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An international committee comprised of members from 31 exchanges around the world, including every major stock exchange. Membership in the ISG allows all members to share surveillance and investigative information to ensure that each regulator has access to the necessary information to effectively regulate its marketplace. The ISG promotes effective market surveillance among international exchanges and RS involvement helps ensure they are continually in touch with other regulators and part of the development of international best practices.

The international standard that is used to uniquely identify securities. It consists of a two-character alphabetic country code specified in ISO 6166, followed by a nine-character alphanumeric security identifier (assigned by a national security numbering agency), and then an ISIN check-digit.

This is a reversal signature pattern. It can be either negative (typical head and shoulders), or positive (inverted head and shoulders). A head and shoulders pattern is one of the more common and reliable patterns. It is comprised of a rally which ends a fairly extensive advance. It is followed by a reaction on less volume. This is the left shoulder. The head is comprised of a rally up on high volume exceeding the price of the previous rally. And the head is comprised of a reaction down to the previous bottom on light volume. The right shoulder is comprised of a rally up which fails to exceed the height of the head. It is then followed by a reaction down. If the right shoulder does not reach the height of the left shoulder, this indicates that the fall could be even more severe. This last reaction down should break a horizontal line drawn along the bottoms of the previous lows from the left shoulder and head. This is the point in which the major decline begins. The major difference between a head and shoulder top and bottom is that the bottom should have a large burst of activity on the breakout.

Pledging of assets as collateral. 

Occurs when new securities are posted for trading, and trading takes place before the closing (formal original issuance) of the prospectus. Also known as the “grey market”. The term is used only for listing of new securities, either on a listing of a new issuer, a supplemental listing, or an additional listing of existing listed securities. Settlement occurs on the closing of the prospectus. The time from posting for trading to closing is generally within a week.

A measurement of the volatility of a stock. Current price rather than historical price is used. Generally, if the price of an option rises without a corresponding rise in the underlying equity, implied volatility is considered to have risen.

An order that either raises the bid price or lowers the offering price is said to be improving the market. The market improves because the spread between the bid and offer decreases.

An exchange-traded, fixed income-like instrument consisting of a subordinated debt security and a share of common stock packaged together to form a tax-efficient delivery mechanism to distribute an issuer’s free cash flow to its investors. Investors are paid dividends from the common share component and interest from the subordinated debt.

See Operating Income.

A record of a company’s sales and expenses over a particular year or quarter.