A “Poison Pill” creates a strong defense mechanism for a “targeted takeover company” allowing the company to properly identify legitimate and beneficial acquisitions and weed out the actions of corporate raiders. The “Poison Pill” is also useful in slowing down the speed of potential raids.

A straddle is an investment strategy that involves the purchase or sale of an option allowing the investor to profit regardless of the direction of movement of the underlying asset, usually a stock.

An oligopoly is characterized by a small number of sellers who dominate an entire market.

Straight line depreciation is the most commonly used and simplest form of depreciation.

A small line (like a candle wick) found at the top or bottom of an individual candle in a candlestick chart.

A point or range in a chart that caps an increase in the price of a stock or index over a period of time. An area of resistance, resistance line or resistance level indicates that the stock or index is finding it difficult to break through it, and may head lower shortly. The more times that the stock or index tries unsuccessfully to break through the resistance line, the stronger that area of price resistance becomes.

The price-to-sales ratio (Price/Sales or P/S) provides a simple approach: take the company’s market capitalization (the number of shares multiplied by the share price) and divide it by the company’s total sales over the past 12 months. The lower the ratio, the more attractive the investment.

High inflation and high unemployment occurring simultaneously.

Return on Equity (ROE) is used to measure how much profit a company is able to generate from the money invested by shareholders.

Price to Earnings is the most usual way to compare the relative value of stocks based on earnings since you calculate it by taking the current price of the stock and divide it by the Earnings Per Share (EPS).

Stock volatility information can be used in many different ways but here is a quick and easy bit of stock volatility information that you can begin using today.

It is impossible to predict what the market will do today, tomorrow or next year, but there is one thing that is definite: markets go up, they go down, and they stay the same.

Market risk is a measure of how much of a loss an investor is facing while trading.

Everywhere you turn there is another proprietary stock market timing system being sold. Let’s take a few minutes to review these claims against common sense.

It is only an offer and will not be accepted if the seller is not willing to let go at the offer price. This offer price pertains to all traded investments.

The difference between the ask price and the sell price is called the “spread” and it is kept by the broker.

If you are brand new to investing then take time to understand what you are reading when viewing a Stock Exchange Symbol and learn Stock Market Investing Basics.

Many people start trading stocks and never learn about stock trading risk management. The one’s that do learn, usually learn after they have been trading for a while, not before they start trading.

A REIT or Real Estate Investment Trust may be the perfect investment vehicle. REITs own, and often operate, real estate but are publicly traded like stock.

By measuring the compilation of similar stocks instead of just one or two stocks, a stock index provides information about that particular market or segment.