A party that brings together professionals and recruiters who have recently been laid off. Pink slip parties are usually held during tough economic times, when unemployment is rising and businesses are closing. Often, these casual gatherings will raise money for charity, and provide job search advice to the attendees. Pink slip parties are a way for job seekers to network with each other as well as with recruiters. As such, each person is often labeled with a name tag or color-coded bracelet. Pink slip parties increase in frequency during economic slowdowns such as after the internet bubble or the credit crisis. They can provide a sense of solidarity for the newly unemployed, but they sometimes also provide practical advice on finding a new job or building a resume to help the recently unemployed as they try to get back into the workforce.
A type of pre-marketing of an initial public offering (IPO) that involves testing investor sentiment to receive feedback on how the market may respond to an issue. Pilot fishing has led to much controversy because it could undermine the role of investment bankers by providing advice to clients about the price at which the IPO is launched. Pilot fishing is practiced in Europe, but SEC regulations about what can and cannot occur during the SEC's IPO approval process prevent this from happening in the U.S. Analyst research is not allowed to be published before IPOs are approved by the SEC, so decisions made by investors is based mainly on prospectuses.
After Bernard Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme was revealed, many new (smaller-scale) Ponzi schemers are being exposed. Ponzimonium refers to the tremendous growth rate in the number of people under investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission for suspected similar fraudulent behaviors. Possibly due to the heavy exposure of the event concerning Mr. Madoff's business practices or the downturn in the economy, the use of Ponzi schemes appears to be more prevalent than previously believed. Criminals are now even turning to fraudulent internet investment operations to cheat unsuspecting victims.
A fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors. The Ponzi scheme generates returns for older investors by acquiring new investors. This scam actually yields the promised returns to earlier investors, as long as there are more new investors. These schemes usually collapse on themselves when the new investments stop. The Ponzi scam is named after Charles Ponzi, a clerk in Boston who first orchestrated such a scheme in 1919. A Ponzi scheme is similar to a pyramid scheme in that both are based on using new investors' funds to pay the earlier backers. One difference between the two schemes is that the Ponzi mastermind gathers all relevant funds from new investors and then distributes them. Pyramid schemes, on the other hand, allow each investor to directly benefit depending on how many new investors are recruited. In this case, the person on the top of the pyramid does not at any point have access to all the money in the system. For both schemes, however, eventually there isn't enough money to go around and the schemes unravel.
An arbitrage activity that involves trading securities based on knowledge of potential future political activity. It may be country-specific or region-specific, depending on the type of political activity envisaged. Impending government elections in a given country may prompt political arbitrage specific to that nation, while the threat of a war that could encompass a number of countries may trigger political arbitrage across the entire region. For example, if recent elections are likely to lead to the formation of a government that is not business friendly, a trader may short the benchmark equity index of that country in anticipation of a steep decline. As another example, if there is a distinct possibility of an imminent conflict in the Middle East, an arbitrageur or trader may short stocks of oil companies based in that region and initiate long positions on North American oil companies.
Economic growth that is powered and consumed by the wealthiest upper class of society. Plutonomy refers to a society where the majority of the wealth is controlled by an ever-shrinking minority; as such, the economic growth of that society becomes dependent on the fortunes of that same wealthy minority. This buzz word was initially coined by analysts at Citigroup in 2005 to describe the incredible growth of the U.S. economy during that period despite increasing interest rates, commodity prices and an inflated national debt. Citigroup analysts argued that as such an economy continues to grow in the face of contradictory elements, the more important the society's ultra rich become to maintaining such growth. The analysts also believed that in addition to the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and China are also becoming plutonomies.
A colloquial reference to a group of economic leaders within the United States whose purpose is to ensure the nation's financial markets are efficient, competitive, and provide confidence for investors. Created by Ronald Reagan in 1988 to deal with the crash of 1987, the group was formed due to Executive Order 12631.
A choice investment, or one that has outperformed other comparable investments. While there are no specific quantitative criteria to define a plum, it should have outperformed over a reasonable period of time without being perceived as being unduly risky. An asset class may be a plum investment in one period and a lemon (the antithesis of a plum) in another. For example, large-cap technology stocks were plum investments in the 1990s, but turned out to be lemons in the first decade of the new Millennium, when US Treasury bonds were among the plums. In general, stocks that have posted consistent returns for many years would qualify as plum investments. A well diversified portfolio of blue-chips would generally contain a number of plums, but may also contain a few lemons - stocks that are chronic underperformers with poor or negative rates of return.