Industry WIKI

Freedom Holding Corp. is an American investment conglomerate headquartered in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Founded in 2008 by Timur Turlov in the United States, the company provides a range of services in retail financial securities brokerage and trading, asset management, capital markets, investment research and counseling, investment banking and underwriting services, mortgages, insurance, bank

Front running, also known as tailgating, is the practice of entering into an equity (stock) trade, option, futures contract, derivative, or security-based swap to capitalize on advance, nonpublic knowledge of a large ("block") pending transaction that will influence the price of the underlying security. In essence, it means the use of knowledge of an impending trade to engage in a person

Fund governance refers to a system of checks and balances and work performed by the governing body (board) of an investment fund to ensure that the fund is operated not only in accordance with law, but also in the best interests of the fund and its investors. The objective of fund governance is to uphold the regulatory principles commonly known as the four pillars of investor protection

Fundamental analysis, in accounting and finance, is the analysis of a business's financial statements (usually to analyze the business's assets, liabilities, and earnings); health; competitors and markets. It also considers the overall state of the economy and factors including interest rates, production, earnings, employment, GDP, housing, manufacturing and management. There are two bas

In mathematical finance, the Greeks are the quantities (known in calculus as partial derivatives; first-order or higher) representing the sensitivity of the price of a derivative instrument, such as an option or future, to changes in one or more underlying parameters on which the value of an instrument or portfolio of financial instruments is dependent. The name is used because the most

A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses or gains that may be incurred by a companion investment. A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insurance, forward contracts, swaps, options, gambles, many types of over-the-counter and derivative products, and futures contracts.

High-frequency trading (HFT) is a type of algorithmic automated trading system in finance characterized by high speeds, high turnover rates, and high order-to-trade ratios that leverages high-frequency financial data and electronic trading tools. While there is no single definition of HFT, among its key attributes are highly sophisticated algorithms, co-location, and very short-term inve

In 1978 and 1979, lawyer and First Lady of Arkansas Hillary Rodham Clinton engaged in a series of trades of cattle futures contracts. Her initial $1,000 investment had generated nearly $100,000 (equivalent to $443,603.85 in 2025), when she stopped trading after ten months. In 1994, after Clinton had become First Lady of the United States, the trading became the subject of considerable co

ICE Clear Credit LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, is a Derivatives Clearing Organisation (DCO) previously known as ICE Trust US LLC which was launched in March 2009.

In the United Kingdom, only an authorised or licensed insolvency practitioner (IP) may be appointed in relation to formal insolvency procedures.

An Inter-dealer broker (IDB) is specialist financial intermediary that facilitates transactions between broker-dealers, dealer banks and other financial institutions rather than private individuals.

The interbank market is the top-level foreign exchange market where banks exchange different currencies. The banks can either deal with one another directly, or through electronic brokering platforms. The Electronic Broking Services (EBS) and Thomson Reuters Dealing are the two competitors in the electronic brokering platform business and together connect over 1000 banks. The currencies

An interest-free economy or interest free economy is an economy that does not have pure interest rates.

International financial management, also known as international finance, is the management of finance in an international business environment; that is, trading and making money through the exchange of foreign currency. The international financial activities help the organizations to connect with international dealings with overseas business partners- customers, suppliers, lenders etc. I

Intrade.com was a web-based prediction market which offered a platform where individuals could place bets on future outcomes. After having been forced to exclude US traders in 2012, on 10 March 2013 Intrade suspended all trading, citing possible "financial irregularities". For a time after the suspension, the intrade.com website stated that they were working on a relaunch of the site, ca

An investor is a person or entity that allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital the investor usually purchases some species of property. Types of investments include equity, debt, securities, real estate, infrastructure, currency, commodity, token, derivatives such as put and call optio

In finance an iron butterfly, also known as the ironfly, is the name of an advanced, neutral-outlook, options trading strategy that involves buying and holding four different options at three different strike prices. It is a limited-risk, limited-profit trading strategy that is structured for a larger probability of earning smaller limited profit when the underlying stock is perceived to

ISO 20022 is an ISO standard for electronic data interchange between financial institutions. It describes a metadata repository containing descriptions of messages and business processes, and a maintenance process for the repository content. The standard covers financial information transferred between financial institutions that includes payment transactions, securities trading and sett

In finance, Jensen's alpha (or Jensen's Performance Index, ex-post alpha) is used to determine the abnormal return of a security or portfolio of securities over the theoretical expected return. It is a version of the standard alpha based on a theoretical performance instead of a market index.

Jon Paul Ruggles (born November 28, 1973) is an American executive known for founding Monroe Energy and creating an internal trading house for Delta Air Lines that earned $420 million in trading profits in its first year. According to CNBC, Delta hired Ruggles as vice-president of fuel in 2011 to help right a fuel-hedge book that had been losing the airline money. He managed to generate

Kalshi Inc. is a prediction market platform based in Manhattan, New York City, that launched in July 2021. The platform is used primarily for sports betting, which constitutes more than 90% of site activity and 89% of revenue in 2025. Analysts describe activity on the platform as "heavily tied to the sports calendar". Individuals can place bets on other future outcomes, including economi

A line break chart, also known as a three-line break chart, is a Japanese trading indicator and chart used to analyze the financial markets. Invented in Japan, these charts had been used for over 150 years by traders there before being popularized by Steve Nison in the book Beyond Candlesticks. The chart is made up of vertical blocks or bars called "lines", which indicate the market's di

A linked exchange rate system is a type of exchange rate regime that pegs the exchange rate of one currency to another. It is the exchange rate system implemented in Hong Kong to stabilise the exchange rate between the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) and the United States dollar (USD). The Macao pataca (MOP) is similarly linked to the Hong Kong dollar.

This is a list of notable futures exchanges. Those stock exchanges that also offer trading in futures contracts besides trading in securities are listed both here and the list of stock exchanges.

In corporate finance, a listing refers to the company's shares being on the list (or board) of stock that are publicly listed. Some stock exchanges allow shares of a foreign company to be listed and may allow dual listing, subject to conditions.

LME Copper is a group of spot, forward, and futures contracts, trading on the London Metal Exchange (LME), for delivery of Copper (Grade A), which can be used for price Hedging, physical delivery of sales or purchases, investment, and speculation.

LME Nickel refers to the spot, forward, and futures contracts, trading on the London Metal Exchange (LME) for primary nickel. These contracts are used for price hedging, physical delivery, investment, and speculation. Nickel futures contracts are used to hedge price risks and as a reference for prices. As of late 2024, LME nickel contracts were linked to approximately 230,000 tonnes of p

In finance, a long position in a financial instrument means the holder of the position owns a positive amount of the instrument. The holder of the position has the expectation that the financial instrument will increase in value. This is known as a bullish position. The term "long position" is often used in context of buying options contracts.

Long/short equity is an investment strategy generally associated with hedge funds. It involves buying equities that are expected to increase in value and selling short equities that are expected to decrease in value. This is different from the risk reversal strategies where investors will simultaneously buy a call option and sell a put option to simulate being long in a stock.

A managed futures account (MFA) or managed futures fund (MFF) is a type of alternative investment in the US in which trading in the futures markets is managed by another person or entity, rather than the fund's owner. Managed futures accounts include, but are not limited to, commodity pools. These funds are operated by commodity trading advisors (CTAs) or commodity pool operators (CPOs),

A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or individual. Management and leveraged buyouts became noted phenomena of 1980s business economics and most frequently refer to leveraged transactions where managers take a company private. These transactions, while originat

In finance, margin is the collateral that a holder of a financial instrument has to deposit with a counterparty (most often a broker or an exchange) to cover some or all of the credit risk the holder poses for the counterparty. This risk can arise if the holder has done any of the following:

The Margin-at-Risk (MaR) is a quantity used to manage short-term liquidity risks due to variation of margin requirements, i.e. it is a financial risk occurring when trading commodities. It is similar to the Value-at-Risk (VaR), but instead of simulating EBIT it returns a quantile of the (expected) cash flow distribution.

A market anomaly in a financial market is predictability that seems to be inconsistent with (typically risk-based) theories of asset prices. Standard theories include the capital asset pricing model and the Fama-French Three Factor Model, but a lack of agreement among academics about the proper theory leads many to refer to anomalies without a reference to a benchmark theory (Daniel and

In finance, market data is price and other related data for a financial instrument reported by a trading venue such as a stock exchange. Market data allows traders and investors to know the latest price and see historical trends for instruments such as equities, fixed-income products, derivatives, and currencies.

In finance, market depth is a real-time list displaying the quantity to be sold versus unit price. The list is organized by price level and is reflective of real-time market activity. Mathematically, it is the size of an order needed to move the market price by a given amount. If the market is deep, a large order is needed to change the price.

The Market Identifier Code (MIC) (ISO 10383) is a unique identification code used to identify securities trading exchanges, regulated and non-regulated trading markets. The MIC is a four alphanumeric character code, and is defined in ISO 10383 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). For example, the US NASDAQ market is identified by MIC XNAS.

A market maker or liquidity provider is a company or individual that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a tradable asset held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the difference, which is called the bid–ask spread or turn. This stabilizes the market, reducing price variation (volatility) by setting a trading price range for the asset.

In economics and finance, market manipulation occurs when someone intentionally alters the supply or demand of a security to influence its price. This can involve spreading misleading information, executing misleading trades, or manipulating quotes and prices.

Market microstructure is a branch of finance concerned with the details of how exchange occurs in markets. While the theory of market microstructure applies to the exchange of real or financial assets, more evidence is available on the microstructure in the financial field due to the availability of transactions data from them. The major thrust of market microstructure research examines

A market trend is a perceived tendency of the financial markets to move in a particular direction over time. Analysts classify these trends as secular for long time-frames, primary for medium time-frames, and secondary for short time-frames. Traders attempt to identify market trends using technical analysis, a framework which characterizes market trends as predictable price tendencies wi

Matchbook FX was an Internet-based electronic communication network ("ECN" or Electronic Trading Network) for trading currency online in the Spot-FX or foreign exchange market. It operated between 1999 and 2002.

Mean reversion is a financial term for the assumption that an asset's price will tend to converge to the average price over time.

A meme coin (also spelled memecoin) is a cryptocurrency that originated from an internet meme or has some other humorous characteristic.

MetaTrader 4, also known as MT4, is an electronic trading platform widely used by online retail foreign exchange speculative traders. It was developed by MetaQuotes Software and released in 2005. The software is licensed to foreign exchange brokers who provide the software to their clients. The software consists of both a client and server component. The server component is run by the br

In finance, MIDAS (an acronym for Market Interpretation/Data Analysis System) is an approach to technical analysis initiated in 1995 by the physicist and technical analyst Paul Levine, PhD, and subsequently developed by Andrew Coles, PhD, and David Hawkins in a series of articles and the book MIDAS Technical Analysis: A VWAP Approach to Trading and Investing in Today's Markets. Latterly,

Mirror trading is a trading selection methodology that can be carried out in both the foreign exchange and the stock markets; however, this is much more common in trading in the foreign exchange market.

A money center bank (also written money-center bank) is a bank or bank holding company that is a particular kind of high-end commercial bank: located in a major financial center such as New York or San Francisco, its lending operations are financed by borrowings from other banks or by issuing bonds. Money center banks tend to engage in a number of different or related businesses, such as

The money market is a component of the economy that provides short-term funds. The money market deals in short-term loans, generally for a period of a year or less.

A money market fund (also called a money market mutual fund) is an open-end mutual fund that invests in short-term debt securities such as US Treasury bills and commercial paper. Money market funds are managed with the goal of maintaining a highly stable asset value through liquid investments while paying income to investors in the form of dividends. Although they are not insured against

Monzo Bank Limited, trading as Monzo (), is a British online bank based in London, England. Monzo launched as part of a number of app-based challenger banks entering the UK market.

A multi-manager fund is an investment product that consists of multiple specialized funds. Each specialized fund may invest across different sectors and markets, or in the same asset class but have different investment styles. For example, large cap value fund versus large cap growth fund.

N26 Bank SE, doing business as N26, and formerly named Papayer GmbH, and Number26 GmbH, is a multinational German fintech and neobank company based in Berlin. N26 was founded in 2013 by Rocket Internet and operates in various European Union member states that are members of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).

NASDAQ futures are financial futures which launched on June 21, 1999. It is the financial contract futures that allow an investor to hedge with or speculate on the future value of various components of the NASDAQ market index.

Novig is a sports-focused prediction market platform based in New York City. It is regulated as a financial exchange rather than a sportsbook.

An odd lotter is an investor who purchases shares or other securities in small or unusual quantities. Stocks are typically traded in increments of 100 shares, a quantity known as a round lot or board lot. The cost of 100 shares of a security may be beyond the means of an individual investor, or may represent a larger investment than the investor wishes to make. Thus, the investor purcha

OneChicago was a US-based all-electronic futures exchange with headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. The exchange offered approximately 12,509 single-stock futures (SSF) products with names such as IBM, Apple and Google. All trading was cleared through Options Clearing Corporation (OCC). The OneChicago exchange closed in September 2020.

Open outcry is a method of communication between professionals on a stock exchange or futures exchange, typically on a trading floor. It involves shouting and the use of hand signals to transfer information primarily about buy and sell orders. The part of the trading floor where this takes place is called a pit.

An order is an instruction to buy or sell on a trading venue such as a stock market, bond market, commodity market, financial derivative market or cryptocurrency exchange. These instructions can be simple or complicated, and can be sent to either a broker or directly to a trading venue via direct market access. There are some standard instructions for such orders.

An order book is the list of orders (manual or electronic) that a trading venue (in particular stock exchanges) uses to record the interest of buyers and sellers in a particular financial instrument. A matching engine uses the book to determine which orders can be fully or partially executed.

The following outline provides an overview and topical guide to finance:

Over-the-counter (OTC) or off-exchange trading or pink sheet trading is done directly between two parties, without the supervision of an exchange. It is contrasted with exchange trading, which occurs via exchanges. A stock exchange has the benefit of facilitating liquidity, providing transparency, and maintaining the current market price. In an OTC trade, the price is not necessarily pub

An overdraft occurs when something is withdrawn in excess of what is in a current account. For financial systems, this can be funds in a bank account. In these situations the account is said to be "overdrawn". In the economic system, if there is a prior agreement with the account provider for an overdraft, and the amount overdrawn is within the authorized overdraft limit, then interest i

A pairs trade or pair trading is a market neutral trading strategy enabling traders to profit from virtually any market conditions: uptrend, downtrend, or sideways movement. This strategy is categorized as a statistical arbitrage and convergence trading strategy. Pair trading was pioneered by Gerry Bamberger and later led by Nunzio Tartaglia's quantitative group at Morgan Stanley in the

The Palais Brongniart (French pronunciation: [palɛ bʁɔ̃ɲaʁ]; English: Brongniart Palace) is a building in Paris that was built at the direction of Napoleon in the early 19th century to house the Paris stock exchange (French: Bourse de Paris). It is located at the Place de la Bourse, in the 2nd arrondissement in central Paris. It was named after its initial architect, Alexandre-Théodore B

The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) is a Pan-African real-time gross settlement (RTGS) infrastructure for cross-border payments in distinct local currencies. It was publicly launched on January 13, 2022 by the African Union (AU) and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to compliment trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) with further roll

Panic selling is a large-scale selling of an investment that causes a sharp decline in prices. Specifically, an investor wants to sell an investment with little regard to the price obtained. The sale is problematic because the investor is reacting to emotion and fear, rather than evaluating the fundamentals.

In finance, partial return reverse swap (PRRS) is a type of derivative swap, a financial contract that transfers a percentage of both the credit risk and market risk of an underlying asset, usually half, while also transferring all of the ownership liabilities for estate planning, tax purposes, and insider trading rules.

Payment for order flow (PFOF) is the compensation that a stockbroker receives from a market maker in exchange for the broker routing its clients' trades to that market maker. The market maker profits from the spread (the difference between purchase price and sale price) and rebates a portion of this profit to the routing broker as PFOF. Some of this benefit may be passed on to the retail

In financial markets, a pivot point is a price level that is used by traders as a possible indicator of market movement. A pivot point is calculated as an average of significant prices (high, low, close) from the performance of a market in the prior trading period. If the market in the following period trades above the pivot point it is usually evaluated as a bullish sentiment, whereas

Polymarket is an American cryptocurrency-based prediction market which offers a platform where individuals can place bets on future outcomes, including sports matches, economic indicators, weather patterns, awards, political and legislative outcomes, and military conflicts. Participants can deposit cryptocurrency through the Polygon blockchain network and trade shares that represent the

A portfolio manager (PM) is a professional responsible for making investment decisions and carrying out investment activities on behalf of vested individuals or institutions. Clients invest their money for future growth, such as a retirement fund, endowment fund, or education fund. PMs work with a team of analysts and researchers and are responsible for establishing an investment strateg

In finance, a position is the amount of a particular security, commodity or currency held or owned by a person or entity.

Prediction markets, also known as betting markets, information markets, decision markets, idea futures, or event derivatives, are open markets that enable the prediction of specific outcomes using financial incentives. They are exchange-traded markets established for trading bets in the outcome of various events.

PredictIt is a United States-based online prediction market that offers exchanges on political and financial events. PredictIt is a project of the Prediction Market Research Consortium, a not-for-profit organization, for educational purposes and is supported by Aristotle, Inc. The company's office is located in Washington, D.C. Only United States citizens can bet on the site.

Price action trading is about reading what the market is doing, so you can deploy the right trading strategy to reap the maximum benefits. In simple words, price action is a trading technique in which a trader reads the market and makes subjective trading decisions based on the price movements, rather than relying on technical indicators or other factors.

On March 17, 2008, in response to the subprime mortgage crisis and the collapse of Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve announced the creation of a new lending facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF). Eligible borrowers include all financial institutions listed as primary dealers, and the term of the loan is a repurchase agreement, or "repo" loan, whereby the broker dealer sells

The primary market is the part of the capital market that deals with the issuance and sale of securities to purchasers directly by the issuer, with the issuer being paid the proceeds. A primary market means the market for new issues of securities, as distinguished from the secondary market, where previously issued securities are bought and sold. A market is primary if the proceeds of sal

In finance, the Private Equity Secondary Market (also often called Private Equity Secondaries or Secondaries) refers to the buying and selling of pre-existing investor commitments to private equity and other alternative investment funds or the underlying private equity assets (e.g., credit secondaries). Unlike public markets, private-equity interests lack an established trading exchange,

Product Control is a control and support function, responsible for ensuring accurate financial reporting for trading, lending and treasury desks.

Proprietary trading (also known as prop trading) occurs when a trader trades stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, their derivatives, or other financial instruments with the firm's own money (instead of using customer funds) to make a profit for itself.

A public offering is the offering of securities of a company or a similar corporation to the public. Generally, the securities are to be publicly listed. In most jurisdictions, a public offering requires the issuing company to publish a prospectus detailing the terms and rights attached to the offered security, as well as information on the company itself and its finances. Many other reg

Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy action where a central bank purchases predetermined amounts of government bonds, company shares, or other financial assets (liquidity) in order to artificially stimulate economic activity. Quantitative easing is a novel form of monetary policy that began in Japan and came into wide application in the US following the 2008 financial crisis. It

A quantitative fund is an investment fund that relies on systematic, data-driven methods, such as mathematical models, statistical techniques, AI, and machine learning, to make investment decisions, rather than fundamental human analysis. These funds are often referred to as systematic funds, and many employ factor investing strategies such as value and momentum, which are widely studied

In finance, quote stuffing refers to a form of market manipulation employed by high-frequency traders (HFT) that involves quickly entering and withdrawing a large number of orders in an attempt to flood the market. This can create confusion in the market and trading opportunities for high-speed algorithmic traders. The term is relatively new to the financial market lexicon and was coined

Regulation of algorithms, or algorithmic regulation, is the creation of laws, rules and public sector policies for promotion and regulation of algorithms, particularly in artificial intelligence and machine learning. For the subset of AI algorithms, the term regulation of artificial intelligence is used. The regulatory and policy landscape for artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging

Retail foreign exchange trading is a small segment of the larger foreign exchange market where individuals speculate on the exchange rate between different currencies. This segment has developed with the advent of dedicated electronic trading platforms and the internet, which allows individuals to access the global currency markets. As of 2016, it was reported that retail foreign exchang

Returns-based style analysis (RBSA) is a statistical technique used in finance to deconstruct the returns of investment strategies using a variety of explanatory variables. The model results in a strategy's exposures to asset classes or other factors, interpreted as a measure of a fund or portfolio manager's investment style. While the model is most frequently used to show an equity mutu

Reuters 3000 Xtra was an electronic trading platform which was released by Reuters in 1999 and supported until the end of 2013. It was typically used by professional traders and financial analysts in trading rooms. It was superseded by the Eikon platform, first released in 2010.

Risk arbitrage, also known as merger arbitrage, is an investment strategy that speculates on the successful completion of mergers and acquisitions. An investor that employs this strategy is known as an arbitrageur. Risk arbitrage is a type of event-driven investing in that it attempts to exploit pricing inefficiencies caused by a corporate event.

The risk-free rate of return, usually shortened to the risk-free rate, is the rate of return of a hypothetical investment with scheduled payments over a fixed period of time that is assumed to meet all payment obligations.

S&P 500 futures are financial futures which allow an investor to hedge with or speculate on the future value of various components of the S&P 500 Index market index. S&P 500 futures contracts were first introduced by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1982. The CME added the e-mini option in 1997. The bundle of stocks in the S&P 500 is, per the name, composed of stocks of 500 large compa

Sales and trading is one of the primary front-office divisions of major investment banks. The term is typically reserved for the trading activities done by sell-side investment banks who are primarily engaged in making markets for institutional clients in various forms of securities. The trading floor of these banks will contain dedicated desks who generally focus exclusively on trading

Scripophily is the study and collection of stock and bond certificates. A specialized field of numismatics, scripophily has developed as an area of collecting because of the inherent beauty of certain historical certificates, and because of interest in the historical context of many of the documents. In addition, some stock certificates serve as excellent examples of engraving. Occasiona

The secondary market, also called the aftermarket, is the financial market in which previously issued financial instruments such as shares, bonds, options, and futures are bought and sold. The initial sale of the security by the issuer to a purchaser, who pays proceeds to the issuer, is the primary market. All sales after the initial sale of the security are sales in the secondary market

In finance, securities lending or stock lending refers to the lending of securities by one party to another.

Securities market participants in the United States include corporations and governments issuing securities, persons and corporations buying and selling a security, the broker-dealers and exchanges which facilitate such trading, banks which safe keep assets, and regulators who monitor the markets' activities. Investors buy and sell through broker-dealers and have their assets retained b

Securities Transaction Tax (STT) is a tax payable in India on the value of securities (excluding commodities and currency) transacted through a recognised stock exchange. As of 2016, it is 0.1% for delivery based equity trading.

Securitization is the financial practice of pooling contractual debt obligations (such as residential mortgages, commercial mortgages, auto loans, or credit card debt) and selling their associated cash flows to investors. The financial instruments sold in such transactions are known as securities, types of which include bonds, pass-through securities, and collateralized debt obligations

A security is a tradable financial asset. The term commonly refers to any form of financial instrument, but its legal definition varies by jurisdiction. In some countries and languages people commonly use the term "security" to refer to any form of financial instrument, even though the underlying legal and regulatory regime may not have such a broad definition. In some jurisdictions the