closing bell

Te bell that rings to signal that trading has ended. An actual, literal moment of reckoning, when margin calls must be paid.
When the closing bell rang, he was ruined. All of his reserves were wiped out and he owed $6 million on margin.
by Abu Yahya May 5, 2010
mugGet the closing bellmug.

liquidity crisis

(ECONOMICS) An emergency in which a financial or government institution cannot meet its current obligations in an acceptable form of payment. Different from insolvency, which is where that same institution cannot be realistically expected to EVER meet its obligations.

A good example of the difference is a run on a bank, especially in the days before deposit insurance. A perfectly honest, well-run bank could have all of its books in order, and be paying its depositors in legal tender, when suddenly a panic strikes and everyone wants their deposits all at once. This is necessarily impossible, and forces the bank's officers to default on their debts.

Often, the bank could resume operation later when it was established that it held performing assets greater than deposits. More recently, liquidity crises have been a problem suffered by countries facing capital flight
In 1997, several countries in East Asia were stricken with a liquidity crisis. In many cases, such as Malaysia, the panicked response had nothing whatever to do with fundamentals; it was sheer herd mentality.
by Abu Yahya May 5, 2010
mugGet the liquidity crisismug.

equity derivative

(FINANCE) a financial derivative whose underlying asset is a stock. The simplest kinds include the equity swap and the option.

As opposed to currency derivatives, interest rate derivatives, commodity derivatives, and so on. An equity swap typically involves an "equity side" of the transaction AND something else, like interest rates or oil prices.

Equity derivatives can be written on indices (e.g., the S&P 500, the FTSE-100, NASDAQ) as well as on stocks. In fact, they are often bought "out of the money" by mutual fund managers as insurance against a catastrophic decline in the fund value.
One other reason that poison pills are back in favor is the growth of synthetic equity derivative swap transactions, where a “short party” agrees to pay a “long party” the cash flows from a particular amount of a target company’s stock. In exchange, the long party agrees to pay a fee and to cover any decrease in the market value of the stock ... Through such transactions, a long party can suddenly become a significant stockholder of a target company without warning.

--Dykema Gossett & Andrew H. Connor "The poison pill resurgence," Lexology (15 March 2010)
by Abu Yahya April 15, 2010
mugGet the equity derivativemug.

portfolio investment

Capital investment in a foreign country that takes the form of purchases of securities (stocks, bonds, and commercial paper) in the companies of firms based in that country. Contrast to FDI.
Portfolio investment accounts for a large share of any country's capital accounts.
by abu yahya September 28, 2008
mugGet the portfolio investmentmug.

short position

(FINANCE) a situation in which an investor owns financial instruments (shares, bonds, financial derivatives, etc.) that will make the most money IF some other thing declines in value.

Therefore, one always has to take a short position on something in particular. A short position on gold means the investor expects gold to decline in value in the near future, and has bought various things to make money if it does.

Some ways to take a short position on X include:

(1) buying a put option on X

(2) writing a call option on X

(3) borrowing X and selling it (shorting a stock)

#3 is the classical way to take a short position. It was dangerous because a skillful trader could squeeze the shorts using a corner.
BILL: I guess you took a bath when the stock market tanked, huh?

ANA: Nope. I took a short position on all of the nine largest banks. Did rather well, thank you very much.

BIL: Sweet!
by Abu Yahya April 5, 2010
mugGet the short positionmug.

private equity fund

(FINANCE) business entity formed to pool money provided by investors in order to buy majority stakes in existing companies. A common practice is to then "take the company private," so that it no longer has shares trading on the stock market. The company is then restructured, so that it has entirely different management practices, or a different business strategy. Afterward, the PE fund will most likely re-sell the company on the stock market in a sponsored IPO.

Private equity funds are usually limited liability partnerships (LLPs), which gives them special privileges of nondisclosure; most are organized in the State of Delaware. PEF's have sponsors, or "principals," who are responsible for organizing the fund and recruiting other investors.

Among the best-known PE funds are Blackstone Group*, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR)*, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners*, Carlyle Group, Permira, Apollo Management, Providence Equity, TPG Capital, Warburg Pincus, and Cerberus. Companies marked with an asterisk (*) are publically listed corporations; most PE funds are pivately managed. The selection above includes the largest ones by capital under management.
The private equity fund first appeared in the 1970's as a result of changes to ERISA. Institutional investors, usually pension funds, could be legal partners in an LLP; they also required a place to park assets with very high rates of return.

In the USA, PE funds have long been sinecures for the most powerful political dynasties: the Rockefellers, the Romneys, the Bushes, and others.
by Abu Yahya September 1, 2010
mugGet the private equity fundmug.

complex number

(MATHEMATICS) a number consisting of a real number and an imaginary number; imaginary numbers are multiples of the square root of -1.
You need a complex number to express the value of an electromagnetic wave function.
by Abu Yahya April 23, 2010
mugGet the complex numbermug.

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