(This is a humorous Glossary. It takes a warped view of many of the terms we all use in the investment business. It is humor. These are not real definitions. The lawyers required we put this notice here because they were afraid that someone would think these were actual definitions. If you find yourself taking any of this seriously or believe any of the definitions, you should immediately seek help.)

Acquisition – A much simpler way of increasing revenues after you realize your company can’t grow revenues by expanding your own business.

Annual Report – Colorful booklet sent every year by companies to shareholders to tell them what the company does. After reading the Annual Report, many investors still don’t know.

Assets – An arbitrary number on a balance sheet that has something to do with the value of stuff. It is usually manipulated in such a way that it is high enough to keep the company out of bankruptcy, but not so high as to attract corporate raiders.

Balance Sheet – The report issued by a company that shows just how creative their accountants and auditors can be. A page that is usually ignored on the way to finding the page that shows how much the CEO made last year. That’s how you really tell if a company is successful!

Bear – A person that thinks there might be a 5% or more correction. Anyone that isn’t 100% invested in the NASDAQ.

Bear Market – An arcane concept that believes stock markets can actually decline - any amount – 5%, 10%… It doesn’t matter because “they” won’t ever let it happen!

Blue Chip – Top quality stocks, you know, ones that had earnings at some point over the past 2 years.

Bond – A boring investment. They don’t even have 4 letter symbols! They work like this – you give the company $1,000 for the bond and they promise to pay you back $1,000 at a specified time in the future – 5 yrs, 10 yrs, even 20 yrs! What is the big deal?! Who would want that?!

Book Value – Another old-fashioned measurement of a company’s value. How much the company is actually worth if you were to add up all the stuff. It is usually way lower than the stock value, so why would it be important?

Bull – A smart investor.

Bull Market – The eternal position of the stock market.

Buy and Hold - Investment strategy for those that have either been duped into believing Wall Street's nonsense or actually believe the nonsense.

Capital Gain – What would happen if you actually ever sold your stocks. (But why would you do that?)

Capital Loss – Editor’s note: We apologize for this, but we don’t know what this is. We checked with every source we had, several hundred investor’s and the Chairman of the SEC and NYSE, and none of them had ever heard of anyone ever having a “Capital Loss.” No one knows what it is, we’ve never seen one. Since the stock market always goes up, we don’t understand how it could happen.

Capitalization – The value of all the stock of a company outstanding multiplied by the share price, plus some other unimportant stuff. This is the single most important factor in determining the value of a stock. Much more important than those confusing calculations like earnings, revenues and debt.

Commission – The fee charged by money grubbing rich guys to buy and sell your stocks. Since there is no service offered by these con-men, there is no value to the commission so, as the media has maintained for years, any commission above 0.99 cents is too much.

Commissioned Broker – A thief in a suit more expensive than your car that is trying to steal your retirement one commission at a time.

Common Stock – Quite simply, the only investment you will ever need to gain riches and everything you ever wanted.

Delayed Opening – A stock that doesn’t start trading until 10:00 or so because some great news was announced and they held the stock back from opening so that more people could put in buy orders before it opened at the high price for the day.

Diversification – Owning more than one stock. Owning just Coke would be non-diversified. Owning Coke and Pepsi would be perfectly diversified.

Earnings – Useless mathematical computation that has nothing to do with important numbers like Capitalization and what the CEO makes.

Earnings Estimate – A number agreed upon by Wall Street analysts that is given to companies as a target they want to beat by 1 cent every quarter. Without Earnings Estimates, there would be chaos and turmoil. This is because company CFO’s would never know what “the number” was that Wall Street wanted to see. Companies would have to report their actual earnings for the quarter which can be unpredictable and cause stocks to move in a direction not believed possible except in theory – down.

Fixed Charges – What a company does after the SEC finds that they have not been reporting costs properly. They fixed the charges.

Fully Invested - The best way for investors to lose the most money possible.

Fundamental Research – Useless, formulaic reports by companies trying to justify their exorbitant commission rates. Actually written by one guy and passed around all the Wall Street firms to publish as their own. Since nobody ever reads the reports, nobody ever notices.

Good Delivery – Getting the pizzas in less than 15 minutes.

Government Bonds – Bonds bought by foreign investors to finance our debt. (Fools! Boy have we got them bamboozled!)

GTC – Good ‘til Close order. An order placed to buy or sell a stock at a certain price. The order stays active until the stock gets close to the execution price at which point the investor cancels the order.

Growth Stock – All stocks

Index – All an investor needs to have a comfortable retirement and educate the kids. Prior to Indices, how did people invest?

Inside Information – What all investors want and then get on their high horses to complain about when somebody else gets caught using it.

Investment Banker – Wealthy rich man with a gold-plated smile that is more than willing to give hundreds of millions of dollars to established companies, but can’t seem to find the $5 million you need for your company.

IPO – Initial Public Offering – When a company goes public for the first time. A time at which wise investors will buy in on the ground floor such great investments as Grocerystore.com and World Wrestling Federation.

IRA – An account that magically turns $80,000 (40 years times $2,000/yr) into a comfortable retirement.

Market Cycle – A cycle that begins when the investor first invests and then only goes up.

Merger – The combination of 2 companies where one believes the other isn’t doing things right, but they think they can. The merger usually involves the elimination of thousands of jobs, which means the company actually thinks they can do a better job with less people. We have all seen how less people improves service. Eventually they find out that they couldn’t do what they wanted and there is a separation. See Spinoff.

Money Market Fund – A useless fund in every investment account that should be kept as close to zero as possible, because everyone knows you should always be fully invested.

Mutual Fund – A pool of investments of a certain pre-ordained type that only go up regardless of market conditions. For this extraordinary performance, investors expect to pay no more than 0.01% management fees. Anything higher is an obvious rip-off from greedy money managers and mutual fund companies.

NASDAQ – The single greatest institution in America. It guarantees fair prices and stocks that only go up.

NYSE – An antiquated system of trading stocks without computers. (Can you believe it!) This stock exchange is for older investors (Over 40) that remember the good ole’ days. (the 1980’s).

Overbought – When an investor jumps onboard today’s hot stock and buys $10,000 worth when they only had $8,000 in the Money Market.

Oversold – While watching CNBC, they hear bad news about a stock they own (the CEO didn’t make as much this year as last year) and the investor sells 200 shares when they only had 100 shares in their account. OOPS!

Paper Loss – How investors fool themselves into thinking they haven’t lost money yet. “It isn’t a loss until you sell.” Face it, if you buy a stock at $25 and now it is $15, you lost money.

Penny Stocks – Stocks that investment pros selfishly keep for themselves while telling investors to buy dumb old blue chips and bonds. Penny Stocks are where the smart money makes the big scores!

Preferred Stock – A type of stock nobody wants. Why it is called “preferred” we will never know. We believe this shows Investment Bankers do have a sense of humor.

P/E Ratio – Some type of formula comparing the price of the stock with what the analysts wants the earnings to be. As long as the P/E ratio is below infinity the stock is considered fairly priced.

Prospectus – A large document sent by mutual fund companies that many investors use to line their bird’s cage.

Speculation – Buying stocks with no earnings or no dividends. Good thing no one does this any more.

Spinoff – A company that is separated from a larger company because the larger one got all they could out of it and are now letting investors “take out the trash.” That should read and now investors are allowed in on a great deal. Yeah, that sounds much better.

Stop Limit Order – An order placed below the current price of a stock to protect it from loss. Here’s how it works. You watch a stock trade from $23 to 24 then back to $23 every day for 2 weeks. You want to sell if it falls below $23, so you put in a stop limit at $22.50. On the day you place the order, the stock drops from $24.00 to $22.49, executing your limit order. As soon as your shares are sold, news comes out that drives the stock to $30. Also called a magnet.

Technical Research – Once called the Voodoo of Wall Street, it has risen to prominence over the past few years after so many prominent technical analysts accurately predicted the market top in March of 2000 protecting millions and millions of investors.

Volume – How loud the crowd on the exchange gets while buying a stock.

Yield – A currently unused measurement of an investment’s value. In the olden days, pre-1995, investors actually received dividends or interest and considered this an acceptable return on their investment.