Stock Market & Investing Abbreviations
110 abbreviations · part of Business & Finance Abbreviations
Abbreviations used in stock trading and investing: exchanges and indices, regulators and SEC filings, fund types, valuation ratios, order types, options terms and technical indicators. They appear in brokerage apps, analyst reports, financial news tickers and regulatory documents. Entries explain what each term measures or regulates, give typical values or rules where they are well established, and point out look-alikes such as the different meanings of ATM, IV and SMA.
| Abbreviation | Stands for | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 10-K | Form 10-K (annual report) | Comprehensive annual report that US public companies must file with the SEC, including audited financial statements, a business description, risk factors and… |
| 10-Q | Form 10-Q (quarterly report) | Quarterly report that US public companies file with the SEC for each of the first three fiscal quarters, containing unaudited financial statements, management's… |
| 13D | Schedule 13D | SEC disclosure an investor or group must file after acquiring more than 5 percent of a public company's voting shares with an intent to influence control, revealing the… |
| 13F | Form 13F | Quarterly SEC report that institutional investment managers with at least $100 million in qualifying US securities must file within 45 days of each quarter-end, listing… |
| 20-F | Form 20-F | Annual report filed with the SEC by foreign private issuers, non-US companies whose shares or ADRs trade in the United States. |
| 8-K | Form 8-K (current report) | SEC filing that US public companies must make, generally within four business days, to announce major events such as an acquisition, CEO departure, bankruptcy, auditor… |
| ADR | American depositary receipt | Certificate issued by a US bank representing shares of a foreign company, allowing American investors to buy that company's stock on a US exchange or over the counter… |
| ADV | Average daily volume | Average number of shares or contracts of a security traded per day over a period, often 20, 30 or 90 days. |
| AMEX | American Stock Exchange | Former US stock exchange in New York, once the country's third largest, known for listing smaller companies and for launching the first US exchange-traded fund in 1993. |
| AON | All or none | Order condition requiring that the entire quantity be filled in one execution or not at all; unlike fill or kill, it can wait on the book until conditions allow. |
| ASX | Australian Securities Exchange | Australia's primary securities exchange, based in Sydney and operated by ASX Ltd, where shares, derivatives and fixed-income securities trade. |
| ATH | All-time high | Highest price, value or level an asset, index or metric has ever reached. |
| ATL | All-time low | Lowest price or level an asset or measure has ever reached since trading or recording began. |
| ATM | At the money | Describes an option whose strike price equals, or is very close to, the current price of the underlying asset. |
| ATS | Alternative trading system | SEC-regulated trading venue that matches buyers and sellers of securities without being registered as an exchange, including dark pools and electronic networks for… |
| BD | Broker-dealer | Firm registered to buy and sell securities for customers (as a broker) and for its own account (as a dealer). |
| BDC | Business development company | US closed-end investment company that lends to and invests in small and mid-sized private businesses, a structure Congress created in 1980 to channel capital to such… |
| bps | Basis points | Unit equal to one hundredth of a percentage point (0.01 percent), used to describe interest rates, bond yields, spreads, fees and small percentage changes precisely. |
| BSE | BSE Limited (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) | Asia's oldest stock exchange, founded in 1875 in Mumbai and now officially named BSE Limited. |
| BVPS | Book value per share | Common shareholders' equity divided by the number of shares outstanding, showing the accounting value of each share. |
| CAC 40 | Cotation Assistée en Continu 40 (continuous assisted quotation 40) | Benchmark index of 40 of the largest companies listed on Euronext Paris, including LVMH, TotalEnergies and L'Oréal, weighted by free-float market capitalization. |
| Cboe | Cboe Global Markets (Chicago Board Options Exchange) | US exchange operator founded in 1973 as the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the first marketplace for standardized, exchange-listed stock options. |
| CBOT | Chicago Board of Trade | Futures exchange founded in 1848, the oldest in the United States, historically known for trading in grains such as corn, wheat and soybeans and later for Treasury bond… |
| CEF | Closed-end fund | Investment fund that raises a fixed amount of capital through an IPO and then trades on an exchange, with no new shares created or redeemed daily. |
| CME | Chicago Mercantile Exchange | World's largest derivatives exchange, owned by CME Group, where futures and options on interest rates, stock indices, currencies, agricultural products and other assets… |
| CUSIP | Committee on Uniform Securities Identification Procedures | Nine-character code identifying a security, such as a stock, corporate bond or municipal bond, in the United States and Canada, used for trading, clearing and settlement. |
| DAX | Deutscher Aktienindex (German stock index) | Benchmark index of the 40 largest and most liquid German companies traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, such as SAP, Siemens and Allianz. |
| DCA | Dollar-cost averaging | Strategy of investing a fixed amount of money at regular intervals, such as monthly, regardless of price, so more shares are bought when prices are low and fewer when… |
| DEF 14A | Definitive proxy statement (Schedule 14A) | SEC filing containing a public company's proxy statement, sent to shareholders before the annual meeting, describing matters up for vote, director nominees, executive… |
| DJIA | Dow Jones Industrial Average | Stock market index of 30 large, well-known US companies, such as Apple, JPMorgan Chase and Walmart, maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices. |
| DM | Developed markets | Advanced economies with mature, liquid financial markets and strong institutions, such as the United States, Japan, the UK, Germany, Canada and Australia. |
| DPS | Dividends per share | Total dividends declared by a company over a period divided by the number of ordinary shares outstanding, showing how much cash income a shareholder receives for each… |
| DRIP | Dividend reinvestment plan | Program that automatically uses an investor's cash dividends to buy additional shares, often fractional, of the same stock or fund, compounding holdings over time. |
| DTCC | Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation | US post-trade utility that clears and settles virtually all US stock and corporate bond transactions through subsidiaries such as the National Securities Clearing… |
| DTE | Days to expiration | Number of days remaining until an options or futures contract expires, a key input for how fast an option loses time value. |
| EAFE | Europe, Australasia and Far East | Developed-market region covered by the MSCI EAFE Index, which tracks large and mid-cap stocks in 21 developed countries outside the United States and Canada. |
| ECN | Electronic communication network | Automated system that matches buy and sell orders for securities electronically, displaying them anonymously to subscribers and allowing trading outside traditional… |
| EDGAR | Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval | SEC's online database where public companies, funds and insiders file required documents such as 10-Ks, 10-Qs, 8-Ks, proxy statements and ownership reports. |
| EM | Emerging markets | Developing economies with growing financial markets, such as China, India, Brazil, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico and South Africa, as classified by index providers. |
| EMA | Exponential moving average | Moving average that gives greater weight to the most recent prices, so it responds faster to new information than a simple moving average. |
| EMH | Efficient-market hypothesis | Theory that asset prices fully reflect all available information, so investors cannot consistently earn above-market returns except by taking extra risk or by luck. |
| ETF | Exchange-traded fund | Investment fund that holds a basket of assets, such as stocks, bonds or commodities, and trades on a stock exchange throughout the day like a single share. |
| ETN | Exchange-traded note | Unsecured debt security issued by a bank that pays a return linked to an index or strategy and trades on an exchange like a stock. |
| ETP | Exchange-traded product | Umbrella term for securities that trade on exchanges and track an underlying index, asset or strategy, including ETFs, ETNs and exchange-traded commodities. |
| FAANG | Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google | Acronym for five large, popular US technology stocks: Facebook (now Meta Platforms), Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (now Alphabet). |
| FINRA | Financial Industry Regulatory Authority | Private self-regulatory organization, overseen by the SEC, that writes and enforces rules for US broker-dealers and their registered representatives. |
| FOK | Fill or kill | Order instruction requiring the entire order to be executed immediately at the specified price or not at all. |
| FPO | Follow-on public offering | Sale of additional shares by a company that is already public, either newly issued shares that raise capital and dilute existing holders or existing shares sold by… |
| FTSE | Financial Times Stock Exchange | Index provider originally set up by the Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange, best known for the FTSE 100, an index of the 100 largest companies listed in… |
| GARP | Growth at a reasonable price | Stock-picking style that seeks companies with consistent earnings growth whose shares are not excessively expensive, blending growth and value investing. |
| GDR | Global depositary receipt | Certificate issued by a depositary bank representing shares of a company, usually from an emerging market, that trades on exchanges outside the issuer's home country… |
| GTC | Good 'til canceled | Order instruction that keeps a buy or sell order active until it is filled or the investor cancels it, rather than expiring at the end of the trading day. |
| HFT | High-frequency trading | Automated trading that uses powerful computers, algorithms and ultra-fast connections to execute large numbers of orders in fractions of a second, profiting from tiny… |
| HKEX | Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing | Operator of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and related derivatives and clearing businesses, one of the world's largest exchange groups and a major venue for listings by… |
| ICE | Intercontinental Exchange | US-based operator of exchanges and clearing houses, including the New York Stock Exchange and ICE Futures Europe, home of the Brent crude oil benchmark. |
| IOC | Immediate or cancel | Order instruction requiring that any portion of an order that can be filled immediately is executed and the remainder canceled at once. |
| IPO | Initial public offering | First sale of a private company's shares to the public, after which the shares list and trade on a stock exchange. |
| IR | Investor relations | Corporate function that manages communication between a public company and the investment community, including earnings calls, investor presentations, annual meetings… |
| ISIN | International Securities Identification Number | Twelve-character code defined by ISO 6166 that uniquely identifies a security worldwide, made up of a two-letter country code, a nine-character national identifier and… |
| ITM | In the money | Describes an option that has intrinsic value: a call whose strike price is below the current price of the underlying asset, or a put whose strike is above it. |
| IV | Implied volatility | Market's forecast of how much an underlying asset's price will move, derived from current option prices using a pricing model such as Black-Scholes. |
| KOSPI | Korea Composite Stock Price Index | Benchmark index of all common stocks traded on the Korea Exchange's main board, weighted by market capitalization. |
| LEAPS | Long-Term Equity AnticiPation Securities | Exchange-listed options with expiration dates more than one year away, typically up to about three years, available on many large stocks and ETFs. |
| LSE | London Stock Exchange | UK's main stock exchange, located in the City of London and owned by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), where most large British companies, including the members… |
| MA | Moving average | Average of an asset's price over a set number of recent periods, recalculated each period so that it "moves" with new data. |
| MACD | Moving average convergence divergence | Trend-following momentum indicator calculated as the difference between a 12-period and a 26-period exponential moving average, plotted with a 9-period EMA "signal… |
| MF | Mutual fund | Pooled investment vehicle that collects money from many investors to buy a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds or other securities under a professional manager. |
| MLP | Master limited partnership | Publicly traded limited partnership, common in US energy infrastructure such as pipelines and storage, that combines the tax benefits of a partnership with the… |
| MMF | Money market fund | Mutual fund that invests in high-quality, short-term debt such as Treasury bills, commercial paper and repurchase agreements, aiming to preserve capital and provide… |
| MOC | Market on close | Order to buy or sell at the official closing price of the trading day, executed in the exchange's closing auction. |
| MPT | Modern portfolio theory | Framework for building portfolios that maximize expected return for a given level of risk by combining assets whose returns are not perfectly correlated. |
| MSCI | Morgan Stanley Capital International | Index provider whose benchmarks, such as MSCI World, MSCI Emerging Markets and MSCI ACWI, are tracked by trillions of dollars of investment funds. |
| NASDAQ | National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations | US electronic stock exchange, the second largest in the world by market value of listed companies, known for technology firms such as Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon… |
| NAV | Net asset value | Value per share of a fund, calculated as total assets minus liabilities, divided by the number of shares outstanding. |
| NBBO | National best bid and offer | Highest bid price and lowest ask price for a stock across all US exchanges at a given moment, as calculated by the securities information processors. |
| NDX | Nasdaq-100 Index (ticker symbol) | Ticker symbol for the Nasdaq-100, an index of the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market, weighted by modified market capitalization. |
| NSE | National Stock Exchange of India | India's largest stock exchange by trading volume, based in Mumbai and founded in 1992 as the country's first fully electronic exchange. |
| NYMEX | New York Mercantile Exchange | Commodity futures exchange, now owned by CME Group, home to the benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures contract and to natural gas, heating oil and… |
| NYSE | New York Stock Exchange | World's largest stock exchange by the total market value of its listed companies, located at 11 Wall Street in Manhattan. |
| OI | Open interest | Total number of outstanding options or futures contracts that have not been closed, exercised or delivered. |
| OTC | Over-the-counter | Medicines that can be bought without a prescription, such as acetaminophen, ibuprofen, loratadine and omeprazole 20 mg. |
| OTM | Out of the money | Describes an option with no intrinsic value: a call whose strike is above the current price of the underlying, or a put whose strike is below it. |
| P/B | Price-to-book ratio | Valuation ratio comparing a company's share price with its book value per share, or market capitalization with shareholders' equity. |
| P/E | Price-to-earnings ratio | Valuation ratio equal to a company's share price divided by its earnings per share, showing how much investors pay for each dollar of profit. |
| P/S | Price-to-sales ratio | Valuation ratio equal to a company's market capitalization divided by its annual revenue, or share price divided by sales per share. |
| PDT | Pattern day trader | FINRA designation for a margin-account customer who makes four or more day trades within five business days, provided they exceed 6 percent of the account's trades in… |
| PEG | Price/earnings-to-growth ratio | Valuation ratio that divides a stock's P/E ratio by its expected annual earnings growth rate, adjusting the P/E for growth. |
| PFOF | Payment for order flow | Compensation a broker receives from a market maker for routing customer orders to it for execution. |
| PT | Price target | Analyst's projected price for a stock, usually over the next 12 months, published with a buy, hold or sell rating. |
| RIA | Registered investment adviser | Firm registered with the SEC or a state securities regulator that gives investment advice for a fee and owes clients a fiduciary duty to act in their best interest. |
| RSI | Relative strength index | Momentum oscillator, ranging from 0 to 100, that compares the size of recent gains with recent losses to gauge whether an asset is overbought or oversold. |
| S&P 500 | Standard & Poor's 500 | Stock market index of about 500 of the largest US public companies, weighted by float-adjusted market capitalization and maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices. |
| S-1 | Form S-1 (registration statement) | SEC registration statement a company files to register securities for an initial public offering in the United States, containing the prospectus with business details… |
| SEDOL | Stock Exchange Daily Official List | Seven-character code issued by the London Stock Exchange to identify securities traded in the UK and Ireland and many international securities. |
| SEO | Seasoned equity offering | Issue of new shares by a company whose stock already trades publicly, the term preferred in academic finance for what practitioners call a follow-on offering. |
| SGX | Singapore Exchange | Singapore's securities and derivatives exchange operator, which lists Singaporean and regional companies and runs one of Asia's most active derivatives markets… |
| SIPC | Securities Investor Protection Corporation | Nonprofit corporation created by the US Congress in 1970 that protects customers of failed brokerage firms, covering up to $500,000 per customer in missing securities… |
| SL | Stop-loss | Order or price level set to close a position automatically if the price moves against the trader to a specified point, limiting the loss. |
| SMA | Separately managed account | Investment portfolio managed by a professional firm for a single investor, who owns the individual securities directly rather than shares of a pooled fund. |
| SPAC | Special purpose acquisition company | Shell company that raises money through an IPO, holds the cash in a trust and has a limited time, usually about two years, to find and merge with a private company… |
| SPX | Standard & Poor's 500 Index (ticker symbol) | Ticker symbol for the S&P 500 index itself, used by trading platforms, data terminals and especially options traders. |
| SRI | Socially responsible investing | Investment approach that considers ethical, social or environmental criteria alongside financial returns, traditionally by excluding sectors such as tobacco, weapons… |
| T+1 | Trade date plus one business day | Settlement cycle in which a securities trade is completed, with cash and securities exchanged, one business day after the trade date. |
| TER | Total expense ratio | Annual cost of running a fund, expressed as a percentage of its assets, covering management fees, administration, custody and other operating costs. |
| TP | Take profit | Order or price target at which a trader closes a winning position to lock in gains, usually set as a limit order when the trade is opened. |
| TSE | Tokyo Stock Exchange | Japan's largest stock exchange and one of the biggest in the world by market value, operated by Japan Exchange Group (JPX). |
| TSX | Toronto Stock Exchange | Canada's main stock exchange, owned by TMX Group, listing large Canadian companies in banking, energy and mining. |
| UIT | Unit investment trust | US investment company that buys a fixed portfolio of securities and holds it, largely unmanaged, until a set termination date, selling redeemable units to investors. |
| VIX | Cboe Volatility Index | Real-time index measuring the stock market's expectation of volatility over the next 30 days, derived from the prices of S&P 500 options. |
| VWAP | Volume-weighted average price | Average price at which a security has traded during a period, usually a single day, weighted by the volume at each price. |
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