New Bear Market Financial Terms

We have created a new take on many traditional stock market and financial terms for the new economy.  Some of these are gut busters and some may hit a little close to home.  Sometimes the lighter side of Wall Street (or a lot more money) is what we all need to get through the hard times. 

Below is the long list:

• "201/K": What used to be your 401/K, but cut in at least half.
• "I.R.A.": This is the paramilitary group you want to sick on thepeople who created the over-the-counter instruments and financialderivatives that are making this financial mess much worse than itshould have been.
• "IPO": The acronym that one yells when they see their brokerage accounts or discover the balance of the 201/K.  "I’m Pissed Off!"
• "Short Squeeze": This is what you think your chair is doing to you when you try to calculate the new balance of your investments.
• "Foreclosure": The time that the stock market stops dropping each day.
• "Stock Broker": The value of your shares each day.
• "Discount Broker": The value of your shares of the brokerage firm you own.
• "Bond Broker": That guy who puts up court money to get you out of jail.
• "Market Sell-off": Daily news reports.
• "Selling Short": The notion you get every time you decide to not go with one of your winning stock picks.
• "Dollar Cost Averaging": Sticking with a strategy that isn’t working.
• "Market Crash": The last sound of Alec Baldwin jumping out of the window at the end of this SNL commercial.
• "Market Rally": A church vigil for investors praying for this stock market selling to end.
• "Bailout": What investors have been doing for weeks and weeks.
• "Credit Default Swap": When you trade canceled credit cards with your friends and family.
• "Treasury Bill": $700 billion to $3 trillion that your kids will have to pay for this mess, plus interest.
• "Over The Counter Derivative": The same stuff meth is made with.
• “CDO”: Community Debt Onus
• "Financial Adviser": Bookie.
• "Hedge Fund": The money, jewelry, and silver coins you buried in your back yard or stuck in a safe.
• "Analyst": Your proctologist’s trainee.
• "Risk Manager": The guy who rubber-stamped AAA ratings as the second coming.
• "Underwriter": That creepy guy that works for the funeral home.
• "Margin Call": What your former financial adviser keeps calling you about.
• "Options Expiration Date": When you decide to give up on the stock market forever.
• "Recession-Proof": That really strong and cheap booze that everyone is drinking now; formerly called rot gut.
• "Stock Split": What you think happened with your shares when you see the share price each week.  But it didn’t split.
• "Bottom Sniffing": When bottom fishing doesn’t work.
• "52-Week Low": How you feel each new day when you get home.
• "TARP": What you sleep under after you lost your job, car, and house.
• "Going Private": Telling your friends you are out of the stock market but aren’t really out.
• "Private Equity": What Eliot Spitzer got in trouble over.
• "Resistance": Almost every penny price increment above the current price.
• "Support": Tomorrow’s new resistance.
• "Gap and Crap": When the market opens up and almost immediately sells off. That’s actually a real term used.
• "Poison Pill": What investors want to take when they see their 201/K balance.
• "Junk Bond": Government agency investments.
• "DJIA": Down Jones Industrial Average
• "Blue Chip": The color of your skin around that broken piece of knuckle you got slamming your first into your desk or keyboard.
• "Penny Stock": Former DJIA and S&P 500 index components that have been kicked out of the index.
• "Reiterated Guidance": The new absolute best case scenario for future earnings.
• "Microsoft": A Man’s libido after talking about the current stock market.
• "Socialism": The new-age definition of Free Market Capitalism
• "Recession": A mild downturn in the economy where some friends and neighbors become jobless.
• "Depression": A mild downturn in the economy that has now turnedhorrible, and now you are jobless along with friends and neighbors.

Jon C. Ogg
November 26, 2008