Glossary of market terms

Glossary

Every word the Academy defines, from A to Z, in one line each.

620 terms

#

10-K / 10-Q / 8-K: US filings: the yearly report, the quarterly report, and a notice of an important event (due within four business days).
10b5-1 plan: a trading plan an insider sets up in advance so later trades follow a schedule.
13D / 13G: filings by someone who crossed 5% ownership of a company.
13F: the quarterly holdings report US investment managers with at least 100 million dollars in US securities must file within 45 days.
20-F / 6-K: the annual / current reports of foreign companies listed in the US.
25-delta skew: implied vol of the 25-delta put minus that of the 25-delta call.
2s10s: the 10-year yield minus the 2-year yield, in basis points; the classic measure of curve slope.
52-week high / low: the highest / lowest price of the past year.
8-K item: the numbered category of an event in an 8-K, like 2.02 results or 5.02 executive changes.

A

accrued interest: coupon earned since the last payment, paid by the buyer to the seller.
acquirer / target: the company buying / the company being bought.
active return: your return minus the benchmark's return.
actual / forecast / prior: a release's published number / the consensus forecast / the previous release.
adjusted EPS: EPS that leaves out items like one-off charges; usually what analysts forecast.
adverse event: a health problem that happened while a drug or device was used; not proof it caused it.
after-hours: trading allowed after the regular session close; few participants, thin volume.
agent (AI agent): an AI that can take actions in the app, not just answer (AGENT).
AI screener: turns a sentence into a list of candidate tickers with reasons (AI).
alert: a rule that notifies you when a price or event condition is met (ALRT, SA).
alpha: the average return a model (or another stock) does not explain.
alternative data: non-financial data (hiring, app ranks, web traffic...) that hints at a business's activity.
American-style / European-style: an American option can be exercised any day up to expiry, a European one only at expiry.
amount band: a range such as 15k-50k reported instead of an exact amount.
analyst (sell-side analyst): a researcher at a bank or broker who studies companies and publishes ratings, estimates and price targets.
annualized: converted to a per-year figure; a daily volatility times about 16 gives a yearly one.
annualized rate: a short-period change scaled to a yearly rate.
annualized return (CAGR): compound annual growth rate: the steady yearly return that would turn the start value into the end value over the same years.
antitrust: rules against monopolies and mergers that harm competition.
appreciate / depreciate: a currency gaining / losing value against others.
APR: a simple yearly rate, not compounded.
argument: what a function applies to: a ticker, a list of tickers, a price.
ARR (annual recurring revenue): the yearly value of a company's subscriptions.
ask (offer): the lowest price a seller will accept right now; where you buy immediately.
asset class: the kind of instrument: equity, ETF, index, future, currency, option, bond.
asset manager: a firm that runs funds and ETFs for many savers, for a fee.
assets / liabilities: what a company owns / what it owes.
at the money (ATM): an option whose strike is about equal to today's price.
average cost: what you paid per share for a position, on average.
award (stock grant): shares or options given to an employee as pay.

B

backtest: replaying a trading rule on past data to see how it would have done.
balance sheet: what a company owns (assets) and owes (liabilities) on one date, plus the owners' share (equity).
bank reserves: cash banks hold at the central bank.
bankroll: the amount of money you size positions against.
bar: one period in a price history (a minute, a day, a week, a month) with its open, high, low, close and volume.
base / quote currency: the first / second currency in a pair; EUR/USD 1.10 means one euro costs 1.10 dollars.
basis point (bp): one hundredth of a percentage point (0.01%); rates and spreads are quoted in it: 4.00% to 4.25% is +25 bp.
beat / miss: a reported result above / below the consensus estimate.
beat and raise: results above consensus plus raised guidance.
benchmark: the index a fund or manager is compared with.
benchmark index: the standard index used to measure a market, like the S&P 500 or the Nikkei 225.
beta: how much a stock tends to move for each 1% move of a benchmark index; equals correlation times the ratio of the two volatilities, measured on past data.
bid: the highest price a buyer is willing to pay right now; where you sell immediately.
bid-to-cover: total bids in an auction divided by the amount sold.
block (trade): one large trade at a single price, often negotiated.
blockchain: a shared ledger kept by many computers that records who owns which coins.
BMO / AMC: before market open / after market close: when a company releases its results.
boilerplate: standard text repeated with little real meaning.
bond: a loan that investors can buy and sell; the borrower pays interest and repays at maturity.
breadth: how many stocks (or basket members) take part in a move.
breakeven: the underlying price at which a position makes zero profit; for a bought call at expiry, strike plus premium.
breakeven inflation: nominal yield minus real yield at the same maturity; a market price, not a forecast.
breaking news: urgent news flagged as it happens.
broker: the firm that sends your orders to the market and holds your account.
broker connection: a link that lets Gloom read your brokerage account and sync its positions.
Buffett indicator: total stock market value divided by GDP.
build / draw: a weekly increase / decrease in inventories.
build-out: the construction of physical capacity: factories, data centers, power.
bull call spread: buy a call and sell a higher-strike call: capped cost, capped profit.
buy side: the firms that invest money and buy assets with it: asset managers, pension funds, hedge funds, endowments.
buy-and-hold: buying once and never selling; the baseline every rule is compared with.
buyback: a company buying its own shares, which shrinks the share count and equity.

C

call option (call): the right to buy the underlying at the strike before expiry.
callable bond: a bond the issuer may repay early.
cap-weighted: each member counts in proportion to its market value.
capacity use (utilization): the share of factory capacity being used.
CAPE (Shiller P/E): price divided by ten years of average inflation-adjusted earnings.
capex (capital expenditure): money spent on long-lasting things like equipment and buildings.
carry trade: borrowing in a low-rate currency to invest in a high-rate one.
cash flow statement: where cash came from and went in a period: operating, investing, financing.
cashtag: a ticker written with a dollar sign in a social post, like $NVDA.
catalyst: a dated event that can move a price or test a thesis (results, a court ruling, a drug approval).
CDS index: one contract insuring a basket of many borrowers (CDX, iTraxx).
ceiling (contract): the maximum a contract can be worth over its life.
central bank: the public institution that manages a country's money and sets its policy rate.
CEO / CFO: chief executive officer / chief financial officer.
CEO pay ratio: CEO pay divided by the median employee's pay.
CFTC: the US regulator of futures and swaps.
changelog: the list of changes in each version of the app (CHG).
channel (chat): a public chat room on one topic.
CIK: the SEC's ID number for a company, fund or person that files.
circulating supply: the coins currently in circulation, used for crypto market cap.
citation: a link to the source an answer used.
clean / dirty price: a bond's quoted price / the quoted price plus accrued interest.
clearing: the step right after a trade where details are confirmed and obligations computed; a clearing house steps between buyer and seller and guarantees both.
clearing house (central counterparty): the organization that becomes buyer to every seller and seller to every buyer, so one side's failure does not hit the other.
CLI (command-line interface): a program you run by typing commands in a shell; Gloom's is gloomberb.
clinical trial: a study testing a drug or device in people, registered publicly.
close (closing price): the last price of the regular session; the daily reference number for charts and statistics.
coin / token: a digital asset recorded on a blockchain.
collateral: what you pledge so a lender can be repaid if you cannot pay; in a margin account, your shares.
command bar: the box where you type a function code and what it applies to, like DES AAPL; Ctrl+P opens it.
comment letter: SEC staff's questions about a company's filings (UPLOAD), answered by the company (CORRESP).
commercial / noncommercial: futures traders hedging a real business / speculators.
Commitments of Traders (COT): the CFTC's weekly report of futures positions by trader class, Tuesday data out Friday.
commodity: a raw material traded in standard units: oil, gas, metals, grains.
compensation actually paid (CAP): executive pay including the change in value of stock awards.
compounding: each period's gain earns its own gain the next period, so returns multiply: +10% twice is +21%, not +20%.
consensus: the average of analysts' estimates for a number, such as next quarter's profit per share; the market's written-down guess.
consolidated tape: the single merged stream of all US trades and best quotes; Tape A (NYSE-listed), B (other exchanges), C (Nasdaq-listed).
contango / backwardation (futures): later contract months priced higher / lower than nearer ones.
contango / backwardation (volatility): a volatility curve sloping up (calm) / down (stress now).
contract month: the month in which a futures contract ends.
contract multiplier: the number of shares one option contract covers, usually 100.
contrarian: doing the opposite of the crowd's mood.
contribution (to inflation): a component's weight times its price change: points of the total it explains.
convexity: the curvature of a bond's price-yield relationship.
conviction: how sure you are about a thesis.
core inflation: inflation without food and energy, the two most jumpy parts.
corporate action: a company event that affects its shares: dividend, split, buyback, merger.
corporate bond: a bond issued by a company.
correlation: a number from -1 to +1 saying how often two things move in the same direction; it says nothing about the size of the moves.
correlation matrix: a table of correlations for every pair in a basket.
cost of carry: storage, insurance and financing costs of holding a commodity until later.
coupon: a bond's fixed yearly interest, as a percentage of its principal.
covenant: a promise a borrower makes to lenders, such as a maximum leverage.
covered call: own the stock and sell a call on it to collect premium.
covered universe: the set of listings a dataset or screener has data for.
CPI (consumer price index): a monthly measure of the price of a typical household basket of goods and services.
credit agreement / indenture: the legal document of a loan / of a bond.
credit default swap (CDS): a contract that pays out if a borrower defaults, in exchange for a yearly fee; insurance on a borrower.
credit event: a default-type event (bankruptcy, failure to pay...) that triggers a CDS payout.
credit rating: a grade of how safe a borrower is, from AAA down.
credit spread: the extra yield a borrower pays over a government bond of the same maturity, for the risk of default.
criterion: one rule in a screen: a field, a comparison and a value.
cross rate: an exchange rate between two non-dollar currencies, computed through the dollar.
crowding: many funds owning or buying the same stock.
CSV: comma-separated values: rows of text that a spreadsheet opens.
cumulative return: a bar's close against the close just before the window started.
Cushing: the Oklahoma hub where WTI crude futures are delivered.
custodian: a firm that holds assets safely on behalf of their owner.
custom view: your own table built from the rows of another function, with your columns, filter and sort (VIEW).
CVR (contingent value right): a payment to target shareholders only if a later condition is met.

D

daily return: one day's percent change in price, from one close to the next.
daily short volume: the short-marked share of a day's off-exchange volume; not the same as short interest.
dark pool: a private matching system that does not display its orders.
date basis: why an event's date exists (announced, effective, deadline, completion), which tells how firm it is.
days to cover: short interest divided by average daily volume.
DCF (discounted cash flow): valuing a company as the sum of its future cash flows discounted to today.
deal spread: the gap between a takeover offer's value and the target's market price.
dealer gamma (GEX): an estimate of how much option dealers must buy or sell per 1% move to stay hedged, assuming they are long calls and short puts.
default: a borrower's failure to pay interest or principal on time.
delayed data: data shown a fixed time after it happened, like 15 minutes for US stock quotes on the free plan.
delta hedging: trading the underlying to cancel an option book's sensitivity to small price moves.
dependency (customer concentration): a link where one company relies on another for a big share of its sales; US companies must name customers above 10% of revenue.
depositary receipt: a certificate traded in one country that stands for shares of a foreign company held abroad.
depreciation: spreading the cost of equipment over its useful years; a cost that uses no cash in the year.
derivative: a contract whose value depends on the price of something else (the underlying).
desk: (in Gloom) a ready-made layout for one kind of market; (on Wall Street) a trading team inside a bank dedicated to one asset family, such as equities, volatility, rates, credit, FX or commodities.
dilution: each share owning a smaller part of the company because new shares were issued.
discount rate: the yearly rate used to discount future money; the return you require.
discounting: turning a future amount of money into its value today.
diversification: spreading money across many assets so that one bad event cannot ruin you.
dividend: cash a company pays to its shareholders out of its profit; many companies pay none.
dividend yield: yearly dividends per share divided by the share price.
DM (direct message): a private conversation with one or a few people.
DMH: during market hours: when a company releases results during the session.
docked / floating pane: a pane tiled into the layout grid / a movable window on top.
docket: the official record of a case's filings and decisions.
drawdown: the fall from the highest value reached so far, in percent.
duration: how much a bond's price moves when interest rates move; longer bonds move more.
DV01: the price change of a bond for a 1 basis point move in yield.
DXY (dollar index): the US dollar against a basket of major currencies.

E

earnings call: the public call management holds after reporting results: prepared remarks, then analyst questions.
earnings per share (EPS): a company's profit divided by its number of shares.
earnings report: a company's quarterly results (sales, profit, often a forecast), published on a set date.
EBITDA: earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization; a rough cash profit before financing.
economic calendar: the schedule of data releases and central bank events, with actual, forecast and prior.
EDGAR: the SEC's free public database of company filings.
EFFR (effective fed funds rate): the average rate banks pay each other for overnight loans of reserves.
EIA: the US Energy Information Administration, which publishes weekly oil and gas inventories.
enforcement: action by a regulator or prosecutor against a company.
engagement: the likes, views and replies a social post gets.
enterprise value (EV): market cap plus debt minus cash: the price of the whole business.
equal-weight basket: a basket where each member counts the same.
equity (book value): assets minus liabilities: the shareholders' accounting share.
equity risk premium: what stocks are expected to pay over safe bonds.
estimate: an analyst's forecast of a number, like next quarter's EPS.
estimate revision: an analyst changing an estimate up or down.
ETF (exchange-traded fund): a fund whose shares trade on an exchange all day like a stock; it need not track an index or be diversified.
EV/EBITDA: enterprise value divided by EBITDA; a valuation multiple comparable across debt levels.
EV/sales: enterprise value divided by revenue.
event contract: a contract that pays 1 dollar if an event happens and nothing if not.
evidence tier: how a supply-chain link is supported: filing, company, call, reported, unconfirmed.
ex-dividend date: the first day a buyer no longer receives the upcoming dividend; buy before it to be paid.
exchange: the organized marketplace where shares are traded and every trade is recorded; NYSE and NASDAQ in the US.
exchange rate: the price of one currency in another.
exchange ratio: the number of acquirer shares given per target share in a stock deal.
exchange suffix: the letters after a dot in a ticker that name the exchange, like .L for London or .T for Tokyo.
exercise: using the right an option gives you; most traders sell the option instead.
expected move: price x IV x the square root of (days / 365): the typical range options price.
expected return: the probability-weighted average of possible outcomes.
expected shortfall: the average loss on the days worse than the VaR level.
expense ratio: a fund's yearly fee as a percentage of the money invested.
expiry (expiration): the last day an option exists; after it the option is gone.
export control: a government limit on selling certain goods or technology abroad.

F

fallen angel: a bond cut from investment grade to high yield.
FCF yield: free cash flow divided by market cap.
FDA / EMA: the US / European medicines regulators.
fed funds futures: futures on the monthly average EFFR, priced 100 minus the rate.
Federal Reserve (Fed): the US central bank; by law it aims for maximum employment and stable prices.
FICC: fixed income, currencies and commodities: the rates, credit, FX and commodity desks taken together.
filing: a document a company or fund sends to the regulator, made public.
filing lag: the delay between the date of reported data and its publication.
first-day return: an IPO's first closing price compared with its offer price.
fiscal year: a company's own 12-month accounting year; it need not end in December.
flip level: the price where estimated net dealer gamma changes sign.
float: the shares available for public trading, excluding insiders' and other locked-up holdings.
focus: the pane that receives your keys right now; its border is highlighted.
focused pane: the pane your keys go to right now; its border is highlighted.
FOMC: the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed group that sets the policy rate.
forensic accounting: reading financial statements for warning signs.
Form 4: the SEC filing an insider must make within two business days of trading the company's shares.
forward: a privately agreed promise to buy or sell later at a price fixed today.
forward P/E: share price divided by the next year's estimated earnings per share.
foundry: a factory that manufactures chips designed by other companies.
fractional Kelly: a chosen share of the full Kelly size, like a quarter, used because guesses are uncertain.
free cash flow (FCF): operating cash flow minus capex: cash left after keeping the business running.
FRN (floating-rate note): a bond whose coupon resets with a short-term rate.
front month: the nearest active futures contract month.
full-text search: searching the words inside documents, not just titles.
function (function code, mnemonic): a screen in Gloom with a short code, like DES for a company overview or PF for your portfolio; you type the code to open it.
fund: a pot of money from many people invested in a basket of assets; each person owns a share of the pot.
fund manager: the person or company that decides what a fund buys, for a yearly fee.
funding rate: the periodic payment between longs and shorts of a perpetual future.
future (futures contract): an exchange-traded promise to buy or sell a set amount of something on a later date at a price agreed today.
futures curve: the prices of all contract months of one commodity.
FX (foreign exchange): currencies and the exchange rates between them.

G

GAAP: the official US accounting rules; GAAP figures are the ones in the statements.
gainers / losers / most active: the biggest percentage rises / falls / highest share volume of the day.
gap: when a price opens far from the previous close, with no trades in between.
GDP (gross domestic product): the value of everything a country produces in a period.
generic ballot: a poll asking which party people would vote for, without naming candidates.
Gloom account (Gloom Cloud): your free Gloom account: sync across devices, chat, phone alerts, Ask Gloom.
go-shop: a period after a deal is signed when the target may look for a better offer.
golden cross: the 50-day moving average crossing above the 200-day average.
government award: a contract or grant of public money to a company or organization.
GPU: the chip used to train and run AI models.
GPU-hour: one GPU rented for one hour.
grid operator (ISO): the organization that runs a region's high-voltage power network.
gross profit: revenue minus the direct cost of what was sold.
guidance: a company's own forecast for coming periods, usually given with its results.
guidance range / midpoint: a company's low-to-high forecast / the middle of it.

H

HBM: high-bandwidth memory, stacked next to AI chips for fast data access.
headline: the title line of a news story.
headline / core CPI: all-items inflation / inflation without food and energy.
headroom: how far a reported metric is from its covenant limit.
heatmap (treemap): rectangles sized by one value (market cap) and colored by another (daily change).
hedge fund: a private fund for wealthy or professional investors that can go short, use leverage and trade almost anything.
hedging (hedge): taking a position that reduces a risk you already have.
hedging flow: buying or selling done to stay hedged rather than to bet.
help card: a short card per function: what it answers, how to type it, its keys, how fresh its data is on Free and Pro, its Bloomberg equivalent and its docs link.
high yield (junk): bonds rated below BBB-: they pay more because the risk of default is higher.
hiking / cutting cycle: a series of central bank rate increases / decreases.
hindsight return: a price move measured after the fact, which nobody could have captured in real time.
hiring freeze: a pause in new hiring.
holdings report (NPORT-P): a fund's filing listing every position it held at a month's end.
hop: one step along a chain of company links.
hyperscaler: one of the largest cloud providers.

I

implied move: a straddle's price divided by the stock price: the size of move the option market expects.
implied path: the expected policy rate after each central bank meeting, read from futures.
implied probability: the chance of an event that a market price suggests.
implied volatility, IV: the volatility that today's option prices assume, as a yearly percentage.
importance score: a 0-100 ranking of how much a story matters, used by TOP.
in the money (ITM): an option that would be worth something if used right now: a call with strike below the price, a put with strike above it.
income statement: revenue minus costs over a period, down to net income.
index: a number computed by a rule from a list of prices; a ruler you cannot buy, like the S&P 500.
indirect bidders: auction bidders acting through dealers, often foreign institutions.
inflation: the average rise in prices over time, usually given as a yearly percentage.
initial / maintenance margin: the deposit needed to open / the minimum needed to keep a futures position.
initiation: a firm starting research coverage of a stock.
insider: an officer, director or owner of more than 10% of a company's shares.
institutional investor: a firm that invests other people's money: mutual funds, pensions, hedge funds, insurers.
interconnection queue: the public list of projects asking to connect to a power grid.
interest coverage: operating income divided by interest expense: how many times profit covers interest.
interest rate swap: an agreement to exchange fixed-rate payments for floating-rate payments.
interval return: a bar's close against the previous bar's close.
intrinsic value: what an option would be worth if used this second: price minus strike for a call, strike minus price for a put, never below zero.
inventories (stocks): how much of a commodity sits in storage.
inverted yield curve: a curve where short-term yields are above long-term yields.
investee: a company another company owns a stake in.
investment bank: a bank whose main jobs are sales, trading, research and helping companies raise money or merge.
investment grade (IG): bonds rated BBB- or better.
IORB: interest on reserve balances: what the Fed pays banks on reserves.
IPO (initial public offering): a company's first sale of shares to the public and start of trading.
ISO (intermarket sweep order): an order that takes liquidity on several venues at once.
issuer: the borrower behind a bond (or the company behind a share).
IV percentile (IVP): the share of the past year's days with implied vol below today's.
IV rank (IVR): where today's implied vol sits between its 52-week low (0) and high (100).
IV/HV: implied volatility divided by realized volatility; above 1 options look rich, below 1 cheap.

J

jobless (unemployment) claims: the weekly count of new US unemployment benefit claims.
jobs report (nonfarm payrolls): the monthly US employment release.
JSON: a structured text format that programs read easily.

K

Kelly criterion: a formula for the bet size that grows money fastest over many bets, given your win chance and payoffs.
kill condition: a fact, agreed in advance, that would make you sell.
KPI (key performance indicator): an operating number a company reports to explain its business (users, units, subscribers...).

L

language model: a program that writes text by predicting likely words; the engine of AI assistants.
large load: a big electricity consumer, such as a data center.
last price: the price of the most recent trade; history, not an offer you can trade at.
layout: a saved arrangement of panes, shown as one tab at the bottom of the screen.
leg: one option or stock line inside a multi-part position.
leverage: the size of your position divided by your own money; 2x leverage doubles both gains and losses.
leveraged ETF: a fund that aims to deliver a multiple of an index's daily move.
limit order: an order to buy at or below, or sell at or above, a price you choose; you control the price but it may never fill.
limit up / limit down: an automatic pause when a stock moves too fast.
link (pane): making a pane follow the selected ticker of a watchlist, portfolio or another pane.
liquidation: a forced close of a leveraged position whose losses used up its margin.
liquidity: how much you can buy or sell quickly without moving the price; narrow spread, big sizes, high volume.
listing: being approved to have your shares traded on a given exchange.
litigation: lawsuits between private parties.
lock-up: a period after an IPO when insiders may not sell.
locked / crossed market: best bid equal to / above the best ask, usually for a split second.
long: owning an asset; you gain if its price rises and can lose at most what you paid.
long / short gamma: a hedged option book that gains from big moves / from calm markets.
long / short vol (vega): a position that gains if implied volatility rises / falls.
long straddle: buy a call and a put at the same strike: profits from a big move either way.
long-only: a strategy that owns or holds cash, never shorts.
lookback: how far back a chart or ranking looks.

M

m/m, y/y: change over one month (month over month) / over one year (year over year).
M&A (mergers and acquisitions): companies combining or buying each other.
macro: the economy as a whole: growth, inflation, jobs and interest rates.
macro day: a day with a major scheduled economic release (CPI, jobs, FOMC).
maintenance / incurrence covenant: a covenant tested regularly / only when the company takes an action.
margin: the borrowing arrangement with your broker, and the amount of your own money you must keep in it; in futures, the deposit each side posts.
margin account: a brokerage account in which the broker lends you money against the assets you hold.
margin call: the broker's demand for more cash when your own money in a margin account falls below the minimum; if you do not pay, it sells for you.
margin debt: money borrowed to buy securities.
margin of error: the likely range around a poll's result.
mark to market: settling futures gains and losses in cash every day.
market capitalization (market cap): price per share times number of shares: the value of all the shares at today's price, before counting debt and cash.
market maker: a firm that always quotes both a bid and an ask, earning the spread and keeping the market liquid.
market order: an order to buy or sell now at the best price available; it almost always fills, at whatever the ask or bid is.
market value: shares held x current price.
maturity: the date a bond's principal is repaid.
maturity wall: a large amount of a company's debt coming due around the same time.
max drawdown: the worst drawdown over a period: the deepest hole a holder sat in.
max pain: the expiry price at which the total payout to option holders would be smallest.
median: the middle value once a list is sorted; ignores how extreme the ends are.
merger arbitrage: buying a takeover target to collect the gap to the offer price when the deal closes.
MIC (market identifier code): the standard code of a trading venue, like XNYS for the NYSE.
midpoint: halfway between the bid and the ask.
mix: each part's share of a total, such as each product's share of revenue.
modification (contract): a change to an existing contract, such as more money or time.
modified duration: the percentage price change of a bond for a 1 point change in yield.
money market: the market for borrowing and lending from overnight to one year.
moneyness: how far a strike is from the current price, often as a percentage.
month code: the letter for a futures contract month: F Jan, G Feb, H Mar, J Apr, K May, M Jun, N Jul, Q Aug, U Sep, V Oct, X Nov, Z Dec.
MOVE index: the implied volatility of US Treasury yields.
multiple: a valuation ratio such as P/E, EV/EBITDA or EV/sales.
multiple expansion / contraction: investors paying more / less for each dollar of earnings.
MW / GW: megawatt / gigawatt (1,000 MW): units of power capacity.

N

N/M (not meaningful): a ratio that cannot be read because its denominator is zero or negative.
named executive officers (NEOs): the CEO, the CFO and the next three highest-paid executives, whose pay the proxy reports.
NBBO (national best bid and offer): the highest bid and lowest ask across all US exchanges at one moment.
net income: the bottom line: profit for shareholders after every cost, interest and tax.
net position: longs minus shorts.
new high / new low: a price above / below everything earlier in the window.
news sentiment: whether a story reads positive or negative for its tickers.
non-GAAP measure: an adjusted metric outside the official accounting rules, like adjusted EBITDA.
note: free text you keep, per ticker or in the NOTE scratchpad.
notional: the size of the underlying a derivative refers to; not the money at stake.

O

obligated amount: money actually committed so far under a contract.
odd lot: a trade or order of fewer shares than one round lot (under 100 shares for most US stocks, under 40 for stocks priced $250 to $1,000).
off-exchange: trades away from exchanges, by wholesalers or in dark pools, reported to a FINRA facility.
offer price / price range: the final IPO price / the expected range before pricing.
open interest: the number of option (or futures) contracts still open after the last session.
open role (requisition): a live job posting on a company's careers site.
open-market purchase: buying shares at the market price with one's own money.
opening / closing trade: a trade that creates / ends a position.
operating income: profit from running the business, before interest and tax.
option: a contract that gives the right, not the duty, to buy or sell something at a fixed price before a deadline.
option contract: one standard listed option; in the US it covers 100 shares, so price x 100 is what you pay.
option-adjusted spread (OAS): a credit spread with the value of embedded options (like early repayment) removed.
options chain: the table of all options on one underlying: expiries by strikes, calls and puts.
options flow: the stream of notable option trades: sweeps, blocks, large premium prints.
oracle price: the reference price a venue uses for a perpetual's underlying.
order: your instruction to a broker: which ticker, buy or sell, how many, and under what condition.
OSAT: outsourced semiconductor assembly and test.
out of the money (OTM): an option that would be worth nothing if used right now.
outperform / underperform: an analyst rating meaning expected to do better / worse than the market or sector.
over the counter (OTC): traded privately between two parties instead of on an exchange.
overfitting (data mining): trying many patterns or settings and keeping the one that fits the past best by chance.
overweight / underweight (rating): an analyst rating meaning hold more / less than the stock's weight in the index.

P

P/E band: lines at fixed multiples of earnings drawn under the price chart.
P/E ratio: price divided by earnings per share: how many dollars you pay for each dollar of yearly profit.
P/S, P/B: market cap divided by revenue (sales); market cap divided by equity (book value).
pane: one rectangle on the screen that shows one function; a screen holds several.
pane menu: the list of every action a pane offers, opened with the period key.
payoff: the profit or loss of an option position at expiry, for each possible price of the underlying.
payout ratio: dividends divided by earnings.
payrolls: jobs added in a month (nonfarm payrolls).
PCE: the personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge.
peer group: a set of comparable companies in the same business.
PEG ratio: P/E divided by the earnings growth rate.
penny stock: a very low-priced stock, often thinly traded.
pension fund: a fund that invests workers' savings to pay their retirement.
percentage point: the plain difference between two percentages: a rate going from 4% to 5% rose 1 percentage point, which is 25 percent.
percentile: where a value ranks within its own history or a group, from 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest).
periodic transaction report (PTR): the filing that discloses a member of Congress's trade.
perpetual future: a futures contract with no expiry, kept near the underlying's price by funding payments.
phase 1 to 4 (clinical): the stages of testing a treatment: safety, effect, large confirmation, after approval.
physical delivery / cash settlement: at expiry the goods change hands / only the price difference is paid.
pillar: a fact that must stay true for a thesis to work.
pinning: a price sticking near a large open-interest strike at expiry.
plugin: an add-on that brings new functions to Gloom; managed in PL.
policy rate: the short-term interest rate a central bank sets; other rates build on it.
poll: a survey of a sample of people, generalized to a population.
polling average: a combination of many polls to reduce noise.
portfolio: a list of what you own, with how many units and what you paid.
position: how much of one thing you hold in one portfolio.
PPI: the producer price index: prices businesses receive.
prediction market: a market trading contracts on whether events happen.
premarket: trading allowed before the regular session; few participants, thin volume.
premium: the price of an option, paid up front by the buyer to the seller; quoted per share.
press wire: a service that distributes companies' official announcements to many outlets.
preview (Pro preview): the first rows of a Pro dataset shown on the free plan, usually three per section.
price: the last amount a buyer and a seller agreed on; nobody sets it, a trade reveals it.
price return: the return from the price change only, without dividends.
price target: the price an analyst expects a stock to reach, usually within 12 months; an estimate, not a promise.
priced in: already expected by the market, so already reflected in the price.
priced-in growth: the growth rate the current price assumes.
primary listing: the listing on a company's home exchange.
primary source: the original document behind a story: a filing, a press release, a data release.
prime broker: the part of a bank that serves hedge funds: lends them cash and shares, holds their assets and handles their trades.
principal (face value, par): the amount a bond borrows and repays at maturity.
print: one reported trade: time, price, size and venue.
Pro: Gloom's paid plan: real-time US prices and news and the full research datasets; 7-day free trial.
profit factor: total gains of winning trades divided by total losses of losing trades.
prospectus: a fund's (or a new issue's) legal document: objective, strategy, risks and fees.
protection buyer / seller: in a CDS, the side paying the premium / the side paying out on default.
proxy statement (DEF 14A): the document sent to shareholders before the annual meeting: votes, board, executive pay.
public company: a company whose shares anyone can buy and sell on an exchange.
published layout: a layout shared as a link that anyone can open; private data stays local.
put option (put): the right to sell the underlying at the strike before expiry; often used as insurance.
put/call ratio: put volume (or open interest) divided by call volume.

Q

quote: the current set of numbers for a stock: last price, bid, ask, spread and volume.

R

R² (R-squared): the share of one series' variation explained by another, from 0 to 1; the correlation squared.
rate differential: the gap between two countries' interest rates.
rating (analyst rating): an analyst's verdict on a stock: buy, hold, sell, or the firm's own words for them (Overweight, Outperform, Neutral).
rating drift: a change in an app's average star rating over time.
ratio line: one price divided by another over time; rising means the first is beating the second.
re-arm: set a fired alert to watch again.
read-only: able to read data but not change anything or trade.
real GDP: GDP after removing inflation.
real yield: a yield after inflation, from inflation-protected bonds.
real-time: shown as it happens.
realized (historical) volatility, HV: how much a price actually moved: the standard deviation of daily returns, scaled to a year.
realized move: the actual move from the close before a report to the first close after it.
rebase (normalize): restart several series at the same value (0% or 100) on the same date so they compare.
recall (product): a firm withdrawing or correcting a product, classified by seriousness.
receivables: money customers owe for sales already made.
recession: a broad fall in economic activity; a common rule of thumb is two quarters in a row of shrinking GDP.
recovery rate: the share of value creditors get back after a default.
red flag / green flag: a fact that may signal a problem / a strength in a company's numbers.
refinance: borrow new money to repay old debt.
Reg FD: the US rule that a company must share important news with everyone at the same time.
registered / likely voters: people registered to vote / screened as likely to vote.
regression: fitting the best straight line through a cloud of points.
regulator: a public body that writes and enforces market rules; in the US the SEC, the CFTC, FINRA and the bank supervisors.
relative performance: how one return compares with another over the same window.
relative strength: a group's or stock's performance compared with the market.
relative valuation: judging a price by comparing its multiples with peers'.
repo: a short loan backed by bonds: sell a bond and agree to buy it back later.
resolution rules: the exact wording that decides how an event contract settles.
restatement: a company correcting financial statements it already published.
return: how much something gained or lost compared with what it cost: (end value - start value) / start value, in percent.
revenue: a company's total sales in a period, before costs.
revenue recognition: the accounting rules for when a sale counts as revenue.
reverse DCF: solving for the growth rate that today's value implies.
reverse repo (RRP): cash that money funds park at the Fed overnight.
revision: a change to a previously published number.
rich / cheap (volatility): implied vol high / low against the stock's own history.
risk: how much, and how badly, results can differ from what you hoped; measured with volatility, drawdown, correlation and beta.
risk factor: a risk a company lists in Item 1A of its annual report.
ROA (return on assets): net income divided by average total assets.
ROE (return on equity): net income divided by average equity.
ROIC (return on invested capital): after-tax operating profit divided by equity plus debt.
roll / roll yield: replacing an expiring futures contract with a later one / the gain or loss from doing so.
rolling correlation: correlation recomputed over a moving window.
rolling window: the last N sessions, recomputed every day.
rotation: money moving from one group of stocks to another.
round lot: the standard block of shares: 100 for most US stocks, 40, 10 or 1 for stocks priced above $250; US quote sizes are whole multiples of it, counted in shares.
rule of 16: daily move is about yearly volatility divided by 16 (the square root of 252 trading days).
rule of 72: 72 divided by a yearly growth rate is roughly the number of years needed to double.

S

S-1: the registration statement for a new share offering, such as an IPO.
S&P 500: an index of about 500 large US companies weighted by market cap.
safe haven: an asset or currency investors buy in panics (dollar, yen, Swiss franc, gold).
same-store sales: sales growth in shops open at least a year, excluding new shops.
saved search: a stored query that can alert you to new matches.
say-on-pay: the shareholder vote approving or rejecting the executive pay plan.
scenario (exposure): a hypothetical shock used to test how exposed holdings are.
screen (stock screen): a filter that keeps only the stocks meeting all your criteria.
seasonal adjustment: removing regular calendar patterns from a data series.
seasonality: a pattern that repeats with the calendar.
SEC: the US Securities and Exchange Commission: the regulator for stocks, bonds, funds and the disclosures companies must file.
sector: a group of companies in the same kind of business.
secured debt: debt backed by specific assets.
segment: a part of a company that management runs and reports separately.
sell side: the banks and brokers that sell research, trading and access to markets to the buy side.
sentiment: how optimistic or fearful investors feel.
SEP (dot plot): the Fed's quarterly Summary of Economic Projections, including officials' expected rate path.
session (regular session): the main trading hours of an exchange; 9:30 am to 4:00 pm New York time for the big US exchanges.
settlement: the final swap of a trade: the cash goes one way, the securities the other.
settlement price: the official daily price of a futures contract, used for margin.
share: one unit of stock, one slice of ownership in a company.
share class: one of several kinds of shares of the same company, like GOOGL and GOOG.
shareholder: someone who owns at least one share of a company.
shares outstanding: all the shares a company has issued and not bought back.
Sharpe ratio: return above a safe cash rate divided by volatility: reward per unit of bumpiness.
shell: your computer's text window where you type commands.
shelter: rent and the rental value of owned homes in the CPI.
short: borrowing an asset and selling it, to buy it back later; you gain if the price falls and losses have no ceiling.
short interest: shares sold short and not yet bought back, counted twice a month in the US.
short squeeze: a rising price forcing short sellers to buy back, which pushes the price higher.
size: the number of shares behind a bid or an ask; for US stocks always a whole number of round lots.
SKEW index: a measure of how expensive far out-of-the-money S&P 500 puts are.
small sample: too few observations to tell a real pattern from luck.
smile / skew: implied volatility across strikes for one expiry; skew is its tilt (puts usually richer for stocks).
SOFR: the secured overnight financing rate: the cost of overnight repo loans backed by Treasuries.
sovereign CDS: a credit default swap on a country's debt.
SPAC: a listed shell company that raises cash to buy a private business later.
sparkline: a tiny chart inside a table cell.
special dividend: a one-off extra dividend outside the regular schedule.
sponsor (trial): the company or institution running a clinical trial.
spot price: the price for delivery now.
SPR: the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the government's emergency oil stock.
spread: ask minus bid; the cost of trading immediately, paid on each round trip.
stablecoin: a coin designed to stay worth 1 dollar, usually backed by dollar assets.
stale: too old for its purpose; a 15-minute-old quote is stale for trading but fine for research.
stance: a score from -1 (bearish) to +1 (bullish) for a post's wording.
standard deviation: a standard way to compute how far numbers typically sit from their average.
steepening / flattening: the gap between long and short yields widens / narrows.
sticky inflation: price increases that fade slowly, often in services.
stock: the general word for ownership slices of a company; "Nvidia stock".
STOCK Act: the 2012 US law requiring members of Congress to disclose trades within 45 days.
stock split: cutting each share into several smaller ones; total value unchanged.
stop order: an order that becomes a market order once the price touches your stop price; the stop is a trigger, not a guaranteed sale price.
straddle: a call plus a put at the same strike; it gains on a big move in either direction.
strategy (option spread): a position combining several option legs.
stress test: a what-if calculation of a portfolio's change under a chosen shock (index fall, rate rise, volatility jump).
strike (strike price): the fixed price written in an option contract.
supplier / customer: a company that sells to another / the company that buys from it.
supply chain: the network of suppliers and customers around a company.
surprise: the gap between a reported result and the consensus estimate.
swap: an agreement to exchange two streams of payments over time.
sweep: an order filled across several exchanges at once, taking available prices.
sync: reading a source again and updating your copy, like broker positions.

T

T+1: settlement one business day after the trade date; the standard for US stocks since May 2024.
tail / stop-through: an auction clearing at a higher / lower yield than the market expected.
target range (fed funds): the range the Fed sets for the overnight rate between banks.
team: a private group in Gloom that shares a chat, layouts, lists, notes, theses and views.
tender offer: an offer to buy shares directly from shareholders at a set price.
tenor: the time left until a bond or contract matures, like 2Y or 10Y.
term slope: short-dated implied vol minus longer-dated implied vol.
term structure (volatility): at-the-money implied vol across expiries.
terminal value: the value of all cash flows after a model's forecast years.
TGA (Treasury General Account): the US Treasury's cash account at the Fed.
theme (basket): a story that cuts across sectors, tracked by a basket of stocks.
thesis: a written, checkable reason for holding a position: instruments, pillars, kill conditions, catalysts.
tick: the smallest price step of a contract.
ticker (symbol): the short code an exchange assigns to a listed thing, like NVDA or SPY.
time value: premium minus intrinsic value: what you pay for the chance of a favourable move before expiry; zero at expiry.
TIPS: Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities: their principal grows with inflation.
Tobin's Q: market value divided by the replacement value of assets.
tone (sentiment score): a score of how upbeat or downbeat a text's wording is.
top chart: an app store's ranking of apps for one country and category.
topic code: a label grouping news stories by subject (M&A, central banks, energy...).
total return: the price change plus any dividends or payouts received, as a percentage of the start value.
tracking error: how much a portfolio's returns wander from its benchmark's, as a yearly volatility.
trade (fill, execution): what happens when a buy order and a sell order meet at a price.
trading halt: a pause in one stock's trading, declared by its listing exchange.
trailing / forward yield: a yield based on the last twelve months' payments / on the latest rate continuing.
trailing EPS: earnings per share over the last twelve months.
transcript: the written text of a call, with who said what.
Treasuries (bills, notes, bonds): US government debt: bills up to 1 year, notes 2 to 10 years, bonds 20 to 30 years.
Treasury auction: the sale of new US government debt to bidders on a published calendar.
Treasury bill: US government debt of one year or less, sold at a discount.
TTM (trailing twelve months): the last four quarters added up.

U

underlying: the stock, ETF or index an option is about.
underwriter: the bank that organizes and sells a share or bond issue.
unemployment rate: the share of people who want a job and do not have one.
unrealized gain: a paper gain on something not yet sold.
unrealized P&L: profit or loss on paper, on positions you have not sold.
up % (hit rate): the share of periods (or trades) with a positive result.
upgrade / downgrade: an analyst rating moving up / down a level.
upside (to target): the average price target divided by the current price, minus 1.
UTC: the reference time zone shown on many screens; New York is 4 or 5 hours behind it.

V

VaR (value at risk): a loss level you should stay under on most days, e.g. 95 days out of 100.
venue: where a trade or quote happened: an exchange or off-exchange.
vesting: the moment granted shares become the employee's to keep.
VIX: the 30-day implied volatility of the S&P 500, computed by the exchange that created it from index option prices.
vol crush: the drop in implied volatility right after an expected event such as earnings.
vol desk (equity derivatives desk): the bank team that makes markets in options and manages volatility risk.
volatility: the size of a typical price move, computed as the standard deviation of returns and usually shown per year; it counts rises and falls alike.
volatility cone: the min, mean, median and max realized vol for each window length over a lookback, with today's values.
volatility risk premium: the usual gap of implied volatility over realized volatility, earned by option sellers.
volatility surface: implied volatility by strike (or delta) and expiry, as a sheet.
volume: the number of shares traded so far in the session.
volume vs average (relative volume): today's volume divided by the usual daily volume; above 1 means busier than usual.
VVIX: the volatility of the VIX index itself.
VWAP (volume-weighted average price): the average price of trades where bigger trades count more; restarts each session.

W

watchlist: a list of tickers you follow, whether or not you own them.
weight: one position's share of the portfolio's total value.
wholesaler: a large trading firm that fills brokers' customer orders off-exchange.
widening / tightening (spreads): credit spreads rising / falling.
writer (option seller): the person who sells an option, collects the premium and must deliver if the buyer exercises.

Y

yield: the yearly return of a bond bought at today's price and held to maturity; moves opposite to price.
yield curve: a government's yields lined up from short to long maturity.
YoY (year over year): compared with the same period a year earlier.
YTD (year to date): from the last close of the previous year to now.

Z

z-score: how many standard deviations a value sits above (or below) its usual average.

Educational material about reading market data, not investment advice.