Intermediate · 7 min · Financial Terms
What does this market term mean?
Financial writing is dense with shorthand. This lesson pairs with the glossary and explains the terms that appear most often in Canadian market coverage.
Terms that describe price
- Basis point: one hundredth of a percentage point. Rate decisions are always quoted this way.
- Realized price: what a producer actually received, after discounts and transport — usually below the headline benchmark.
- Enterprise value: market capitalization plus net debt, the price of the whole business.
Terms that describe quality
- Free cash flow: cash left after the spending needed to keep the business running.
- All-in sustaining cost (AISC): the mining sector's honest cost measure, including sustaining capital.
- Net interest margin: the spread a bank earns between lending and funding.
- CET1 ratio: how much core capital a bank holds against its risk-weighted assets.
Terms that describe risk
- Liquidity: whether you can exit a position without moving the price against yourself.
- Duration: how sensitive an asset is to a change in interest rates.
- Impairment: an admission that an asset is worth less than the balance sheet claimed.
If a report uses a term you cannot define in a sentence, treat that as a signal to slow down rather than skim. Vague language is often doing work that precise language could not.
Terms in this lesson
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Every term links through to the full glossary.