InvestorWords.com - Investing Glossary

Funny Definitions

Our premier glossaries, InvestorWords.com and BusinessDictionary.com, have received high acclaim for providing the most clear, concise, and comprehensive financial and business terms and definitions online. We realize, however, that many of these definitions still have room for "interpretation".

Take a look below at the amusing takes we found for a number of popular investing terms, or visit our sister site BusinessDictionary.com to see some funny business definitions!

accountant	A person who works with numbers but lacks the personality to be an economist.
bank	A place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it. (Bob Hope)
bargain	Something you can't use offered at a price you can't resist. (Ned Kelly)
broke	What you are after working with a financial advisor.
budget	A mathematical system designed to remind you that you can't afford the kind of living you've grown accustomed to.
bull market	A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.
bull	What your broker uses to explain why your mutual funds tanked last quarter.
capitalism	Man exploiting man, as opposed to socialism, which is the reverse.
charity	Something that begins at home, and usually stays there.
convenience fee	Fee.
credit	The preferred method of acquiring money for people who are too timid to steal and too proud to beg.
derivatives	Financial weapons of mass destruction. (Warren Buffett)
earmarxist	A congressman or senator who adds earmarks to congressional bills. (American Dialect Society)
economist	An expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
financial planner	A person whose phone has been disconnected.
forger	A person who gives checks a bad name.
home	A real estate agent's word for a house. (Robert Hirst)
income tax	Capital punishment.
inflation	A situation in which no one has enough money because everyone has too much money.
inheritance	Will-gotten gains.
loanation	Money given, typically to a close relative, which the provider considers a loan and which the recipient considers a donation.
lottery	A tax on the gullible.
market correction	The event that occurs the day after you buy.
money	The most efficient labor-saving device ever invented.
poverty	Having too much month left at the end of the money.
power	The only narcotic regulated by the SEC rather than the FDA.
quarter	A dollar, after taxes.
repossession	What happens if you don't pay your exorcist.
retirement	The point at which one stops living at work and starts working at life.
Social Security	A federally mandated pyramid scheme.
spendthrift	A person who considers it a sin to die rich.
tax refund	A tactic devised by politicians to give you back some of your own money in such a way that you are supposed to think it's a gift.
taxation	An art which consists of plucking the goose to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hiss. (Jean Baptiste Colbert)
value investing	The art of buying low and selling lower.

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