Education
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Dividend Yield - The yield a company pays out to its shareholders in the form of dividends. It is calculated by taking the amount of dividends paid per share over the course of a year and dividing by the stock's price. For example, if a stock pays out $2 in dividends over the course of a year and trades at $40, then it has a dividend yield of 5%.
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Price to Earnings Ratio (PE Ratio) - The price of the stock divided by the earnings per share. For example, if a company is currently trading at $43 a share and earnings over the last 12 months were $1.95 per share, the P/E ratio for the stock would be 22.05 ($43/$1.95).
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Exchange-Traded Funds (ETF) - Similar to mutual funds in that they are usually a basket of stocks or bonds that track an index, commodity, or other investment product. They are highly liquid and unlike mutual funds, are bought and sold in the market just like stocks.
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Ex-Dividend Date - The ex-dividend date is the date on which sellers rather than buyers of a stock have a right to a declared dividend. In most cases, the ex-dividend date is two business days before the record date: If the record date is on Thursday, the ex-dividend date is on Tuesday. A buyer of the shares on Monday will have rights to the dividend; a buyer on the ex-dividend date of Tuesday will not.
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Industry - An industry, also known as sectors, deals with the manufacturing or construction of a finished, usable product. Some well known industries are mining, farming, construction, law and medicine, and even computer programming can be considered an industry
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Institution - Mutual Funds, money managers and other big organizations that purchase and sell large blocks of stock. Usually you can make money by getting into these stocks if there is institutional buying because it takes time to establish such large positions. The key is to identify these stocks early.
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Stop Loss - The price at which a security is sold automatically to protect the investor against further losses.
