Investment glossary of terms

Financial Literacy - Financial tuneup

investing

By Bankrate.com

A comprehensive glossary of investing terms could go on for miles, but here are some basic words you're bound to run into. Learn these words to conquer confusion and impress friends with your thoroughly respectable investing intelligence.

Investing terms to know:

1.	12b-1 fee	29.	International fund
2.	Actively managed fund	30.	Large cap
3.	Aggressive growth	31.	Life-cycle fund
4.	Alpha	32.	Lifestyle fund
5.	Asset allocation	33.	Load
6.	Balanced fund	34.	Market capitalization
7.	Beta	35.	Midcap
8.	Blend fund	36.	Money market funds
9.	Bond fund	37.	Moving Average
10.	Bond	38.	Mutual funds
11.	Broker	39.	Net asset value
12.	Capital gain	40.	No-load funds
13.	Commodity	41.	Passively managed
14.	Convertible bond	42.	Prospectus
15.	Convertible preferred stock	43.	Put option
16.	Core holding	44.	R-squared
17.	Correlation	45.	REITs
18.	Dividend	46.	Return
19.	Diversification	47.	Risk
20.	Emerging market fund	48.	Risk tolerance
21.	ETFs	49.	S&P 500 index
22.	Expense ratio	50.	Sector (specialty)
23.	Federal funds rate	51.	Small cap
24.	Fund of funds	52.	Standard deviation
25.	Growth fund	53.	Value fund
26.	Growth stocks	54.	Value stocks
27.	Index	55.	Yield curve
28.	Index fund	56.	Yield spread

1. 12b-1 fee -- An annual fee deducted from an investor's fund assets to pay for the distribution and marketing costs of the fund. 12b-1 fees are capped by law at 1 percent.

2. Actively managed fund -- A fund that uses a manager or team to analyze securities and try to beat the market return. The opposite of active management is passive management, found in index funds.

3. Aggressive growth -- This is an investment style of funds that hold positions in potential high-growth companies. Aggressive growth funds have high betas, meaning they tend to be more volatile than the stock market.