Financial lexicon

The financial world has it own vocabulary.
Click on the first letter of the word
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Par
See Nominal.
Pay Out Ratio
This is the proportion of the profit distributed to shareholders.
Pension fund
Self-funded retirement plan where people in work voluntarily make contributions to prepare for their own retirement. The fund is then reinvested on the financial markets. They are currently the main players on the financial marketplaces.
PER (Price earnings ratio)
This ratio is extensively used to calculate whether a share is expensive or not in relation to comparable companies or the stock market as a whole.
Phasing out of share certificates
Eliminating the material representation (paper) of transferrable securities.
Portfolio
A portfolio represents all securities held by an investor.
Portfolio manager
Individual managment or management on behalf of customers of a portfolio of transferrable securities.
Position
A market position means you are on the market, either by holding shares or acting as a short seller.
PPI
The production price index reflects the change in prices for factors of production.
Pre-opening
Period when orders are accumulating on the market sheet, without any transactions being made, until the market opens.
Primary market
The primary market is the site for issuing new securities.
Profit margin
Ratio between profit and turnover expressed as a percentage.
Profit taking
Term used to describe the partial sale of shares to achieve a return. In this case investors sell part of their portfolios and retain the balance.
Profit warning
A profit warning is a signal a company gives to warn that its profit or loss forecasts will be less than its original predictions. A profit warning is often synonymous with a fall in the security price.
Profitability
The increased value obtained after transferring shares, plus the return received.
Public offer of exchange
This takes the form of exchanging securities rather than in-cash payments. In this case, the buyer pays the shareholders of the company being targeted with the the buyer's own securites, according to an exchange parity determined in the light of the relative value of the two companies.
Public share offer
A public share offer involves selling a number of securities at a fixed price.

Put
Financial instrument allowing underlying assets to be sold at a designated price.