The stage of the economy's business cycle that marks the end of a period of declining business activity and the transition to expansion.

In general, the business cycle is said to go through expansion, then the peak, followed by contraction, and then it finally bottoms out with the trough.

investopedia.com

A short-term technical analysis breadth indicator calculated as the following:

A technical indicator that uses three parallel trendlines to identify possible levels of support and resistance. The trendlines are created by placing three points at the end of identified trends. This is usually achieved by placing the points in three consecutive peaks or troughs. Once the points have been placed, a straight line is drawn from the first point that intersects the midpoint of the other two.

Also known as "median line studies".

The chart shown here makes it clear why this indicator is called a pitchfork. The first point drawn on the chart forms the handle, while the lines extending from the other two points will make up the prongs.

investopedia.com

Portfolio Turnover

A measure of how frequently assets within a fund are bought and sold by the managers. Portfolio turnover is calculated by taking either the total amount of new securities purchased or the amount of securities sold - whichever is less - over a particular period, divided by the total net asset value (NAV) of the fund. The measurement is usually reported for a 12-month time period.

The portfolio turnover measurement should be considered by an investor before deciding to purchase a given mutual fund or similar financial instrument. After all, a firm with a high turnover rate will incur more transaction costs than a fund with a lower rate. Unless the superior asset selection renders benefits that offset the added transaction costs they cause, a less active trading posture may generate higher fund returns.

In addition, cost conscious fund investors should take note that the transactional brokerage fee costs are not included in the calculation of a fund's operating expense ratio and thus represent what can be, in high-turnover portfolios, a significant additional expense that reduces investment return.

Any exchange-traded fund that seeks to provide high dividend yields by investing in a basket of high-dividend paying common stocks, preferred stocks or REITs. There are dividend ETFs that contain only U.S. domestic stocks and global dividend ETFs, which have an international focus. The indexes used to create dividend ETFs vary by fund manager or custodian, but most contain stocks with a high level of liquidity and above-market dividend yields.

Although dividend ETFs are passively managed around an index, that index may be the result of certain quantitative screens such as companies with a history of increasing their dividends, or larger blue-chip companies with a higher level of perceived safety. The expense ratios of dividend ETFs should be comparable to, or lower than, the cheapest no-load mutual funds with similar investment objectives. As with all ETFs, dividend ETFs can be traded intraday. These types of funds may be part of the core portfolio of an income-seeking or generally risk-averse stock investor.

Investopedia.com

What Does Diversification Mean?
A risk management technique that mixes a wide variety of investments within a portfolio. The rationale behind this technique contends that a portfolio of different kinds of investments will, on average, yield higher returns and pose a lower risk than any individual investment found within the portfolio.

Diversification strives to smooth out unsystematic risk events in a portfolio so that the positive performance of some investments will neutralize the negative performance of others. Therefore, the benefits of diversification will hold only if the securities in the portfolio are not perfectly correlated.

Studies and mathematical models have shown that maintaining a well-diversified portfolio of 25 to 30 stocks will yield the most cost-effective level of risk reduction. Investing in more securities will still yield further diversification benefits, albeit at a drastically smaller rate.

Further diversification benefits can be gained by investing in foreign securities because they tend be less closely correlated with domestic investments. For example, an economic downturn in the U.S. economy may not affect Japan's economy in the same way; therefore, having Japanese investments would allow an investor to have a small cushion of protection against losses due to an American economic downturn.

Most non-institutional investors have a limited investment budget, and may find it difficult to create an adequately diversified portfolio. This fact alone can explain why mutual funds have been increasing in popularity. Buying shares in a mutual fund can provide investors with an inexpensive source of diversification.

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) that is constructed by using various derivatives for the purpose of profiting from a decline in the value of an underlying benchmark. Investing in these ETFs is similar to holding various short positions, or using a combination of advanced investment strategies to profit from falling prices.

Also known as a "Short ETF," or "Bear ETF".

One advantage is that these ETFs do not require the investor to hold a margin account as would be the case for investors looking to enter into short positions.

There are several inverse ETFs that can be used to profit from declines in broad market indexes, such as the Russell 2000 or the Nasdaq 100. In addition, it is possible to buy inverse ETFs that focus on a specific sector, such as financials, energy or consumer staples. Most investors look to purchase inverse ETFs so that they can hedge their portfolios against falling prices.

A category of expenditure that a business incurs as a result of performing its normal business operations. One of the typical responsibilities that management must contend with is determining how low operating expenses can be reduced without significantly affecting the firm's ability to compete with its competitors.

Also known as "OPEX".

For example, the payment of employees' wages and funds allocated toward research and development are operating expenses. In the absence of raising prices or finding new markets or product channels in order to raise profits, some businesses attempt to increase the bottom line purely by cutting expenses.

While laying off employees and reducing product quality can initially boost earnings and may even be necessary in cases where a company has lost its competitiveness, there are only so many operating expenses that management can cut before the quality of business operations is damaged.

What Does Active Investing Mean?
An investment strategy involving ongoing buying and selling actions by the investor. Active investors purchase investments and continuously monitor their activity in order to exploit profitable conditions.

Active investing is highly involved. Unlike passive investors, who invest in a stock when they believe in its potential for long-term appreciation, active investors will typically look at the price movements of their stocks many times a day. Typically, active investors are seeking short-term profits.

The person or persons responsible for investing a mutual, exchange-traded or closed-end fund's assets, implementing its investment strategy and managing the day-to-day portfolio trading.

The portfolio manager is one of the most important factors to consider when looking at fund investing. Portfolio management can be active or passive (index tracking). Historical performance records indicate that only a minority of active fund managers beat the market indexes.

What Does Active Management Mean?
The use of a human element, such as a single manager, co-managers or a team of managers, to actively manage a fund's portfolio. Active managers rely on analytical research, forecasts, and their own judgment and experience in making investment decisions on what securities to buy, hold and sell. The opposite of active management is called passive management, better known as "indexing".

Investors who believe in active management do not follow the efficient market hypothesis. They believe it is possible to profit from the stock market through any number of strategies that aim to identify mispriced securities.

Investment companies and fund sponsors believe it's possible to outperform the market, and employ professional investment managers to manage one or more of the company's mutual funds. The objective with active management is to produce better returns than those of passively managed index funds. For example, a large cap stock fund manager would look to beat the performance of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. Unfortunately, for a large majority of active managers, this has been difficult. This phenomenon is simply a reflection of how hard it is, no matter how smart the manager, to beat the market.

Investopedia.com