Numbers dressed up in fancy suits pretending to be words.
How wildly a stock's price swings up and down, which is finance's polite way of saying buckle up. High volatility means your portfolio could be worth a fortune at lunch and a used Honda by dinner. Day traders love it. Cardiologists recommend against it.
The estimated worth of a company, a number that ranges from scientifically calculated to completely made up depending on who's doing the estimating. Startup valuations in particular are an art form, where a company with no revenue and an idea on a napkin can be worth a billion dollars if the napkin is impressive enough.
Money given to startups by firms who expect most of their investments to fail spectacularly, banking on one unicorn to pay for all the donkeys. VCs will fund almost anything if you put AI in the pitch deck and promise to disrupt something.
The timeline over which stock options or retirement benefits become owned by the employee, ensuring they can't grab equity and immediately quit. It's the corporate version of 'you have to stay for dessert if you want dessert.'
In finance, the Greek letter measuring how much an option's price will swing when market volatility does its thing—basically, it's sensitivity to how much everyone is collectively freaking out. The higher the vega, the more your option's value rides the uncertainty rollercoaster. Named after Las Vegas (sort of), because options trading is basically sanctioned gambling with more math.
When a supplier extends credit or loans to help customers buy their products, effectively becoming a bank out of desperation to make sales. It's what happens when your product is so expensive that customers need financing just to afford it.
A stock that appears cheap based on traditional metrics but deserves the low valuation because the business is deteriorating. Looks like a bargain, performs like a money incinerator.
Value Added Tax, the European way of making you pay incrementally for everything at each stage of production and distribution. Unlike American sales tax that hits you once at checkout, VAT is baked into the price at every step, making it simultaneously more transparent and more insidious. British tourists love explaining this to confused Americans at duty-free shops.
The practice of comparing actual financial results to budgeted or forecasted amounts and investigating the differences. It's how management discovers that 'unforeseen circumstances' is code for 'we completely missed our projections.'
Expressing each financial statement line item as a percentage of a base figure, like revenue or total assets. It's financial statements in relative terms, making it easier to spot when expenses are getting out of hand.
Investment funds that buy distressed debt for pennies then aggressively pursue collection, like financial hyenas picking at corporate carcasses. Compassion not included.