Instruments: US equities & ETFs: glossary

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  • 28 terms

The terms

  • 52-week high and lowA 52-week high or low is the highest or lowest price a stock has traded at over the past year, the number scanners and headlines count. Counting…
  • ADR (American Depositary Receipt)An ADR is a receipt a US bank issues for shares of a foreign company it holds abroad, so the stock trades in New York in dollars; Infosys and ICICI…
  • Blue chip US stocksBlue chip US stocks are large, long-established, profitable American companies like Apple, JPMorgan or Johnson & Johnson; the Dow was built as their…
  • Bull and bear marketA bull market is a sustained rise in prices; a bear market is a fall of 20% or more from a recent high, the convention for the S&P 500. The labels…
  • Cyclical vs defensive stocksCyclical stocks earn more when the economy grows and less when it shrinks: discretionary, industrials, materials, energy, financials. Defensive…
  • Direct listing / SPACA direct listing puts existing shares on an exchange with no new shares and no underwriter, so the opening auction sets the first price. A SPAC is a…
  • Dividend aristocratsDividend aristocrats are S&P 500 companies that have raised their dividend every year for at least twenty five years, like Coca-Cola and Procter &…
  • Dividend ETFA dividend ETF holds stocks picked for high or steadily rising dividends, such as SCHD or VYM. Its headline yield rises when prices fall, so read it…
  • ETF creation and redemptionETF creation and redemption is how an ETF's price stays near the value of its holdings: large dealers swap baskets of shares for new ETF units, or…
  • GICS sectorsGICS sectors are the eleven sectors S&P and MSCI use to classify every company: energy, materials, industrials, consumer discretionary, consumer…
  • Growth vs value stocksGrowth vs value is the split between companies priced for profits far in the future, like most technology, and companies priced cheaply on today's…
  • Index ETFAn index ETF holds every stock in a published index at the index weights, with no view and a small fee. It buys in the closing auction on the day…
  • Index rebalancingIndex rebalancing is when an index changes members or weights and every fund tracking it must trade the difference, usually in the closing auction…
  • Inverse ETFAn inverse ETF aims for the opposite of an index's daily move, so it rises when the index falls, and it resets daily like a leveraged ETF. It is a…
  • IPO (US)A US IPO is a company's first sale of shares to the public, registered with the SEC in an S-1 filing. In June 2026 SpaceX raised $75 billion in one…
  • Leveraged ETFA leveraged ETF aims for two or three times an index's daily move and resets every day. Up 10% then down 10% leaves the index at 99 and a 2x fund at…
  • Magnificent 7The Magnificent 7 are Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and Tesla, seven companies that drove most of the S&P 500's gains from 2023.…
  • Market breadthMarket breadth is how many stocks are taking part in a move: advancers against decliners, new highs against new lows, the equal-weight index against…
  • Market cap categories (mega/large/mid/small)Market cap categories group US companies by size: mega above $200 billion, large $10 to $200 billion, mid $2 to $10 billion, small $300 million to…
  • Market capitalizationMarket capitalization is share price times shares outstanding, the market's price for the whole company. Index weights in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100…
  • Market correctionA correction is a fall of 10% to 20% from a recent high, a convention, not a rule. Most start on a rate repricing or a guide that disappoints, the…
  • Pre-IPO stocksPre-IPO stocks are shares of private companies before they list, priced in private funding rounds with no public order book. Some venues list…
  • QQQ ETFQQQ is the Invesco ETF tracking the Nasdaq 100, technology-heavy and concentrated in a few giants. It sits on the long-dated side of the rates line…
  • REIT (US)A US REIT is a listed company that owns income-producing property and must pay out at least 90% of taxable income as dividends. It trades like a…
  • Sector ETFA sector ETF holds one of the eleven GICS sectors, like XLE for energy, XLF for financials or XLK for technology. A number about the economy never…
  • SPY ETFSPY is the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, the first US-listed ETF (1993) and one of the most traded securities on earth, so its price is effectively the live…
  • Stock split (US)A stock split divides each share into several, so a 10-for-1 split turns one $1,000 share into ten $100 shares at the same company value; Nvidia…
  • US ETFA US ETF is an exchange-traded fund on a US exchange that holds a basket, usually an index, and trades all day like one share. Most list on NYSE…