401(k)
An employer-sponsored retirement account that lets you save from your paycheck before taxes.
Explained, once, properly
The Open Bell Glossary.
Every jargon word gets translated the moment it's said on the show. This is that same explanation, written down, so you don't have to wait for it to come up on air.
52-Week Range
The highest and lowest price a stock has traded at over the past year.
Adjustable-Rate Mortgage (ARM)
A home loan whose interest rate can change over time, unlike a fixed-rate mortgage.
Antitrust
Laws designed to stop companies from becoming so dominant they crush competition.
Basis Points
The unit central banks use to count interest rate moves.
Bitcoin Halving
A built-in event roughly every four years that cuts the reward for mining new bitcoin in half.
Black Swan Event
A rare, severe, almost impossible-to-predict event that upends markets when it happens.
Blockchain
A shared digital ledger that records transactions across many computers, without one central owner.
Blue Chip Stock
Shares in a large, well-established, financially stable company.
Book Value
What a company would theoretically be worth if it sold everything and paid off all its debts today.
Budget Deficit
The gap between what a government spends and what it collects in a given year.
Bull Market vs. Bear Market
The two basic weather states for stocks: rising for a while (bull) or falling for a while (bear).
Business Cycle
The recurring pattern economies move through: expansion, peak, downturn, and recovery, over and over.
Capex (Capital Expenditure)
Money a company spends on long-term stuff, buildings, equipment, data centers, rather than day-to-day costs.
Capital Controls
Government limits on how much money can flow into or out of a country.
Capital Flight
A rapid, large-scale exit of money out of a country, usually driven by fear.
Circuit Breaker
An automatic pause in stock trading triggered when the market falls too fast, too quickly.
Compound Interest
Interest earned not just on your original money, but on the interest it already earned.
Consensus Estimate
The average forecast from Wall Street analysts, and the number every earnings report gets measured against.
Consumer Confidence Index
A monthly survey of how optimistic or worried ordinary households feel about the economy.
Credit Card APR
The annual interest rate you're charged on any credit card balance you don't pay off in full.
Credit Rating
A grade agencies give a government or company on how likely it is to repay its debt.
Credit Score
A three-digit number that sums up how reliably you've borrowed and repaid money in the past.
Crypto ETF
A fund that trades on a regular stock exchange but tracks the price of a cryptocurrency.
Currency Peg
When a country fixes its currency's value to another currency, usually the dollar, instead of letting it float freely.
Current Account / Balance of Trade
The scorecard for whether a country sells more to the world than it buys, or the reverse.
De-dollarization
Countries gradually trading and holding reserves in currencies other than the US dollar.
Debt Ceiling
The legal limit on how much the US government is allowed to borrow, which Congress has to periodically raise.
Debt-to-Equity Ratio
How much a company relies on borrowed money versus its own shareholders' money to run its business.
Debt-to-Income Ratio
How much of your monthly income goes toward paying off debt, a key number lenders check.
DeFi (Decentralized Finance)
Financial services, lending, trading, saving, built on blockchain instead of banks.
Dividend Yield
How much cash a stock pays out each year, as a percentage of its price.
Dot Plot
The Fed's own internal guess at where interest rates go next, published as literal dots on a chart.
Earnings Per Share (EPS)
A company's profit divided by its number of shares, the single number earnings season revolves around.
Embargo
A total ban on trade with a country, more absolute than a sanction.
Emergency Fund
Cash set aside specifically to cover a sudden job loss, medical bill, or unexpected expense.
Federal Funds Rate
The interest rate the US central bank sets, and the one that quietly sets everyone else's.
FOMC
The Federal Reserve's committee that actually votes on interest rates.
Free Cash Flow
The actual cash a company has left over after paying for its operations and investments.
Free Trade Agreement
A deal between countries to cut or remove tariffs and trade barriers between them.
GDP
The total value of everything a country produces, the standard scoreboard for the size of an economy.
Gig Economy
Work built around short-term, freelance, or app-based jobs instead of traditional full-time employment.
Guidance
A company's own forecast for its future results, given directly to investors.
Hawkish vs. Dovish
The two moods central bankers get sorted into: hawkish wants tighter policy, dovish wants looser.
Hedge Fund
A lightly regulated investment fund for wealthy investors, free to make aggressive, unconventional bets.
Index Fund
An investment fund built to simply track a market index, rather than try to beat it.
Inflation (CPI)
How fast prices are rising, measured through a basket of everyday goods and services.
Inverted Yield Curve
When short-term government debt pays more interest than long-term debt, historically a recession warning.
Investment Grade
The safest tier of borrower a credit rating agency recognizes, judged unlikely to default.
IPO
A company's first sale of shares to the public, its debut on the stock market.
Jobless Claims
A weekly count of people newly filing for unemployment benefits, one of the freshest snapshots of the job market.
Junk Bond (High-Yield Bond)
A bond from a riskier borrower that pays a higher interest rate to compensate for that risk.
Leverage
Using borrowed money to make a bet bigger than your own cash would allow.
Liquidity
How easily an asset can be bought or sold quickly without moving its price much.
Margin Call
A demand to add more cash or sell assets fast, after a leveraged bet starts losing money.
Market Capitalization
A company's total value on the stock market: share price multiplied by every share outstanding.
Market Correction
A drop of ten percent or more from a recent high, short of a full bear market.
Minimum Wage
The lowest hourly pay employers are legally allowed to offer.
Monopoly
When a single company controls a market so completely that real competition disappears.
Mortgage Rate
The interest rate charged on a home loan, and one of the most personally felt numbers in the whole economy.
Nonfarm Payrolls
The monthly headline jobs report: how many jobs the US economy added or lost, minus farm work.
OPEC+
The group of oil-producing nations that meets regularly to decide how much oil the world gets.
PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures)
The Fed's own preferred inflation gauge, a close cousin of CPI with a slightly different formula.
PMI (Purchasing Managers' Index)
A monthly survey of business managers that gives an early read on whether the economy is growing or shrinking.
PPI (Producer Price Index)
Inflation measured at the factory gate, before it reaches store shelves.
Purchasing Power
How much your money can actually buy, which shrinks as prices rise even if your income doesn’t.
Quantitative Easing
A central bank buying bonds at scale to push more money into the economy.
Quantitative Tightening
The reverse of quantitative easing: a central bank shrinking its balance sheet instead of expanding it.
Rate-Hike Odds
The market's own real-time guess at what the Fed will do next, priced through futures trading.
Real vs. Nominal
The difference between a raw dollar figure (nominal) and that figure adjusted for inflation (real).
Real Wages
What your paycheck can actually buy, after accounting for inflation, not just the number on it.
Recession
A sustained economic downturn, usually meaning less spending, hiring, and output across the board.
Refinancing
Replacing an existing loan with a new one, usually to get a better interest rate.
Retail Sales
A monthly measure of how much money shoppers actually spent at stores, restaurants, and online.
Roth IRA
A retirement account funded with money you’ve already paid tax on, so withdrawals in retirement are tax-free.
Safe-Haven Asset
Something investors rush to buy when they're scared, regardless of whether it pays much return.
Sanctions
Restrictions one country places on another to block trade, banking, or travel, without going to war.
Short Selling
Betting a stock will fall, by borrowing and selling shares you don’t own, then buying them back cheaper.
Soft Landing
A central bank cooling inflation without tipping the economy into a recession.
Sovereign Debt
Money a national government owes, and the risk that it might not pay it back on time.
Sovereign Wealth Fund
A government-owned investment fund, often built from oil or trade surplus money, invested globally.
SPAC
A shell company that raises money on the stock market, then merges with a private company to take it public.
Stablecoin
A cryptocurrency deliberately designed to hold a steady value, usually pegged to the US dollar.
Stagflation
The worst combination: high inflation and a stagnant economy at the same time.
Stock Buyback
A company using its own cash to repurchase its own shares from the market.
Student Loan Debt
Money borrowed to pay for education, now one of the largest categories of household debt in the US.
Supply Chain
The full chain of steps, sourcing, manufacturing, shipping, that gets a product from raw material to your hands.
Support and Resistance
Price levels where a stock has repeatedly stopped falling (support) or stopped rising (resistance).
Tariff
A tax a government charges on goods coming in from another country.
Treasury Yield
The interest rate the US government pays to borrow money.
Trimmed-Mean CPI
A version of inflation that ignores the most extreme price swings to show the underlying trend.
Unicorn (Startup)
A private startup company valued at $1 billion or more.
US Dollar Index (DXY)
A single number tracking the dollar's strength against a basket of other major currencies.
Venture Capital
Money invested in early, unproven startups in exchange for a stake in the company.
Volatility (VIX)
Wall Street's fear gauge, measuring how much price swings are expected in the near future.
Yield Curve
A chart of how much interest government debt pays across different lengths of time.
New terms explained the moment they matter.
Every newsletter issue links back to the glossary the moment new jargon comes up — so you're never stuck looking things up after the fact.