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What is Collateralized Mortgage Obligation (CMO)? A CMO is a mortgage bond that consists of a large number of different individual mortgages bundle...

When a bond is secured, it means it's protected, i.e. there are assets that would be forfeited if repayment is not made. When it's unsecured... it'...

What is Counterparty Risk? Counterparty risk is the risk to either party within a transaction that the other will not or be unable to abide by the...

What are Bond Anticipation Notes (BANS), Revenue Anticipation Notes (RANS), and Tax Anticipation Notes (TANS)? BANS, RANS and TANS are all short-te...

What is liquidity? Think: water. It's liquid. It can be squeezed into little, tiny spaces and infused into large spaces. A defining trait of liquid...

A liquid market is a market featuring high trading volumes, i.e. investors actually want to put their cash to work.

What's a yankee bond, and does it stick a feather in its cap and call it macaroni?

What is a Country Basket (Index Fund)? Investing internationally can be a challenge, as foreign exchange, different accounting rules, time zones an...

What is AMBAC? AMBAC stands for American Municipal Bond Assurance Corporation. It provides insurance for municipalities that sell muni bonds, such...

What are credit ratings and how are they interpreted? Credit ratings describe a borrower’s likelihood to pay back their debts; it’s a look at h...

What are CEOs, CFOs, and COOs? The “C” level executives in a corporation are the corporate officers responsible for the management decisions an...

What is ordinary income versus long-term gain income? Hit play to find out.

What is the Black Scholes Model? The Black Scholes Model is used to determine the price of call options. It looks at the change in stock price over...

What is tax loss selling? Hit play to find out.

How do you judge the performance of an index fund? For index funds, they're really just a reflection of the stocks and bonds they, uh... reflect. S...

Trading volume is the number of shares trading back and forth at a given time.

What does “Called Away” mean? Calling away means that an option has been called and exercised and the writer is now responsible for giving the...

What is the difference between taxable and untaxed returns? Not all returns and investments are taxed. Some of these can be considered nontaxable i...

What's the difference between senior and junior debt? No matter the differences, we know the similarity: you don't want to be in either of them.

What is real return? Real return is the actual return made from an investment after inflation is factored in. Return is expressed as a percentage c...