Hedge fundA hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as short selling, leverage, and derivatives. Financial regulators generally restrict hedge fund marketing to institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and accredited investors. Hedge funds are considered alternative investments.
Venture capitalVenture capital (commonly abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth (in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc). Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake.
Contingent claimIn finance, a contingent claim is a derivative whose future payoff depends on the value of another “underlying” asset, or more generally, that is dependent on the realization of some uncertain future event. These are so named, since there is only a payoff under certain contingencies. Any derivative instrument that is not a contingent claim is called a forward commitment. The prototypical contingent claim is an option, the right to buy or sell the underlying asset at a specified exercise price by a certain expiration date; whereas (vanilla) swaps, forwards, and futures are forward commitments, since these grant no such optionality.
Financial servicesFinancial services are economic services provided by the finance industry, which together encompass a broad range of service sector firms that provide financial management, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, accountancy companies, consumer-finance companies, stock brokerages, investment funds, individual asset managers, and some government-sponsored enterprises.
Financial analystA financial analyst is a professional, undertaking financial analysis for external or internal clients as a core feature of the job. The role may specifically be titled securities analyst, research analyst, equity analyst, investment analyst, or ratings analyst. The job title is a broad one: in banking, and industry more generally, various other analyst-roles cover financial management and (credit) risk management, as opposed to focusing on investments and valuation; these are also discussed in this article.
Capital budgetingCapital budgeting in corporate finance, corporate planning and accounting is area of capital management that concerns the planning process used to determine whether an organization's long term capital investments such as new machinery, replacement of machinery, new plants, new products, and research development projects are worth the funding of cash through the firm's capitalization structures (debt, equity or retained earnings). It is the process of allocating resources for major capital, or investment, expenditures.
Residual income valuationResidual income valuation (RIV; also, residual income model and residual income method, RIM) is an approach to equity valuation that formally accounts for the cost of equity capital. Here, "residual" means in excess of any opportunity costs measured relative to the book value of shareholders' equity; residual income (RI) is then the income generated by a firm after accounting for the true cost of capital. The approach is largely analogous to the EVA/MVA based approach, with similar logic and advantages.
Patent valuationIntellectual property assets such as patents are the core of many organizations and transactions related to technology. Licenses and assignments of intellectual property rights are common operations in the technology markets, as well as the use of these types of assets as loan security. These uses give rise to the growing importance of financial valuation of intellectual property, since knowing the economic value of patents is a critical factor in order to define their trading conditions.
Cash flow forecastingCash flow forecasting is the process of obtaining an estimate of a company's future financial position; the cash flow forecast is typically based on anticipated payments and receivables. There are two types of cash flow forecasting methodologies in general: Direct cash forecasting Indirect cash forecasting. Financial forecastCash management and Treasury management#Cash and Liquidity Management Cash flow forecasting is an element of financial management.
Intrinsic value (finance)In finance, the intrinsic value of an asset or security is its value as calculated with regard to an inherent, objective measure. A distinction, is re the asset's price, which is determined relative to other similar assets. Note, then, that the intrinsic approach to valuation may be somewhat simplified, in that it ignores elements other than the measure in question. For an option, the intrinsic value is the absolute value of the difference between the current price (S) of the underlying and the strike price (K) of the option, to the extent that this is in favor of the option holder.
