Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to but distinct from economics, which is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Based on the scope of financial activities in financial systems, the discipline can be divided into personal, corporate, and public finance.
Passive management is an investing strategy that tracks a market-weighted index or portfolio. Passive management is most common on the equity market, where index funds track a stock market index, but it is becoming more common in other investment types, including bonds, commodities and hedge funds.
A financial market is a market in which people trade financial securities and derivatives at low transaction costs. Some of the securities include stocks and bonds, raw materials and precious metals, which are known in the financial markets as commodities.
A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks, which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include securities listed on a public stock exchange as well as stock that is only traded privately, such as shares of private companies that are sold to investors through equity crowdfunding platforms. Investments are usually made with an investment strategy in mind.
Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources to achieve later benefits". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later". From a broader viewpoint, an investment can be defined as "to tailor the pattern of expenditure and receipt of resources to optimise the desirable patterns of these flows". When expenditures and receipts are defined in terms of money, then the net monetary receipt in a time period is termed cash flow, while money received in a series of several time periods is termed cash flow stream.
Day trading is a form of speculation in securities in which a trader buys and sells a financial instrument within the same trading day, so that all positions are closed before the market closes for the trading day to avoid unmanageable risks and negative price gaps between one day's close and the next day's price at the open. Traders who trade in this capacity are generally classified as speculators. Day trading contrasts with the long-term trades underlying buy-and-hold and value investing strategies. Day trading may require fast trade execution, sometimes as fast as milli-seconds in scalping, therefore direct-access day trading software is often needed.
The Hollywood Stock Exchange, or HSX, is a web-based, multiplayer game in which players use simulated money to buy and sell "shares" of actors, directors, upcoming films, and film-related options. The game uses Virtual Specialist technology invented by HSX co-founders and creators Max Keiser and Michael R. Burns, who were awarded a U.S. patent no. 5950176 in 1999 for the invention. Claims of this patent cover trading applications for trading virtual securities using virtual currencies over a network.
Contrarian investing is an investment strategy that is characterized by purchasing and selling in contrast to the prevailing sentiment of the time.
Market timing is the strategy of making buying or selling decisions of financial assets by attempting to predict future market price movements. The prediction may be based on an outlook of market or economic conditions resulting from technical or fundamental analysis. This is an investment strategy based on the outlook for an aggregate market rather than for a particular financial asset.
Investment management is the professional asset management of various securities, including shareholdings, bonds, and other assets, such as real estate, to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of investors. Investors may be institutions, such as insurance companies, pension funds, corporations, charities, educational establishments, or private investors, either directly via investment contracts/mandates or via collective investment schemes like mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, or Real estate investment trusts.
In finance, an investment strategy is a set of rules, behaviors or procedures, designed to guide an investor's selection of an investment portfolio. Individuals have different profit objectives, and their individual skills make different tactics and strategies appropriate. Some choices involve a tradeoff between risk and return. Most investors fall somewhere in between, accepting some risk for the expectation of higher returns. Investors frequently pick investments to hedge themselves against inflation. During periods of high inflation investments such as shares tend to perform less well in real terms.
Asset allocation is the implementation of an investment strategy that attempts to balance risk versus reward by adjusting the percentage of each asset in an investment portfolio according to the investor's risk tolerance, goals and investment time frame. The focus is on the characteristics of the overall portfolio. Such a strategy contrasts with an approach that focuses on individual assets.
A stock trader or equity trader or share trader, also called a stock investor, is a person or company involved in trading equity securities and attempting to profit from the purchase and sale of those securities. Stock traders may be an investor, agent, hedger, arbitrageur, speculator, or stockbroker. Such equity trading in large publicly traded companies may be through a stock exchange. Stock shares in smaller public companies may be bought and sold in over-the-counter (OTC) markets or in some instances in equity crowdfunding platforms.
In finance, a trading strategy is a fixed plan that is designed to achieve a profitable return by going long or short in markets.
In finance, an option is a contract which conveys to its owner, the holder, the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a specific quantity of an underlying asset or instrument at a specified strike price on or before a specified date, depending on the style of the option. Options are typically acquired by purchase, as a form of compensation, or as part of a complex financial transaction. Thus, they are also a form of asset and have a valuation that may depend on a complex relationship between underlying asset price, time until expiration, market volatility, the risk-free rate of interest, and the strike price of the option. Options may be traded between private parties in over-the-counter (OTC) transactions, or they may be exchange-traded in live, public markets in the form of standardized contracts.
CAN SLIM is an acronym developed by the American stock research and education company Investor's Business Daily, intended to represents the seven characteristics that top-performing stocks often share before making their biggest price gains.
Popular Science Predictions Exchange (PPX) was an online virtual prediction market run as part of the Popular Science website. The application was designed by the same group behind the Hollywood Stock Exchange using their virtual specialist application. Users traded virtual currency, known as POP$, based on the likelihood of a certain event being realized by a given date. Stock prices would range between POP$0 and POP$100 and were intended to reflect the general confidence of the users about that event. A stock at price POP$95 would mean roughly that users believed there to be a 95% chance of the event happening. If an event was realized by the given date, the stock will pay out POP$100 per share. A stock that did not occur by the closing date was worth POP$0 per share.
FameLeague is a gamification technology platform which drives fantasy stock market web applications for sports, people and show business. Licensees can customize FameLeague to create their own fantasy market games. It was the first flagship product of Gametize, a Singapore-based startup founded by Keith Ng and Damon Widjaja. It was a simulated stock exchange and a prediction market web application with more than 100,000 registered users. FameLeague adds gaming mechanics to prediction speculations, a concept also known as gamification, though that term is not commonly used in 2009.
In finance, box office futures is a type of futures contract in which investors speculate on upcoming movies based on their predicted performance.
Wall Street Magnate is a fantasy stock-trading platform and community website. By March 2015, the platform had exceeded 60,000 monthly users. Participants are given $100,000 in simulated currency to build their fantasy stock portfolio. Stocks are traded on the platform based on data from the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ and AMEX. According to IDC, "Wall Street Magnate has woven together social elements, real-time feeds, leaderboards, and data-rich progress reports into a compelling game-like experience." Of particular note are social features derived from fantasy sports leagues that allow users to form clubs, track member progress, and compete against other clubs. Wall Street Magnate also allows its users to create competitions, compare portfolios, track investments, and communicate via instant messaging. It accounts for both dividends and stock splits in real-time, and constantly streams current financial news from a variety of media outlets. Additionally, the platform allows its members to test out thousands of new exchange-traded products including exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and debt securities such as exchange-traded notes (ETNs).
