Business English Vocabulary: The Stock Market

Video Description

Learn business English vocabulary: Whether you are investing in a bull or a bear market, you should know the common terms and expressions that stock brokers and mutual fund managers will use to discuss your options. In this lesson, we will go over some of the more common terms you will need to familiarize yourself with if you want to become rich. Playing the stock market is a risky business, so be prepared! https://www.engvid.com/business-english-vocabulary-stock-market/ TRANSCRIPT Hi again. I'm Adam. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. Today we're going to look at some business English, with an introduction to investing. Now, what is investing? Investing is putting your money someplace with the hope that more money will come back to you later. Okay? So it's making money over time. Many ways to do it, but today we're going to look more specifically at the stock market. Now, before we begin to look at the stock market, we need to know all the different words that you will find in the stock market discussion. Of course, we have to look at "stocks". So: "stocks" and "shares". Now, many people get confused: what is a stock? What is a share? Realistically, these are basically the same thing, but subtle differences between the two. So, when a company decides that it wants to make money, so it can expand its business, it wants to raise capital. "Capital", it's a big word, there's lots of meanings to it. We're going to look at that a different time. But for our case, "capital" means money. They want to make money, they want to raise capital so they can grow their business. So what they do is they sell stock. Stock is a partial ownership of the company. So when you buy stock, you get a piece of paper, you get a certificate that says that you own part of this company. And because you own part of the company, you have certain rights. You can make... You can vote for changes, you can vote for things that the company should do. Now, what is a share? A share is an equal piece of the stock. So, for example, a company sells $100 worth of stock. That's the full amount of the ownership that the company makes available to the public. Now, this stock, this total amount, they divide into 100 shares. Okay? So you buy as many shares as you want of this stock. So because you have 100 shares, the full stock is $100. Each share is, of course, $1. You buy 10 shares, that mean... That means you're buying 10% of the available stock. You're buying $10 worth of shares. Now, you own stock, you own shares in the company. In that case, it's the same thing. Now, when you talk about stocks, you can say: "I own stocks." So let's go to this word quickly: "portfolio". Your portfolio is the collection of your investments. You may have stocks, you may have mutual funds, you may have bonds, you may have commodities, you may have real estate. You may have all kinds of different investments. If part of your portfolio is stocks, you say: "I have some stocks." It means I can have five company's stocks. But when you say: "I have shares", then you have shares of a company. Okay? I have stocks in 10 different companies. I have shares... I have 10% or I have 100 shares in this company, I have 50 shares in that company, I have 2,000 shares in that company. But all together, you have stock. Okay? So it's a total amount of the companies that you own. Now, if you want to buy stocks or trade stocks, if you want to buy and sell your shares, you can contact a "stockbroker". Okay? A broker is somebody who deals with trades; buys, sells stocks on the stock market. These days, you can just go online and find a "brokerage" which is a website or a company that lets you buy and sell your own stocks and shares. Okay. Next: we have "IPO", this is "Initial Public Offering". Sorry I'm a little bit off line, here. When a company decides: "Okay, we need to make more money. We need to raise capital. We need to sell some stock of our company." So the first time that they sell this stock, there's a big event, you know, like it's a big promotion, they have to market it, they have to tell the public: "Look, we're going to sell stock. Get ready." This is the initial public offering. The first time that they sell stock. We actually don't say: "Sell". They don't sell stock; they issue stock. And then the stock brokerage or the stockbrokers, they buy and sell the stock. Next: "ROI". This is a very important thing to consider. "Return On Investment". Before you buy anything, before you invest your money in anything, you always have to consider your ROI. How much money do you hope to get back? How much money do you think you will get back? Because at the end of the day, a stock market is a gamble. There's high-risk and there's low-risk companies. Your return on investment, obviously, you're hoping to make money. You hope to get a positive yield.