Numbers dressed up in fancy suits pretending to be words.
The investment strategy of not putting all your eggs in one basket, which is excellent advice until you have to figure out how many baskets to buy. It's how financial advisors tell you they don't know what will go up, so they're betting on everything.
The period where you pretend to be a detective, an engineer, and an accountant all at once to figure out if a property is a goldmine or a money pit. Spoiler: it's usually somewhere between "fine" and "oh no."
Relating to those mysterious number wizards called actuaries who calculate risk, probability, and future costs using mathematics that would make most people weep. It's the science of predicting when you'll die, how likely your house is to burn down, and how much money a pension fund needs—cheerful stuff. If it involves insurance, statistics, and existential dread, it's probably actuarial.
How quickly you can turn an asset into cash without losing value, which is finance's polite way of asking how fast you can run to the ATM. Your checking account is highly liquid; your collection of vintage Beanie Babies is decidedly not.
Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization, or as cynics call it, earnings before all the stuff that actually matters. It's the financial equivalent of saying you ran a marathon if you don't count the parts where you walked, stopped, and took an Uber.
A person legally obligated to act in your best interest, which is a beautiful concept that works perfectly until money is involved. It is like having a best friend who is contractually required to not steal your lunch.
The auditing equivalent of a failing grade, where auditors formally declare that financial statements are materially misstated and unreliable. It's the corporate kiss of death that sends investors running for the exits.
A prolonged period when stock prices fall and investors pretend they saw it coming all along. Named after bears because, like encountering an actual bear, the best strategy is to play dead and hope it goes away before it eats your retirement fund.
Tradeable financial instruments like stocks and bonds, given a name that implies safety despite being approximately as secure as a sandcastle at high tide. The irony of calling them securities when they can lose 50% of their value overnight is Wall Street's longest-running joke.
Two consecutive quarters of economic decline, or as economists love to debate, maybe it's a vibe thing. During a recession, everyone becomes an armchair economist and suddenly has strong opinions about GDP, none of which are correct.
Large, well-established companies that are considered safe investments, named after the highest-value poker chips because Wall Street can't resist gambling metaphors. They're the financial equivalent of ordering chicken fingers at a fancy restaurant: boring, but unlikely to disappoint.
A financial instrument whose value is derived from something else, like a bet on a bet, which is exactly as stable as it sounds. They played a starring role in the 2008 financial crisis, proving that when you stack enough abstractions on top of each other, reality eventually comes knocking.
A collection of investments that you constantly check at 2 AM like a new parent checking on a sleeping baby. Financial advisors will tell you not to look at it every day, which is excellent advice that nobody in the history of investing has ever followed.
The terrifying phone call from your broker informing you that your borrowed-money bets have gone south and you need to cough up more cash immediately. It's the financial equivalent of your landlord and your bookie showing up at the same time demanding payment.
When the central bank prints money and buys stuff to stimulate the economy, which is basically a cheat code that would get you banned if the economy were a video game. It sounds sophisticated, but it's the monetary equivalent of fixing a leaky boat by adding more water.
The total money a company brings in before subtracting any expenses, which is like bragging about your salary before mentioning your rent, taxes, and crippling avocado toast habit. Startups love to talk about revenue growth while conveniently forgetting to mention they spend two dollars for every dollar earned.
The lucky person who gets your stuff when you're gone, or whoever's name is on that insurance policy you forgot you had. In estate planning, they're the ones fighting over your belongings at Thanksgiving. In finance and law, they're the designated recipients of money, assets, or benefits from trusts, wills, and policies—basically, someone's getting paid and it's not you.
Making investment decisions based on the fear that everyone else is getting rich without you, which historically has been the most reliable way to buy at the top. It's the financial equivalent of joining a dance floor just as the DJ switches to a slow song.
Stocks that trade for less than a dollar, which are to investing what scratch-off tickets are to financial planning. They're cheap, exciting, and almost certainly going to leave you with less money than you started with, but the thrill of potential riches keeps people coming back.
The movement of money in and out of a business, which in most startups flows primarily in the out direction at an alarming velocity. Positive cash flow means more money coming in than going out, a concept that seems simple until you try to actually achieve it.
A 10% drop in the stock market that financial experts insist is healthy and normal, like telling someone getting punched in the face that it's good for their bone density. The word correction implies the market was wrong before, raising the question of when it's ever right.
Borrowing a stock, selling it, and hoping to buy it back cheaper, which is basically betting against a company's success while profiting from their misery. It's the financial equivalent of rooting for the villain, and occasionally, the villagers fight back with meme stocks.
Someone who takes money or property with the solemn promise to return it, a promise that banks document in triplicate just in case. In real estate, this is the person signing away their financial future for the privilege of owning a home. Also known as the person who will be seeing a lot of mortgage statements for the next 30 years.
Initial Public Offering, the moment a private company decides to let random strangers on the internet buy and sell pieces of it. It's like inviting the entire neighborhood to become co-owners of your lemonade stand and then wondering why everyone has opinions.