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Investment Dictionary

16 terms explained in plain English.

Asset

Any resource with economic value that an individual or entity owns with the expectation that it will provide future benefit.

Bear Market

A market condition where prices fall 20% or more from recent highs, accompanied by widespread pessimism.

Bull Market

A market condition where prices rise or are expected to rise, accompanied by optimism and investor confidence.

Compound Interest

Interest calculated on the initial principal and also on the accumulated interest of previous periods.

Diversification

The strategy of spreading investments across various assets to reduce risk.

Dividend

A distribution of a portion of a company's earnings to its shareholders.

ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund)

A type of investment fund that holds a collection of assets and trades on stock exchanges like a stock.

Index Fund

A mutual fund or ETF designed to follow certain preset rules so that it can track a specified basket of investments.

Liquidity

The ease with which an asset can be converted into cash without affecting its market price.

Market Cap

The total value of a company's outstanding shares, calculated as share price times number of shares.

P/E Ratio

Price-to-Earnings ratio, a valuation metric comparing a company's share price to its earnings per share.

Portfolio

A collection of financial investments like stocks, bonds, ETFs, and cash.

Risk Tolerance

The degree of variability in investment returns an investor is willing to withstand.

Stock

A share in the ownership of a company, representing a claim on part of the company's assets and earnings.

Volatility

A statistical measure of the dispersion of returns for a given security or market index.

Yield

The income return on an investment, such as interest or dividends received.