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A short-rate model, in the context of interest rate derivatives, is a mathematical model that describes the future evolution of interest rates by describing the future evolution of the short rate, usually written

A single-dealer platform (SDP) is software used by an investment bank dealing in the capital markets to deliver trading and associated services via the web. The function of an SDP is to integrate pricing, liquidity, and information from multiple sources within a bank and provide access to them via a single user interface. It is thus both an integration platform and a delivery platform.

Single-price auctions are a pricing method in securities auctions that give all purchasers of an issue the same purchase price. They can be perceived as modified Dutch auctions. This method has been used since 1992 when it debuted as an experiment of the U.S. Treasury for all auctions of 2-year and 5-year notes. There is only one main difference between the multiple-price system and the

In finance, a single-stock future (SSF) is a type of futures contract between two parties to exchange a specified number of stocks in a company for a price agreed today (the futures price or the strike price) with delivery occurring at a specified future date, the delivery date. The contracts can be later traded on a futures exchange.

In finance and the stock market, slippage is the difference between the execution price expected by the trader (usually the one indicated by the trading software) and the one at which the transaction actually happens. Market impact, liquidity, and frictional costs may contribute to slippage.

The Smeed Report (titled Road Pricing: The Economic and Technical Possibilities) was a study into alternative methods of charging for road use, commissioned by the UK government between 1962 and 1964 led by R. J. Smeed. The report stopped short of an unqualified recommendation for road pricing but supported congestion pricing for busy road networks.

The Snell envelope, used in stochastics and mathematical finance, is the smallest supermartingale dominating a stochastic process. The Snell envelope is named after James Laurie Snell.

Social finance is a category of financial services that aims to leverage private capital to address challenges in areas of social and environmental need. Having gained popularity after the 2008 financial crisis, it is notable for its public benefit focus. Mechanisms of creating shared social value are not new; however, social finance is conceptually unique as an approach to solving socia

According to the International Labour Organization, social security is a human right that aims at reducing and preventing poverty and vulnerability throughout the life cycle of individuals. Social security includes different kinds of benefits (maternity, unemployment, disability, sickness, old age, etc.) A social pension is a stream of payments from the state to an individual that starts

Social trading is a form of investing that allows investors to observe the trading behavior of their peers and expert traders. The primary objective is to follow their investment strategies using copy trading or mirror trading. Social trading requires little or no knowledge about financial markets.

Socially responsible investing (SRI) is any investment strategy which seeks to consider financial return alongside ethical, social or environmental goals. The areas of concern recognized by SRI practitioners are often linked to environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics.

The Society for Financial Studies (SFS) is a nonprofit, academic society in the field of finance. It owns and runs three academic journals: (1) the Review of Financial Studies, (2) the Review of Asset Pricing Studies, and (3) the Review of Corporate Finance Studies. It organizes the SFS Cavalcade North America and the SFS Cavalcade Asia-Pacific, which are annual academic conferences. It

The Sortino ratio measures the risk-adjusted return of an investment asset, portfolio, or strategy. It is a modification of the Sharpe ratio but penalizes only those returns falling below a user-specified target or required rate of return, while the Sharpe ratio penalizes both upside and downside variance equally. Though both ratios measure an investment's risk-adjusted return, they do s

A Spahn tax is a type of currency transaction tax that is meant to be used for the purpose of controlling exchange-rate volatility. This idea was proposed by Paul Bernd Spahn in 1995.

The System for Transfer of Financial Messages (Russian: Система передачи финансовых сообщений, romanized: Sistema peredachi finansovykh soobscheniy), abbreviated SPFS (Russian: СПФС), is a Russian equivalent of the SWIFT financial transfer system, developed by the Central Bank of Russia. The system has been in development since 2014, when the United States government threatened to discon

A split capital investment trust (split) is a type of investment trust which issues different classes of share to give the investor a choice of shares to match their needs. Most splits have a limited life determined at launch known as the wind-up date. Typically the life of a split capital trust is five to ten years.

In finance, a spot contract, spot transaction, or simply spot, is a contract of buying or selling a commodity, security or currency for immediate settlement (payment and delivery) on the spot date, which is normally two business days after the trade date. The settlement price (or rate) is called spot price (or spot rate). A spot contract is in contrast with a forward contract or futures

In finance, a spread option is a type of option where the payoff is based on the difference in price between two underlying assets. For example, the two assets could be crude oil and heating oil; trading such an option might be of interest to oil refineries, whose profits are a function of the difference between these two prices. Spread options are generally traded over the counter, rath

Squarepoint Capital ("Squarepoint") is a global investment management firm headquartered in New York City & London. The firm is known for its quantitative finance approach to investing. Squarepoint has additional offices in Bangalore, Boston, Dubai, Geneva, Hong Kong, Houston, Jersey, London, Madrid, Montreal, New York, Paris, Singapore, and Zug.

A squeeze-out or squeezeout, sometimes synonymous with freeze-out, is the compulsory sale of the shares of minority shareholders of a joint-stock company for which they receive a fair cash compensation.

In the context of operational risk, the standardized approach or standardised approach is a set of operational risk measurement techniques proposed under Basel II capital adequacy rules for banking institutions.

In finance, statistical arbitrage (Stat Arb or StatArb) is a class of short-term financial trading strategies that employ mean reversion models involving broadly diversified portfolios of securities (hundreds to thousands) held for short periods of time (generally seconds to days). These strategies are supported by substantial mathematical, computational, and trading platforms.

A stochastic differential equation (SDE) is a differential equation in which one or more of the terms is a stochastic process, resulting in a solution which is also a stochastic process. SDEs have many applications throughout pure mathematics and are used to model various behaviours of stochastic models such as prices of listed company shares, random growth models or physical systems tha

In statistics, stochastic volatility models are those in which the variance of a stochastic process is itself randomly distributed. They are used in the field of mathematical finance to evaluate derivative securities, such as options. The name derives from the models' treatment of the underlying security's volatility as a random process, governed by state variables such as the price leve

Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporation in proportion to the total number of shares. This typically entitles the shareholder (stockholder) to that fraction of the company's earnings, proceeds from liquidat

Stock dilution, also known as equity dilution, is the decrease in existing shareholders' ownership percentage of a company as a result of the company issuing new equity. New equity increases the total shares outstanding which has a dilutive effect on the ownership percentage of existing shareholders. This increase in the number of shares outstanding can result from a primary market off

A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for the issue and redemption of such securities and instruments and capital events including the payment of income and dividends. Securities traded on a stock

A stock fund, or equity fund, is a fund that invests in stocks, also called equity securities. Stock funds can be contrasted with bond funds and money funds. Fund assets are typically mainly in stock, with some amount of cash, which is generally quite small, as opposed to bonds, notes, or other securities. This may be a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund. The objective of an equity fun

In finance, a stock market index or stock index is an index that measures the performance of a stock market, or of a subset of a stock market. It helps investors compare current stock price levels with past prices to calculate market performance.

In finance, a stock market index future is a cash-settled futures contract on the value of a particular stock market index. The turnover for the global market in exchange-traded equity index futures is notionally valued, for 2008, by the Bank for International Settlements at US$130 trillion.

A stock split or stock divide increases the number of shares in a company. For example, after a 2-for-1 split, each investor will own double the number of shares, and each share will be worth half as much. A stock split causes a decrease of market price of individual shares, but does not change the total market capitalization of the company: stock dilution does not occur.

A stock trader or equity trader or share trader, also called a stock investor, is a person or company involved in trading stocks and attempting to profit from the purchase and sale of those securities. Stock traders may be an investor, agent, hedger, arbitrageur, speculator, or stockbroker. Such equity trading in large publicly traded companies may be through a stock exchange. Stock shar

Stock valuation is the method of calculating theoretical values of companies and their stocks. The main use of these methods is to predict future market prices, or more generally, potential market prices, and thus to profit from price movement – stocks that are judged undervalued (with respect to their theoretical value) are bought, while stocks that are judged overvalued are sold, in th

A stockbroker is an individual or company that buys and sells stocks and other investments for a financial market participant in return for a commission, markup, or fee. In most countries they are regulated as a broker or broker-dealer and may need to hold a relevant license and may be a member of a stock exchange. They generally act as a financial adviser and investment manager. In thi

The Stockholm congestion tax (Swedish: Trängselskatt i Stockholm), also referred to as the Stockholm congestion charge, is a congestion pricing system implemented as a tax levied on most vehicles entering and exiting central Stockholm, Sweden. The congestion tax was implemented on a permanent basis on 1 August 2007, after a seven-month trial period between 3 January 2006 and 31 July 200

In finance, a straddle strategy involves two transactions in options on the same underlying, with opposite positions. One holds long risk, the other short. As a result, it involves the purchase or sale of particular option derivatives that allow the holder to profit based on how much the price of the underlying security moves, regardless of the direction of price movement.

In finance, a strangle is an options strategy involving the purchase or sale of two options, allowing the holder to profit based on how much the price of the underlying security moves, with a neutral exposure to the direction of price movement. A strangle consists of one call and one put with the same expiry and underlying but different strike prices. Typically the call has a higher stri

Strategic financial management is the study of finance with a long term view considering the strategic goals of the enterprise. Financial management is sometimes referred to as "Strategic Financial Management" to give it an increased frame of reference.

In finance, a stress test is an analysis or simulation designed to determine the ability of a given financial instrument or financial institution to deal with an economic crisis. Instead of doing financial projection on a "best estimate" basis, a company or its regulators may do stress testing where they look at how robust a financial instrument is in certain crashes, a form of scenario

In finance, the strike price (or exercise price) of an option is a fixed price at which the owner of the option can buy (in the case of a call), or sell (in the case of a put), the underlying security or commodity. The strike price may be set by reference to the spot price, which is the market price of the underlying security or commodity on the day an option is taken out. Alternatively,

A student loan is a type of loan designed to help students pay for tertiary education and the associated fees, such as tuition, books and supplies, and living expenses. It may differ from other types of loans in the fact that the interest rate may be substantially lower and the repayment schedule may be deferred while the student is still in school. It also differs in many countries in t

Style drift occurs when a mutual fund's actual and declared investment style differs.

Style investing is an investment approach in which securities are grouped into categories, and portfolio allocation is based on selection among "styles" rather than among individual securities.

In finance, a swap is a derivative in which two parties agree to exchange one stream of cash flows for another, based on some agreed formula. An example is a floating-for-fixed interest rate swap, which calls for (a) payments by one party based on the product of a floating interest rate and a fixed amount, called the notional, in exchange for (b) payments by the counterparty based on the

A swaption (a portmanteau of "swap" and "option") is an option granting its owner the right but not the obligation to enter into an underlying swap on specified terms at a future date. In practice the term is most commonly used for options on interest rate swaps, where the holder has the right to enter into a fixed-for-floating interest rate swap.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), legally S.W.I.F.T. SC, is a cooperative established in 1973 in Belgium (French: Société Coopérative) and owned by the banks and other member firms that use its service. SWIFT provides the main messaging network through which international payments are initiated. It also sells software and services to financial insti

Swing trading is a speculative trading strategy in financial markets where a tradable asset is held for one or more days in an effort to profit from price changes or swings. A swing trading position is typically held longer than a day trading position, but shorter than buy-and-hold investment strategies that can be held for months or years. Profits can be sought by either buying an asse

In finance, a synthetic position is a way to create the payoff of a financial instrument using other financial instruments.

A systematic investment plan (SIP) is an investment vehicle offered by many mutual funds to investors, allowing them to invest small amounts periodically instead of lump sums. The frequency of investment is usually weekly, monthly or quarterly.

In finance and economics, systematic risk (in economics often called aggregate risk or undiversifiable risk) is vulnerability to events which affect aggregate outcomes such as broad market returns, total economy-wide resource holdings, or aggregate income. In many contexts, events like earthquakes, epidemics and major weather catastrophes pose aggregate risks that affect not only the dis

In finance, systemic risk is the risk of collapse of an entire financial system or entire market, as opposed to the risk associated with any one individual entity, group or component of a system, that can be contained therein without harming the entire system. It can be defined as "financial system instability, potentially catastrophic, caused or exacerbated by idiosyncratic events or co

In finance, the T-model is a formula that states the returns earned by holders of a company's stock in terms of accounting variables obtainable from its financial statements. The T-model connects fundamentals with investment return, allowing an analyst to make projections of financial performance and turn those projections into a required return that can be used in investment selection.

The tax burden is the level of effective taxation represented as the distribution of tax rates across people, households, sectors, or forms of income by the amount of their income. Tax burdens are commonly summarized as the tax revenue as a share of gross domestic product for different groups; usually as the effective tax rates paid by different income groups as a share of their income o

Tax competition, a form of regulatory competition, exists when governments use reductions in fiscal burdens to encourage the inflow of productive resources or to discourage the exodus of those resources. Often, this means a governmental strategy of attracting foreign direct investment, foreign indirect investment (financial investment), and high value human resources by minimizing the ov

Tax compliance software is software that assists tax compliance, and may cover income tax, corporate tax, VAT, service tax, customs, sales tax, use tax, or other taxes its users may be required to pay. The software automatically calculates a user's tax liabilities to the government, keeps track of all transactions (in case of indirect taxes), keeps track of eligible tax credits, etc. The

Tax law or revenue law is an area of legal study in which public or sanctioned authorities, such as federal, state and municipal governments (as in the case of the US) use a body of rules and procedures (laws) to assess and collect taxes in a legal context. The rates and merits of the various taxes, imposed by the authorities, are attained via the political process inherent in these bodi

A tax shield is the reduction in income taxes that results from taking an allowable deduction from taxable income. For example, because interest on debt is a tax-deductible expense, taking on debt creates a tax shield. Since a tax shield is a way to save cash flows, it increases the value of the business, and it is an important aspect of business valuation.

A tax transparent fund (TTF) - also known as an authorised contractual scheme fund - is the proposed authorised collective investment scheme structure in the United Kingdom once the UK Finance Bill 2012 becomes an act and when the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and the Corporation Tax Act 2010 are amended, sometime mid-2012. TTFs will then have the option to be based in the UK r

In Algeria, the most important sources of government revenue have been oil and gas royalties.

Due to the absence of the tax code in Argentina, the tax regulation takes place in accordance with separate laws, which, in turn, are supplemented by provisions of normative acts adopted by the executive authorities. The powers of the executive authority include levying a tax on profits, property and added value throughout the national territory. In Argentina, the tax policy is implemen

See Government of Colombia for a broader perspective of Colombian government.

Taxes in Cyprus are levied by both the central and local governments. Tax revenue stood at 39.2% of GDP in 2012. The most important revenue sources are the income tax, social security, value-added tax and corporate tax, and are all collected by the central government.

Taxation in Estonia consists of state and local taxes. A relatively high proportion of government revenue comes from consumption taxes whilst revenue from capital taxes is one of the lowest in the European Union.

Taxes in Iceland are levied by the state and the municipalities. Property rights are strong and Iceland is one of the few countries where they are applied to fishery management. Taxpayers pay various subsidies to each other, similar to European countries that are welfare states, but the spending is less than in most European countries. Despite low tax rates in relation to European welfar

Private equity funds and hedge funds are private investment vehicles used to pool investment capital, usually for a small group of large institutional or wealthy individual investors. They are subject to favorable regulatory treatment in most jurisdictions from which they are managed, which allows them to engage in financial activities that are off-limits for more regulated companies.

In finance, technical analysis is an analysis methodology for analysing and forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. As a type of active management, it stands in contradiction to much of modern portfolio theory. The efficacy of technical analysis is disputed by the efficient-market hypothesis, which states that stock market pr

Thematic investing is a form of investment that aims to identify macro-level trends and the underlying investments that stand to benefit from the materialisation of those trends. Thematic investing aims to seize opportunities arising from megatrends likely to shape the global economy in the decades ahead.

A time deposit or term deposit (also known as a certificate of deposit in the United States, and as a guaranteed investment certificate in Canada) is a deposit in a financial institution with a specific maturity date or a period to maturity, commonly referred to as its "term". Time deposits differ from at call deposits, such as savings or checking accounts, which can be withdrawn at any

A Tobin tax was originally defined as a tax on all spot conversions of one currency into another. It was suggested by James Tobin, an economist who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Tobin's tax was originally intended to penalize short-term financial round-trip excursions into another currency. By the late 1990s, the term Tobin tax was being applied to all forms of shor

In finance, a total return swap (TRS), total rate of return swap (TRORS), or cash-settled equity swap is a financial contract that transfers both the credit risk and market risk of an underlying asset.

Tracking stock (also known as letter stock and targeted stock) is a specialized equity offering issued by a company that is based on the operations of a defined business within the larger organization (such as, for instance, a wholly owned subsidiary of a diversified firm). Therefore, the tracking stock will be traded at a price related to the operations of the specific division of the c

In finance, a trade is an exchange of a security such as stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, derivatives or any valuable financial instrument for "cash". Such a financial transaction is usually done by participants of an exchange such as a stock exchange, commodity exchange or futures exchange with a short-dated promise to pay in the currency of the country where the 'exchange' is lo

The trade-off theory of capital structure is the idea that a company chooses how much debt finance and how much equity finance to use by balancing the costs and benefits. The classical version of the hypothesis goes back to Kraus and Litzenberger who considered a balance between the dead-weight costs of bankruptcy and the tax saving benefits of debt. Often agency costs are also included

In finance, the notion of traditional investments refers to putting money into well-known assets (such as bonds, cash, real estate, and equity shares) with the expectation of capital appreciation, dividends, and interest earnings. Traditional investments are to be contrasted with alternative investments.

A transaction account (also called a checking account, cheque account, chequing account, current account, demand deposit account, or share account at credit unions) is a deposit account or bank account held at a bank or other financial institution. It is available to the account owner "on demand" and is available for frequent and immediate access by the account owner or to others as the

Treasury basis trading is a financial strategy that involves taking offsetting positions in a cash market instrument (typically a U.S. Treasury bond) and its related derivative, such as a Treasury futures contract. The strategy seeks to exploit pricing discrepancies between the two instruments, which are expected to converge over time. It is a specialized form of basis trading applied to

Treasury management (or treasury operations) entails management of an enterprise's financial holdings, focusing on the firm's liquidity, and mitigating its financial, operational and reputational risk.

Trend following or trend trading is a trading strategy according to which one should buy an asset when its price trend goes up, and sell when its trend goes down, expecting price movements to continue.

In finance, the Treynor reward-to-volatility model (sometimes called the reward-to-volatility ratio or Treynor measure), named after American economist Jack L. Treynor, is a measurement of the returns earned in excess of that which could have been earned on an investment that has no risk that can be diversified (e.g., Treasury bills or a completely diversified portfolio), per unit of mar

Triangular arbitrage (also referred to as cross currency arbitrage or three-point arbitrage) is the act of exploiting an arbitrage opportunity resulting from a pricing discrepancy among three different currencies in the foreign exchange market. A triangular arbitrage strategy involves three trades, exchanging the initial currency for a second, the second currency for a third, and the thi

The trinomial tree is a lattice-based computational model used in financial mathematics to price options on equity. It was developed by Phelim Boyle in 1986. It is an extension of the binomial options pricing model, and is conceptually similar. It can also be shown that the approach is equivalent to the explicit finite difference method for option pricing.

Trondheim Toll Scheme or Trondheim Package (Norwegian: Trondheimspakken) was the result of that in the 1980s politicians and road authorities in Trondheim Municipality, Norway wanted to accelerate the investments in roads and motorways around the city through an investment package and toll scheme to ease construction and generate more funds. Between 1991 and 2005, there were more than 24

A turbo warrant (or callable bull/bear contract) is a kind of stock option. Specifically, it is a barrier option of the down and out type. It is similar to a vanilla contract, but with two additional features: It has a low vega, meaning that the option price is much less affected by the implied volatility of the stock market, and it is highly geared due to the possibility of knockout. Th

The Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities Directive (Directive 2009/65/EC, "UCITS") is a directive of the European Union (EU) that allows collective investment schemes to operate freely throughout the EU on the basis of a single authorisation from one member state. EU member states are entitled to have additional regulatory requirements for the benefit of inve

In 2010, the United States implemented the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act; the law required financial firms around the world to report accounts held by US citizens to the Internal Revenue Service.

A universal bank is a type of bank which participates in many kinds of banking activities and is both a commercial bank and an investment bank as well as providing other financial services such as insurance. These are also called full-service financial firms, although there can also be full-service investment banks which provide wealth and asset management, trading, underwriting, researc

In finance, unsecured debt refers to any type of debt or general obligation that is not protected by a guarantor, or collateralized by a lien on specific assets of the borrower in the case of a bankruptcy or liquidation or failure to meet the terms for repayment. Unsecured debts are sometimes called signature debt or personal loans. These differ from secured debt such as a mortgage, whic

The uptick rule is a trading restriction that states that short selling a stock is allowed only on an uptick. For the rule to be satisfied, the short must be either at a price above the last traded price of the security, or at the last traded price when the most recent movement between traded prices was upward (i.e. the security has traded below the last-traded price more recently than a

In finance, valuation is the process of determining the value of a (potential) investment, asset, or security.

In finance, a price (premium) is paid or received for purchasing or selling options.

Valuation risk is the risk that an entity suffers a loss when trading an asset or a liability due to a difference between the accounting value and the price effectively obtained in the trade.

Value at risk (VaR) is a measure of the risk of loss of investment/capital. It estimates how much a set of investments might lose (with a given probability), given normal market conditions, in a set time period such as a day. VaR is typically used by firms and regulators in the financial industry to gauge the amount of assets needed to cover possible losses.

Value averaging (VA), also known as dollar value averaging (DVA), is a technique for adding to an investment portfolio that is controversially claimed to provide a greater return than other methods such as dollar cost averaging. With the method, investors add to (or withdraw from) their portfolios in such a way that the portfolio balance reaches a predetermined monthly or quarterly targe

Value investing is an investment paradigm that involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. Modern value investing derives from the investment philosophy taught by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd at Columbia Business School starting in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis.

The Vanna–Volga method is a mathematical tool used in finance. It is a technique for pricing first-generation exotic options in foreign exchange market (FX) derivatives.

A variance swap is an over-the-counter financial derivative that allows one to speculate on or hedge risks associated with the magnitude of movement, i.e. volatility, of some underlying product, like an exchange rate, interest rate, or stock index.

In finance, the Vasicek model is a mathematical model describing the evolution of interest rates. It is a type of one-factor short-rate model as it describes interest rate movements as driven by only one source of market risk. The model can be used in the valuation of interest rate derivatives, and has also been adapted for credit markets. It was introduced in 1977 by Oldřich Vašíček, an

In finance, volatility (usually denoted by "σ") is the degree of variation of a trading price series over time, usually measured by the standard deviation of logarithmic returns.

In finance, volatility arbitrage (vol arb) is a term for financial arbitrage techniques directly dependent and based on volatility.

Volatility risk