The high and low prices, or bids and offers, recorded during the period designated as the official close. A transaction in which the seller's intention is to reduce or eliminate a long position in a stock, or a given series of options. A statistical technique that identifies clusters of stocks whose returns are highly correlated within each cluster and relatively uncorrelated between clusters. Cluster analysis has identified groupings such as growth, cyclical, stable and energy stocks. The fee paid to a broker to buy or sell securities.
Commissions vary widely from broker to broker.
A statement in which all items are expressed as a percentage of a base figure, useful for purposes of analyzing trends and the changing relationship between financial statement items. For example, all items in each year's income statement could be presented as a percentage of net sales. A commodity is food, a metal or another physical substance that investors buy or sell, usually via futures contracts. Corporations may have several classes of common stock, as well as preferred stock, or they may have a single class of common stock. Common stockholders are on the bottom of the ladder in a corporation's ownership structure, and have rights to a company's assets only after bond holders, preferred shareholders and other debt holders have been satisfied.