A crisis that occurs when several financial institutions issue or are sold high-risk loans that start to default. As borrowers default on their loans, the financial institutions that issued the loans stop receiving payments. This is followed by a period in which financial institutions redefine the riskiness of borrowers, making it difficult for debtors to find creditors. In the case of a credit crisis, banks either do not charge enough interest on loans or pay too much for the securitized loan, or the rating system does not rate the risk of the loans correctly. A crisis occurs when several factors combine in the marketplace, affecting a large number of investors. For example, banks will charge teaser rates on loans, but when the initial low payments change, they become too high for borrowers to pay. The borrowers default on the loans, and the loan's collateral value simultaneously drops. If enough lending institutions reduce the number of new loans issued, the economy will slow down, making it even harder for other borrowers to pay their loans.
The currency abbreviation for the Malawian kwacha (MWK), the currency for Malawi. The Malawian kwacha is made up of 100 tambala and is often presented with the symbol MK. The name kwacha comes from the word "dawn" in Chichewa, which along with English, is the official language of Malawi. |||From Malawi's independence in 1964, the Malawian pound was the currency of Malawi. The pound remained the currency until 1971, when the Malawian kwacha replaced the pound at a rate of 2:1. At the time of this change, the currency of Malawi was decimalized.
A ratio used to measure the quality of a fund's investment picking ability. It compares the fund's alpha (or the adjusted return of the fund assuming the market return is zero) to the portfolio's unsystematic risk or residual standard deviation. By selecting a basket of investments, the managers of an active investment fund attempt to beat the returns of a relevant benchmark or of the overall market. The appraisal ratio measures the managers' performance by comparing the return of their stock picks to the specific risk of those selections. The higher the ratio, the better the performance of the manager in question.
An investment strategy that is focused on mitigating a risk that has already been taken. The "short" portion of the term refers to the act of shorting a security, usually a derivatives contract, that hedges against potential losses in an investment that is held long.If a short hedge is executed well, gains from the long position will be offset by losses in the derivatives position, and vice versa. A common risk in short hedging is basis risk, or the risk that price levels will not change much over the period the hedge is in place; in this scenario, the asset held in the long position would not gain any value, and the short hedge would lose value.Short hedging is often seen in the agriculture business, as producers are often willing to pay a small premium to lock in a preferred rate of sale in the future. Also, short hedges involving interest rates are common among institutional money managers that hold large amounts of fixed income securities and are concerned about reinvestment risk in the future.
A measure of financial performance that looks at the cash flow generated by a company on a per share basis. This differs from basic earnings per share (EPS), which looks at the net income of the company on a per share basis. The higher a company's cash EPS, the better it is considered to have performed over the period. A company's cash EPS can be used to draw comparisons to other companies or to the company's own past results. Watch: Earning Per Share |||You may sometimes see cash EPS defined as either EPS plus amortization of goodwill and other intangible items, or net income plus depreciation divided by outstanding shares. Whatever the definition, the point of cash EPS is that it's a stricter number than other variations on EPS because cash flow cannot be manipulated as easily as net income.
A term coined by Joseph Schumpeter in his work entitled "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" (1942) to denote a "process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one." Creative destruction occurs when something new kills something older. A great example of this is personal computers. The industry, led by Microsoft and Intel, destroyed many mainframe computer companies, but in doing so, entrepreneurs created one of the most important inventions of this century. Schumpeter goes so far as to say that the "process of creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism." Unfortunately, while a great concept, this became one of the most overused buzzwords of the dotcom boom (and bust), with nearly every technology CEO talking about how creative destruction would replace the old economy with the new.
The time period for which a limited partnership expects to hold a specific asset. A firm will disclose its anticipated holding period on assets through its prospectus. After the specified time period, the partnership will typically sell the holding, and the capital invested will be repaid to investors through a lump-sum distribution. Before a broker recommends a potential investment to an individual, he or she should evaluate and disclose the selling firm’s anticipated holding periods on underlying assets. The anticipated holding period on assets can affect how investments are graded and therefore recommended to customers. For example, the anticipated holding period on underlying assets can affect mutual funds’ share classes. FINRA – the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency – enforces rules governing broker-dealers, including that they must have “reasonable grounds” for believing that a recommended transaction/investment is suitable for a customer based on his or her financial situation, needs and investment objectives.
One of three stock exchanges in the People's Republic of China, located in Shenzhen. The SHZ lists more than 1500 companies, most of which are controlled by the Chinese government. It lists the Shenzhen Stock Exchange 100 Index, which is composed of various Chinese benchmark banks and companies. The SHZ is the 9th largest stock exchange in all of Asia in terms of market capitalization. It runs from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM weekdays except for holidays. In 2009 the SHZ opened a new exchange similar to Nasdaq for small cap technology companies.