using less of the promoter's own money, and it is one reason a discount can sit unchanged for a decade.
A large share of revenue coming from one or a few customers.
Indian rules require disclosure above 10% of revenue. It caps margins as well as threatening revenue.
Total borrowings divided by shareholders’ equity.
Above 2 means lenders fund the business more than owners do — and lenders get paid first.
Total borrowings divided by shareholders' equity.
A ratio that trebled for many Indian retailers in FY20 without any borrowing happening — the leases were always there, they were just not written down.
A company removing its shares from the exchange, usually after the promoter buys out public holders.
Hold through a successful one and you own an unlisted share with no screen price and no easy exit.
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.
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.
Separating a division into an independently listed company, with shares issued to existing holders.
No premium is paid and each business gets its own multiple, which is why the record is better than for acquisitions.
The negative directional indicator — the share of recent price range attributable to downward movement, plotted alongside ADX.
When it sits above DI+, whatever strength ADX is reporting belongs to a downtrend. An ADX of 45 is equally consistent with a runaway rally and a violent crash.
The positive directional indicator — the share of recent price range attributable to upward movement, plotted alongside ADX.
ADX gives strength and no direction whatsoever. Reading a high ADX on its own as bullish is a common and expensive error; this is where the direction comes from.
The share of a company held by domestic institutional investors, reported in the quarterly shareholding pattern.
Domestic funds building over consecutive quarters is among the more reliable positive signals. One filing is a snapshot; four to eight of them is a trend.
Earnings per share calculated as if every outstanding option, warrant and convertible had already been exercised.
The version to use, because headlines quote the other one. A wide gap to basic EPS means a large claim on your ownership exists and has simply not been triggered yet.
A reduction in your proportional ownership when a company issues new shares.
The cake is the same size and there are more people at the table. Watch share count alongside profit.
The outright sale of a loan portfolio to a buyer — often a bank meeting its priority sector obligations — with the seller retaining a prescribed minimum share of every loan and continuing to service them.
Where the transfer qualifies, the loans leave the balance sheet and the future spread is recognised now. The borrower never notices: the same branch, the same collections, a different owner of the interest.
Cash a company distributes to shareholders out of its profits, received by whoever owns the share before the ex-date.
Sustainable only when covered by free cash flow — a company borrowing to maintain its dividend is buying goodwill with someone else's money. It is now taxed in your hands at your slab rate.
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.
Annual dividend per share divided by the share price.
A high yield usually means the price collapsed, not that the company got generous.
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.
Earnings per share divided by price — the inverse of PE.
Useful, but based on accounting profit. When it diverges sharply from FCF yield, trust the cash.
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.
Earnings per share — net profit divided by shares outstanding.
Can rise from buybacks alone. Always check net profit rose too.
Employee stock options granting the right to buy shares at a set price.
Rewards upside without punishing downside. Restricted shares align better than options do.
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.
The first day a share trades without entitlement to a declared corporate action.
You must own the share before this date. Buying on it gets you nothing.
The fixed price at which an employee stock option may be converted into shares, set when the grant is made.
It is what separates an ESOP from an RSU. With an exercise price of ₹400 and the share at ₹250 the option is worth nothing at all, whereas an RSU is a share.
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.
A shared understanding among relatives about an indivisible asset.
Have the conversation before acting. Silent assumptions turn a shared inheritance into a decade-long dispute.
First in, first out — the accepted basis for identifying which shares or units were sold when a holding was built up in tranches.
You do not get to nominate the expensive lot. Sell part of a position and the earliest purchases are treated as the ones sold, which sets both the cost and the holding period applied.
The share of a company held by foreign institutional investors, reported in the quarterly shareholding pattern.
Serious research usually precedes it, and it brings volatility with it — they can sell for global reasons. Check whether FIIs are leaving the whole market before reading it as a verdict on this company.
The cash flow bucket covering borrowing and repayment, share issues and buybacks, and dividends paid.
Read it alongside the other two. Negative operating cash flow with a large positive here describes a company kept alive by fresh borrowing rather than by trading.
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.
Total monthly loan obligations expressed as a share of net monthly income, used by lenders to decide how much they will lend you.
Guaranteed loans generally sit in the numerator even while payments are current, which is how one signature for a relative can remove most of your own home loan capacity before anybody has defaulted.
The portion of shares actually available for public trading, excluding promoter and locked-in holdings.
The shares that genuinely trade. It determines liquidity and index weight.
New shares issued in an IPO, with proceeds going to the company.
Money enters the business. Contrast with an offer for sale, where it goes to existing holders.
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.
Gross non-performing assets — the share of a bank’s loans that have stopped being repaid.
The single most important number for any bank. Below 2% is healthy; above 6% is a crisis.
An unofficial price quoted for an IPO share before listing, in an unregulated market that has no legal standing.
No exchange, no reporting requirement, no audit trail, and nobody accountable for the number — which can be moved by the very people who benefit from a heavily subscribed issue. A sentiment reading, and it has been wrong spectacularly.
The tendency to hold far more of your own country's equity than its share of global market value would justify.
Partly rational, since you earn and spend in rupees. The problem is that a wholly domestic portfolio stacks your job, your property and your savings on one economy, one currency and one regulatory regime.
The Investor Education and Protection Fund, to which dividends left unclaimed for a number of consecutive years fixed in the Companies Act — and the shares behind them — are transferred.
Not a confiscation. The rightful owner can claim them back through a prescribed application verified by the company and then the authority, and it is far harder for an heir than for the person who bought the shares.
The growth and returns a current share price must already be assuming to be justified.
The required run rate. Rather than forecasting, you extract the market’s forecast and judge whether the company can hit it.
Whether management is rewarded for the same outcomes shareholders want.
Whatever the variable pay is linked to is what will get maximised.
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 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.
The share of a fund’s assets held by its largest investors, disclosed alongside the liquidity stress test.
It tells you how few decisions it would take to produce a large redemption. A fund whose top holders own a big slice can face an exit that no retail pattern would ever generate.
A lender selling pledged shares in the open market after a margin call is not met.
The moment a promoter's personal finances become your share price problem.
Initial Public Offering — the first sale of a company’s shares to the public, after which it becomes listed.
The only moment your money actually reaches the company. Everything after is second-hand trading.
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.
A SEBI-registered agency that holds an investor’s KYC record centrally, keyed on the PAN, and shares it with other intermediaries.
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.
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.
Everything the company owes to someone other than its shareholders, split into current — due within twelve months — and non-current.
Sort them by when they fall due, not only by size. A profitable company still fails if the obligations arrive before the cash does.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 cap set by the exchange on the aggregate derivatives open interest permitted in a single stock, expressed as a number of shares.
It stops the derivatives tail growing large enough to wag the cash market. The basis on which it is computed has been revised, so read the current circular for the formula — what has not changed is that the names reaching the ceiling are overwhelmingly midcaps with concentrated promoter holdings and thin deliverable float.
A subsidiary whose income or net worth exceeds a defined share of the listed group’s consolidated figures, attracting extra governance obligations under the listing regulations.
A subsidiary large enough that it cannot be governed entirely out of sight. The threshold has been tightened over the years, so read the current definition rather than a remembered one.
The difference between the value a fixed exchange ratio or cash offer implies for a target share and the price the target actually trades at.
Payment for the wait and for the chance the scheme never completes. It narrows as approvals land and gaps out the moment one is in doubt.
The move of an SME-platform company to the main exchange board, once it meets size, profitability and shareholder-count criteria.
The genuine bull case for an SME holding — better liquidity, wider coverage, index eligibility. It is also uncommon and slow, so it is not something to rely on when you buy.
The share of a subsidiary’s profit belonging to other shareholders.
Compute per-share figures after deducting it, or you overstate earnings.
Selling shares that have neither been borrowed nor arranged to be borrowed before the sale.
Not permitted in India, and the prohibition shapes everything else about shorting here. An intraday short that cannot be squared off — a stock locked at its upper circuit, say — becomes a short delivery and is closed out at a deliberately penal price.
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.
The offer an acquirer must make to public shareholders on crossing the shareholding thresholds prescribed in the takeover regulations, or on acquiring control, at a price computed under those regulations, unless an exemption applies.
It is for a stated proportion of the shares rather than all of them, so it is not a floor under your whole holding. Where the computed price lands above the market the price tends to sit just under it and the daily range flattens; where it lands below, almost nobody tenders and the chart is unaffected.
Gains and losses that Ind AS routes directly into reserves, presented below net profit and excluded from earnings per share.
The half of the year earnings per share never sees. It still lands in equity, so return on equity can improve on an entirely unchanged business simply because a large OCI loss shrank the denominator.
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.
Price divided by book value per share.
Essential for banks. Nearly meaningless for asset-light businesses whose real assets are people.
Price divided by earnings per share — the multiple of annual profit being paid per share.
How many years of current profit you are handing over. Inverts its meaning for cyclicals.
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.
Tax at your slab rate on the difference between the market value of employer shares at vesting or exercise and what you paid, treated as salary income.
The first of the two taxable events, and the one that catches people. You owe cash on a paper gain before you have sold anything — particularly harsh at an unlisted startup where there is nobody to sell to.
The share of a life insurer's policies still being paid at set intervals after sale.
Embedded value assumes policies run their full term. Strong VNB growth alongside falling persistency is value being reported that will never be collected.
Settlement of a derivative contract by delivery of the underlying shares against cash, rather than by paying the cash difference.
It takes every single-stock future open at expiry and every single-stock option that finishes in the money, while index contracts stay cash-settled — which is why the two behave so differently in the final week. A cheap option finishing marginally in the money becomes an obligation for the full strike price times lot size.
Offering shares you own as collateral to receive trading margin against them.
Borrowing against your portfolio. You keep the shares; the broker gets a claim on them.
The pool of premium money an insurer holds separately from shareholders’ funds, with regulatory limits on how it may be invested.
Premiums are not the shareholders’ money. A large proportion has to sit in government and other approved securities — the money backing a thirty-year promise cannot chase this year’s best return.
An issue of shares or warrants to named persons — frequently promoters or a strategic investor — approved by shareholders and priced at or above a regulatory floor.
New shares are created and sold to somebody in particular, so the count rises while your holding does not. Nothing about it is adjusted on the chart.
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 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.
Borrowing by promoters against their own shareholding in the company.
A falling price triggers margin calls, forcing lenders to dump shares — which drives price lower still.
A firm that analyses resolutions and publishes voting recommendations for institutional shareholders.
IiAS, SES and InGovern in India. Their objections are often the first public statement that something is wrong.
Public Sector Undertaking — a company in which the government is the controlling shareholder.
The promoter is also the policymaker, employer and often the largest customer.
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.
The cut-off date determining which shareholders are entitled to a corporate action.
Hold the shares on this date and the entitlement is yours. The price adjusts to reflect what has left.
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 share of profits a company puts back into the business rather than distributing.
Sustainable growth is roughly incremental return multiplied by this. A high return with nowhere to deploy it is worth little.
The price discovery process in a delisting, where public shareholders state the price at which they will sell.
Shareholders bid the price up rather than down. The promoter can accept or walk away.
An offer to existing shareholders to buy new shares, usually at a discount to market price.
The company asking you for money. Read why it needs it before deciding.
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.
Return on equity — net profit as a percentage of shareholders’ equity.
Can be inflated simply by borrowing more. Always decompose it before admiring it.
Restricted Stock Unit — a grant of the employer's shares themselves, delivered once vesting conditions are met, with nothing to pay.
Unlike an ESOP it cannot become worthless, only worth less. The real problem is correlation: your salary and a large slice of your savings then depend on the same company.
The share of income actually invested.
The lever with more force than any allocation or fund decision, and the one that matters most for a late starter.
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.
The exchange, where existing shares are traded between investors without the company’s involvement.
The second-hand market. Over 99% of all trading happens here.
The share of a portfolio's total open risk concentrated in a single sector.
Four banks and two NBFCs are not six positions. They are one bet on Indian credit conditions, and a single RBI decision stops all of them out in the same session.
A screen-based, order-driven and anonymous market for borrowing shares against a fee, with the clearing corporation standing between lender and borrower.
The only route that carries a short past an expiry date without a paid roll, with tenures running to about a year. The catch is availability: in exactly the names a bearish thesis tends to be about, there may be no lender at any price, and the lender can recall early.
A seller’s failure to deliver shares to the clearing corporation by the securities pay-in deadline.
The one settlement failure an ordinary investor can personally cause. The buyer is never left waiting — the clearing corporation buys the shares in and sends the seller the bill.
A periodically published figure for the total shares sold short in a security, standard in the United States and not published in that form here.
There is no Indian days-to-cover statistic to look up. A crowded short position shows up in derivatives open interest instead.
Dividing each share into several, reducing the price proportionally.
Nothing changes in value. Your chart must be restated or it shows a cliff that never happened.
Division of a share’s face value, increasing the share count and reducing the price proportionally.
Same as a bonus in effect, different in accounting. Also creates nothing.
Trades settle one working day after execution — shares and money change hands on T+1.
Buy Monday, own it Tuesday. India moved to this ahead of most of the world.
A platform's net revenue as a share of the gross value of the transactions it processes.
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.
The account held with an exchange member through which orders are placed; it holds funds temporarily, not shares.
Your money sits briefly with the broker; your shares never do. That separation is what makes a broker failure survivable.
Shares, deposits and fund units whose owners or heirs have not come forward to claim them.
Thousands of crores sit unclaimed in India — mostly because nobody registered a nomination.
The share of a workforce that is billable.
Low is wasteful; very high means no bench, so new contracts need hiring first.
The number of shares traded in a given period.
The only widely used input that is not derived from price, which makes it worth more than the four oscillators sitting under your chart. A breakout without a volume surge is a suspect breakout.
A right issued by a company to buy its own shares later at a fixed price, frequently allotted to promoters.
Watch the strike price and who holds them. Promoter warrants priced well below where the share eventually trades are a transfer from minority shareholders, disclosed in the notes rather than announced.
The average closing price over roughly one trading year.
The market’s shared definition of "long-term trend". Best used as an on/off regime switch.
A cash deposit the buying member must lodge with the exchange over and above the purchase price, collected at the higher stages of the Graded Surveillance Measure.
A toll on entering rather than on holding. It is retained for some months and is not released simply because you have sold the shares, which is why a GSM stock costs more to own than the quote suggests.
An exchange framework that applies tighter trading conditions to a security on the basis of its price and volume behaviour, in a short-term and a long-term form.
It reacts to how the share has traded, not to anything the company did. The bite is 100% upfront margin, which usually reaches you as a rejected order or a margin call before you have read the circular.
A company in which there is significant influence but not control.
Included by the equity method — a share of profit rather than line-by-line consolidation.
The convention that fixes where a platform starts cutting the session into bars — at the opening bell, or on the clock hour.
It only matters for bar sizes that do not divide the session. Two hourly charts of the same Indian equity session, one anchored at 9.15 and one on the clock, share no interior candle at all.
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.
Central Depository Services Limited — one of India's two depositories, holding securities in electronic form.
Where your shares actually live. Your broker is the intermediary; the depository is the register.
The entity that guarantees settlement of every trade by becoming counterparty to both sides.
Why you never need to know or trust whoever sold you your shares.
Talking about money openly enough that both people can act.
One shared page a year removes the single-point-of-failure risk entirely.
How a company stands relative to its rivals over time.
Read share gain alongside margin — share bought with discounts is rented, not owned.
Accounts combining the parent with its subsidiaries line by line.
The economic entity you own a share of. Use this for almost every purpose.
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.
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.
A dematerialised account that holds your securities electronically at a depository.
Your share locker. The broker is only the key, not the locker.
Statutory cover protecting bank deposits up to a prescribed limit, written per depositor per bank rather than per account.
Bank FDs have it; corporate FDs, NCDs, credit societies and NBFC deposits have nothing equivalent, and that gap is most of the yield difference. Six accounts at one bank share one limit — the unit that multiplies the cover is the bank.
An institution (NSDL or CDSL in India) that holds securities in electronic form in investors’ names.
Where your shares actually live — in your name, not your broker’s. This is why a broker failure is survivable.
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.
Sustained selling into strength, typically at a top, with heavy volume and choppy sideways price.
The stock feels exciting while large holders hand their shares to newcomers.
The difference between the net proceeds of selling a business or asset and its carrying amount in the accounts.
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.
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.
The length of time a particular asset was held, counted from its own date of acquisition, which decides whether a gain on it is short-term or long-term.
It attaches to the lot, not to the position. Bonus and rights shares start their own count from allotment, so a holding you have owned for years can produce a short-term gain.
Hindu Undivided Family — a family unit recognised as a separate taxpayer with its own PAN.
A second exemption limit and slab progression. Only helps for genuinely shared family assets, not your salary.
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.
A commissioned study by an independent research agency, included in an offer document, describing market size, growth, segment split and capacity across an industry.
Often the only free source of a denominator for market share. Take the historical counting and treat the forward projections as advocacy — the report was paid for to sell shares.
Know Your Customer — the identity and address verification an intermediary must complete before it can open an account for you.
The record is registered centrally and shared between intermediaries, which is why a second broker did not ask again — and why one stale record can block fresh purchases everywhere at once.
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.
Last traded price — the price at which the most recent transaction occurred.
One trade, possibly for a single share. Not "the price", and in an illiquid stock it can be minutes stale.
A position constructed so that its outcome depends on the relationship between two instruments rather than on the direction of the market.
Neutral only while both legs are held at equal rupee exposure. Size by share count instead and you have taken a directional bet by accident.
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.
Offsetting a client’s buys and sells in the same security on the same day, so that only the net position goes to settlement.
Why most of a busy day’s turnover leaves no trace anywhere. Buy and sell the same shares before the close and nothing is delivered.
The DRHP section stating what the money raised will be used for.
“General corporate purposes” for a large share of proceeds is not a plan.
An order of which only part executed, the balance staying pending until it lapses or is cancelled.
You asked for 2,000 shares and got 640. Nothing announces it, and every calculation afterwards uses 2,000.
The deadline by which securities or funds owed on a trade must reach the clearing corporation.
The moment an obligation stops being a number on a contract note. Shares not there by then are a shortage, whatever the holding statement shows.
Marking securities as collateral, typically for margin.
Pledged shares are encumbered, which complicates recovery if a broker fails.
Where new securities are issued and money flows from investors to the issuing company.
The showroom. New shares, sold for the first time.
The founder, family and entities defined as controlling a listed company under SEBI regulations.
In India a succession is simultaneously a management change and a transfer of a controlling shareholding.
The Reserve Bank of India — the central bank, which sets the policy rate through its Monetary Policy Committee and manages the currency.
Its rate decisions reach every share price through the discount rate. That is how a quality growth stock falls 30% in a hiking cycle with nothing at all wrong at the company.
Revenue that arrives again in the next period without having to be re-won, such as subscriptions, maintenance contracts or annuity-like service income.
It makes earnings predictable, which is most of why the market pays more for it. Establish what share of the top line genuinely recurs before applying the label to the whole company.
Today’s volume divided by the average volume of the last 20 sessions.
The only honest way to judge volume — absolute share counts mean nothing across stocks.
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.
The composition of what was sold — across products, variants, geographies or channels — which changes revenue and margin without any change in total units.
Watch the share of revenue against the share of units. When those two move apart, mix is doing the work rather than volume or price.
A statutory scheme under which a failing bank’s assets and liabilities are taken over by a stronger institution.
The route that has generally protected depositors above the insured limit, because deposits are liabilities the acquirer assumes. Shareholders in the same transaction are frequently written down to nothing.
The administrative grouping of listed companies into industries by an index provider or exchange.
A label, not an economic statement. Two companies in one sector can share nothing but the word.
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 resolution requiring at least 75% of votes cast in favour, used for the more consequential decisions.
Share issues, changes to the articles and much of managerial remuneration need one. The higher bar is where minority votes matter most.
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.
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.
Tax Collected at Source — tax taken on LRS remittances above a threshold, recoverable against your liability when you file.
Less a cost than a cash-flow delay: the money comes back at filing but is blocked until then. Nothing to do with the IT company that shares the initials.
How long money can stay invested before it is needed.
It determines the sensible equity share and almost nothing else does. Twenty years is still a long horizon.
Time Price Opportunity — one unit of time spent at one price, the building block of Market Profile.
Counting minutes at a price instead of shares traded there.
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.