Big Biz Show

What Does White Candlestick Mean?
A point on a candle stick chart representing a day in which the underlying price has moved up. Candlesticks will have a body and usually two wicks on each end. The bottom of the white body represents the opening price and the top of the body represents the closing price. The [...]

What Does Gross Domestic Product – GDP Mean?

The monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period, though GDP is usually calculated on an annual basis. It includes all of private and public consumption, government outlays, investments and exports less imports that occur within a defined [...]

What Does McMansion Mean?

A slang term that describes a large, opulent house that may be generic in style and represents a good value for a homebuyer in terms of its size. This type of home is built to provide middle and/or upper middle class homeowners with the luxurious housing experience that was previously only available to [...]

What Does Cookie Jar Accounting Mean?
An accounting practice in which a company uses generous reserves from good years against losses that might be incurred in bad years. Cookie jar accounting is a sign of misleading accounting practices.

This gives the sense of “income smoothing”, because earnings are understated in good years and overstated in bad years. You may have [...]

What Does Consumer Price Index – CPI Mean?

A measure that examines the weighted average of prices of a basket of consumer goods and services, such as transportation, food and medical care. The CPI is calculated by taking price changes for each item in the predetermined basket of goods and averaging them; the goods are weighted according to their importance. Changes in [...]

What Does VIX – Volatility Index Mean?
The ticker symbol for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Volatility Index, which shows the market’s expectation of 30-day volatility. It is constructed using the implied volatilities of a wide range of S&P 500 index options. This volatility is meant to be forward looking and is calculated from both calls and [...]

What Does Turkey Mean? Slang for an investment that yields disappointing results or turns out worse than expected. Failed business deals, securities that realize significant losses and unsuccessful initial public offerings (IPOs) could all be called “turkeys”.
Turkey For an individual investor, a turkey could be a speculative equity investment in a startup technology company that [...]

A technical indicator named after the famous crash of the German airship of the late 1930s. The Hindenburg omen was developed to predict the potential for a financial market crash. It is created by monitoring the number of securities that form new 52-week highs relative to the number of securities that form new 52-week lows – the number [...]

What Does Repackaging Mean?
When a private equity firm takes a public firm private by purchasing all of its common stock with leverage loans. The private equity firm then makes changes to the company, in effect “dressing up” the company, with an eye toward bringing it public again via an initial public offering
Repackaging is a [...]

What Does October Effect Mean?
The theory that stocks tend to decline during the month of October. The October effect is considered mainly to be a psychological expectation rather than an actual phenomenon. Most statistics go against the theory.

Some investors may be nervous during October because the dates of some large historical market crashes occurred during this [...]