Finance

Finance is the application of the principles of financial economics to an inter-related set of monetary problems. In the case of a company, this generally involves balancing risk and profitability and is typically called managerial finance or corporate finance. Investment theory is concerned with the identification of an optimal portfolio of assets, given a set of objectives and constraints, as well as with the valuation of assets. Finance can also be used by individuals (called personal finance), and by governments (called public finance).

Finance involves:

Investment management and valuation
- Financial markets, financial instruments, and financial institutions
- The risk-return framework and the identification of the asset appropriate discount rate
- Valuation of assets - discounting of relevant cash flows; relative valuation; contingent claim valuation
- The optimum allocation of funds - What to invest in - How much to invest - When to invest
Corporate and Managerial finance
- Cash flow budgeting and working capital management
- Comparing alternative proposals
- Forecasting and risk analysis
- Obtaining funds - debt or equity sources - long term or short term - optimum capital structure
- allocation of funds to long term capital investments, vs optimize short term cash flow
- Dividend policy
Wealth management and personal finance
- How much money will be needed by an individual (or a family) at various points in the future?
- How is that need to be funded?
Public finance
- Identification of required expenditure of a public sector entity
- Source(s) of that entity's revenue
- The budgeting process

Finding Finance Articles

Fundamental Financial Concepts
- Annuity
- Arbitrage
- Balance sheet
- Business plan
- Business valuation
- Capital (economics)
- Capital asset pricing model
- Cash flow
- Cash flow matching
- Debt
  - default
- Discounted cash flow
- Financial capital
- Entrepreneur
- Gap financing
- Hedging
  - hedge
  - hedger
- interest rate
  - Risk free interest rate
  - Term Structure of Interest Rates
  - interest
  - interest rate basis
- Investment
- Leverage
- Locked-in value
- Liquidity
- Mark to future
- Mark to market
- Market Impact
- Medium of exchange
- Money
  - coin
  - banknote
  - counterfeit
- Portfolio
- Reference rate
- Risk, Value at Risk
- Scenario analysis
- Short selling
- Speculation
- Standard of deferred payment
- Store of value
- Time horizon
- Time value of money
  - Present value
  - Future value
  - Discounting
- Unit of account

Financial Markets
- Commodities
  - Commodity markets
  - Fungibility
- Securities
- Bond market
  - Bonds
- Derivative securities
  - Underlying instrument
  - Derivatives market
  - Equity derivative
  - Forward contract
  - Futures contract
    - Financial futures
    - Futures exchange
  - Options
    - Stock option
      - Call option
      - Put option
      - Strike price
      - Put-call parity
      - The Greeks
      - Black-Scholes formula
      - Black model
      - Binomial options model
      - Implied volatility
      - Option time value
      - Moneyness
      - Option style
        Vanilla option
        Exotic option
        European option
        Bermudan option
        American option
        Quanto option
        Asian option
    - Warrants
    - Foreign exchange option
    - Interest rate options
    - Bond options
    - Options on futures (see Futures)
  - Swaps
    - Stock swap
    - Interest rate swap
  - Swaption
  - Interest rate linked derivatives:
    - Financial future
    - LIBOR
    - BBA LIBOR
    - Forward rate agreement
    - Interest rate swap
    - Interest rate cap
    - Exotic interest rate option
  - Credit derivatives
    - Credit default swap
    - Collateralised Debt Obligation
    - Credit default option
    - Total return swap
- Money market
  - International Money Market
- Primary market
  - Initial public offering
- Aftermarket
- Free market
- Efficient market hypothesis
- Bull market
- Bear market
- Ponzi scheme

Fund management
- Passive management
  - Index fund
- Activist shareholder
- Mutual fund
  - Open-End Fund
  - Closed-End Fund
- Hedge fund
- Long-term Capital Management
Financial institutions
Financial supervision
- Banking license
- Glass-Steagall Act (US)
- Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (US)
- Securities and Exchange Commission (US)
Economics and Finance
Mathematics and Finance
- Financial mathematics
- Internal rate of return
- Net present value
- Brownian motion
- Girsanov's theorem
- Radon-Nikodym derivative
- Monte Carlo method
- Risk-neutral measure
- Value at Risk
- Stochastic calculus
- Probability
- Expected value
- Partial differential equations
Constraint Finance

Personal finance
Public finance
- tax, tariff and trade
- industrial policy
- agricultural policy
- currency union
The History of Finance
- Tulipomania 1620s
- South Sea Bubble 1710s
- Railway mania 1840s
- Wall Street Crash 1929
- Great Depression 1930s
- Black Monday 1987
- Asian financial crisis 1990s
- Stock market downturn of 2002 2002

Finance

Finance involves:

Finding Finance Articles

Finding related topics

Links