# A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z all
Balanced Fund
A fund that seeks to provide both current income and long-term growth of principal by investing in a combination of stocks, bonds, and other securities.
Barclay BTOP50 Index
The BTOP50 Index seeks to replicate the overall composition of the managed futures industry with regard to trading style and overall market exposure. The BTOP50 employs a top-down approach in selecting its constituents. The largest investable trading advisor programs, as measured by assets under management, are selected for inclusion in the BTOP50. In each calendar year the selected trading advisors represent, in aggregate, no less than 50% of the investable assets of the Barclay CTA Universe.
Basis Point
One one-hundredth of one percentage point, or 0.01%. For example, 25 basis points equals 0.25%.
Bear Market
A prolonged period of declining market prices, typically defined as a decline of 20% or more from the market high.
Benchmark
A standard, often an unmanaged index, used for comparative purposes in assessing an investment's performance.
Beneficiary
A recipient of proceeds from a qualified retirement plan, from a will or trust, or from an insurance policy upon the death of the registered owner.
Bequest
Property left to an heir under the terms of a will.
Beta
Beta is a measure of the volatility, or systematic risk, of a security or a portfolio in comparison to the market as a whole.
Bid Price
The price that a dealer or other prospective buyer is prepared to pay for securities or other assets.
Bloomberg 1-10 Year Municipal Bond Index
An unmanaged index composed of investment-grade municipal bonds with maturity dates of more than one year and less than 10 years.
Bloomberg 1-15 Year Blend Municipal Bond Index
An unmanaged index comprised of fixed-rate, investment-grade tax-exempt bonds with remaining maturities between 1 and 17 years.
Bloomberg 1-3 Year Government/Credit Bond Index
An unmanaged index that includes all medium and larger issues of U.S. government, investment grade corporate, and investment-grade international dollar-denominated bonds that have maturities of between 1 and 3 years and are publicly issued.
Bloomberg 3-Year Municipal Bond Index
An unmanaged index comprised of fixed-rate, investment-grade tax-exempt bonds with remaining maturities between two and four years. The index returns assume reinvestment of dividends but do not reflect any applicable sales charges. You cannot invest directly in an index.
Bloomberg 7-Year Municipal Bond Index
An index designed to measure the performance of tax-exempt U.S. investment grade municipal bonds with remaining maturities between six and eight years. Index returns assume reinvestment of distributions, but do not reflect any applicable sales charges or management fees.
Bloomberg Aggregate-Eligible Build America Bond Index
An unleveraged index that comprises all direct pay Build America Bonds that are SEC-regulated, taxable, dollar-denominated and have at least one year to final maturity, at least $250 million par amount outstanding, and are determined to be investment grade by Bloomberg.
Bloomberg Credit/Mortgage Index
A market-weighted blend of the Bloomberg U.S. Credit Index and the Bloomberg MBS Index. The Bloomberg U.S. Credit Index includes both corporate and non-corporate sectors. The corporate sectors are industrial, utility, and finance, which include both U.S. and non-U.S. corporations. The non-corporate sectors are sovereign, supranational, foreign agency, and foreign local government. The Bloomberg Mortgage-backed Securities (MBS) Index is a market value-weighted index which covers the mortgage-backed securities component of the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. The index is composed of agency mortgage-backed pass-through securities of the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae), the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) with a minimum $150 million par amount outstanding and a weighted-average maturity of at least 1 year.
Bloomberg Emerging Markets USD Aggregate Index
The Bloomberg Emerging Markets USD Aggregate Index is a flagship hard currency Emerging Markets debt benchmark that includes fixed and floating-rate U.S. dollar-denominated debt issued from sovereign, quasi-sovereign, and corporate EM issuers.
Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index
The Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index is a flagship measure of global investment grade debt from twenty-four local currency markets. This multi-currency benchmark includes treasury, government-related, corporate and securitized fixed-rate bonds from both developed and emerging markets issuers.
Bloomberg Gold Subindex Total Return
Reflects the potential returns available through an unleveraged investment in the futures contracts on gold and is quoted in USD.
Bloomberg High Yield 2% Issuer Capped Index
The Bloomberg Corporate High Yield 2% Issuer Capped Index measures the USD-denominated, high-yield, fixed-rate corporate bond market and limits each issuer to 2% of the index.
Bloomberg High Yield Municipal Index
The Bloomberg High Yield Municipal Bond Index is an unmanaged index consisting of noninvestment-grade, unrated or below Ba1 bonds.
Bloomberg Intermediate Government Bond Index
An unmanaged index that includes all publicly issued, U.S. Treasury securities that have a remaining maturity of greater than or equal to 1 year and less than 10 years, are rated investment grade, and have $250 million or more of outstanding face value.
Bloomberg Intermediate Government/Credit Bond Index
An unmanaged index that measures the performance of U.S. dollar denominated U.S. Treasuries, government-rated and investment grade U.S. corporate fixed-rate, non-convertible securities having $250 million or more of outstanding face value and a remaining maturity of greater than or equal to 1 year and less than 10 years.
Bloomberg Municipal Bond Index
The Bloomberg Municipal Index covers the USD denominated long-term tax-exempt bond market. The index has four main sectors: state and local general obligation bonds, revenue bonds, insured bonds, and prerefunded bonds.
Bloomberg Municipal Bond Total Return Index Bloomberg Municipal Intermediate Index Bloomberg U.S. Credit - Financial Institutions Index Bloomberg U.S. Government/Credit Bond Index Bloomberg U.S. Intermediate Corporate Bond Index
The Bloomberg Municipal Bond Total Return Index is a U.S. dollar denominated long-term tax-exempt bond index. It is unhedged and current has 57,947 members.
The Bloomberg Municipal Intermediate Index is a subset of the Bloomberg Capital Municipal Bond Index including maturities of five to ten years.
Bloomberg Municipal Short Index
The Bloomberg Municipal Short Index is a subset of the Bloomberg Capital Municipal Bond Index that measures the performance of investment-grade issues with maturities of one to five years.
Bloomberg Tier 1 Capital Securities Index
An unmanaged index that includes securities that can generally be viewed as hybrid fixed-income securities that either receive regulatory capital treatment or a degree of “equity credit” from a rating agency.
Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index is a broad-based flagship benchmark that measures the investment grade, U.S. dollar-denominated, fixed-rate taxable bond market. The index includes Treasuries, government-related and corporate securities, MBS (agency fixed-rate and hybrid ARM pass-throughs), ABS and CMBS (agency and nonagency)
Bloomberg U.S. CMBS Investment Grade Index
The Bloomberg U.S. CMBS Investment Grade Index measures the market of U.S. Agency and U.S. Non-agency conduit and fusion CMBS deals with a minimum current deal size of $300m. The index is dividend into two subcomponents: the U.S. Aggregate-eligible component, which contains bonds that are ERISA eligible under the underwriter's exemption, and the non-U.S. Aggregate-eligible component, which consists of bonds that are not ERISA eligible.
Bloomberg U.S. Corporate Bond Index
The Bloomberg US Corporate Bond Index measures the investment grade, fixed-rate, taxable corporate bond market. It includes USD denominated securities publicly issued by US and non-US industrial, utility and financial issuers.
Bloomberg U.S. Corporate High Yield Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Corporate High Yield Bond Index measures the USD-denominated, high-yield, fixed-rate corporate bond market.
Bloomberg U.S. Corporate Investment Grade Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Corporate Investment Grade Index is a broad based benchmark that measures the investment grade, fixed-rate, taxable, corporate bond market.
Bloomberg U.S. Credit - Financial Institutions Index tracks the financial institutions component of the Bloomberg U.S. Credit Index. The Bloomberg U.S. Credit Index includes both corporate and non-corporate sectors. The corporate sectors are industrial, utility, and finance, which include both U.S. and non-U.S. corporations. The non-corporate sectors are sovereign, supranational, foreign agency, and foreign local government.
The Bloomberg U.S. Government/Credit Bond Index is a broad-based benchmark that measures the non-securitized component of the U.S. Aggregate Index. It includes investment grade, U.S. dollar-denominated, fixed-rate Treasuries, government-related and corporate securities.
Bloomberg U.S. Government/Credit 1-3 Year Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Government/Credit 1-3 Year Index is an unmanaged index considered representative of performance of short-term U.S. corporate bonds and U.S. government bonds with maturities from one to three years.
Bloomberg U.S. Intermediate Corporate Bond Index is a broad based benchmark that measures the investment grade, fixed-rate, taxable corporate bond market. It includes USD-denominated securities publicly issued by U.S. and non-U.S. industrial, utility and financial issuers that have between 1 and up to, but not including, 10 years to maturity.
Bloomberg U.S. Intermediate Government/Credit Bond Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Intermediate Government/Credit Bond Index measures the non-securitized component of the U.S. Aggregate Index with maturities of 1 to 9.999 years.
Bloomberg U.S. Long Corporate Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Long Corporate Bond Index measures the investment grade, fixed-rate, taxable corporate bond market with maturities of 10+ years.
Bloomberg U.S. Mortgage Backed Securities Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) Index tracks agency mortgage backed pass-through securities.
Bloomberg U.S. Securitized Index
A subset of the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, which is an index designed to measure the performance of the USD-denominated, fixed-rate, U.S. investment grade taxable bond market. The index includes mortgage-backed-securities (MBS), asset-backed securities (ABS), commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) and covered assets. Index returns assume reinvestment of distributions, but do not reflect any applicable sales charges or management fees.
Bloomberg U.S. TIPS Index
An unmanaged index that includes all publicly issued, U.S. Treasury inflation-protected securities that have at least one year remaining to maturity, are rated investment grade, and have $250 million or more of outstanding face value.
Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bellwethers 10 Yr. Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bellwethers 10 Yr. Index is an unmanaged index representing the on-the-run (most recently auctioned) U.S. Treasury bond with 10 years’ maturity.
Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bellwethers 2 Yr. Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bellwethers 2 Yr. Index is an unmanaged index representing the on-the-run (most recently auctioned) U.S. Treasury bond with 2 years’ maturity.
Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bellwethers 3 Mo. Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bellwethers 3 Month Index is an unmanaged index representing the on-the-run (most recently auctioned) U.S. Treasury bill with 3 months’ maturity.
Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bellwethers 30 Yr. Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bellwethers 30 Yr. Index is an unmanaged index representing the on-the-run (most recently auctioned) U.S. Treasury bond with 30 years’ maturity.
Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Index measures U.S. dollar-denominated, fixed-rate, nominal debt issues by the U.S. Treasury.
Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Inflation-Linked Bond Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Inflation-Linked Bond Index (Series-L) measures the performance of the U.S. Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) market. Federal Reserve holdings of U.S. TIPS are not index eligible and are excluded from the face amount outstanding of each bond in the index.
Bloomberg U.S. Treasury TIPS 1-10 Year Index
The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury TIPS 1-10 Year Index includes all publicly issued, U.S. Treasury inflation-protected securities maturities between 1 and 10 years, are rated investment grade and have $250 million or more of outstanding face value.
Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOM)
The Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOM) is a broadly diversified commodity price index that tracks prices of futures contracts on physical commodities in the commodity markets.
Blue-Sky Laws
State regulations designed to protect investors against securities fraud by requiring sellers of new issues to register their offerings and provide financial details.
Bond
A type of IOU issued by corporations, governments, or government agencies. The issuer typically makes regular interest payments on the bond and promises to pay back, or redeem, the face value of the bond at a specified point in the future, called the maturity date. Bonds may be issued for terms of up to 30 years or more.
Bond Fund
A closed-end fund or open-end mutual fund that invests in bonds. Taxable bond funds typically invest in corporate bonds and/or U.S. government debt. Some focus on domestic bonds, others invest in international debt, including bonds from emerging markets. Other bond funds invest in municipal bonds; their interest is usually free from federal income tax and may be free from state and local taxes as well.
Bond Insurance
Insurance as to timely payment of interest and principal of a bond issue.
Book Value
The net worth of a business based on accounting values. Calculated by subtracting all liabilities, including debt and preferred stocks from total assets, and dividing by the number of shares of common stock outstanding.
Bottom-up Approach
An investment strategy that emphasizes evaluating individual companies' businesses before considering broad economic trends.
Broker/Dealer
A financial firm registered with the Securities & Exchange Commission that trades investment securities such as stocks, bonds, ETFs, and closed-end funds to the public.
Bull Market
A prolonged period of strongly rising security prices.
Business Cycle
The regular ebb and flow of economic conditions over time, characterized by fluctuating employment levels, industrial productivity, and interest rates.
