Nick Renton, the author of Understanding the Stock Exchange, Understanding Investment Property and many other books, has produced a new edition of his popular dictionary of investment terms and acronyms.
This Dictionary and Almanac is an essential reference tool for Australian stock exchange and property investors at all levels, from beginners to professionals and from students to retired persons. It cuts through the jargon so often used by stockbrokers, estate agents, financial planners and the media.
This new enlarged edition has been updated to the middle of 2008 and now contains about 3300 terms. Abbreviations - an area of great puzzlement to many investors - are also extensively covered. The dictionary now contains many terms not found in similar works - for example, "pump and dump", "stapled securities" and "trimmed mean".
Presented in plain English, this book covers everything from family trusts to yield, from imputation to monetary policy and from securitisation to capital gains tax.
It explains a wide selection of investment, economic, accounting, taxation, legal and mining terms in common use.
Some important topical concepts are dealt with at greater length - for example, guarantees, stock exchange indices, margin lending, derivatives and the return on equity. The book also includes many useful statistics and the ASX codes of all 2200 listed companies.
This book will also be welcomed by persons puzzled by jargon, such as those who find themselves confused when told to put their ETP into a DIY fund with a high IRR because it holds CUFS, CHF and CMBS in order to outperform the DJIA.
The book is very suitable for investors who do not know the difference between a green shoe and a black box.
Maurice Newman, the chairman of the Australian Securities Exchange, says of the work in his foreword: "I am sure it will provide a useful reference for all those investors who want to demystify the jargon and understand the terminology."
On a lighter note, the book features some fascinating "definitions from hell" and also two specially written pieces on old scrip as collectors' items and the use of metaphors by investors.
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