The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:
Finance – addresses the ways in which individuals and organizations raise and allocate monetary resources over time, taking into account the risks entailed in their projects.
Overview
The term finance may incorporate any of the following:
- The study of money and other assets
- The management and control of those assets
- Profiling and managing project risks
Fundamental financial concepts
- Finance
- Arbitrage
- Capital (economics)
- Capital asset pricing model
- Cash flow
- Cash flow matching
- Debt
- Discounted cash flow
- Financial capital
- Financial modeling
- Entrepreneur
- Fixed income analysis
- Gap financing
- Global financial system
- Hedge
- Interest rate
- Short-rate model
- Interest
- Investment
- Leverage
- Long (finance)
- Liquidity
- Margin (finance)
- Mark to market
- Market impact
- Medium of exchange
- Microcredit
- Money
- Portfolio
- Reference rate
- Return
- Risk
- Scenario analysis
- Short (finance)
- Speculation
- Position trader
- Spread trade
- Standard of deferred payment
- Store of value
- Time horizon
- Time value of money
- Unit of account
- Volatility
- Yield
- Yield curve
History
- History of banking
- History of insurance
- Tulip mania (Dutch Republic), 1620s/1630s
- South Sea Bubble (UK) & Mississippi Company (France), 1710s; see also Stock market bubble
- Vix pervenit 1745, on usury and other dishonest profit
- Panic of 1837 (US)
- Railway Mania (UK), 1840s
- Erie War (US), 1860s
- Long Depression, 1873–1896 (mainly US and Europe, though other parts of the world were affected)
- Post-World War I hyperinflation; see Hyperinflation and Inflation in the Weimar Republic
- Wall Street Crash of 1929
- Great Depression 1930s
- Bretton Woods Accord 1944
- 1973 oil crisis
- 1979 energy crisis
- Savings and Loan Crisis 1980s
- Black Monday 1987
- Asian financial crisis 1990s
- Dot-com bubble 1995-2001
- Stock market downturn of 2002
- United States housing bubble
- Financial crisis of 2007–08, followed by the Great Recession
Finance terms by field
Accounting (financial record keeping)
- Auditing
- Accounting software
- Book keeping
- FASB
- Financial accountancy
- Management accounting
- Philosophy of Accounting
- Working capital
Banking
- Anonymous banking
- Automatic teller machine
- Deposit
- Deposit creation multiplier
- Ethical banking
- International Bank Account Number
- Islamic banking
- Loan
- Withdrawal
Corporate finance
- Balance sheet analysis
- Business plan
- Capital budgeting
- Corporate action
- (Strategic) Financial management
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Real options
- Working capital management
Investment management
- Active management
- Efficient market hypothesis
- Portfolio
- Modern portfolio theory
- Arbitrage pricing theory
- Passive management
- Activist shareholder
- Mutual fund
- Financial engineering
- Hedge fund
- Hedge
- #Quantitative investing, below
Personal finance
- 529 plan (US college savings)
- ABLE account (US plan for benefit of individuals with disabilities)
- Asset allocation
- Budget
- Coverdell Education Savings Account (Coverdell ESAs, formerly known as Education IRAs)
- Credit and debt
- Debit card
- Direct deposit
- Employment contract
- Financial literacy
- Insurance
- Predatory lending
- Retirement plan
- Australia – Superannuation in Australia
- Canada
- Japan – Nippon individual savings account
- New Zealand – KiwiSaver
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Pension
- Simple living
- Social security
- Tax advantage
- Wealth
- Comparison of accounting software
- Personal financial management
- Investment club
- Collective investment scheme
Public finance
- Central bank
- Federal Reserve
- Fractional-reserve banking
- Tax
- Capital gains tax
- Estate tax (and inheritance tax)
- Gift tax
- Income tax
- Inheritance tax
- Payroll tax
- Property tax (including land value tax)
- Sales tax (including value added tax, excise tax, and use tax)
- Transfer tax (including stamp duty)
- Tax advantage
- Tax, tariff and trade
- Tax amortization benefit
- Crowding out
- Industrial policy
- Agricultural policy
- Currency union
- Monetary reform
Insurance
- Actuarial science
- Annuities
- Catastrophe modeling
- Earthquake loss
- Extended coverage
- Insurable interest
- Insurable risk
- Insurance
- Insurance contract
- Loss payee clause
- Risk Retention Group
Economics and finance
Mathematics and finance
Time value of money
Financial mathematics
Mathematical tools
- Probability
- Stochastic calculus
- Monte Carlo methods
- Partial differential equations
- Volatility
Derivatives pricing
- Underlying logic
- Forward contract
- Futures
- Options (incl. Real options and ESOs)
- Valuation of options
- Black–Scholes formula
- Approximations for American options
- Black model
- Binomial options model
- Finite difference methods for option pricing
- Garman–Kohlhagen model
- The Greeks
- Lattice model (finance)
- Margrabe's formula
- Monte Carlo methods for option pricing
- Monte Carlo methods in finance
- Quasi-Monte Carlo methods in finance
- Least Square Monte Carlo for American options
- Trinomial tree
- Volatility
- Swaps
- Interest rate derivatives (bond options, swaptions, caps and floors, and others)
- Black model
- Short-rate models (generally applied via lattice based- and specialized simulation-models, although "Black like" formulae exist in some cases.)
- Forward rate / Forward curve -based models (Application as per short-rate models)
- LIBOR market model (also called: Brace–Gatarek–Musiela Model, BGM)
- Heath–Jarrow–Morton Model (HJM)
- Cheyette model
- Valuation adjustments
Constraint finance
- Environmental finance
- Feminist economics
- Green economics
- Islamic economics
- Uneconomic growth
- Value of Earth
- Value of life
Financial markets
Market and instruments
- Capital markets
- Securities
- Financial markets
- Primary market
- Initial public offering
- Aftermarket
- Free market
- Bull market
- Bear market
- Bear market rally
- Market maker
- Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Nasdaq
- List of stock exchanges
- List of stock market indices
- List of corporations by market capitalization
- Value Line Composite Index
Equity market
- Stock market
- Stock
- Common stock
- Preferred stock
- Treasury stock
- Equity investment
- Index investing
- Private Equity
- Financial reports and statements
- Fundamental analysis
- Dividend
- Dividend yield
- Stock split
Equity valuation
- Dow theory
- Elliott wave principle
- Economic value added
- Fibonacci retracement
- Gordon model
- Growth stock
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Leveraged buyout
- Takeover
- Corporate raid
- PE ratio
- Market capitalization
- Income per share
- Stock valuation
- Technical analysis
- Chart patterns
- V-trend
- Paper valuation
Investment theory
- Behavioral finance
- Dead cat bounce
- Efficient market hypothesis
- Market microstructure
- Stock market crash
- Stock market bubble
- January effect
- Mark Twain effect
- Quantitative behavioral finance
- Quantitative analysis (finance)
- Statistical arbitrage
Bond market
- Bond (finance)
- Zero-coupon bond
- Junk bonds
- Convertible bond
- Accrual bond
- Municipal bond
- Sovereign bond
- Bond valuation
- Fixed income
Money market
- Repurchase agreement
- International Money Market
- Currency
- Exchange rate
- International currency codes
- Table of historical exchange rates
Commodity market
- Commodity
- Asset
- Commodity Futures Trading Commission
- Commodity trade
- Drawdowns
- Forfaiting
- Fundamental analysis
- Futures contract
- Fungibility
- Gold as an investment
- Hedging
- Jesse Lauriston Livermore
- List of traded commodities
- Ownership equity
- Position trader
- Risk (Futures)
- Seasonal traders
- Seasonal spread trading
- Slippage
- Speculation
- Spread trade
- Technical analysis
- Trade
- Trend
Derivatives market
- Derivative (finance)
- (see also Financial mathematics topics; Derivatives pricing)
- Underlying instrument
Forward markets and contracts
Futures markets and contracts
- Backwardation
- Contango
- Futures contract
- Financial future
- Futures exchange
Option markets and contracts
- Options
- Stock option
- Warrants
- Foreign exchange option
- Interest rate options
- Bond options
- Real options
- Options on futures
Swap markets and contracts
Derivative markets by underlyings
Equity derivatives
- Contract for difference (CFD)
- Exchange-traded fund (ETF)
- Equity options
- Equity swap
- Real estate investment trust (REIT)
- Warrants
Interest rate derivatives
- LIBOR
- Forward rate agreement
- Interest rate swap
- Interest rate cap
- Exotic interest rate option
- Bond option
- Interest rate future
- Money market instruments
- Range accrual Swaps/Notes/Bonds
- In-arrears Swap
- Constant maturity swap (CMS) or Constant Treasury Swap (CTS) derivatives (swaps, caps, floors)
- Interest rate Swaption
- Bermudan swaptions
- Cross currency swaptions
- Power Reverse Dual Currency note (PRDC or Turbo)
- Target redemption note (TARN)
- CMS steepener
- Snowball
- Inverse floater
- Strips of Collateralized mortgage obligation
- Ratchet caps and floors
Credit derivatives
- Credit default swap
- Collateralized debt obligation
- Credit default option
- Total return swap
- Securitization
Foreign exchange derivative
- Foreign exchange option
- Currency future
- Forex swap
- Foreign exchange hedge
- Binary option: Foreign exchange
Financial regulation
Designations and accreditation
- See also: Professional certification in financial services; Professional certification #Accountancy, auditing and finance; #Education below
- Certified Financial Planner
- Chartered Financial Analyst
- Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst
- Professional risk manager
- Chartered Financial Consultant
- Canadian Securities Institute
- Independent financial adviser
- Financial risk manager
- Chartered Market Technician
- Certified Financial Technician
Litigation
Fraud
Industry bodies
Regulatory bodies
International
- Bank for International Settlements
- International Organization of Securities Commissions
- Security Commission
- Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
- Basel Accords – Basel I, Basel II, Basel III
- International Association of Insurance Supervisors
- International Accounting Standards Board
European Union
Regulatory bodies by country
United Kingdom
United States
- Commodity Futures Trading Commission
- Federal Reserve
- Federal Trade Commission
- Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board
- Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
- Securities and Exchange Commission
United States legislation
- Glass–Steagall Act (US)
- Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (US)
- Sarbanes–Oxley Act (US)
- Securities Act of 1933 (US)
- Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (US)
- Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (US)
- USA PATRIOT Act
Actuarial topics
Asset types
Raising capital
Valuation
- Note that this section is corporate-finance-focused; for the valuation of derivatives and interest rate / fixed income instruments see § Derivatives pricing above.
Underlying theory
- Value (economics)
- Valuation (finance) and specifically § Valuation overview
- "The Theory of Investment Value"
- Financial economics § Corporate finance theory
- Valuation risk
- Real versus nominal value (economics)
- Real prices and ideal prices
- Fair value
- Intrinsic value
- Market price
- Value in use
- Fairness opinion
- Asset pricing
Context
- (Corporate) Bonds
- Equity valuation
- Real estate valuation
Considerations
- Bonds
- Equity
Discounted cash flow valuation
- Bond valuation
- Modelling
- Results
- Cash flows
- Real estate valuation
- Equity valuation
- Results
- Specific models and approaches
- Modelling
- Cash flow
- Required return (i.e. discount rate)
- Terminal value
- Forecasted financial statements
Relative valuation
- Bonds
- Real estate
- Equity
Contingent claim valuation
- Valuation techniques
- Applications
- Corporate investments and projects
- Balance sheet assets and liabilities
- warrants and other convertible securities
- securities with embedded options such as callable bonds
- employee stock options
- structured finance investments (funding dependent)
- special purpose entities (funding dependent)
Other approaches
- "Fundamentals"-based (relying on accounting information)
Portfolio theory
General concepts
- Portfolio (finance)
- Portfolio manager
- Investment management
- Investor profile
- Rate of return on a portfolio / Investment performance
- Risk return ratio
- Risk factor (finance)
- Portfolio optimization
- Diversification (finance)
- Asset classes
- Asset allocation
- Sector rotation
- Correlation & covariance
- Risk-free interest rate
- Leverage (finance)
- Utility function
- Intertemporal portfolio choice
- Portfolio insurance
- Mathematical finance § Risk and portfolio management: the P world
- Quantitative investment / Quantitative fund (see below)
Modern portfolio theory
- Theory and results (derivation of the CAPM)
- Equilibrium price
- Market price
- Systematic risk
- Idiosyncratic risk / Specific risk
- Mean-variance analysis (Two-moment decision model)
- Efficient frontier (Mean variance efficiency)
- Feasible set
- Mutual fund separation theorem
- Tangent portfolio
- Market portfolio
- Beta (finance)
- Capital allocation line
- Capital market line
- Security characteristic line
- Capital asset pricing model
- Security market line
- Roll's critique
- Related measures
- Optimization models
- Equilibrium pricing models (CAPM and extensions)
Post-modern portfolio theory
- Approaches
- Optimization considerations
- Pareto efficiency
- Bayesian efficiency
- Multiple-criteria decision analysis
- Multi-objective optimization
- Stochastic dominance
- Downside risk
- Risk parity
- Tail risk parity
- Volatility skewness
- Semivariance
- Expected shortfall (ES; also called conditional value at risk (CVaR), average value at risk (AVaR), expected tail loss (ETL))
- Tail value at risk
- Statistical dispersion
- Discounted maximum loss
- Indifference price
- Measures
- Optimization models
Performance measurement
- Performance attribution
- Fixed-income attribution
- Benchmark
- Lipper average
- Returns-based style analysis
- Rate of return on a portfolio
- Holding period return
- Tracking error
- Alpha (finance)
- Beta (finance)
- Simple Dietz method
- Modified Dietz method
- Modigliani risk-adjusted performance
- Upside potential ratio
- Maximum Downside Exposure
- Maximum drawdown
- Sharpe ratio
- Treynor ratio
- Jensen's alpha
- Bias ratio
- V2 ratio
- Calmar ratio (hedge fund specific)
Mathematical techniques
- Quadratic programming
- Nonlinear programming
- Mixed integer programming
- Stochastic programming (§ Multistage portfolio optimization)
- Copula (probability theory) (§ Quantitative finance)
- Principal component analysis (§ Quantitative finance)
- Deterministic global optimization
- Genetic algorithm (List of genetic algorithm applications § Finance and Economics)
- Machine learning (§ Applications)
- Artificial neural network
Quantitative investing
- Quantitative investing
- Quantitative fund
- Quantitative analysis (finance) § Quantitative investment management and § Algorithmic trading quantitative analyst
- Trading:
- Portfolio optimization:
- Risks:
- Discussion:
- Automated trading system § Market disruption and manipulation
- High-frequency trading § Risks and controversy
- Algorithmic trading § Issues and developments
- Positive feedback § Systemic risk
- 2010 flash crash
- Black Monday (1987) § Possible causes
- Statistical arbitrage § StatArb and systemic risk: events of summer 2007
Financial software tools
- Straight Through Processing Software
- Technical Analysis Software
- Fundamental Analysis Software
- Algorithmic trading
- Electronic trading platform
- List of numerical analysis software
- Comparison of numerical analysis software
Financial institutions
- Bank
- List of banks
- Advising bank
- Central bank
- Commercial bank
- Community development bank
- Cooperative bank
- Custodian bank
- Depository bank
- Ethical bank
- Investment bank
- Islamic banking
- Merchant bank
- Microcredit
- Mutual savings bank
- National bank
- Offshore bank
- Private bank
- Savings bank
- Swiss bank
- Bank holding company
- Building society
- Broker
- Clearing house
- Commercial lender
- Community development financial institution
- Credit rating agency
- Credit union
- Diversified financial
- Edge Act Corporation
- Export Credit Agencies
- Financial adviser
- Financial intermediary
- Financial planner
- Futures exchange
- Government sponsored enterprise
- Hard money lender
- Independent financial adviser
- Industrial loan company
- Insurance company
- Investment adviser
- Investment company
- Investment trust
- Large and Complex Financial Institutions
- Mutual fund
- Non-banking financial company
- Savings and loan association
- Stock exchange
- Trust company
Education
- For the typical finance career path and corresponding education requirements see:
- Financial analyst generally, and esp. § Qualification, discussing various investment, banking, and corporate roles (i.e. financial management, corporate finance, investment banking, securities analysis & valuation, portfolio & investment management, credit analysis, working capital & treasury management; see Financial modeling § Accounting)
- Quantitative analyst, Quantitative analysis (finance) § Education and Financial engineering § Education, specifically re roles in quantitative finance (i.e. derivative pricing & hedging, interest rate modeling, financial risk management, financial engineering, computational finance; also, the mathematically-intensive variant on the banking roles; see Financial modeling § Quantitative finance)
- Business education lists undergraduate degrees in business, commerce, accounting and economics; "finance" may be taken as a major in most of these, whereas "quantitative finance" is almost invariably postgraduate, following a math-focused Bachelors; the most common degrees for (entry level) investment, banking, and corporate roles are:
- Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA)
- Bachelor of Commerce (BCom)
- Bachelor of Accountancy
- Bachelor of Economics
- The “tagged” BS / BA in Finance (the undergraduate version of the MSF below)
- At the postgraduate level, the MBA, MCom and MSM (and often the Master of Applied Economics) similarly offer training in finance generally; at this level there are also the following specifically focused masters degrees - see Master of Finance § Comparison with other qualifications for their focus and inter-relation:
- Master of Applied Finance (M.App.Fin)
- Master of Computational Finance
- Master of Finance (M.Fin, MIF)
- Master of Financial Economics
- Master of Financial Engineering
- Master of Financial Mathematics
- Master of Mathematical Finance
- Master of Quantitative Finance (MQF)
- Master of Science in Finance (MSF, MSc Finance)
- Master of Science in Global Finance
- Doctoral-training in finance is usually a requirement for academia, but not relevant to industry
- quants often enter the profession with PhDs in disciplines such as physics, mathematics, engineering, and computer science, and learn finance "on the job”
- as an academic field, finance theory is studied and developed within the disciplines of management, (financial) economics, accountancy, and applied / financial mathematics.
- For specialized roles, there are various Professional Certifications in financial services (see #Designations and accreditation above); the best recognized are arguably:
- Association of Corporate Treasurers (MCT / FCT)
- Certificate in Quantitative Finance (CQF)
- Certified Financial Planner (CFP)
- Certified International Investment Analyst (CIIA)
- Certified Treasury Professional (CTP)
- Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA)
- Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)
- CISI Diploma in Capital Markets (MCSI)
- Financial Risk Manager (FRM)
- Professional Risk Manager (PRM)
- Various organizations offer executive education, CPD, or other focused training programs, including:
- See also qualifications in related fields:
Related lists
- Index of accounting articles
- Outline of business management
- Outline of marketing
- Outline of economics
- Outline of production
- List of international trade topics
- List of business law topics
- List of business theorists
- Actuarial topics
External links
- Wharton Finance Knowledge Project – finance knowledge for students, teachers, and self-learners.
- Prof. Aswath Damodaran - financial theory, with a focus in Corporate Finance, Valuation and Investments. Updated Data, Excel Spreadsheets.
- Web Sites for Discerning Finance Students (Prof. John M. Wachowicz) -Links to finance web sites, grouped by topic
- studyfinance.com - introductory finance web site at the University of Arizona
- BF gallery - introductory articles, full glossary and links to resources on behavioral finance
- SECLaw.com - law of the financial markets
- TheStreet.com Glossary - stock market related definitions