GLOSSARY



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Derivatives
Options, swaps, futures, forward contracts, options on futures, options on indexes, and other more exotic instruments are called deritvatives because their value and definition is derived from other securities. With some derivatives you can gain a lot of leverage on an investment, which increases the level of risk greatly. If risk management is not properly exercised, a disaster will eventually occur, and this has given derivatives a bad reputation. It's not a problem with derivatives, however, but rather a problem of a lack of proper risk management.
Equities
These are stocks, basicaly. They are the publicly traded shares of a corporation. Not all companies are publicly traded. To own stock in a company is to own shares in it, and that means you have equity in the company. Equities are different from bonds; holders of bonds do not own a piece of a company, they own debt obligations instead.
LDR
This stands for long distance relationship. Basically, with the advent of the Internet, the concept of LDRs gained in popularity because frequently, or actually most of the time, the person you met on the 'net would live far, far away. So the LDR was invented, and it was quickly shown (through scientific observation of laboratory tests) that LDRs are bad for your health, and are doomed to failure 90% of the time. The remaining 10% are either lies or amazing luck, but they act as a carrot for future fools.
poing
An angstfull derivative of "point". Often used with bean, as in "poing bean", meaning, the point being that had this been a regular universe, had there been any justice in the world, this thing would never have happened, and thus the reason it did happen would have been irrelevant, but it's not, so reasons are important, if you get my poing.
Quantitative Analysis
Using advanced mathematical and programmnig techniques to model, analyze, and predict the markets. The dream job. Also known on Wall Street as "Rocket Science" although it has nothing to do with rockets and is, in fact, far more complex than the science related to rocketry.
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics
This is a computational simulation technique using lagrangian-style numerical analysis. Basically, you take the substances you are modelling and represent them with particles, so an armored explosive, such as steel plate over Comp-B exposlive material, would be represented by a large field of Comp-B particles, covered by a layer of steel particles. Then you would take your projectile, say, a Tungsten Carbide cube, and represent that by a cube-shaped array of WC particles. Each particle has mass, velocity, pressure, energy, stress, and about 20 other parameters. So you might consider this a 25-dimensional simulation of a 55,000-body problem. Computers are faster today however, so a lot more particles may be used. I would show you pictures, but apparently that information has become classified. The work I did at TERA was (mostly) unclassified, modelling explosions and shock waves. Anyway, in order to make this solvable in our lifetime, a smoothing function is applied to the particles, such that they don't factor in the effects of particles far away.
SNTF
Someone Nice to Fuck.
Time Series Analysis
The science of doing a statistical study of a string of sequential data, where the primary index is typically time. This can involve fourier transforms, auto-correlation, auto-regression, comparison against derived functions, and other techniques. Mastery requires a knowledge of partial differential equations, stochastics, numerical analysis, probability, mathematical programming, and fourier analysis. Basically all of the neat stuff!
Time Value of Money
This is an extremely important concept that everyone should learn as early as possible. A dollar today is not worth a dollar tomorrow. A dollar invested at the risk-free rate (say, about 6%, for institutional firms) is worth $1.06 after a year (roughly; it's actually compounded daily). To find out what a dollar will be worth a year from now, you have to discount it using the same risk-free rate, and you would get about $0.94. The effect of this is that in order to measure the real return of an investment, you have to subtract out the risk-free rate. Another implication of this is that if you can invest money and get a return of Y% while borrowing money at X%, and Y is greater than X after taxes and risks are taken into consideration, then it is actually wiser to use new money to invest in Y instead of pay off the loan at X. A common application of this is to avoid paying off your 30-year mortgage if you have a really low rate.


"Some words are stranger than others."