Market Mechanics
This is what you do when you think your stock will continue to rise in value.
What is holding?
This word describes how "bouncy" or unpredictable a stock's price is.
What is volatility?
This famous index tracks 500 large U.S. companies.
What is the S&P 500?
Companies report these every quarter to show how much money they made.
What are earnings?
This major chipmaker faced U.S. restrictions on selling advanced processors to China.
What is Nvidia?
This term describes how much a stock's price changes from its lowest point to its highest point during the day.
What is the daily price range?
When a company releases big news, this usually happens to volatility.
What is it increases?
This type of ETF focuses on a specific industry, like tech or energy.
What is sector/a sector ETF?
This metric shows how much profit a company made per share.
What is earnings per share (EPS)?
This major energy company revealed a long‑term earnings plan that became controversial for cutting back clean‑energy efforts.
What is ExxonMobil?
This type of order lets you choose the exact price you want to buy or sell at.
What is limit order?
Owning many different stocks instead of just one helps reduce this.
What is risk, potential losses?
Instead of being actively managed, this type of fund tries to match the performance of the market benchmark rather than beat it.
What is a passive fund?
Including a word for shock, this term describes when a company's results are higher or lower than analysts predicted.
What is an earnings surprise?
A company reports a weak quarter, but the CEO announces major cost cuts and a plan to improve efficiency, attracting this type of investor.
Who are long-term investors/value investors?
This term describes the total number of shares traded during the day, often used to show how active a stock is.
What is trading volume?
This type of event- such as earnings, economic reports, or major announcements- often cause volatility to rise.
What is a catalyst?
A type of fraction, this term tells you how much a fund charges each year to manage your money.
What is the expense ratio/expense percentage?
When a company reports higher revenue but lower profit because costs increased, investors say this key measure is "getting squeezed."
What are profit margins?
Demand for AI has skyrocketed, increasing the value of this type of chip used for training models.
What is a GPU?
Named after a state of matter, this term describes how easily a stock can be bought or sold without big price changes.
What is liquidity?
This type of risk affects the entire market- things like recessions, interest rates, or global events- and cannot be avoided by diversification.
What is systemic risk/market risk/macro risk?
This term describes the small difference between an ETF's performance and the index it is supposed to track.
What is tracking error/tracking difference/tracking gap/deviation?
A stock might jump or drop sharply right after earnings reports come out, but many investors often ignore these short-term spikes and focus on this instead.
What is the long-term trend/long-term performance/bigger picture?
A major storm shuts down production at a company's main factory, but the stock rises because competitors are hit even harder. Investors interpret this as the company gaining this type of advantage.