Financial terms
A plain-language glossary of the financial terms used across The Maple Markets, from all-in sustaining cost to the yield curve.
- All-in sustaining cost (AISC)
- The total cost a miner incurs to produce an ounce of metal and keep operations running, including sustaining capital.
- Basis point
- One hundredth of a percentage point. Twenty-five basis points equals 0.25 per cent.
- CET1 ratio
- A regulatory measure of a bank's core capital relative to its risk-weighted assets.
- Free cash flow
- Cash generated by operations after the capital spending needed to maintain the business.
- Market capitalization
- Share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding.
- Net interest margin
- The difference between what a bank earns on loans and pays on deposits, expressed as a percentage of assets.
- Take rate
- The share of transaction volume a platform keeps as its own revenue.
- Trimmed-mean inflation
- A core inflation measure that removes the most extreme price movements in each period.
- Yield curve
- The relationship between bond yields and their maturities.
- Enterprise value
- Market capitalization plus net debt — what it would cost to buy the whole business, not just its equity.
- Liquidity
- How easily a security can be bought or sold without moving its price. Thin liquidity is the defining risk of venture-listed issuers.
- Guidance
- A company's own forecast for future results. Markets often react more to a change in guidance than to the reported quarter.
- Realized price
- The price a producer actually receives for its output after discounts, transport and hedging — usually below the headline benchmark.
- Duration
- Sensitivity to interest-rate changes. Long-duration assets — growth equities, long bonds, development projects — move most when rates move.
- Index methodology
- The published rules that decide what an index or ETF holds and how it is weighted. It matters far more than the fund's name.
- Sustaining capital
- Capital spending required simply to keep existing operations running at their current rate.
- Impairment
- A write-down recognising that an asset is worth less than its carrying value on the balance sheet.
- Custody
- Who actually holds an asset and under what legal protection. For crypto holdings, custody arrangements are a distinct risk from price volatility.
