investment terminology and types

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Thu Jul 31 20:17:16 CDT 2003


Jon Lapham <lapham at extracta.com.br> writes:

> This is the intro to investments I've been working on:
> 
> http://www.jandr.org/temp/gnucashdocs/invest_concepts1.html
> 
> In section "7.1.1 Terminology", can someone proof the definitions of
> terminologies... and/or suggest additional.

You might want to define "Realized vs. Unrealized Gains/Losses" -- an
unrealized gain is when you've got a change in price of an asset.  You
realize the gain/loss when you actually sell the asset.

> In section "7.1.2 Types of Investments", I want to make a list of the
> general kinds of investments.  I have 3:
> 
> 1) "Interest-bearing ACCOUNT" (account is all caps b/c I don't like
> that word... a CD is not an account)

Perhaps "Instrument"?  I don't like that either..  Perhaps:
"Interest-bearing account or instrument"?

Note that according to your definition:

   This type of investment allows you immediate access to your money, 

does not apply to CD's, which you do include in this type.  Perhaps
you can say "This type of investment usually allows ..."

> 2) "Publically traded company common stock": is there another name for
> this which would include mutual funds?
> 
> 3) "Assets that increase in value" ugh, terrible title.  I mean stuff
> like houses.  Is there a better title for this?
> 
> are there any others?  The idea of these groups of investment types is
> to try to organize the investments in terms of how GnuCash deals with
> them.

This is pretty much it, I think.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available


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