Every term, in plain English

How much of the coin changed hands in the past day. Higher volume usually means it is easier to buy and sell.

Income and costs recorded when they're earned or incurred, not when the cash actually moves.

Fund units that keep the income inside the fund, lifting the unit price instead of paying you cash.

A fund whose manager chooses what to buy and sell, aiming to beat a benchmark after costs.

A running record of the actions you take in SquirrelStocks — buys and sells, holdings added or removed, imports, watchlist and goal changes, diversification and price targets, alerts, and widgets added or removed.

A transaction form for adding and editing buy and sell lots with auto-filled dividends.

Trading that happens outside an exchange's normal hours, usually on a separate venue with far lower liquidity.

A broker pooling many customers' fractional holdings together into whole shares it holds on their behalf.

A written summary of your portfolio produced by a language model from a snapshot of your data.

The coin's record price, and how far today's price is from it.

Annual management charge: the fund manager's own yearly fee, as a percentage of what you hold.

Leaning on the first number you saw when judging what comes next.

The most that can go into your pensions in a tax year with tax relief, an employer's contributions included.

What your portfolio has paid you over the past year. It looks back at dividends actually booked to your holdings rather than forecasting the year ahead, so a newly added holding reads low until it has a full year of payments behind it.

The net gains you can realise each tax year before Capital Gains Tax applies.

The most you can pay into ISAs in one tax year, shared across all of them.

The income return on what you actually paid, rather than on today's market value. Because it uses your cost, it rises over time as holdings raise their dividends.

A return expressed per year, so periods of different lengths can be compared.

Questions a firm asks to check you understand a complex or high-risk product before you can invest.

The moment the data behind a figure or report was taken.

How your money splits between kinds of asset — shares, bonds, cash, property and others.

How what you own is split up. A mortgaged home counts only for the part you own outright, so it doesn't swamp everything else.

The Balance Sheet widget's Precious metals, Collectible cards and "Property, pensions & other" views: one asset class's total, its share of everything you own, and — for metals and cards — how it stands against what you paid, then each item in it.

What this holding, card or metal cost you. Cash, crypto and property show -- because the app holds a balance or value for them, not a purchase price.

How far above or below what you paid this item is today, where you've recorded what you paid.

How close you are to a goal like "£10,000 of cash", "£250,000 net worth" or "debts paid down to £50,000".

What kind of things the fund owns. An all-shares tracker is close to 100% shares; a 60/40 fund holds about 60% shares and 40% bonds.

What this row is worth right now.

Being required to fulfil an option you wrote — delivering or buying the underlying at the strike.

When a gain and a loss of the same size don't feel the same size.

A large dealer allowed to create and redeem an ETF's units, which keeps its price close to NAV.

Judging how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind.

Everything you've paid for a holding divided by all the shares you've bought.

The duration of a bond fund's holdings, averaged — how sensitive the whole fund is to rates.

Your average capital gain per month since your first purchase. It's a simple average, so a single strong month is spread across the whole period.

Testing how a strategy would have performed on past data.

A snapshot of what a company owns and owes on one day, and the shareholders' equity left between them.

The currency you measure your whole portfolio in — for most UK investors, pounds.

The Bank of England's main interest rate, which most savings and loan rates follow.

How often something has happened across a long record — the starting point before any story.

Selling an investment outside an ISA and buying it back inside one.

The difference between a fund's return and its investors' return.

The index or target a fund's performance is measured against.

The person entitled to a share's economic value — dividends, gains, usually votes — even if someone else's name is on the register.

Having the economic rights to a share — dividends, gains — even when it isn't legally registered in your name.

How much a share has tended to move when the market moves. 1 moves in line; above 1 moves more; below 1, less.

The gap between the highest price a buyer will pay (bid) and the lowest a seller will accept (ask).

A shared ledger, copied across many computers, recording who holds which tokens.

Think of the bands as a channel the price tends to stay inside. When price touches the upper band the stock may be stretched; when it touches the lower band it may be oversold. When the bands squeeze together, a big move is often coming.

A loan to a government or company that pays interest and repays a fixed amount on a set date.

A fund holding many bonds, which never matures itself.

A set of individual bonds bought to mature one after another at intervals.

The firm that routes your order to an exchange and holds the resulting shares on your behalf.

One purchase, recorded on its own: the date, the number of shares and the total you paid.

Being forced to buy back borrowed shares at the current price, because the loan is recalled or delivery fails.

Compound annual growth rate: the steady yearly rate that would produce a period's total result.

Month view calendar that lists dividend dates, earnings, and news events for portfolio holdings.

How the fund did year by year, good years and bad, which shows how bumpy the ride has been.

The right, but not the obligation, to buy an asset at a fixed price until expiry.

Capital expenditure: spending on long-lasting things like equipment, buildings, networks and software.

The UK tax on the profit when you sell or otherwise dispose of an investment for more than it cost.

Stat block separating banked gains from paper gains and expressing the portfolio's growth rate.

How much a card — or all the cards you've entered a price for — is up or down on what you paid.

Shows what your collectible cards are worth today against what you paid for them — in total, then every card from the biggest gain to the biggest loss. What you paid is entered on the Portfolio page.

What one of your cards, in that printing, has recently been selling for.

Card prices jump around. This is where your card has been trading lately, so the widget can show whether today's price is above or below that. It's a recent average, not a prediction or a view on what the card should be worth.

How your collection's value has moved — going up and down with card prices — over the last month, three months, year, or since the prices begin.

Charts what the collectible cards you hold today were worth on each day, over one month, three months, a year or all of TickerMint's price history — with what you paid as a dashed line.

The Balance Sheet widget's Cash view: cash you enter on the Portfolio page, plus — on Investor Pro — live balances from bank accounts you link there (read-only, through TrueLayer open banking; UK and European banks), with Total Cash as a share of your cash and stock portfolio together.

How much of your tracked money is sitting in cash rather than invested. High cash means dry powder; it also means money not earning dividends.

Checks whether the dividend is paid out of real cash coming in from the business, not just accounting profit. Above 1 means trading brought in more cash than the company handed to shareholders; below 1 means it topped the dividend up from savings, borrowing or selling things.

Where the cash actually came from and went: trading, investment and financing.

A contract for difference: an agreement with a provider to exchange the change in an asset's price, without owning it.

How often you look at your investments' value.

How many coins are out there right now.

Your uninvested cash at a broker, which it must keep in accounts separate from its own.

Two prices rising and falling on the same days — what correlation looks like on a chart.

What all the coins that exist today are worth together at the current price.

What your cards would roughly sell for today, going by TCGplayer's market price for the exact printing you own.

Your trading cards and sealed product — Pokémon, One Piece, Lorcana, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Riftbound and Gundam — dealt out as a fanned hand and valued daily from TCGplayer market prices, via TickerMint. Cards are added and edited on the Portfolio page.

A raw material such as gold, oil, copper or wheat.

Something a company does better or more cheaply than its rivals, in a way they can't easily copy.

Growth building on previous growth, so a return is earned on the original amount and on everything it's already grown by.

The risk that one holding or one sector is a big enough slice to swing your whole result.

Seeking out, and believing more readily, evidence that supports what you already think.

The average of analysts' forecasts — for dividends, what the professionals collectively expect a company to pay.

When later-dated futures cost more than the current price, so rolling them costs money.

The agreement a derivative is: what each side must do, and when.

The gap between the spot rate and the rate a broker actually gives you.

A company event that changes your shares — a split, consolidation, spin-off, rights issue or takeover.

A bond issued by a company, paying more than a government bond to reflect the extra risk.

How closely two investments move together, from +1 (in lockstep) to −1 (in opposite directions).

The number that measures correlation, from −1 to +1, worked out from two price histories.

What you actually paid for a holding, fees included.

The other party to an arrangement — the one who has to keep their side of the deal.

The fixed interest a bond pays, usually once or twice a year.

A condition in a loan agreement, such as a maximum ratio of debt to profit, that the borrower must stay within.

Any “how many times over” figure: what's available divided by what has to be paid.

A call option written against shares you already own.

An agency's grade of how likely a company is to repay its lenders, from AAA down.

The order in which an insolvent company's creditors are paid, with shareholders at the end.

When a fast line crosses above a slow line, it signals that short-term momentum is stronger than long-term momentum — often read as bullish. The opposite crossing is bearish. No signal is perfect; they work best alongside other indicators.

How much of your tracked wealth sits in the crypto wallets you've added.

What your crypto wallets are worth right now, counting only assets with a real market so worthless airdrops don't inflate it.

The Balance Sheet widget's Crypto view: values public crypto wallet addresses you add — coins, tokens and NFTs on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon, plus Bitcoin and Solana — read-only from public block explorers, and lists any crypto balance you've typed in on the Portfolio page.

A digital asset recorded on a blockchain, with no bank or government behind it.

Trading with the next dividend still attached — any day before the ex-dividend date.

The total change over a whole period, however long.

How much of your portfolio's value moves with exchange rates, not just share prices.

The safekeeping of shares and cash on an investor's behalf, typically by a broker or a dedicated custodian.

A business whose profits rise and fall with the economy, like carmakers, builders and airlines.

What your portfolio earns per day on average. It's mostly a motivational number — dividends are actually paid on scheduled dates, not daily.

A leveraged fund rebalancing every day to restore its multiple.

The delay between something happening at a company and it showing up in a figure.

How much your holdings moved today compared with yesterday's closing prices. Holdings without a previous close are skipped, so on thin data the figure can cover only part of the portfolio.

A fixed fee a broker charges each time you buy or sell.

How much of what you own is matched by what you owe. Lower is a stronger position; over 100% means you owe more than you own.

How much the company relies on borrowed money versus money from shareholders. Too much debt can be risky.

A dated record of decisions and the reasons for them, kept together so they can be reviewed.

Checking whether what you thought would happen actually happened.

The day the board announces a dividend — the amount, and the dates that follow.

Drawing money down from savings or investments, often in retirement.

A business that sells things people keep buying in a downturn, like food, medicines and utilities.

A company's shares being removed from a stock exchange.

A contract whose value comes from something else — a share, an index, a currency or a commodity.

EPS worked out as if every staff option and convertible bond had already become a share.

Your slice of a company getting smaller because new shares have been issued.

Facts that would show a belief is wrong.

A fund or trust trading below the value of its holdings.

Selling, giving away or otherwise parting with an investment — the moment a gain is realised for tax.

The tendency to sell winners too early and hold losers too long.

A fund's payout of the income it has collected — its equivalent of a dividend.

Whether the fund pays out monthly, every quarter, twice a year or once a year.

What a fund expects to pay out over the next twelve months, as a percentage of its price.

Your personal yield based on your purchase price. As the dividend grows over time, this number becomes much higher than the current yield.

Owning enough different businesses that no single one gets to decide your year.

A mix of holdings swinging less than its parts, because they don't all move together.

An allocation chart — the Pie Chart set to Target sector allocation or Target asset-class split — that compares your ideal mix to what you actually hold: your stock portfolio by sector, or everything you own by asset class.

A slice of a company's profit paid out in cash to the people who own its shares — usually every three months.

The amount of dividend income each tax year that's taxed at 0%.

An S&P 500 member that has raised its dividend for at least 25 years in a row. Other index providers run lists with their own rules.

Earnings per share ÷ dividend per share: how many times over this year's profit could pay this year's dividend.

How many times over earnings could pay the dividend. Around 2× is roomy.

A reduction in the dividend per share. Stopping it altogether is called an omission or suspension.

The chance that a company reduces or stops its dividend.

Your right to a particular dividend: you have it if you owned the shares at the close of the day before the ex-dividend date.

How fast the dividend per share has risen, usually as a yearly percentage.

How many years in a row a company has raised its dividend.

A company's past dividend payments per share, in order.

The cash your holdings pay you as dividends.

Stat block showing dividend income at annual, monthly and daily cadence, plus lifetime dividends received.

A 0 to 10 score for each dividend-paying holding, built from its payout ratio, dividend cover, yield level and per-share dividend trend.

A 0–100 measure inside the portfolio health score, built from each dividend payer's payout ratio and dividend cover.

The rate charged on dividends above the allowance, set by the tax band they fall in.

A year of dividends divided by today's share price, shown as a percentage.

Dividend distribution view grouped by sector with optional cost and value context.

The country a fund is legally based in, which can differ from where it's listed.

The point at which an investment's value reaches twice its starting amount, purely from growth compounding over time.

How far a price has fallen from its most recent high.

The gap between the mix you hold and the mix you intended, caused by prices moving.

A dividend reinvestment plan: your broker uses each cash dividend to buy more of the same shares automatically.

A measure, in years, of how sensitive a bond's price is to interest rates. A duration of 7 means roughly a 7% fall for a one-point rise.

Another name for a P/E: how many years of today's profit the share price represents.

Net profit divided by the number of shares — your slice of the year's profit.

Whatever protects a company's profits from competitors — brand, network, cost, switching costs or licences.

Roughly how many independent bets a portfolio really holds, once holdings that move together count as one.

The Enterprise Investment Scheme: tax reliefs for buying shares directly in small unlisted companies.

Your formal choice between options a company offers — cash or shares, for example — made by a deadline.

The share of a portfolio in shares versus bonds — the most common shorthand for asset allocation.

A best guess at a number that hasn't happened yet — like next year's dividends.

What an account would earn in a year if the balance and rate stayed as they are today.

Stacked bar chart of projected dividends by month.

The app's placing of a dividend payment when the company's own date isn't in the data feed.

Roughly what your investments might add to your tax bill for the year.

An exchange-traded commodity: a listed security backed by physical metal or by futures contracts.

An exchange-traded fund: a fund listed on a stock exchange and traded all day like a share.

A more comprehensive version of P/E. It looks at the whole company (including debt) relative to its 'cash' earnings. Lower is often better.

The fall in a share's price on the ex-dividend date, roughly equal to the dividend, because new buyers no longer get it.

The cut-off. You have to own the share before this date to be paid the next dividend.

The risk that the crypto exchange holding your tokens is hacked, freezes withdrawals or fails.

The moment an order actually trades — matched with a buyer or seller and confirmed.

Investments you can buy without paying UK stamp duty, such as AIM shares, ETFs and foreign shares.

The date a derivative contract ends and is settled.

Like an SMA, but recent prices count for more. If a stock just made a big move, the EMA reacts faster than the SMA. Traders use it when they want an early signal rather than a smooth one.

A best-guess price tag for a stock based on future cash flows. If the fair value is higher than the current price, the stock may be undervalued.

Comparison grid of fair value versus current price. Stocks use their discounted cash flow (DCF) fair value per share. Crypto, precious metals, collectible cards, property, pensions, bonds and other assets are compared, as a whole holding, with either a fair value you set yourself on the Portfolio page or — set to Market reference — a market reference where one exists: a card's 90-day average price, or a UK property's price carried forward by its local house price index.

The Financial Conduct Authority, which regulates how financial products are sold in the UK.

Dividends paid ÷ free cash flow: the share of spare cash handed to shareholders.

A maximum some platforms put on their percentage fee, often only for shares, ETFs and investment trusts.

The result of an order that has actually traded — the price and quantity you ended up with.

The dividend paid after full-year results, typically approved by shareholders at the AGM.

Any communication that invites or encourages someone to invest.

How much actual gold, silver, platinum or palladium is in what you hold, once the other metals mixed in are taken out.

A platform fee that's a fixed amount, whatever the size of your pot.

Fear of missing out: the pull to buy because other people seem to be making money.

A leveraged position being sold for you, at the market price, when the margin runs out.

Share price divided by next year's forecast earnings per share.

Yield based on the dividends a company is expected to pay over the next twelve months.

Owning less than one whole share — for example 0.34 of a share bought with a fixed amount of cash.

The cash left once a company has paid for running and maintaining itself.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme, which pays out when an authorised firm fails and money or investments are missing.

Around 1 means the fund has risen and fallen about as much as the market. Below 1 means smaller moves, above 1 bigger ones.

A fund limiting how much investors can withdraw, so it isn't forced to sell assets cheaply.

Which parts of the economy the fund's shares are in, such as technology or healthcare.

How much money is invested in the fund altogether. Larger funds tend to be easier to trade and less likely to be closed down.

What a broker charges to convert your money into another currency: a stated fee, a worse rate, or both.

The risk that exchange-rate moves reduce the value of holdings priced in another currency.

How much a company relies on borrowed money compared with shareholders' money.

An ordinary investment account with no limit on what goes in and no tax shelter.

How your money splits by country or region, by where companies are listed or earn their money.

A bond issued by the UK government.

Outcome planning module for income, growth, and retirement timelines with weekly tracking.

The dashboard's Goals widget: your income target, stock portfolio target and retirement date tracked as progress, plus value goals for anything you own or owe — cash, net worth, pensions, a mortgage paid down — and any goals you've written in yourself.

What's left of each £1 of sales after the direct cost of what was sold.

The money left from sales once the company has paid for what it sold. Staff, rent, marketing, interest and tax haven't come out yet, so it is always much bigger than the profit that ends up belonging to shareholders.

The portfolio value you are aiming to reach over time.

What management says it expects for the year ahead — profit, revenue or the dividend.

The label on a portfolio health score: Strong from 82, Stable from 68, Watchlist from 50, At risk below that.

A fund share class that uses currency contracts to remove most of the effect of exchange rates.

Buying or selling because others are, rather than on your own reading of the investment.

A bond from a borrower rated below investment grade, paying more because it's riskier.

What a fund actually paid over the last twelve months, as a percentage of today's price — its version of trailing yield.

How many different holdings you own.

Every dividend this one stock has paid you since you started tracking it.

What one share currently trades for. This column is not FX-converted, so a US holding shows in dollars even if your portfolio is in pounds.

What this one position is worth today.

The income the stock currently pays relative to its market price. This is the yield anyone buying today would get — it is not based on your purchase price, so it does not change when your cost basis does. For your own yield on cost, see Annual Yield.

Holding more of your own country's shares than its share of the world's markets would suggest.

The Industry Classification Benchmark: the sector scheme behind the FTSE indices.

Being hard or impossible to sell quickly at a fair price.

A company writing down the value of assets or acquisitions that won't earn what it expected.

What your holdings paid you in dividends and distributions over a period.

The profit and loss account: revenue at the top, costs taken off line by line, profit at the bottom.

A specific amount of dividend income you're aiming for — a number, not a feeling.

A fund share class that pays out the income it collects as cash distributions.

A two-state switch that flips the view between income and growth metrics.

A list of companies with rules for how much of each to hold, used to measure a market.

A passive fund that holds what its index holds, in the same proportions.

An index regularly dropping companies that have shrunk and adding ones that have grown.

What the index itself did over a period, with or without dividends reinvested.

It answers "if my home had moved in line with prices in my area, what would it be worth now?" It's an average for the area, not a valuation of your home: extensions, condition, the street and the size of the local sample all make a real house differ.

The rate at which prices rise, so each pound buys a little less.

Payments that rise each year with an inflation index such as RPI or CPI.

An investment trust owning stakes in long-lived assets like schools, hospitals, roads and energy networks.

A company being unable to pay its debts, after which administrators sell what's left.

How many times a company's operating profit covers its interest bill.

The risk that rising interest rates push down the price of a bond you already hold.

A dividend paid partway through the financial year, usually alongside half-year results.

Notes written when you buy or sell: why, what you expect, and what would change your mind.

A listed company whose business is holding other investments, with a fixed number of shares.

The profile you choose in the app — one of eight — that decides what it shows you first.

The return a fund's investors actually earned, weighted by when their money went in and out — a money-weighted return across all of them.

Internal rate of return: the usual way of calculating a money-weighted return from dated cash flows.

What the fund last paid out for each unit you hold.

Controlling a bigger position than your own money covers, by borrowing the rest.

A fund that aims to deliver a multiple, or the opposite, of an index's daily return.

The Balance Sheet widget's Liabilities view. Shows what you owe — mortgages, loans, credit cards, car finance — as entered on the Portfolio page, and sets it against your total assets.

An instruction to buy or sell only at a specified price or better.

Something a number or report can't see or can't do.

How easily a stock can be bought or sold without your own order moving its price.

A minimum time you must hold an investment, or before you're able to sell it.

A fall in value that has already happened — on paper until you sell, real once you do.

Feeling a loss more strongly than a gain of the same size.

Investing all of the money at once, at one price.

The part of a leveraged position you've paid for yourself — your deposit against losses.

A demand to add money or cut a leveraged position when losses eat into your margin.

Valuing a holding at what it would fetch today.

Share price × total shares issued — what the market currently thinks the whole company is worth.

An instruction to buy or sell immediately at whatever price is currently available.

The risk of losing money because the whole market falls — another name for systematic risk.

How optimistic or nervous investors feel right now, which can move a price faster than the underlying business changes.

Holding each company in proportion to its total market value, so the biggest get the biggest slices.

The date a bond ends and the borrower repays the par value.

The cap on how many coins there will ever be. Some coins, such as Ether, have no cap.

The largest peak-to-trough fall over a given history.

A cap you set on how large one holding may grow before you trim it.

How much your gold, silver, platinum or palladium is up or down on what you paid.

Shows what your precious metals are worth today against what you paid for them — in total, then every holding from the biggest gain to the biggest loss. It's the Gainers & Losers widget with Precious metals vs price paid picked as its data. What you paid is entered on the Portfolio page.

What an ounce of pure gold, silver, platinum or palladium is trading at right now.

How a figure or report was produced: what went in, and what was done to it.

The midpoint between the bid and the ask — usually the single number quoted as "the price".

A marker of progress, like your first steady tenner a month, that shows the machinery is working.

The documented tendency for recent winners to keep outperforming for a while, and recent losers to keep lagging.

A return weighted by how much money was invested when, showing the return you actually got.

A year of dividend income divided by twelve — smooth, even though real payments arrive in lumps.

How much of the next year's payments is the lender's charge rather than paying the debt down.

Roughly what you pay the lender each month, so you can see it beside everything else.

Loss aversion combined with checking often, so that frequent small losses loom large.

An option written with nothing held to cover the obligation.

A simple story about an investment that spreads faster than the numbers behind it.

What a fund's holdings are worth, divided by the number of units or shares.

The rule that a UK retail CFD or spread-bet account can't lose more than the money in it.

The profit, after this year's losses, on shares you sold this tax year from a general account.

Borrowings minus cash — what a company would still owe after emptying its bank account.

A speed test for debt. It tells you how many years of profit (EBITDA) it would take to pay off all their net debt. Lower is safer.

Profit after every cost, interest and tax — the bottom line that belongs to shareholders.

What you'd have left if you sold everything you track and paid off everything you owe.

Roughly what you can expect the next time dividends land. It is a projection built from each holding's dividend schedule, not confirmed cash.

What your NFTs would roughly fetch if you sold them at the cheapest price anyone is asking today. Rare items may be worth more; this deliberately doesn't guess.

Price movement that carries no information about the underlying business.

The return before inflation — the headline interest rate or percentage gain.

An account structure where a broker holds shares on the register on behalf of many customers at once.

The share of a property portfolio that's let to paying tenants.

Ongoing charges figure: a fund's yearly running costs, the manager's fee included, as a percentage of what you hold.

An open-ended investment company: a fund priced once a day at the value of its holdings, bought from and sold back to the manager.

For UK tax, a fund based outside the UK — including many ETFs traded in London.

Any payment to shareholders that isn't expected to repeat, such as a special dividend or a return of capital.

The fund's yearly fee. It comes out of the fund's own value bit by bit, so you never see a bill, but it reduces your return.

Whether a fund creates and cancels units as money comes and goes (open) or has a fixed number of shares (closed).

A brief process at the start of each trading session where the exchange collects orders and sets a single official opening price.

The cash a business actually brought in from trading, after paying staff, suppliers and tax.

Operating profit as a share of revenue — what's left after all the costs of running the business.

The standard type of share: one vote each, dividends only if the board declares one.

Holding cash instead of an investment, for however short a time.

Believing your information and judgement are better than they are.

The difference between where a stock closed and where it opens the next trading session.

Share price divided by earnings per share — what you pay for £1 of a year's profit.

How expensive the stock is compared to how much money it makes. It tells you how many years it would take to earn back your investment through profits alone.

The amount a bond repays at maturity — usually £100 per bond.

A fund that follows fixed rules — usually an index — instead of a manager's choices.

Income that arrives without you working for each payment, like dividends from shares you already own.

When the route prices take matters, not just where they start and finish.

The day the cash actually arrives in your account.

How often a company pays: quarterly, twice a year, monthly or once a year.

How much of its earnings a company hands out as dividends.

A fall measured from a high point to the lowest point before the next high.

The fixed value a stablecoin is meant to hold.

The P/E ratio but with a twist—it accounts for growth. A low P/E might be a trap if the company isn't growing. PEG fixes that.

The earliest age you can normally take money out of a personal pension.

A platform fee charged as a share of what you hold, so it grows as your pot grows.

A loss that never comes back, because the business behind the price was damaged for good.

The interest you can earn each year outside an ISA before tax is due, smaller for higher earners.

A tracker owning the actual shares in its index — all of them, or a representative sample.

What a broker or platform charges to hold your investments, separate from any fund's own charges.

The income your portfolio throws off relative to what it is worth today. Unlike Annual Yield — which uses what you paid — this moves whenever prices move, so a market fall pushes it up even though your income has not changed.

Single diagnostic score combining concentration, dividend safety, diversification, and sector coverage.

A 0–100 blend of four measures of how your portfolio is built, chosen and weighted by your investor profile.

An automated report view that summarizes trends, strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations.

A regular look at the same few figures on a set date, to notice what has changed since last time.

Flow diagram tracing portfolio value from holdings through to sectors and overall totals.

Breakdowns that show how portfolio weight changes by sector, cost, and current value.

Headline stat block showing total value, total cost, return and return yield for the whole portfolio.

Time series chart of portfolio value versus total cost.

News feed context layer that explains why each headline matters to your own holdings.

How much of your portfolio one holding takes up, as a share of the total.

Investing a fixed amount at regular intervals, so you buy more shares when prices are low and fewer when high.

What the metal in your coins, bars and jewellery is worth at today's price — before any dealer's margin.

The price an option's buyer pays its writer.

A fund or trust trading above the value of its holdings.

A summary of daily or period price moves across holdings.

An interactive candlestick-style line chart showing a single holding's historical closing price and volume, with toggleable technical overlays: Simple Moving Averages (SMA 20/50/200), Exponential Moving Averages (EMA 12/26), and Bollinger Bands (BB 20).

A fall in the share price. On an ex-dividend date, most of it is usually the dividend leaving the price.

The change in value from price moves alone, leaving out dividends.

A tracker that monitors target prices for each holding with progress indicators.

The secret that controls a crypto wallet. Whoever has it, or the seed phrase behind it, controls the funds.

How likely something is, as a number — the part of the future people try to measure.

Judging a decision by how it was made, separately from how it turned out.

A company's stated aim to hold or raise its dividend every year.

What your holdings are expected to pay you over the next twelve months.

The part of a home you actually own — what would be left if you sold it and paid off the mortgage.

The payout a UK REIT makes from its tax-exempt property profits, taxed as property income.

Kahneman and Tversky's account of how people really choose under risk: outcomes judged as gains or losses from a reference point, with losses weighing more.

The software rules of a blockchain: how tokens are created, how transactions are confirmed and who gets paid.

A percentage return advertised on crypto, usually paid in more tokens from new issuance or lending.

A small flat charge on larger trades in UK companies' shares, which funds the Takeover Panel.

What your money actually buys, rather than its number of pounds.

The right, but not the obligation, to sell an asset at a fixed price until expiry.

The screener's 0–100 ranking of a result by its yield, size, stability and trading volume.

The price currently displayed for a stock — typically the last trade or the mid price.

How much of their sales money they are plowing back into invention and new tech. High spend often means a focus on future growth.

Physical things with their own value — property, infrastructure, commodities.

The return after inflation — roughly the nominal return minus the inflation rate.

A gain or loss locked in by selling.

Trimming what has grown too large and topping up what's small, back toward your targets.

A trade list that turns the gap between your target sector mix and your actual holdings into concrete buy and trim amounts — or, set to Asset classes, the gap between how you want everything you own split (stocks, cash, crypto, property, pensions, bonds, metals, cards, other) and how it's split now.

Resetting a dividend to a lower level the business can afford, then growing from there.

Giving the latest events more weight than they deserve when judging what comes next.

The date the company checks its register to see who gets paid.

How long a price took to climb back to its previous high after a fall.

The ongoing dividend a board intends to keep paying, on its usual schedule.

Putting in a set amount on a schedule, often monthly.

Using a dividend to buy more shares instead of taking it as cash, so future dividends are paid on a slightly larger holding.

A real estate investment trust: a listed property company that must pay out most of its rental profits.

Your return minus a benchmark's over the same period.

An HMRC status for offshore funds that lets gains be taxed as capital gains rather than income.

Buying back an investment you've just sold.

The FCA's category for higher-risk investments, including most cryptoassets, that come with extra selling rules.

A company's full-year or half-year results, with the financial statements and usually the dividend.

How many weeks or months you have left until your target retirement date.

Profit earned on all the money tied up in a business, from both shareholders and lenders.

Your paper profit as a percentage. Despite sitting under a label reading 'Yield', this is a capital return figure, not a dividend yield — dividend income is measured separately by Annual Yield.

Everything customers paid a company over the period — the top line.

Income an investment trust holds back in good years so it can keep paying dividends in bad ones.

Keeping clients' investments and cash legally separate from a firm's own, so its creditors can't claim them.

The range of things that might happen to an investment, good and bad.

How big a fall you could live through without being forced to sell, set by your timeline and circumstances.

The Regulatory News Service, where UK-listed companies publish price-sensitive announcements.

A strict efficiency measure. It looks at profit relative to all the capital used in the business. Great for comparing similar companies.

A score for management. It shows how good they are at turning shareholders' money into more profit.

Shows how efficient the company was with shareholder money over the last year.

Similar to ROE but includes debt. It measures how efficiently the company uses ALL its money (debt + equity) to generate profit, so borrowing can't flatter it the way it can flatter ROE.

A bond fund continually selling bonds near maturity and buying longer ones.

Tied to the Retail Prices Index, one of the UK's measures of inflation.

A filter over the whole stock universe: set rules, get back the names that match.

An option to take a dividend as newly created shares instead of cash.

A group of companies that do similar things, such as utilities, banks or healthcare.

How many sectors you hold, and how evenly your money is spread across them.

Value-weighted price return for each sector (or currency) you hold, over the selected timeframe, with each group's contribution to the whole-portfolio return.

How much of your portfolio sits in one sector, as a percentage.

Holding your own crypto keys, rather than leaving tokens with an exchange.

The risk that bad years arriving early do lasting damage once money is being taken out.

The behind-the-scenes process of exchanging cash for shares that finalises a trade.

The day a trade is fully completed and ownership legally changes hands.

A single unit of ownership in a company — a small legal slice of the business itself.

A company buying its own shares and cancelling them, so each remaining share owns a little more.

A company combining several shares into one — a reverse split — which raises the price in proportion.

How many shares a company has in issue. Each one takes an equal slice of the profit.

How big this row is compared with the rest of the table.

How your wealth is split between investments, cash, crypto, property, pensions and everything else.

What the most recent trade actually happened at — not a valuation, just the last agreed price.

A company's official record of who legally owns its shares.

A company dividing each share into several, cutting the price in proportion without changing what you own.

Anyone who owns at least one share — with a legal claim on the business's profits and, usually, a vote.

How many shares of this company you own right now.

How much extra return the fund has earned for each unit of bumpiness. Higher means more reward for the risk taken; below 0 means it did worse than cash.

Borrowing shares, selling them, and aiming to buy them back more cheaply later.

A rising price forcing short sellers to buy back, which pushes the price higher still.

A heads-up that something important changed and needs review.

Add up the last N closing prices and divide by N. The line smooths out daily noise and shows the underlying direction a price has been trending. A rising SMA means the average price has been going up; a falling SMA means it has been going down.

A self-invested personal pension: a pension in which you choose the investments.

The difference between the price you expected and the price you actually got, caused by the market moving in the moment your order is processed.

Rules you set that are checked whenever the dashboard loads: a price or yield threshold on one holding, a criteria scan across every holding (yield, price, P/E, payout, dividend cover), or a threshold on your net worth, total assets, debts, debt to assets, any asset class's value or share of your assets, or a metal's price per troy ounce.

A one-off payment on top of the regular dividend, usually from surplus cash or the sale of part of the business.

The wholesale exchange rate between two currencies at a given moment.

A bet of an amount per point on an asset's price rising or falling, without owning it.

A composite score that rates a holding's income quality and risk on a 1-5 scale.

A token designed to hold a fixed value, usually one US dollar.

Locking up tokens to help run a proof-of-stake network, in return for newly created tokens.

The UK tax on buying shares in UK companies electronically, paid by the buyer.

The usual statistical measure of volatility: how widely returns spread around their average.

The loan of shares a short seller needs. It carries a fee and can be recalled.

A deep dive modal that expands a holding into panels that fit what it is. A share gets valuation, dividend, financials and performance panels; an ETF or fund gets fund facts, what it holds, returns and distributions; a coin gets its supply and trading figures; an index, currency or future gets its price, a description and the price chart.

A dividend paid automatically in new shares rather than cash, with no choice involved.

A regulated marketplace that matches buyers and sellers of listed shares — the LSE, the NYSE, and others.

A compact card that summarizes a single holding with key portfolio metrics.

A UK account in which dividends, interest and gains are free of UK tax, with a yearly limit on what goes in.

Something expected to keep its purchasing power over long periods, like gold.

A decision log, shown on the dashboard as Notes & ideas, where you write down why you made a decision while you still remember.

The fixed price at which an option lets its holder buy or sell.

Money already spent that can't be recovered, whatever you decide next.

The balance of buyers wanting in against sellers wanting out — the mechanical reason prices move at all.

How close the coin is to its cap. Near 100% means few new coins are left to be created.

Support is a floor the price keeps bouncing off; resistance is a ceiling it keeps hitting. When price breaks through resistance and holds above it, that level often becomes the new support. Moving averages (SMA 50, SMA 200) frequently act as dynamic support or resistance.

Looking only at the companies or funds that survived, which makes the past look better than it was.

A halt to trading in a share, or to buying and selling a fund, usually while something is resolved.

The bank that promises a synthetic fund the index's return.

A tracker holding other assets and using a swap with a bank to receive the index's return.

Risk that comes from the market as a whole, which diversification can't remove.

How many business days after a trade settlement takes — T+2 means two business days later.

Sortable table with one row per thing you own. On stocks alone it is the full holdings table (shares, price, cost, value, gain, dividends and yield); tick other asset classes (cash, crypto, precious metals, collectible cards, property, pensions and other assets) and it lists them all together with cost, value, gain and share columns.

The share of your portfolio you intend a holding or sector to have.

A slice of income taxed at one rate — basic, higher or additional.

In a pension, tax added back to what you pay in: at the basic rate, £80 from you becomes £100 invested.

One UK tax year (6 April to 5 April) at a glance: the dividends, capital gains and savings interest the app knows about outside ISAs and pensions, each against its allowance, with an estimate of the tax on what's above them. Choose this tax year or last; which account each holding and cash account sits in is set on the Portfolio page.

The dividends that count towards your dividend allowance and dividend tax for the year.

Total expense ratio: an older measure of a fund's yearly running costs, much the same as the OCF.

What the current month is expected to pay in total across your holdings.

The short code that identifies a listed company — AAPL, BARC, VOD.

How long you plan to hold an investment before you'll need the money.

A return that removes the effect of money going in and out, measuring how the investments themselves did.

When money goes into and comes out of an investment.

A unit recorded on a blockchain. Some act as currencies; some represent other things.

How far from its target a sector can drift before you'll act on it.

The biggest things the fund owns. If the top ten add up to a large share, a few companies drive much of the fund's return.

The share of a fund or index held in its ten largest companies.

Everything you own that SquirrelStocks knows about, added up in one number — before subtracting anything you owe.

The Balance Sheet widget's Assets view. Adds your holdings, cash, crypto, precious metals, collectible cards and everything else you enter on the Portfolio page — a home, a pension, bonds — into one total, with each part's share.

Uninvested money the app knows about: balances read from banks you've connected on the Portfolio page, plus any amounts you typed in yourself.

What you actually paid for the shares you still own. When you sell part of a position, the cost of those sold shares is removed so the figure only reflects what's still in your portfolio.

Every dividend you've logged, added up since you started. Unlike Annual Dividend this looks backwards at money actually received, and it includes payments from holdings you've since sold.

Everything you owe that you've told the app about.

Price change plus the dividends you received — the whole picture rather than half of it.

Share price change plus dividends paid — the full return to a shareholder over a period.

What your holdings would be worth if you sold everything at today's prices. It ignores cash accounts and any shares you've already sold.

A fund that copies an index rather than choosing its own holdings.

The gap between a fund's return and its index's return over a period.

How much a fund's gap from its index varies from one period to the next.

The day you actually placed and executed the trade — the price is fixed here.

Everything a trade costs: the dealing charge, the spread, stamp duty on UK shares and any currency fee.

The currency a share is priced in on its exchange — dollars in New York, pounds (quoted in pence) in London.

The set window during which an exchange is actually open for trading — for the LSE, 8am–4:30pm UK time on weekdays.

A short statement between results on how the current period is going.

Volume shows how many people were buying and selling on a given day. A price move on high volume is considered more significant and reliable than the same move on low volume. Big volume spikes often accompany major news events.

How much the fund has made or lost, income included, over different stretches of time.

The last twelve months of dividends actually paid, divided by today's share price.

What a fund pays to buy and sell its own holdings: commissions, spreads and taxes.

The return lost to the costs of buying and selling.

A broker export listing every movement of money — buys, sales, dividends, fees — as debits and credits.

The lower withholding rate a tax treaty gives residents of the other country.

How much of a portfolio is bought and sold over a year, as a share of its value.

Rules for funds sold to the public, limiting concentration, borrowing and counterparty risk.

The part of the future nobody can put a number on.

The asset a derivative's value is based on.

The income a fund expects to earn over the next twelve months after all its charges, as a percentage of its price.

Leaving currency movements in, so your return includes the exchange rate's move.

A gain on shares you still hold — on screen until you sell.

A paper loss on a holding you still own — it only becomes real if you sell.

How many dated things are coming up across your holdings — dividend dates, earnings and other scheduled events — over the next month.

The difference between what a share trades for and a careful estimate of what the business is actually worth.

A share that looks cheap on the numbers because the business behind it is shrinking.

A venture capital trust: a listed company investing in small unlisted UK businesses, with tax reliefs attached.

How much a price swings up and down around its average — the size of the bumps.

How much the fund's returns have bounced around. A higher figure means a bumpier ride.

The erosion a leveraged fund suffers when its index swings up and down.

The US form that says you're not a US person and claims your treaty rate on US dividends.

A parking space for ideas you haven't acted on yet.

A holding's share of the portfolio changing because its price moved differently from the rest.

Watchlist for stocks, crypto, precious metals and collectible cards you want to keep an eye on but don't own.

Taking money out of an investment or portfolio.

Tax a country takes from a dividend before it's paid to an investor who lives abroad.

Selling an option: taking the premium in exchange for the obligation to buy or sell if the buyer uses it.

The same dividend measured against what you actually paid, rather than today's price.

The return from buying a bond at today's price and holding it to the end, coupons and repayment included.

A share whose yield looks high only because its price has fallen, often ahead of a dividend cut.

Stocks come with a calculated fair value. Nothing else you own does, so for those you set the figure yourself, and the Fair Value Discounts widget shows how far today's value sits from it. It is your estimate, not ours, and not advice.