The financial world has developed a special investment-oriented language to help describe the stock market, investments, securities for the stock market, stock market analysis, and its conditions. At times you may be confronted with a term which is totally alien or has a completely different meaning from what you thought. Misunderstanding these terms can sometimes lead to the wrong conclusion, and that can cost you money!

What you don't know can hurt you.

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Random-Walk Theory A theory that says technical analysis is worthless because the market is simply responding to information as it becomes available, and that whatever has come before is meaningless for predicting what's ahead.   Real Return The return on an investment after taking inflation into account. To calculate the real return, simply subtract the inflation rate from the stated return. For instance, a 12 percent annual return in a year of 5 percent inflation results in a 7 percent real return.   Receivable Turnover The receivable ratio is total credit sales divided by accounts receivable. Receivable turnover ratio indicates how many times the receivables portfolio has been collected during the accounting period.   Receivables What the company is owed, less any provision for bad debts. Rising receivables could indicate increasing sales, which of course is good. But rising receivables might also be a sign that debtors are paying more slowly or the company is being forced to extend more credit to sell its products, which is bad.   Record Date The date by which you must own a stock in order to get a dividend check on the pay date. When a company plans to issue a dividend to shareholders, it announces both a pay date for the dividend and a record date. The record date usually precedes the pay date by about two weeks. If you buy the stock the day after the record date, you won't get a dividend check.