Preferred stock, also called preferred shares, preference shares, or simply preferreds, is a special equity security that resembles properties of both an equity and a debt instrument and generally considered a hybrid instrument. Preferreds are senior (i.e. higher ranking) to common stock, but are subordinate to bondsUnlike the tax treatment of typical preferred securities, … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2010
“After The Bell” in Stock Market
"After the bell" is basically a financial slang used for activity occurring after the close of the stock market, The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) closes its trading day with the ringing of a bell including after-hours trading, illegal late trading of open-ended funds (during the mutual fund scandal of 2003), earnings announcements, acquisition plans and merger agreements. The … [Read more...]
What does Quadruple Witching mean?
The expiration date for four types of standardized contracts: stock options, stock index options, stock index futures, and single stock futures.In simple words,Quadruple witching refers to the third Friday of every March, June, September and December. On these days, market index futures, market index options, stock options and stock futures expire, usually resulting in … [Read more...]
What is Triple Witching?
An event that occurs when the contracts for stock index futures, stock index options and stock options all expire on the same day.The event happens on the third Friday in March, June, September and December when all four speculative derivatives i.e options, index options, single stock futures and index futures all expire on the same date. he speculative investments are not … [Read more...]
The Witching Hour
Witching hour is the last hour of stock market while trading is on between 3pm (when the bond market closes) and 4pm . Witching hour is typically controlled by large professional traders, program traders and large institutional traders, and can be characterized by higher-than-average volatility. The witching hour is most commonly known in the context of triple witching, which … [Read more...]