Trading Terminology Explained

Book Icon

Before investing, it is important to understand basic trading concepts. Below are some popular investment terms explained.

Ask/Offer: The price that a seller is asking for to sell their shares at. This is the lowest amount of money that the seller is willing to accept.

ASX: Stands for The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). The ASX brings buyers and sellers together to trade listed securities like shares, options, and other financial instruments.

Bid: The price at which buyers are willing to pay for or buy the shares on the market.

Broker: An individual or trading firm that charges a fee/commission for executing buy and sell orders for an investor.

Capital: Any available cash or assets that help to shape your investment strategy.

Cboe Australia: An alternate trade execution venue to the ASX which uses its own trading system and provides trading in both ASX and Cboe Australia quoted securities.

CHESS: Stands for Clearing House Electronic Subregister System and is the computer system used by the ASX to manage the settlement of share transactions and to record shareholdings.

Cleared Funds: Funds available in the cash account or your account for the purposes of trading and payments for inclusive services.

Conditional Order: Allows you to set specific price conditions for your trade, and only when those conditions are met, our systems will place your trade in the market.

Diversification:A risk management strategy that involves investing across or within different asset classes to minimise the potential of being adversely affected by one industry or asset class. In other words, diversification is about not having all your eggs in one basket.

Equity: Refers to the investment you’ve made to purchase and own shares of a publicly listed company. 

HIN:Holder Identification Number

Limit Order: An instruction to place a limit on either the highest price you are willing to pay, or the lowest price you will accept.

Liquidity: Refers to the ease with which an asset, or security can be converted into cash without affecting its market price.

Market Order:An instruction to buy or sell shares at the best available market price, during market hours.

PID: Stands for Participant Identification Number. This is the Broker’s identification number. Your share trading account is a service offered through Australian Investment Exchange Limited (AUSIEX), PID 6382.

Portfolio: Refers to the collection of shares that you own at any given time. You can own multiple shares in multiple companies and across different industries among multiple accounts. Your total collection of shares is referred to as your share portfolio.

Prospectus: Refers to an offering document which provides information such as key features and risks of a security to potential investors. This includes information about the issuer of the security.

Risk/Market Risk:Any uncertainty with respect to your investments that has the potential to negatively affect your financial welfare.

Settlement: When you purchase or sell shares, you exchange the title or legal ownership of those specific financial products for money. This exchange is called settlement, it takes place two business days after a trade occurs for equities.

Share Registry: All ASX listed companies have a share registry appointed to them to manage its book of shareholders and associated administration work. A share registry can contact you on behalf of the company for any shareholder matters. This includes to manage the distribution and payment of dividends, organising dividend reinvestment plans, corporate actions, and shareholder voting.

Spread: The difference between the best bid and best offer prices quoted for a company.

Stocks/Shares: A share is a portion of ownership or equity that you can have in a company.

Volatility: A measure of fluctuation in the price of a security.

Volume: Refers to the number of the securities traded over a given period of time.

Warrants: Financial instruments issued by banks and other institutions and are traded on ASX. Warrants are a form of derivative – that is, they derive their value from another ‘thing’ (underlying instrument).

Yield: The rate of return on an investment over a set period of time, expressed as a percentage.

This information is intended to provide information for educational purposes only and is subject to change at anytime without notice.