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Stocks that increase in value over the course of the trading day are described as gainers or advancers.
Those that increase the most in relation to their opening price are called percentage gainers, or percentage winners. Those that go up the greatest number of points are called net gainers, or dollar winners.
On a day that the stock market indexes go up, there are typically more gainers than there are losers or laggards - stocks that have lost value. And on a day where there's little change, there are likely to be similar numbers of gainers and losers.
- Browse Related Terms: Advance-decline (A-D) line, Advancer, Decliner, Gainer, Loser, Rally, Sell-off
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Legislation enacted in 1982 that provided the thrift industry more flexibility in managing assets and liabilities. As a result, the thrifts were authorized to: (1) invest up to 50% of assets in construction and development loans; (2) invest up to 30% of assets in consumer loans, commercial paper, and corporate debt; (3) own real estate development companies; (4) use land and other noncash assets in the capitalization of new charters, instead of the previously required cash; and (5) offer money market deposit accounts.
- Browse Related Terms: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Conservatorship, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act), Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA), Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act, Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA), Inspector General Act, Inspector General Reform Act, Interest Rate Risk
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A legal process allowing a financial institution to remove funds from your deposit or share account to satisfy a debt that you have not paid. If you owe money to a person or company, they can obtain a court order directing your financial institution to take money out of your account to pay off your debt. Not all states allow garnishment actions.
- Browse Related Terms: Automated Clearing House (ACH), Automated Teller Machine (ATM), Error Resolution, Frozen Account, Garnishment/Garnish, General account, Joint Account, Margin account, Minimum Amount to Open, Point of Sale (POS), Right of offset, statement
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An excise tax paid by consumers when they purchase gasoline. The tax covers the manufacture, sale, and use of gasoline.
- Browse Related Terms: gasoline excise tax, long-distance telephone tax refund, luxury tax, market economy, property taxes, resources, tax shift, telephone tax refund, user fees, user tax
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A general account is a deposit account. In the insurance industry, a general account is the account into which all incoming funds, except those designated for a separate account, are deposited.
Deposits to a general account include premiums for life insurance and fixed annuities, plus assets in the fixed portfolios of variable annuities.
Assets in a general account can be used to cover company expenses and are vulnerable to creditors' claims. In fact, this account can be sued to pay the firm's obligations. That's one reason that contract holders are cautioned that payouts are subject to the insurer's ability to pay its claims.
The Federal Reserve considers brokerage firms' margin accounts that are governed by Regulation T as general accounts. The Fed requires that all margin transactions made on behalf of clients be conducted through the clients' individual general accounts.
- Browse Related Terms: Automated Clearing House (ACH), Automated Teller Machine (ATM), Error Resolution, Frozen Account, Garnishment/Garnish, General account, Joint Account, Margin account, Minimum Amount to Open, Point of Sale (POS), Right of offset, statement
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A General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was signed in 1947 to provide an international forum to encourage free trade, reduce tariffs, and provide a mechanism for resolving trade disputes.
The Uruguay Round Agreements Act was ratified by Congress in 1994 to foster trade by cutting international tariffs, standardizing copyright and patent protection, and liberalizing trade legislation.
- Browse Related Terms: Closing a mortgage loan, Down Payment, First Mortgage, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Lease, Lien, mortgage, Release of Lien
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State and local governments issue general obligation (GO) municipal bonds and pay the interest and repay the principal from general revenues.
GO bonds considered somewhat less risky, and so pay slightly lower rates, than the same municipality's revenue bonds, which are backed by income from a specific project or agency.
A municipality's general revenues come from the taxes it is able to raise and money it can borrow. Those powers are sometimes described as its full faith and credit.
- Browse Related Terms: accrued interest, Bonds (Corporate), Coupon Rate, Debt, Full faith and credit, General obligation (GO) bond, Insured bond, Senior bond, Treasuries
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Geocode refers to the combination of applicable codes for the metropolitan area, state, county and census tract. These codes indicate the location of the property to which a loan relates.
Beginning with calendar year 2004 data, the combination is MSA-MD/state/county/census tract.
- Browse Related Terms: Activity Year, Census Tract, County Code, Geocode, Metropolitan Division (MD), Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) / Metropolitan Division (MD), Quality Edits, State Code, Syntactical Edits, Validity Edits
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A payment, advance, forbearance, rendering, or deposit of money, or anything of value, unless consideration of equal or greater value is received by the donor, but does not include:
- Bequests and other forms of inheritance;
- Suitable mementos of a function honoring the reporting individual;
- Food, lodging, transportation, and entertainment provided by a foreign government within a foreign country or by the United States Government, the District of Columbia, or a State or local government or political subdivision thereof;
- Food and beverages which are not consumed in connection with a gift of overnight lodging;
- Communications to the offices of a reporting individual, including subscriptions to newspapers and periodicals;
- Consumable products provided by home-State businesses to the offices of the President or Vice President, if those products are intended for consumption by persons other than the President or Vice President; or
- Exclusions and exceptions as described at Sec. 2634.304(c) and (d).
- Browse Related Terms: Audit, Banking day, Consumer Reporting Agency, Correspondent, custodian, Direct Dispute, Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), Gift, Lender, Remittance Transfers, Safe (or Safety) Deposit Box
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A gift tax is a tax on the combined total value of the taxable gifts you make that exceed your lifetime federal tax-exempt limit of $1 million. The tax is figured as a percentage of the value of your gifts over that amount.
For example, if during your lifetime you make taxable gifts of money and property valued at $1.2 million, you will owe federal gift tax on $200,000. You might also owe state gift tax, depending on where you live.
However, you can make annual tax-free gifts to as many individuals and nonprofit institutions as you like. As long as the value of the gifts to each individual is less than the annual limit set by Congress, that amount doesn't count against your lifetime tax-free limits.
Gifts to nonprofits are not taxed and don't count against your lifetime limit either.
If you're married, you can give your spouse gifts of any value at anytime, totally tax free, provided he or she is a US citizen. There are limits on spousal gifts when the spouse is not a citizen.
You are not required to report the tax-free gifts on your tax return, but you must report taxable gifts whose value exceeds the annual tax-free limit on IRS Form 709 for the year you make them. The tax becomes due when the cumulative total exceeds $1 million.
However, the law setting the $1 million limit is set to expire at the end of 2010. Unless Congress acts before that date, the lifetime tax-exempt limit will fall back to $675,000.
- Browse Related Terms: Back-up withholding, Custodial account, Estate, Estate tax, Gift tax, Income, Income in respect of a decedent, Income stock, National debt, Qualified domestic trust (QDOT), Revocable trust, Uniform Gifts to Minors Act (UGMA), Uniform Transfers to Minors Act (UTMA)
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When the term gilt-edged is applied to bonds, it's the equivalent of describing a stock as a blue chip.
Both terms mean that the issuing corporation has a long, strong record for meeting its financial obligations to its investors. That includes making interest and dividend payments on time and redeeming bonds on schedule.
- Browse Related Terms: Callable bond, Conversion price, Convertible bond, Deep discount bond, Exchange traded notes, Gilt-edged security, Indenture, Noncallable, Original issue discount, Par Value, Prerefunding, Redemption, Sinking fund, Zero-coupon bond, Zero-coupon convertible bond
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To raise money in more than one market, some corporations use global depositary receipts (GDRs) to sell their stock on markets in countries other than the one where they have their headquarters.
The GDRs are issued in the currency of the country where the stock is trading. For example, a Mexican company might offer GDRs priced in pounds in London and in yen in Tokyo.
Individual investors in the countries where the GDRs are issued buy them to diversify into international markets. GDRs let you do this without having to deal with currency conversion and other complications of overseas investing.
However, since GDRs are frequently offered by newer or less-known companies, the prices are often volatile and the stocks may be thinly traded. That makes buying GDRs riskier than buying domestic stocks.
- Browse Related Terms: Brady bond, Central bank, Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Devaluation, Euro, Eurobond, Eurocurrency, Exchange Rate, Floating rate, Global depositary receipt (GDR), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Monetary policy, Monetary reserve, Open market, World Bank, Yankee bond
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Global, or world, mutual funds invest in US securities as well as those of other countries. In that way, they differ from international funds, which invest only in non-US markets.
Although global funds may keep as much as 75% of their assets invested in the US, fund managers are able to take advantage of opportunities they see in various overseas markets.
- Browse Related Terms: Contrarian, equity fund, Global fund, Growth and income fund, income fund, International fund, Investment objective, Portfolio turnover, Prospectus, Real estate investment trust (REIT), Tax-efficient funds, Transparency, Turnover ratio, Value fund, Vulture fund, World fund
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When you go long, you buy a security or other financial product that you intend to hold for a period of time or one that you expect to increase in value so that you can sell it at a profit.
Going long is the opposite of going short, which means you sell an investment, usually because you expect it to decline in value in the near future.
If you're buying and selling options or futures contracts, you go long when you enter a contract to buy and you go short when you enter a contract to sell.
- Browse Related Terms: Cash settlement, Clearinghouse, Closing price, Commodity, Daily trading limit, derivative, Financial future, Fungible, Futures contract, Go long, Hedger, Open interest, Speculator, Trade date, Trading volume, Unit of trading, Weather derivative, Zero sum
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A corporation goes public when it issues shares of its stock in the open market for the first time, in what is known as an initial public offering (IPO).
That means that at least some of the shares will be held by members of the public rather than exclusively by the investors who founded and funded the corporation initially or the current owners or management.
- Browse Related Terms: Floating an issue, Go public, Gross spread, Hot issue, Lock-up period, New Issue, Offering date, Offering price, Oversubscribed, Reverse merger, Secondary offering, Startup
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When you enter a futures contract that commits you to sell or deliver the underlying product, you go short or have a short position.
You're also going short when you write an options contract, giving the buyer the right to exercise the contract. With stocks, you go short when you borrow shares of stock through your broker and sell them at their current market price.
In contrast, you go long when you enter a futures contract to buy, when you purchase an options contract, or buy a stock either to hold in your portfolio or sell at some point in the future.
- Browse Related Terms: assignment, At-the-money, Automatic exercise, Call, Call option, Covered option, Exercise, Go short, Green shoe clause, In-the-money, Incentive stock option (ISO), Long position, Naked option, offset, Option, Option premium, Put option, Short position, Stock option, Strike price, Uncovered option, Writer
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Interest rate you are charged after the introductory rate.
- Browse Related Terms: "Go-to" rate, Average daily balance method with compounding, Average daily balance method without compounding, balance, Daily balance method with compounding, Daily balance method without compounding, Daily periodic rate (DPR), Default APR, Interest-free period, Introductory APR, Penalty APR, Periodic rate, Purchase APR
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The gold standard is a monetary system that measures the relative value of a currency against a specific amount of gold.
It was developed in England in the early 18th century when the scientist Sir Isaac Newton was Master of the English Mint. By the late 19th century, the gold standard was used throughout the world.
The US was on the gold standard until 1971, when it stopped redeeming its paper currency for gold.
- Browse Related Terms: Bond fund, Bond rating, Currency, Duration, Fallen angel, Gold standard, High-yield bond, Investment grade, Junk bond, Moody's Investors Service, Inc., Rating, Rating service, Risk premium
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A good faith deposit is a sum of money provided by a buyer to a seller, which demonstrates the buyer's intention to purchase.
For instance, if you've decided on a home you want to buy, you generally make a good faith deposit to support your bid.
A good faith deposit, also called a binder or earnest money, is usually a fixed amount that's standard in the community where you're buying. It's different from a down payment. That's a larger cash payment, figured as a percentage of the purchase price, which you make when you sign the contract to purchase the property.
If you and the seller can't agree on the terms of the sale, you generally get your good faith deposit back.
- Browse Related Terms: Affinity fraud, Earnest Money, ex-dividend, Good faith deposit, Net change, Record date, Settlement date, Tick, Uptick
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A good faith estimate is a written summary provided by your mortgage lender. It shows the amount you can expect to pay at your real estate closing to cover all the fees and expenses that are part of arranging your mortgage loan.
It includes, among other things, the title search and title insurance, lawyers' fees, transfer taxes, and filing fees. The total amount of a good faith estimate is in addition to the down payment you will make.
- Browse Related Terms: Closing Costs, Closing Statement, Deed, Escrow, Good faith estimate, Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), Refund, Satisfaction of mortgage, Settlement (or Closing) Costs, Settlement agent, Title, Title Insurance, Title Search
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An estimated breakdown of the costs of a mortgage loan. The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) requires your mortgage lender to give you a good faith estimate of all your closing costs within 3 business days of submitting your application for a loan, whether you are purchasing or refinancing a home. The actual expenses at closing may be somewhat different from the good faith estimate.
- Browse Related Terms: Appraisal, Appraiser, Closing (or settlement) costs, equity, Financial Models, Good faith estimate, Loan to Value (LTV) Ratio
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