Reporters and investors use it to say whether the market is up or down. Then there's the ever-common YTD percentage change. This is simply the price divided by earnings per share. Then there is the beta of a stock. That's a lot of the technical terms in common English.
Mutual funds are organizations that many people invest in.
The fund manager oversees the purchases of a variety of stocks and bonds with the money of the people who invest in that fund. The people in turn own a part of the organization. It is like owning a stock in a company where all the company does is use your invested money to buy many different stocks. There are funds that purchase mainly Internet stocks, or mainly restaurant stocks, and many other groupings. After answering these questions, I was able to pick up the business section of the paper.