Vocabulary

• Asset – Something valuable that an entity owns, benefits from, or has use of, in generating income.
• Bankruptcy – A legal proceeding involving a person or business that is unable to repay their outstanding debts.
• Bond – A fixed income instrument representing a loan made by an investor to a borrower.
• Budget – An estimation of revenue and expenses over a specified future period of time.
• Capital – Wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization or available for a purpose such as starting a company or investing.
• Credit – The ability of a customer to obtain goods or services before payment, based on the trust that payment will be made in the future.
• Debt – An amount of money borrowed by one party from another.
• Dividend – A distribution of a portion of a company's earnings, decided by the board of directors, to a class of its shareholders.
• Equity – Ownership interest in a corporation in the form of stock or shares.
• Finance – The management of large amounts of money, especially by governments or large companies.
• Gross Income – The total income from all sources before taxes and other deductions.
• Hedge Fund – An offshore investment fund, typically formed as a private limited partnership, that engages in speculation using credit or borrowed capital.
• Inflation – The rate at which the general level of prices for goods and services is rising, and subsequently, purchasing power is falling.
• Interest Rate – The proportion of a loan that is charged as interest to the borrower, typically expressed as an annual percentage of the loan outstanding.
• Investment – The action or process of investing money for profit or material result.
• Liability – A company's legal financial debts or obligations that arise during the course of business operations.
• Margin – Borrowed money that is used to purchase securities.
• Net Income – A company's total earnings, also called net profit.
• Option – A financial derivative that represents a contract sold by one party to another.
• Pension – A regular payment made during a person's retirement from an investment fund to which that person or their employer has contributed during their working life.
• Portfolio – A range of investments held by a person or organization.
• Profit – A financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.
• Recession – A significant decline in economic activity that lasts more than a few months.
• ROI (Return on Investment) – A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.
• Savings Account – A deposit account held at a bank or other financial institution that provides principal security and a modest interest rate.
• Stock Market – A public market for the trading of company stock and derivatives of company stock at an agreed price.
• Tax – A compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits, or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.
• Unemployment – The state of being unemployed, especially involuntarily.
• Venture Capital – Capital invested in a project in which there is a substantial element of risk, typically a new or expanding business.
• Wealth – An abundance of valuable possessions or money.
• Yield – The income return on an investment, such as the interest or dividends received from holding a particular security.
• Zakat – A form of alms-giving treated in Islam as a religious obligation or tax, which, by Quranic ranking, is next after prayer in importance.
• Zero-Sum Game – A situation in which one person's gain is equivalent to another's loss, so the net change in wealth or benefit is zero.
• Leverage – The use of borrowed money to increase the potential return of an investment.
• Liquidity – The availability of liquid assets to a market or company.
• Mutual Fund – An investment program funded by shareholders that trades in diversified holdings and is professionally managed.
• Real Estate – Property consisting of land or buildings.
• Risk Management – The forecasting and evaluation of financial risks together with the identification of procedures to avoid or minimize their impact.
• Securities – All of the investments, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, and commodities, that a person or company owns.
• Tariff – A tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports.
• Trading – The action or activity of buying, selling, or exchanging goods or services.
• Underwriting – The process by which investment bankers raise investment capital from investors on behalf of corporations and governments that are issuing securities.
• Valuation – The process of determining the current worth of an asset or a company.
• Volatility – A statistical measure of the dispersion of returns for a given security or market index.
• Wage – A fixed regular payment earned for work or services, typically paid on a daily or weekly basis.
• Insurance – A contract, represented by a policy, in which an individual or entity receives financial protection or reimbursement against losses from an insurance company.
• Forex (Foreign Exchange) – The market in which currencies are traded.
• Derivative – A security with a price that is dependent upon or derived from one or more underlying assets.
• Capital Gain – A rise in the value of a capital asset (investment or real estate) that gives it a higher worth than the purchase price.
• Fiscal Policy – The use of government revenue collection (taxation) and expenditure (spending) to influence a country's economy.