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- Safety cushion
- In a contingent immunization strategy, the difference between the
initially available immunization level and the safety-net return.
- Safety-net return
- The minimum available return that will trigger an immunization strategy in
a contingent immunization strategy.
- Samurai market
- The foreign market in Japan.
- Savings deposits
- Accounts that pay interest, typically at below-market interest rates, that
do not have a specific maturity; and that usually can be withdrawn upon
demand.
- Scalp
- To trade for small gains. It normally involves establishing and
liquidating a position quickly, usually within the same day. scenario
analysis The use of horizon analysis to project bond total returns under
different reinvestment rates and future market yields.
- Search costs
- Costs associated with locating a counterparty to a trade, including
explicit costs (such as advertising) and implicit costs (such as the value
of time). Related: Information costs
- Secondary market
- The market where securities are traded after they are initially offered in
the primary market.
- Securities analysts
- Related: Financial analysts
- Securitization
- The process of creating a passthrough, such as the mortgage pass- through
security, by which the pooled assets become standard securities backed by
those assets.
- Security deposit (initial)
- Synonymous with the term margin. A cash amount of funds that must be
deposited with the broker for each contract as a guarantee of fulfillment of
the futures contract. It is not considered as part payment or purchase. Related:
Margin
- Security deposit (maintenance)
- Related: Maintenance margin security market line (SML) .
- A description of the risk return relationship for individual securities,
expressed in a form similar to the capital market line.
- Sell hedge
- Related: Short hedge
- Sell limit order
- conditional trading order that indicates that a, security may be sold at
the designated price or higher. Related: Buy limit order
- Sell-side analyst
- Also called a Wall Street analyst, a financial analyst who works for a
brokerage firm and whose recommendations are passed on to the brokerage
firm's customers.
- Selling short
- A trade in which the investor (working through a broker) borrows a
security, sells it, repurchases it at a later time, and then returns it to
the party who initially loaned the security. If the price has fallen, the
short seller profits. When the security is returned, the investor is said to
have "covered the short position."
- Semistrong form efficiency
- A form of pricing efficiency where the price of the security fully
reflects all public information (including, but not limited to, historical
price and trading patterns). Compare weak form efficiency and strong form
efficiency.
- Serial bonds
- Corporate bonds arranged so that specified principal amounts become due on
specified dates. Related: Term bonds
- Settlement date
- Also called the delivery date, the designated date at which the parties to
a futures contract must transact.
- Settlement Price
- A figure determined by the closing range which is used to calculate gains
and losses in futures market accounts. Settlement prices are used to
determine gains, losses, margin calls, and invoice prices for deliveries. Related:
Closing range
- Settlement rate
- The rate suggested in Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) 87 for
discounting the obligations of a pension plan. The rate at which the pension
benefits could be effectively settled ff the pension plan wished to
terminate its pension obligation.
- Shareholders' letter
- A section of an annual report where one can find jargon-free discussions
by management of successful and failed strategies which provides guidance
for the probing of the rest of the report.
- Sharpe benchmark
- A statistically created benchmark that adjusts for a managers' index-like
tendencies.
- Sharpe Index
- A measure of a portfolio's excess return relative to the total variability
of the portfolio. Related: Treynor Index
- Short
- One who has sold a contract to establish a market position and who has not
yet closed out this position through an offsetting purchase; the opposite of
a long. Related: Long
- Short hedge
- The sale of a futures contract(s) to eliminate or lessen the possible
decline in value ownership of an approximately equal amount of the actual
financial instrument or physical commodity. Related: Long hedge
- Short position
- In the cash market, a sale of securities not owned. The securities sold
are borrowed. In the futures market, the sale of a futures contract with no
offsetting long position. In the options market, the sale of an option with
no offsetting long position.
- Short selling
- Establishing a market position by selling a futures contract.
- Short squeeze
- A situation in which a lack of supply tends to force prices upward. short
straddle A straddle in which one put and one call are sold.
- Short-term solvency ratios
- Ratios used to judge the adequacy of liquid assets for meeting short-term
obligations as they come due, including (1) the current ratio, (2) the
acid-test ratio, (3) the inventory turnover ratio, and (4) the accounts
receivable turnover ratio.
- Shortfall risk
- The risk of falling short of any investment target.
- Simple linear regression
- A regression analysis between only two variables, one dependent and the
other explanatory.
- Simple linear trend model
- An extrapolative statistical model that asserts that earnings have a base
level and grow at a constant amount each period.
- Simple moving average
- The mean, calculated at any time over a past period of fixed length.
- Single-index model
- Related: Market model
- Single-premium deferred annuity
- An insurance policy bought by the sponsor of a pension plan for a single
premium. In return, the insurance company agrees to make lifelong payments
to the employee (the policyholder) when that employee retires.
- Sinking fund requirement
- A condition included in some corporate bond indentures that requires the
issuer to retire a specified portion of debt each year. Any principal due at
maturity is called the balloon maturity.
- Small-firm effect
- The tendency of small firms (in terms of total market capitalization) to
outperform the stock market (consisting of both large and small firms).
- Specialist
- On an exchange, the member firm that is designated as the market maker (or
dealer for a listed common stock. Only one specialist can be designated for
a given stock, but dealers may be specialists for several stocks. In
contrast, there can be multiple market makers 'in the OTC market.
- Speculator
- One, who attempts to anticipate price changes and, through buying and
selling contracts, aims to make profits. A speculator does not use the
market in connection with the production, processing, marketing or handling
of a product.
- Speed
- Related: Prepayment speed
- Spot markets
- Related: Cash markets
- Spot month
- The nearest delivery month on a futures contract.
- Spot price
- The current market price of the actual physical commodity. Also called
cash price.
- Spot rate
- The theoretical yield on a zero-coupon Treasury security.
- Spot rate curve
- The graphical depiction of -the relationship between the spot rates and
maturity.
- Spread
- The simultaneous purchase and sale of separate futures or options
contracts for the same commodity for delivery in different months. Also
known as a straddle.
- Spread income
- Also called margin income, the difference between income and cost. For a
depository institution, the difference between the assets it invests in
(loans and securities) and the cost of its funds (deposits and other
sources).
- Spread strategy
- A strategy that involves a position in one or more options so that the
cost of buying an option is funded entirely or in part by selling another
option in the same underlying.
- Standard deviation
- The square root of the variance. A measure of dispersion of a set of data
from their mean.
- Standardized value
- Also called the normal deviate, the distance of one data point from the
mean, divided by the standard deviation of the distribution.
- Stated conversion price
- At the time of issuance of a convertible security, the price the issuer
effectively grants the securityholder to purchase the common stock, equal to
the par value of the convertible security divided by the conversion ratio.
- Statutory surplus
- The surplus of an insurance company determined by the accounting treatment
of both assets and liabilities as established by state statutes. Related:
Regulatory surplus, Economic surplus
- Steepening of the yield curve
- A change in the yield curve where the spread between the yield on a
long-term and short-term Treasury has increased. Compare flattening of the
yield curve and butterfly shift.
- Step-up bond
- A bond that pays a lower coupon rate for an initial period which then
increases to a higher coupon rate. Related: Deferred-interest bond,
Payment-in-kind bond
- Stochastic models
- Liability-matching models that assume that the liability payments and the
asset cash flows are uncertain. Related: Deterministic models
- Stock exchanges
- Formal organizations, approved and regulated by the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC), that are made up of members that use the
facilities to exchange certain common stocks. The two major national stock
exchanges are the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the American Stock
Exchange (ASE or AMEX). Five regional stock exchanges include the Midwest,
Pacific, Philadelphia, Boston, and Cincinnati. The Arizona Stock Exchange is
an after hours electronic marketplace where anonymous participants trade
stocks via personal computers.
- Stock index option
- An option in which the underlying is a common stock index.
- Stock market
- Also called the equity market, the market for trading equities.
- Stock option
- An option in which the underlying is the common stock of a corporation.
- Stock replacement strategy
- A strategy for enhancing a portfolio's return, employed when the futures
contract is expensive based on its theoretical price, involving a swap
between the futures, Treasury bills portfolio and a stock portfolio.
- Stop-limit order
- A stop order that designates a price limit. In contrast to the stop order,
which becomes a market order ff the stop is reached, the stop-limit order
becomes a limit order ff the stop is reached.
- Stop order (or stop)
- An order to buy or sell at the market when a definite price is reached,
either above (on a buy) or below (on a sell) the price that prevailed when
the order was given.
- Straddle
- urchase or sale of an equal number of puts and calls with the same terms
at the same time. Related: Spread
- traight value
- Also called investment value, the value of a convertible security without
the con-version option.
- Stratified equity indexing
- A method of constructing a replicating portfolio in which the stocks in
the index are classified into stratum, and each stratum is represented in
the portfolio.
- Stratified sampling approach to indexing
- An approach in which the index is divided into cells, each representing a
different characteristic of the index, such as duration or maturity.
- Stratified sampling bond indexing
- A method of bond indexing that divides the index into cells, each cell
representing a different characteristic, and that buys bonds to match those
characteristics.
- Strike index
- For a stock index option, the index value at which the buyer of the option
can buy or sell the underlying stock index. The strike index is converted to
a dollar value by multiplying by the option's contract multiple. Related:
Strike price
- Strike price
- The price at which an option can be converted by exercise into the
underlying futures contract.
- Strong form efficiency
- Pricing efficiency, where the price of a, security reflects all
information, whether or not it is publicly available. Related: Weak
form efficiency, Semistrong form efficiency
- Structured portfolio strategy
- A strategy in which a portfolio is designed to achieve the performance of
some predetermined liabilities that must be paid out in the future.
- Structured settlement
- An agreement in settlement of a lawsuit involving specific payments made
over a period of time. Property and casualty insurance companies often buy
life insurance products to pay the costs of such settlements.
- Subject to opinion
- An auditor's opinion reflecting acceptance of a company's financial
statements subject to pervasive uncertainty that cannot be adequately
measured, such as information relating to the value of inventories, reserves
for losses, or other matters subject to judgment.
- Subordinated debenture bond
- An unsecured bond that ranks after secured debt, after debenture bonds,
and often after some general creditors in its claim on assets and earnings. Related:
Debenture bond, Mortgage bond, Collateral trust bonds
- Subperiod return
- The return of a portfolio over a shorter period of time than the
evaluation period.
- Substitution swap
- A swap in which a money manager exchanges one bond for another bond that
is similar in terms of coupon, maturity, and credit quality, but offers a
higher yield.
- Surplus management
- Related: Asset management
- Swap assignment
- Related: Swap sale
- Swap buy-back
- The sale of an interest rate swap by one counterparty to the other,
effectively ending the swap.
- Swap option
- Related: Quality option
- Swap reversal
- An interest rate swap designed to end a counterparty's role in another
interest rate swap, accomplished by counterbalancing the original swap in
maturity, reference rate, and notional amount.
- Swap sale
- Also called a swap assignment, a transaction that ends one counterparty's
role in an interest rate swap by substituting a new counterparty whose
credit is acceptable to the other original counterparty.
- Swaptions
- Options on interest rate swaps. The buyer of a swaption has the right to
enter into an interest rate swap agreement by some specified date in the '
future. The swaption agreement will specify whether the buyer of the
swaption will be a fixed-rate receiver or a fixed-rate payer. The writer of
the swaption becomes the counterparty to the swap if the buyer exercises.
- Switching
- Liquidating an existing position and simultaneously reinstating a position
in another futures contract of the same type. symmetric cash matching An
extension of cash flow matching that allows for the short- term borrowing of
funds to satisfy a liability prior to the liability due date, resulting in a
reduction in the cost of funding liabilities.
- Synchronous data
- Data available at the same time. In testing option-pricing models, the
price of the option and of the underlying should be synchronous,
representing the same moment in the market.
- Systematic risk
- Also called undiversifiable risk or market risk, the minimum level of risk
that can be obtained for a portfolio by means of diversification across a
large number of randomly chosen assets. Related: Unsystematic risk
Options Glossary
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