Stock Basics
This financial document shows everything a company owns and everything it owes at a given point in time.
Balance Sheet
This type of order lets you set the exact price you want to buy or sell a stock at, rather than taking whatever price the market gives you.
Limit Order
This popular retirement account lets you invest after-tax dollars today so that all your gains and withdrawals in retirement are completely tax-free.
Roth IRA
This digital currency, launched in 2009 by an anonymous creator, was the first cryptocurrency and is now treated by many investors as a store of value similar to gold.
Bitcoin (BTC)
A company owes a lot of money compared to what its owners have invested. This makes the company look riskier to investors.
Debt-to-Equity Ratio
When a company uses its own cash to buy back its shares from investors, this is what the move is called.
Stock Buyback
This is the practice of betting that a stock's price will go down by borrowing shares, selling them, and hoping to buy them back cheaper later.
Short Selling
This broad category of physical goods — including gold, oil, and wheat — is something investors sometimes buy to protect against inflation.
Commodities
This tariff-heavy trade dispute between the U.S. and ____, which escalated significantly in 2018 and again in 2025, rattled global markets and disrupted supply chains worldwide.
U.S. -- China Trade War
Apps like Venmo or Cash App let people send money without going to a bank. Companies like this are part of what industry?
Financial Technology (FinTech)
This percentage tells you how much of every dollar in sales a company actually keeps as profit.
Profit Margins
This is the nickname for the small group of massive tech companies — like Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia — that make up an outsized portion of the S&P 500's total value.
At what age can you withdraw from a 401(k) or a Roth IRA
401(k)--55 Years Old
Roth IRA--59 1/2 Years Old
This major U.S. bank in California collapsed in 2023 after rising interest rates caused losses in its bond portfolio and panicked customers rushed to withdraw their money all at once.
Silicon Valley Bank
Instead of trying to pick winning stocks, an investor buys a fund that tracks the whole market because they believe it’s safer and easier. What is this strategy called?
Index Investing
If a stock appears to be priced lower than what the company is actually worth, investors call it this.
Undervalued
This investing style focuses on finding stocks that are trading for less than they are truly worth and holding them until the market catches up.
Value Investing
After the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates near zero for years and purchased massive amounts of bonds to stimulate the economy — a policy known by this name.
Quantitative easing/QE
When inflation gets too high, the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates to make borrowing more expensive and slow spending. What is this action called?
Raising Rates/Monetary Tightening
This is the name for the cash flow a company generates from its core business operations, before accounting for investments or financing.
This basic financial principle explains why getting $1,000 today is better than getting $1,000 five years from now.
Time Value of Money
If the prices of groceries, gas, and clothes all go up over time, economists use a number to track how fast those prices are rising. What is this called?
Consumer Price Index (CPI)