A fee charged for the buying of securities and investment funds. It describes the difference between the par value and the actual market price paid. When subscribing a fund, the sales fee is also referred to as the entrance fee, sales charge or commission.
S&P 500
An index of 500 biggest companies in the U.S.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the primary regulatory agency for the securities industry of the United States of America.

The Sharpe Ratio is a measure of reward for risk taken, where risk is measured in terms of volatility. Thus, the higher the Sharpe ratio, the greater a portfolio's returns have been relative to the amount of risk. Often, the Sharpe ratio is used to construct a portfolio that provides a maximum rate of return for a given level of risk tolerance. To calculate: subtract the risk free rate from the rate of return of a portfolio and divide it by the standard deviation of the portfolio’s returns. (The risk free rate is a theoretical interest rate at which an investment may earn interest without incurring any risk.)

Short selling occurs when an investor borrows securities from a broker in order to sell them at the current market price (establishing a short position) with the intention of buying them back (hopefully at a lower price) at a later date and returning them to the broker. Short selling (or "selling short") is a technique used by investors who aim to profit from the falling price of a stock.

Societé d’investissement à capital variable (SICAV) is a financial institution with the legal structure of a stock corporation. SICAV are common corporations in France and Luxemburg and similar to a unit trust or mutual fund. A SICAV exclusively manages the capital of its investors, following the principle of diversification.

The difference between the sample or target price for buying or selling an asset and the actual price at which the transaction takes place.

A measure of risk-adjusted performance (see Risk-adjusted performance) that indicates the level of excess return per unit of downside risk. It differs from the Sharpe ratio [see Sharpe ratio] in that it recognises investors' preference for upside ('good') over downside ('bad') volatility and uses a measure of 'bad' volatility as provided by semi-deviation - the annualised standard deviation of the returns that fall below a target return, say the risk free rate.

A widely used measurement of risk, usually used to represent volatility [see Volatility] derived by calculating the square root of the variance of the returns of an investment from their mean.

Ownership of a corporation represented by shares that are claim on the corporations earnings and assets.

The particular investment process employed by a manager in the application of an investment style [see Style].

Typically provides principal protection [see Principal protection], invests across a range of styles and managers, provides increased investment exposure [see Leverage] and requires a high level of structuring expertise with respect to blending investment approaches, financing, liquidity and risk management.

A generic investment approach, such as equity hedge and long/short, event driven, arbitrage, global macro, fund of funds, that has developed as a result of numerous managers aiming to exploit a particular type of market inefficiency, sharing a broadly similar conceptual understanding of that inefficiency, and employing a broadly similar investment methodology in order to extract value. Practitioners of a particular style will have their own investment process or strategy with unique distinguishing features and techniques.