Wall Street Lingo

Book excerpt: The exchanges : at home and abroad -- Exchange operations : bringing order to the markets -- Playing fair : rules and regulations -- The big wheels : Wall Street professionals -- The money machines : bankers, economists and world trade -- The money makers : corporations at home and abroad -- Investors, big and small -- The industry guard dogs : regulators, enforcers and safety nets -- Economics for investors : the ups and downs of business the business cycle -- Economic indicators : taking the business cycle temperature -- The long and short of trends, cycles and crashes : market movement and the indexes that track them -- Stocks : owning a piece of something big -- Funds : letting a professional make the decisions -- Bonds : loaning corporations and governments money -- Options and futures : taking bigger chances -- Initial public offerings : the darling of the 90s -- Fundamental analysis : cheap or undervalued? -- Decoding financial statements : seeing beyond the numbers -- Equity valuations : it's all relative -- Bond valuations : all debt is not created equal -- Technical analysis : using the past to predict the future -- Charting : more than pretty pictures -- Tools that match your style : starting with the right broker -- Orders, quotes and fills : getting the price you want -- Recordkeeping and taxes : paying the piper -- Investor resources : getting help when you need it -- Acronyms : alphabet soup.