103
votes
Accepted
Are all current world currencies 'decimal'?
The word you're looking for is not "metric" but "decimal".
Pretty much all currencies are decimal these days except for currencies that have divisions where the sub-unit is no longer used as it's ...
- 5,105
74
votes
Accepted
Am I a billionaire if a friend gives me $1000 for 0.0001% of my "company"?
The unspoken point behind your question is that people often talk about the value of companies in terms of their market capitalisation which is the price of one share times the number of shares. This ...
- 27.3k
73
votes
Accepted
Are currency terms like USD, EUR, CNY used in all languages?
As Flux said, "中国新年" is a literal translation of "Chinese New Year". CNY is 人民币 in Chinese.
USD, EUR and CNY are not known from English. They are known from ISO 4217 standard.
In ...
- 10.2k
49
votes
Accepted
Why is the "discount rate", charged to merchants in card transactions, called that?
The merchant is accepting a discounted price for their product. When the merchant has something for sale with a price listed as $100, if they accept a credit card payment with a discount rate of 3.7%, ...
47
votes
Accepted
What is it called when you sell and reinvest to pay lower taxes?
It sounds like you're describing tax gain harvesting, where you intentionally realize capital gains in a low-tax-rate period in order to increase your cost basis and reduce future capital gains at ...
- 124k
46
votes
Accepted
What does "gross of" mean?
why don't they just say "The numbers below include fees" or "don't include"?!
Because these are accounting documents, and the terms accountants use are "gross" and "net".
Think, for example, of your ...
- 49.9k
45
votes
What does 'mutual' mean in mutual fund?
"Mutual" as in "owned and funded by a pool of investors for a shared purpose". Some more details on the more generic concept of a "mutual organization" can be found in ...
- 149k
44
votes
Am I a billionaire if a friend gives me $1000 for 0.0001% of my "company"?
The term "billionaire" is not a legal or technical term; it can mean whatever you want it to mean. Most people would define it as someone who owns at least $1 billion in assets.
If you own ...
42
votes
Accepted
Does the 'A' in IRA stand for "Account" or "Arrangement"?
It means both.
The IRS currently calls them Individual Retirement Arrangements, as seen on the titles of Publications 590-A and 590-B.
However, in the tax code, they are called Individual Retirement ...
42
votes
"Buy assets, not liabilities": How is it possible to buy a liability?
In this sense, a liability is something that would cost you additional money to continue to own, or otherwise hinder your financial position.
To quote Kiyosaki directly (and explicitly explain this ...
- 9,420
40
votes
Accepted
What does the letter "c" mean with a number in an annual report (UK)
It appears that "c" is used in two ways in this press release:
When the "c" comes after the number, it means "cents". For example, a basic EPS of "(34.1)c" ...
- 16.6k
38
votes
Accepted
What is meant by one being in a "tax bracket"?
Tax brackets refer to the range of taxable within which you fall. An income tax bracket usually refers to federal or state tax, not the combined rate. I have put here the tax brackets for 2016 for IRS ...
- 2,209
33
votes
Accepted
What is crypto deleveraging?
'Leverage' in a financial context is debt. If you borrow money to buy an investment, that is called a 'leveraged' investment.
When you invest with borrowed money, your personal risk increases. This is ...
- 41.4k
31
votes
Are all current world currencies 'decimal'?
The Wikipedia article Non-decimal currency explains the situation in full:
Today, only two countries have non-decimal currencies: Mauritania, where 1 ouguiya = 5 khoums, and Madagascar, where 1 ...
- 491
29
votes
What's the meaning of the word 'less' in this tax table?
"A less B" means "A minus B".
For example, "4% of X less 4,000" means "(4% of X) minus 4000", that is,
0.04 * X - 4000
This table describes progressive tax rate, where each bracket is taxed at its ...
- 3,118
26
votes
Accepted
Mortgages: What is the terminology for how much I own and how much I still owe?
$400K is equity, $200K is principal owed on your mortgage. (This is also called 'Mortgage Balance' or Mortgage Debt', depending who is asking.) Cost basis is still $500K.
26
votes
Am I a billionaire if a friend gives me $1000 for 0.0001% of my "company"?
If my friend gives me a thousand dollars for 0.0001% of my "company", am I technically a Billionaire now?
$1000 is definitely 0.0001% of $1Bn. You'd be a billionaire IF:
you own the other ...
- 49.9k
24
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between money and currency?
Money in that context has two kinds of common usage:
money noun
1 A current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes; coins and banknotes collectively.
‘I counted the money before ...
- 9,217
24
votes
Accepted
"Buy assets, not liabilities": How is it possible to buy a liability?
The definitions in the book are:
An asset is something that puts money in your pocket and a liability is something that takes money out of your pocket,
Buying real estate is an example of an asset - ...
- 124k
23
votes
Why is the "discount rate", charged to merchants in card transactions, called that?
Discount rate is a financial concept and has nothing to do with the bargain between the customer and the merchant.
When the merchant sells you $100 of goods on credit, a debt is created - you owe the ...
- 351
23
votes
Why isn't there a universal investment standard/benchmark?
Here are some (non-exhaustive) reason why different benchmarks are used, or why a constant benchmark is not optimal:
Returns are different in different time periods. In your golf analogy, par is ...
- 124k
21
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between fund and portfolio?
A "Fund" is generally speaking a collection of similar financial products, which are bundled into a single investment, so that you as an individual can buy a portion of the Fund rather than buying 50 ...
- 41.4k
21
votes
What are credit cards, debit cards, and other types of cards?
EU and more specifically Germany:
(Colloquial) terminology is roughly: the card automatically issued by your bank is the "bank card", and cards issued by e.g. Visa, Mastercard, Diners, American ...
21
votes
Better terms to use to understand Puts and Calls for options trading
This is maybe kind of stupid, but it's a mnemonic device that worked OK for me to get the hang of these two varieties of option. It may only work for American English in my particular region, so if it ...
- 1,548
20
votes
Why would a bank refund appear as a debit on my billing statement?
I'm assuming this is a credit card/credit line/loan account because that's the context in which it makes sense.
You pay your statement balance, then your account is credited due to a refund. This ...
- 67.5k
18
votes
What is this type of risk-free investment called?
This sounds a lot like an Equity-indexed Annuity. They date from about 1996 (there is a bit of skepticism about them, as they are tricky to understand for the typical investor). For instance, an ...
- 930
17
votes
The proper term for a third party economy
Uber, FB and Airbnb are facilitators, since they, well, facilitate connections between the consumer and the provider.
Alibaba and Amazon are in that role, too.
- 49.9k
16
votes
What are credit cards, debit cards, and other types of cards?
This is accurate for the USA.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chargecard.asp
A charge card is a type of electronic payment card that charges no interest but requires the user to pay his/her ...
- 49.9k
16
votes
Accepted
What does "GILEAD SCIENCES INC REV NRA W/H ,03/30" mean?
These are not industry conventions. NRA W/H means Non-Resident Alien Withholding Tax.
REV could mean anything e.g. Revenue, Reversed, Revised.
Ask the broker who designed this description.
- 10.2k
15
votes
What is it called when you sell and reinvest to pay lower taxes?
D Stanley gave a correct answer. Let me offer an observation. In a year where any of your investments are down, I'd suggest taking the loss (being mindful of wash sale rules), and use it to offset up ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible