ExpertGlossary

Laddering is an investment strategy that calls for establishing a pattern of rolling maturity dates for a portfolio of fixed-income investments. Your portfolio might include intermediate-term bonds or certificates of deposit (CDs).

For example, instead of buying one $15,000 CD with a three-year term, you buy three $5,000 CDs maturing one year apart. As each CD comes due, you can reinvest the principal to extend the pattern.

Or, you could use the money for a preplanned purchase, have it available to take advantage of a new investment opportunity, or use it to cover unexpected expenses.

You can use laddering to pay for college expenses, with a series of zero coupon bonds coming due over four years, in time to pay tuition each year.

And if you ladder, you can avoid having to liquidate a large bond investment if you need just some of the money or reinvest your entire principal at a time when interest rates may be low.

A lapse causes a policy, right, or privilege to end because the person or institution that would benefit fails to live up to its terms or meet its conditions.

For example, if you have a subscription right to buy additional shares of a stock at a price below the public offering price, you must generally act before a certain date. If that date passes, your right is said to lapse.

Similarly, if you have a life insurance policy that requires you to pay annual premiums, the policy will lapse and you'll no longer be covered if you fail to pay.

The stock of companies with market capitalizations of $10 billion or more is known as large-cap stock. Market capitalization is figured by multiplying the number of either the outstanding or the floating shares by the current share price.

Large-cap stock is generally considered less volatile than stock in smaller companies, in part because the bigger companies may have larger reserves to carry them through economic downturns.

However, market capitalization is always in flux. Today's large-cap stock can drop out of that category if the share price plunges either in a general market downturn or as a result of internal problems.

And the opposite is true as well. Many of the country's largest companies began life as start-ups.

The last trading day is the final day on which an order to buy or sell an options contract or futures contract can be executed.

In the case of an options contract, for example, the last trading day is usually the Friday before the third Saturday of the month in which the option expires, though a brokerage firm may set an earlier deadline for receiving orders.

If you don't act on an option you own before the final trading day, the option may simply expire, or if it is in-the-money it may be automatically executed on your behalf by your brokerage firm or the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) unless you request that it not be.

But if a futures contract isn't offset, the contract seller is obligated to deliver the physical commodity or cash settlement to the contract buyer.

When a company wants to raise capital by selling securities to investors, it partners with an investment bank, known as the lead underwriter.

That bank has the primary responsibility for organizing and managing an initial public offering (IPO), a secondary stock offering, or a bond offering.

In the case of an IPO, the lead underwriter agrees to buy all the shares from the company and helps it determine an initial offering price for the security, create a prospectus, and organize a syndicate of other investment banks to help sell the securities to investors.

In return for assuming the financial risk of the IPO, the lead underwriter receives a fee, which is usually a percentage of each share price of the IPO.

A lease is a legal agreement that provides for the use of something - typically real estate or equipment - in exchange for payment.

Once a lease is signed, its terms, such as the rent, cannot be changed unless both parties agree. A lease is usually legally binding, which means you are held to its terms until it expires. If you break a lease, you could be held liable in court.

Some load mutual funds impose a recurring sales charge, called a level load, each year you own the fund rather than a sales charge to buy or sell shares.

The level-load rate is generally lower than the sales charge for front- or back-end loads. But the annual asset-based management fee on these funds is higher than for front-load funds.

This means the total amount you pay over time with a level load can be substantially more than a one-time sales charge, especially if you own the fund for a number of years.

If a fund company offers you a choice of the way you prefer to pay the load, level-load funds are generally identified as Class C shares. Front-end loads are Class A shares and back-end loads are Class B shares.

With a level term life insurance policy, your annual premium remains the same for the term, which may be as long as 10 or 20 years.

The death benefit also remains the same. If the policy is guaranteed renewable, you can extend coverage for an additional term without having to qualify again, though the annual premium will increase because you're older.

Although the cost of insurance in the first few years will probably be higher for a level term than an increasing term policy, the total cost of a level term with the same benefit is usually less. As with all term policies, you don't build up a cash reserve and your coverage ends at the end of the term or at any time you stop making payments.

A level yield curve results when the interest rate on short-term US Treasury issues is essentially the same as the rate on long-term Treasury bonds.

You create the curve by plotting a graph with rate on the vertical axis and maturity date on the horizontal axis and connecting the dots.

In most periods, the rate on long-term bonds is higher and the yield curve is positive because investors demand more for tying up their money for a longer period.

There are also times, when interest rates seems to be on the upswing, that the pattern is reversed and the yield curve is negative, or inverted.

Leverage is an investment technique in which you use a small amount of your own money to make an investment of much larger value. In that way, leverage gives you significant financial power.

For example, if you borrow 90% of the cost of a home, you are using the leverage to buy a much more expensive property than you could have afforded by paying cash.

If you sell the property for more than you borrowed, the profit is entirely yours. The reverse is also true. If you sell at a loss, the amount you borrowed is still due and the entire loss is yours.

Buying stock on margin is a type of leverage, as is buying a futures or options contract.

Leveraging can be risky if the underlying instrument doesn't perform as you anticipate. At the very least, you may lose your investment principal plus any money you borrowed to make the purchase.

With some leveraged investments, you could be responsible for even larger losses if the value of the underlying product drops significantly.

A leveraged buyout occurs when a group of investors using borrowed money, often raised with high yield bonds or other kinds of debt, takes control of a company.

These buyouts are usually hostile takeovers, and if they are successful, the investors will usually start to sell off assets to pay down the substantial debt they have incurred.

In personal finance, liabilities are the amounts you owe to creditors, or the people and organizations that lend you money. Typical liabilities include your mortgage, car and educational loans, and credit card debt.

When you figure your net worth, you subtract your liabilities, or what you owe, from your assets. The result is your net worth, or the cash value of what you own.

In business, liabilities refer to money a company owes its creditors and any claims against its assets.

A lien is a document that shows you owe money to a lender on a particular vehicle or other asset, such as real estate, that has been used as collateral on a loan.

An asset on which there's a lien can't be sold until the lienholder has been repaid. When you own an asset on which there's a lien, you risk having it repossessed if you default and don't make the required payments in full and on time.

A lienholder is the bank, finance company, credit union, other financial institution, or individual with whom you signed an agreement to borrow money using a particular asset, such as a car, as collateral.

As long as there is a balance due on the loan, the lienholder must be repaid before you are free to sell the asset.

A lifecycle fund, which is a fund of funds, invests in individual mutual funds that a fund company puts together to help investors meet their objectives without having to select individual funds.

Some companies offer a set of lifecycle funds, each with a different level of risk and return, from conservative to aggressive. In that case, you may choose a lifecycle that's appropriate for reaching your goals within the time frame you've allowed.

The typical pattern is for younger investors to choose a more aggressive lifecycle fund and those nearing retirement to choose a more conservative fund.

With target date funds, which are a type of lifecycle fund, you choose a target retirement year, and the fund manager invests and reallocates your money more and more conservatively as you near retirement.

Your life expectancy is the age to which you can expect to live. Actuarial tables establish your official life expectancy, which insurance companies use to evaluate the risk they take in selling you life insurance or an annuity contract.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) also uses life expectancy to determine the distribution period you must use to calculate minimum required distributions from your retirement savings plans or traditional IRAs.

However, your true life expectancy, based on your lifestyle, family history, and other factors, may be longer or shorter than your official life expectancy.

Life insurance is a contract you sign with an insurance company, obligating it to pay a death benefit of a certain value to the beneficiaries you name.

In most cases, the payment is made at the time of your death, but certain policies allow you to take a portion of the death benefit if you are terminally ill and need the money to pay for healthcare.

You may select either term or permanent insurance. With a term policy, you are insured for a specific period of time. When the term ends, you must renew the policy for another term or change your coverage. Otherwise, you're no longer insured. With a permanent policy, you can buy coverage for your lifetime.

You pay an annual premium, typically billed monthly or quarterly, for the coverage. The insurer sets the cost, based on your age, health, life style, and other factors. With a permanent policy, your premium is fixed, but with a term policy it typically increases when you renew your coverage to reflect the fact that you're older.

A lifeline account is a basic checking account with low or no minimum deposit and balance requirements and very low or no monthly fees.

Most lifeline accounts, however, limit the number of checks that you can write and may otherwise restrict the banking services you receive.

Currently, certain states require banks to offer lifeline accounts, to ensure that lower-income people have access to banking services. However, you can find no-frills checking accounts in other states as well.

If you are over age 70 and no longer need your life insurance policy, you may be able to sell it to a third party in what's called a life settlement.

You're paid a cash amount less than the death benefit but typically greater than the surrender value, and the party that buys your policy will get the death benefit when you die.

Similar to viatical settlements, in which terminally ill people may sell their life insurance policies, generally to use the cash to pay for healthcare, life settlements let you forgo a death benefit and use the cash in your policy while you're alive.

However, life settlements are for people who are healthy and expect to live more than a couple of years. Specific rules for life settlements are set by the state where a specific transaction takes place.

Some businesses specialize in buying life insurance policies from older or terminally ill individuals and reselling them as investments.

However, because these insurance arrangements are controversial and most investors understand them poorly, both people considering selling policies and people considering investing in them are advised to proceed with caution. For example, there may be complex estate-planning and tax consequences to life settlements.