Why did we build this site?

There are a lot of great investing and personal finance sites on the web, but most of them assume you already have a certain level of experience, or even a certain vocabulary. InvestorWords.com provides all of the necessary keys for decoding what can often seem like an encrypted language, regardless of your investing experience. InvestorWords.com provides definitions for over 7,500 financial terms and includes over 60,000 links between related terms. The glossary is completely free to use. Whether you are a newcomer to investing or a financial professional, InvestorWords.com is your one-stop source for information about any financial term that you encounter. If you would like to contact us, click here.

Why is InvestorWords.com better than traditional print investing glossaries?

1. It's free.
2. Related terms have links between them, and the definitions are packed with linked terms for a more complete understanding.
3. It's updated frequently, so it always has the up-to-date terminology that you're looking for.

How do I use this site?

The top of each page of the glossary has a search box that lets you type in exactly what you are looking for, and at the bottom there is an alphabetical menu so you can quickly jump from one section of the glossary to another.

If you chose to use the search tool to find the term you wanted, you will be taken to a search results page which has a list of terms that matched your search. You can select one of the terms by clicking on it if it is what you were looking for, or you can modify your search phrase and search again.

If you chose to use the alphabetical menu to find the term you wanted, you will be taken to a page that lists all terms that begin with the letter you chose. You'll notice that if the list of terms is long, there will be a section at the top called "Jump To:". This enables you to quickly jump to the section of the long list that you want. Once you find the term you are looking for, just click on one to go directly to the definition.

Most definitions have links to other terms, so if you're not sure what a word in a definition means, just click on it to jump to that term. Hit the 'Back' button on your browser at any time to jump back to the last term you viewed. It's that simple.

We encourage you to bookmark our home page. This will make it easy for you to return in the future. If you have a page or site of your own that is related to investing or finance, feel free to link to us.

We recommend using InvestorWords.com in conjunction with our sister site, InvestorGuide.com, the leading online guide to investing, linking to all the best and most useful investing sites and providing top-notch educational content. Together, these sites provide you with a powerful tool for managing your financial decisions.

Why did my search return no results?

Make sure you spelled your search terms correctly. InvestorWords' proprietary search engine can handle common misspellings, but it can't work miracles.

Make sure you are searching for a financial term. If you encounter an unknown word in a financial document, it may not be an investor word - perhaps try a regular dictionary instead.

Make sure that the word you searched for is a financial term in general use. Many companies use an internal lingo of terms and phrases not adopted by the financial community at large.

Make sure you are searching for an English term. At this time, InvestorWords is an English only glossary.

The term you searched for may not be part of the InvestorWords glossary at this time. If you feel this is an omission on our part, please use the Contact Us form to let us know.

How can I use the InvestorWords search engine effectively?

It's simple to get great search results with InvestorWords - just type in the term you are looking for.  If the term appears in our drop down menu, simply click on it; otherwise, click 'Search' to view the results.

Tips for a better search:

• Enter search terms in their root form. For example, if you enter "liquid" you will get results such as liquid, illiquid, liquidate, liquidation, etc). Wildcards or special characters are not required by InvestorWords. Our search engine will automatically find all variations.
• Make your search as succinct as possible. Do not write questions or long sentences in the search box or you will likely get too many results back.
• Be as specific as possible. For example, enter "coupon bond" rather than just "bond".
• Use words likely to appear in the definition you want. For example, enter "early retirement" instead of "stop working before age 50".
• Do not worry about capitalization. The InvestorWords search engine is case-insensitive. Searching for "INstitUTioNaL bROkeRAge" is the same as searching for "institutional brokerage" or "INSTITUTIONAL BROKERAGE."
• If you are not sure exactly what term you are searching for, try our "By Subject" search. Simply click on the "Browse By Subject" button in the navigation bar and then select the subject you want to browse.

How should I use my search results?

If you select a term from our drop down menu, you will be taken directly to the definition for that term.  If you perform a search, however, the InvestorWords search engine always attempts to rank your search results in the most relevant order. There are at most three sections to your results:

• The first section is exact or nearly exact matches. We recommend you investigate these definitions first – they're probably just what you were looking for. However, your search may not have generated an exact or nearly exact match, in which case you should try the next section.
• The second section is for terms containing one or more words from your search request. We recommend you try this section if you did not get any exact or nearly exact matches. Terms in this section will likely be relevant to you.
• The third section is for terms which have definitions containing the term you searched for. To see this section, you must click on the link which says "Click here to see definition(s) containing 'your query'."  If you phrased your search in an unusual way you may find relevant terms here. This section also provides a great way to see how your search term is related to other financial fields.

If relevant, we will also display search results from our sister site, BusinessDictionary.com.  These results will be presented in the same order, and will specify that they are coming from BusinessDictionary.

What else is there to know?

InvestorWords.com has received several awards, including CNBC’s Power Lunch Site of the Day and Yahoo’s Incredibly Useful Site of the Day. High-profile websites that license InvestorWords.com for their own users include E*Trade, Credit Suisse First Boston, Pioneer Funds, Unisys, and over 100 other leading companies. For more information on how to license InvestorWords.com for your own site, please visit our licensing section.

InvestorGuide.com, the leading online guide to investing and the publisher of InvestorWords.com, is a privately held, Virginia-based company. It also publishes the InvestorGuide Daily, a daily investing newsletter with over 35,000 subscribers, the InvestorGuide Stock of the Day, a newsletter published everyday covering stocks that are making the news, and the InvestorGuide Weekly, a weekly investing newsletter received by over 145,000 people.

How can I reach someone at InvestorWords?

If you have questions about the site or if you just want to tell us how we're doing, please e-mail us at iwfeedback@investorwords.com or use this form.