Pardon the Jargon: Terms you need to know

Bryce: [00:00:37] Welcome to get started, investing a series of lessons to help you on your investing journey. This is for anyone who wants to start investing but is really not sure where to start. Our aim is to break down the markets, to make them as accessible as possible to you. My name's Bryce and as always, I am joined by my equity body, Ren. How's it going, bro? [00:00:55][18.9]

Alec: [00:00:56] It's good, Bryce. You would think after hearing that intro for the seventh time, I would be a bit over it. But just as excited as the first time I heard it. [00:01:04][7.4]

Bryce: [00:01:04] Great. That is positive news, because if you were starting to lose interest and hate on me here, that is not good news. So, so Ren today we have an official stance here at equity rates that we hate jargon. We will try to deliver things in layman's terms and break it down so that everyone can understand all that. I guess the big, bad jungle of investing, as I referred to it a few episodes ago. [00:01:28][24.0]

Alec: [00:01:28] Yeah. The only podcast with an official policy position on jargon. And we're willing to take that to the election and we'll stand by it and we'll deliver it to the Australian people. [00:01:37][9.4]

Bryce: [00:01:38] Absolutely. Ren. So what we've decided to do in this episode is actually break down some of the more common jargon that is out there. We've made the commitment to stick to a no jargon series, but we may as well break some of the ones down that you're probably going to hear more often than not. [00:01:54][15.9]

Alec: [00:01:54] Yeah. Hundred percent. I mean, we've touched on this before, but the jargon, the terminology that I didn't understand, like all that stuff was the reason that it took me so long to get interested in investing. It's a whole other world out there that the concepts that we're talking about, investing in good companies that make money and holding them for a long period of time aren't complicated. But the industry has an incentive to make it complicated because it creates reliance on the experts in the industry. Yeah. If they're not using jargon and they're trying to break it down in simple terms, no need or there's less need for them. So financial advisers are really important. They play a role. But there's a lot of people in the industry that thrive on retail investors, everyday people thinking that they can't do it themselves. [00:02:39][44.9]

Bryce: [00:02:40] So we're here to destroy the industry that's built around jargon. [00:02:45][5.1]

Alec: [00:02:46] No, because people in the industry will still play a role. But we'll be more informed. Yes, we'll be able to ask better questions. We'll know what they're saying more. We'll be able to take more control and call out bullshit if there is. [00:02:59][12.8]

Alec: [00:02:59] Absolutely. We'll like to swear on this podcast. Absolutely. We have an official open free speech policy. [00:03:04][4.8]

Bryce: [00:03:06] So Ren in this episode today, we're going to have a look at key concepts and jargon, terminology around the market, around company specific sort of terminology and also some trading terms that everyone will probably come across at some point in their investing journey. And then we will touch on, I guess, more so around if you do come across jargon, how to find out what it means. [00:03:27][20.6]

Alec: [00:03:27] That's probably the main message we want to get in the spirit of give them out a fish. He'll eat for a day, teach them and officially for a lifetime. We're not gonna be able to break down every piece of jargon that you'll come across. No, that would be really boring. It would be long at the side. I don't know if I'd be able to answer all the questions as well, but we want to give you guys some of those simple tips and tricks we learnt as we tried to figure out what the hell some of this jargon meant through our investing journey. [00:03:52][24.9]

Bryce: [00:03:53] So my challenge for this episode is to keep Ren on track. Does Steward go for a while? Ren in 20 words or less. We're going to try and cover these off. Is that possible? Yeah. So let's start with the market. I think Ren. So it's possible. It may not be probable yet, right? Highly unlikely. All right. [00:04:14][20.8]

Bryce: [00:04:14] So let's start with the market and I think we'll start with bull and bear. How about that? [00:04:18][4.5]

Alec: [00:04:19] Sounds good. So you'll often hear people say we're in a bull market or a bear market. What they're referring to a bull market is when the market is on an upwards trend. Yeah. Prices are getting higher. A bear market is when the market is on a downward trend. So prices are getting lower and then people will say they're feeling bullish, which means they think prices are going to go up or they're feeling bearish, which means they think prices are going to go down. People can feel that way about markets. They can feel that way about individual stocks. It's a terminology for whether people are feeling positive or negative about our sector, market, industry, stock, whatever. Nice. [00:04:56][37.5]

Bryce: [00:04:57] Out of ten, that was pretty succinct. [00:04:58][1.1]

Alec: [00:05:00] Should we explain why they call it bull and why they call it Bear from memory. [00:05:03][3.3]

Bryce: [00:05:04] The last time that we looked into this, there wasn't a hard and fast. I think I think I had a different reason to what you had. [00:05:09][5.6]

Alec: [00:05:10] What comes to mind is that bears attack downwards with their claws and then bulls attack upwards with their horns. [00:05:16][6.1]

Bryce: [00:05:16] Okay, I know what's in your mind. [00:05:18][1.9]

Bryce: [00:05:19] I had bear no, look, I'm not going to go down that path. This economy has to do with some sort of old school merchant and to do the fur off the back of the bear and all this sort of stuff, I'll have to look into it and I'll come back to it. At some point I go, I'll put it in the notes. [00:05:33][14.4]

Bryce: [00:05:35] All right, so Ren, I'm going to cover chess, and this is something that has to do with brokers and your brokerage account, you often see that when you sign up to a brokerage account, you will get a chess number. So chess stands for Australian Clearing House, Electronic Subir Register system. Simply put, what it means is that if you are chest's sponsored, it means the ASX is keeping a list of who owns what shares. That's really all it is. And there's probably not too much more to worry about that at this point in time. So what's the opposite of that? The opposite of chess? Yes, sir. [00:06:09][33.9]

[00:06:12] Yes, sir. [00:06:14][1.5]

Alec: [00:06:15] So you said chess. The ASX keeps a list of who owns the shares. Yes. What would the alternative of that be? [00:06:21][6.2]

Bryce: [00:06:21] So if you're not chess sponsored, then it means you are probably in a position where you are issuer sponsored or you are under a custodian system. And that means the custodian essentially holds a record of the shares that you have in real simple terms. [00:06:39][17.9]

Alec: [00:06:40] Some brokers that you sign up with either ASX will list you, i.e. Bryce Leskie, as the owner of the shares. Yeah, but some brokers that you sign up with ASX will have the broker listed as the shareholder or the someone some other third party listed as a shareholder. And then they'll have a record of you owning it. Is that what you say? [00:07:00][19.7]

Bryce: [00:07:00] In some instances, like, for example, Stake ASX doesn't have a list of who owns it? Because they're obviously American stocks. But yes. Simply put. [00:07:10][9.4]

Alec: [00:07:10] Okay. The relevant market or have it down as either you holding it up or a third party or your broker holding it, and then that third party or your broker will then have a record that you own. [00:07:23][12.5]

Bryce: [00:07:23] Yeah, well, not that I own it because of the custodian. I don't actually have full ownership of that. I have rights to it, but I don't have ownership of it. [00:07:31][8.3]

Alec: [00:07:32] Okay, let's leave it at that. Yeah, well, I don't I just don't think that that's that's made it very clear. [00:07:37][5.2]

Bryce: [00:07:38] Well, I wasn't planning to go down the whole route of custodian versus what. [00:07:42][3.4]

Alec: [00:07:43] Well, I mean, you you don't want to just leave it at all. We'll look some brokers who don't actually own what you say. Yeah. You don't. It's custodian. [00:07:51][8.2]

Alec: [00:07:52] So let's say this. This could go down a rabbit hole. Let's say the broker then just said, no, you don't own it anymore. Do you have any rights? [00:07:59][7.4]

Bryce: [00:08:00] Can get very complicated. If if your broker is a custodian model and your broker goes bust, then the rights to that and your ownership of those shares is not as clear cut as if you were chess sponsored and through. Like, for example, CBA, it goes past. You still directly own those shares. But if your custodian, you have rights to it, but you may if the broker goes bust, you don't have full ownership of those shares. [00:08:25][24.8]

Alec: [00:08:26] So worrying to leave that one on. All right, let's pick it up. Equities. [00:08:31][4.9]

Bryce: [00:08:34] Simply put, it is just another terminology for stocks shares. We can probably leave it at that. [00:08:38][4.5]

Alec: [00:08:38] Yeah. Means the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Ren liquidity. It's the amount of buying and selling of a particular asset. So if there's lots of money changing hands over a particular asset, it's said to be a very liquid asset. If there's not a lot of buyers and sellers in a market it said to be illiquid, the more liquid an asset, the safer it is because you'll be able to sell it more easily. Some illiquid assets, if things go terribly wrong, will be very hard to sell. [00:09:07][28.7]

Bryce: [00:09:08] Can you give an example of something that is highly liquid versus something that is not so or illiquid yet? [00:09:13][5.4]

Alec: [00:09:13] So a highly liquid asset would be a big stock. So Commonwealth Bank in Australia is extremely liquid because it's easier to sell. Yeah, because there's heaps of people buying and selling shares in it every day. Yeah. A highly illiquid asset, as your example, would be a house. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Nice. All right. What else have we got. So we've got ETF. Now we've touched on those before and our index episode. Yeah. So just you'll see HFS a lot. Yeah. Just think of them as the wrapper for what is in the ETF. It's just the way to access what the ATF is holding. ETF exchange traded fund. That's it. Yeah. [00:09:53][39.9]

Bryce: [00:09:54] Ren crypto. Yeah. Everyone's favourite buzzword here to throw this right. Define crypto. [00:10:00][6.0]

Alec: [00:10:01] So people will often you'll hear a lot about crypto. Crypto is like bitcoin and stuff like that. It's a it's an alternative currency. It's arguably an investable asset. People invest in it. But crypto currency is not bitcoin. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. There's a number of other ones out there. But just for the purposes of Jörg and if you hear the term crypto, it's just those bitcoin like assets. Nice. Yeah. [00:10:27][26.2]

Alec: [00:10:27] Last one in market jargon, "capital" in terms of finance, capital is, I guess, primarily money used. [00:10:34][7.0]

Bryce: [00:10:35] To start a company or to use to invest in a company or to invest in running of the company or a company could use it to buy assets or other companies. I guess it's money to use in, I guess, an investing standpoint to get things off the ground. [00:10:50][15.4]

Alec: [00:10:51] You'll hear terms like deploy capital, invest capital, use capital to do this. Just think of it in simple terms as use money, deploy money, invest money. Nice. [00:11:00][9.3]

Bryce: [00:11:01] So let's move on to some company specific stuff so people will probably hear about the PE ratio Ren or the price to earnings ratio. Yeah. [00:11:07][6.7]

Alec: [00:11:08] Now, I just I want to jump in here because we're ripping through these terms. The idea of this is to give you a taste at the end of this episode, we're going to give you some resources for how to go back over these terms and also more generally, how to find out about terms. So don't worry if we're moving too quickly. Yeah, but in saying that PE ratio price to earnings ratio is probably I would say it's the most common metric that people look at when they're looking at companies. Would you agree with that? I think so, yeah. Your holiday. Our share price might be the most common. And so essentially what that says is, what's the price? The share price and how much profit does the company make per share? And then you say, what's the ratio between the two? And a low rate ratio means that your getting more earnings for the price, essentially. And then the higher the ratio, it means you're getting less earnings for the price that you're paying. Yeah, and generally markets sit between a price to earn. So companies sit between sort of 15 to 20 price to earnings is sort of an average band. And so if it's a lower than that, people say, oh, that company might be cheap. And if it's higher than that, people sometimes will say, oh, that company looks expensive. That's a rough rule of thumb, but it's just a very common metric to sort of assess the relationship between the price that you're paying and the profitability of the company. Yeah. Nice income statement and balance sheet. I think with this one, it's probably not important to go date, but more important just to spell out the difference. [00:12:37][89.9]

Bryce: [00:12:38] Yeah. So income statement and balance sheet, both very important financial statements used to measure or I guess get an insight into the performance of a company. So the income statement is simply a record of income and expenses for that year. And the balance sheet is a record of total assets and liabilities. So you get an overall position of if the company is in debt or if it's in a positive asset situation. [00:13:05][27.1]

Alec: [00:13:06] So Speed, round for you. If I wanted to find out how profitable a company was. [00:13:10][3.8]

Bryce: [00:13:10] Which one would I look at if you wanted to find out how profitable you would look at the income statement? [00:13:14][4.2]

Alec: [00:13:15] And if I wanted to find out how much cash the company held, you would look at the balance sheet. If I wanted to find out how much sales the company had done. Income statement. If I wanted to say how much debt the company had. Balance sheet. Nice. So I passed Ren that you did. I think that would be probably the case. Things that you would look for in terms of understanding where they sit on those terms. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of income Ren, what is a dividend? Yeah. Dividend is a nice little bonus for investing. Yes, sir. The way the company thanks. You hear it as a part owner of these companies, as we keep talking about, that's how you have to think about yourself when you're investing in these companies, you own their company. And as an owner, you're entitled to the profits that the company makes depending on the company. But generally, every six months there, at least the bigger companies will pay a dividend. And that is essentially the profits being paid out to the owners. Yeah. And so for each share that you own in the company, you will get a certain dollar amount or sense amount of a payout. So think of dividends as the profits being given to you as a owner of the business. Yeah, yeah. [00:14:24][69.3]

Bryce: [00:14:25] So if Woolworths just really basically if Woolworths pay 52 cent dividend and I'm a Woolworths shareholder, how do I know what I'm entitled to? [00:14:33][8.2]

Alec: [00:14:34] So you look at the number of shares you own. So let's say you own 10 shares. Woollies say eight share. We're paying 52 cents. Yeah. So that means as an owner of ten shares, you will get paid by Woollies, five dollars 20. Nice. If you own 100 shares, you get fifty two dollars. You know, it just it scales up like that to say every company pay a dividend. [00:14:53][19.1]

Alec: [00:14:54] No. So the company will announce the dividends that they pay in Australia. Most of the big companies will pay a dividend. Australians love dividends. Yes. And how it comes into your bank account is or traditionally they used to send physical cheques here. Which is was always annoying because eight years ago, the bank who goes to bank branches, they say. But now most of it's done electronically. Yes. [00:15:16][22.9]

Bryce: [00:15:18] And do I have a choice? Do I always get dividend in cash? [00:15:21][3.8]

Alec: [00:15:22] So there is a concept called the Dividend Reinvestment Plan. Yeah. What that allows you to do is say let's let's use your woollies example. Let's say you owned 100 shares and they were going to pay you fifty two dollars. You could say, hold on, please. I really like you as a company rather than giving me cash from the business. I want you to take the money that I earned as an owner and use that to increase my ownership stake in the company. And so what they do is they say, all right, well, you're entitled to fifty two dollars rather than paying bribes out in cash. We will go and invest that back into our company. And so they will buy shares on your behalf and then you will increase the amount of shares that you have in the company. [00:16:00][37.7]

Bryce: [00:16:00] Very powerful tool. If you plan on staying with the company for a long period of time and reinvesting your dividends year after year, that's where you can really start to generate some solid compound. [00:16:10][10.2]

Alec: [00:16:11] Compound a term that you will explain. [00:16:14][2.2]

Bryce: [00:16:15] Now, I guess you did mention that at the start of very start of the eighth wonder of the world. Does that count as jargon? Well, yes. [00:16:24][8.5]

Bryce: [00:16:30] So compound is essentially a year on year growth that I guess exponentially increases the longer you let compounding do its thing. So as the example that we gave right at the start of the show, I have ten thousand dollars and it grows 10 percent that year. So that's a 1000 dollar growth, taking my total pool to eleven thousand dollars. [00:16:49][18.7]

Bryce: [00:16:50] Then the next year it grows at 10 percent again. And so it's growing on an eleven thousand dollar base. So the return is 1100. And then so on and so on. And so as you find, the longer you go because you're growing off a bigger and bigger base each year, you're you're compounding on that and the returns become larger and larger. Very powerful tool to building wealth over a long period of time. Hundred percent. Okay. So we have rip through some market terms. We've ripped through some companies specific terms. I think let's finish up with some terms that we might say just in the course of buying and selling and trading. Sure. And then let's get into the broader scale. So don't kick us off. What's a what's a portfolio? [00:17:31][41.6]

Bryce: [00:17:32] Yeah, this is a good question, because we had a listener actually send in an email a couple of days ago wanting some clarification on this because they wanted to know, is a portfolio just classified as safe? You have two brokers. Does that mean you have two portfolios? If you have shares, cash and crypto, does that mean you have three portfolios? So there are different ways to look at this. But I guess as I see it, your total portfolio is the make up of all of your assets in to one pool. So I would classify my total portfolio as my cash, as my safe. I had a house, my stock brokerage accounts all as one. So then I get a total value of my portfolio. Now, you might want to classify it as just your stocks, your stock portfolio. You might have a property portfolio, essentially portfolio. Is that the total of whatever? [00:18:21][49.1]

Alec: [00:18:22] You're defining it as nice one next term volatility. This is a term that you say a little bit and it really just refers to the movement in price. And companies are more volatile. If prices move up and down in a bigger range, prices are less volatile if they move in a smaller range. So they there's less wild swings in the price. Now, companies and assets that are less volatile are said to be less risky because there's less chance of a big swing going against you. So you'll hear volatility talked about a lot in terms of stocks are looking very volatile. The market was very volatile. Just think of it in terms of the risk of big price fluctuations. [00:19:04][42.6]

Bryce: [00:19:06] Nice. All right. So the next one we have is yield Ren. [00:19:11][5.0]

Bryce: [00:19:11] Now, you discuss this when it came to bonds. Yeah. But I think, simply put, yield is the cash return that you get from an asset. An investment. Yeah. So a dividend is really a yield. [00:19:21][9.5]

Alec: [00:19:21] Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. People will talk about dividend yield. Yeah. Yeah. [00:19:24][3.5]

Bryce: [00:19:25] So Ren can you explain to me what is meant by a diversification. Yeah. And or allocation. [00:19:30][4.3]

Alec: [00:19:30] Diversification is an important term because you'll say it a lot. Yeah. And essentially it is the concept of having multiple investments across different asset classes, across different countries, across different industries. And the reason that you diversify your portfolio is to mitigate the risk if you have a very concentrated portfolio. So the opposite of diversification is concentration. If you're concentrating all your investments into one asset and something goes wrong in that country or that market or that industry, then your portfolio is tanked. Then your investment, you lose money. But if you diversify, if you have lots of different investments across different geographies and different industries, the risk of one investment failing leading to your whole portfolio tanking is greatly reduced. Yeah. So it's diversification is very simple way of mitigating some risk in your investing and or rounded out Ren capital gains. [00:20:30][59.7]

Bryce: [00:20:30] Now, we spoke about capital being money that you can deploy essentially into some investment or to get a business off the ground. Capital gains simply refers to the gain that you get in dollars point of view from that capital itself. So I guess if I put in ten thousand dollars into Apple and it appreciates to be worth twelve thousand dollars, that 2000 dollar difference is known as your capital gains. [00:20:55][24.6]

Alec: [00:20:56] There's two real forms of making money, I guess, from a tax perspective. Yeah, it's the income and then capital gains. So let's do a quick question. Where do they fall under your shares? Appreciate in value and then you sell them. That is capital gains, income from a job. I kind of go there. Did not income. Dividends. Dividends is income. You're making money selling a house. Capital gains and losing money. Selling a car. Capital loss. You're getting money from renters in your property income. Yeah. So essentially the difference is in. [00:21:29][33.5]

Alec: [00:21:30] Is it capital gains, is money made when you sell an asset or an investment and income is money that comes in from activity, I guess from that asset? Yeah. Or from your labour? Yes. Those of your job. Do you have a preference to one or the other? Money is money. It doesn't matter. I mean, if we talk from an Australian context, there's some tax advantages from the capital gains side of things. For example, if you hold an asset for over a year and then you sell it, there's a capital gains discount on your tax. So there's probably some tax benefits from capital gains. But, look, money's fungible. [00:22:09][38.9]

Bryce: [00:22:09] I'm not gonna say no. So, Ren, we have a glossary at our Web site. Equity mates, dot com forward slash glossary that is tailored to cover a lot of terminology that you'll come across early in your investing journey. So head over there and cheque it out. If there's anything on there that you would like, clarification. Hit us up. We're on social or you can hit us at contact at equity mates dot com. I think what we want to finish with Ren and this is something that is due to your heart, is more about figuring out how to find information on terminology that is understandable that you're going to come across in your investing journey. And as you said, it's all about getting that process so that if you do come across something you don't understand, how do you then gonne understand it? [00:22:47][37.6]

Alec: [00:22:47] Well, let's talk from personal experience. When you come across a term that you're not sure about, what do you first. Straight to Google. Yeah. You just literally define semicolon word. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's that's how I'd first do it as well. [00:23:00][13.1]

Bryce: [00:23:01] And then there are a lot of pretty good websites, Investopedia, those sorts of things that break it down for you in in pretty comprehensive and understandable ways. So, yeah, there's definitely tools out there. I think the main thing is that you take the five minutes to actually figure out what they're talking. [00:23:17][15.8]

Alec: [00:23:17] Yeah, I think Investopedia was where I was going to go next. So that's a really good resource. We obviously have a glossary if none of those yield results. I think the best thing to do is to have someone you can ask. Now, if you don't have a mate who's interested in investing or, you know, a parent who knows what they're talking about. We've built a discussion group for people to ask questions like this. And I think that's probably a really useful way to clarify things that you don't understand it. Yeah. So on Facebook Equity Mates Discussion Group, you are free to join some. Are people there helping? So, look, I think having someone to ask is really important. You can do it that way. And then I think last thing, if you've tried to find that information yourself and you haven't been able to understand it, if you've asked other people in your own life or, you know, the discussion group or whatever, and you still don't really understand it, I think if you have a financial advisor, definitely hit them up first. For a lot of young people, especially, they're not they're not in a position to have a financial advisor yet. Don't let the jargon deter you. I think is the main thing. There will be things that you don't understand. There's definite things that we don't understand. But if it leads to not investing at all, that's a real loss. [00:24:31][73.5]

Bryce: [00:24:31] Yeah, absolutely. So don't get caught up in it all. It'll slowly make sense as you progressed through your journey. Don't feel like you need to understand a balance sheet and income statement from the get go. It takes a long time to get a grip of these sorts of things. As Ren said, don't let it stop you. [00:24:47][15.5]

Alec: [00:24:47] Yeah, read around it to try and understand what you what you're reading from context and just keep learning. [00:24:53][5.3]

Bryce: [00:24:53] Nice one, Ren. Always good to chat markets and stocks with you. I hope we have been able to break down yet another barrier that stopping people from entering the markets. As we said at the start of the show, our aim is to make the markets as accessible as possible. So we are one step closer to breaking all those barriers that we face as a beginner investor. So without going into any more detail, I think we will leave it there and chat next episode. Sounds good. [00:25:17][24.1]

[00:25:19] Thanks for listening to get started investing. A production of Equity Mates Media. Please remember that everything you hear and get started investing is general advice. [00:25:26][7.4]

[00:25:27] Only the content has been prepared without knowing your personal objectives, specific financial circumstances or goals. The host of Get Started Investing may maintain positions in the companies discussed before considering any investment. Please read the product disclosure statement and consider speaking to a licenced financial professional. [00:25:27][0.0]

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