A statement of a firm’s net worth, a balance sheet lists what the company owns (assets), what it owes (liabilities) and how it has all been financed (shareholders’ funds). A growing balance sheet generally reflects the fact that a firm is profitable. READ MORE
This is the name of Britain’s central bank tasked with several key responsibilities. One is fiscal policy – setting the level of interest rates and also the amount of any additional monetary stimulus such as quantitative easing (QE) needed to hit its targets in relation to interest rates and the overall level of economic growth. …
Someone who expects prices to fall, whether for property, shares, currencies or commodities. When this occurs on a consistent basis – and the drop is 20% or more in the case of equity markets – you get what is called a “bear market”. READ MORE
This is a measure of the volatility of a portfolio, or a single stock, in relation to the wider market. The higher a stock’s beta the more volatile, or cyclical, it tends to be. In simple terms it compares the movement in a single stock to the movement of the wider market – if a …
Most prices for financial instruments are quoted “two way” – there is a bid and an offer price. The price at which you can sell securities in the market is the bid price for your counterparty. So if a share has a spread of 210p-215p, 210p is the more relevant price when it comes to …
A virtual asset built on the Blockchain distributed ledger. Labelled a “currency”, Bitcoin may be used to buy a limited range of goods and services and can be exchanged for other virtual currencies as well as hard currencies such as the US dollar (subject to restrictions). Its main use to date, however, has been as …
Investors buy bonds looking for an annual return known as a yield. There are two basic types – an income yield only takes account of the annual income a bond generates as a percentage of the current price. A yield to maturity also factors in any expected annual capital gain or loss between the point …
Also known as final, or average, salary schemes, these arrangements offer many employees of the state and some larger companies a pension based on their salary whilst in employment. For example you might accrue one eightieth of your final salary for every year that you work up to a maximum of 40/80ths based on forty …
Mon to Fri, 8:00 – 17:30
