Articles on Stock markets

IPOs are initial public offerings of a private company ready to turn public and trade on an exchange

If there is a lot of hype surrounding the IPO, it may be a good strategy to immediately sell them while the frenzy is on

Another way to participate in IPOs is to pick up shares of mutual funds and ETFs that invest in them for you

You may find it difficult to find IPO shares to buy if you are not already a very active and wealthy investor

Many studies have investigated the benefits of purchasing IPOs, and the results might surprise you

Gold ETFs work by holding some amount of gold in trust and then selling shares of the fund that owns it

The value of gold coins is twofold: the price of the gold in the coin, and the numismatic value of the coin

Conventional wisdom says that investing in gold might be a good hedge against inflation or market cataclysms

Contango is when the price of a futures contract is higher than the current spot price of a commodity

Real estate investments fall into a wide spectrum of subsets. You can invest in residential property, commercial, etc.

Conventional wisdom is that real estate investments are a good hedge against inflation, and they often have tax advantages

REITs are similar to mutual funds, except that they only invest in real estate properties, related companies, and assets

Hedge funds are private investment groups that attract high net worth individuals and use riskier investment strategies

Hedge funds have historically been very secretive. Now, they are a little more transparent, but not fully

Some hedge funds will require investors to fit the Qualified Purchaser criteria, which requires a portfolio of $5 million

About half of all hedge funds are obligated to disclose their performance, and it can be found online through Morningstar

Hedge funds are sometimes the highest-earning investment vehicles, and sometimes they do that much worse than everything else

Hedge funds can require initial investments that are quite large. This may be somewhere between $250,000 to $10,000,000

Hedge funds can employ many strategies and focus on virtually any kind of investing style. As of 2016, the are over 12,000

In reality, only a small portion of venture capital is directed at seed money for startups. The rest is directed at...

There are large venture capital firms, which might invest in any start-up company if they think the company has potential

Minimum investments into venture capital funds tend to be vast sums of money. They tend to be for $1 million or more

Venture capitalists are now helping newer companies achieve success in return for large equity positions in the business

Private placements may be for non-public companies, or it may be a private offering of a publicly traded company

Different opportunities to invest in private placements may present themselves to wealthy individuals over time

Private Placements — How To Get Information The answer is, you can’t. Private placements have no reporting or registration requirements with the SEC or other entities

Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) are bond-like investments backed by debts such as mortgages

A Credit Default Swap is a contract that provides a hedge against credit default risk

In essence, the risk associated is separated from the actual asset and is passed on to a counter-party for a premium

A derivative is a security which monetizes the risk or volatility associated with a reference asset

Futures markets are the formal exchanges on which futures contracts are bought and sold for financial products

Futures contracts constitute a binding agreement to trade a commodity or share at a future date at an agreed-upon price

Index futures are futures contracts written on an index in which a large position can be held with a small margin

Forward contracts are agreements to exchange specific assets on a specific date, at a price determined at the outset

Naked shorting means that the seller has not located or secured the security being short sold, and is in many cases illegal

Some securities, such as IPOs, are prohibited from being purchased on margin or for serving as margin for other purchases

Meaning: OTC (over-the-counter) stocks are bought and sold outside an official stock exchange, via a dealer network.

A penny Stock is a term for equity shares valued below $5, many of which are not registered with the SEC and trade OTC

The Pink Sheets used to be printed on pink paper and contained the bid and ask prices of penny stocks

The secondary markets are where most trading goes on today, where the trades are made investor-to-investor using shares

A short position is a sale made by an investor for a security which he or she will deliver to the buyer in the near future

Short interest is a term used to describe how many short positions are open for a given security or market at a given time

A short sale is the sale of a security not owned by an investor, which the investor has borrowed from the broker to sell

A short squeeze occurs when many short-sellers attempt to cover their positions at the same time, and it drives prices up

Triple witching hour is when three types of derivatives expire at once, which happens once every quarter in the US

An accelerated return note (ARN) is an unsecured debt instrument that uses derivatives to offer leveraged return