A call is an option that grants its owner the right, but not the obligation, to buy a given stock at a given price before expiration.

When you sell a stock for a profit, you have capital gains. In the United States, capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than regular income.

When you sell a stock for a loss, you have a capital loss. Capital losses can be used to offset capital gains for income tax purposes.

Cash flow differs from profit. It is possible to be profitable but have negative cash flow, or to be unprofitable and have positive cash flow. The reason is that certain cash expenses, known as capital expenditures, are not counted as expenses on an income statement. While profit is important, a business that fails to produce positive cash flow will eventual run out of money and go bankrupt.

A closely held company is a company in which there are few shareholders. An example would be a family business in which the family members still control the vast majority of shares.

Commission is the amount a broker takes per trade. Ameritrade, the online broker, for example, takes $8.99 per buy or sell.

When used in the financial world, "conservative" has nothing to do with political ideology. Instead, it refers to an individual who is unwilling to take much risk. Conservative investments are safer, more reliable investments, the downside of which is that they are unlikely to produce outsized gains.

Oftentimes, you will hear that a given sector or industry is experiencing consolidation. This means that companies are merging or buying one another out, thereby consolidating, and reducing the number of competing firms within the sector or industry.

Counter-cyclical stocks perform best when the economy is in the later stages of the business cycle.

When an investor writes call options for a stock that he owns, these are considered covered calls. Call writing literally creates options contracts out of thin air and sells them to a market maker or specialist, who then can sell them to interested investors.

When an investor sells losing stocks with the belief that they are going to go lower, he is said to be cutting losses. Alternatively, some investment philosophies mandate the cutting of losses once a stock drops a set percentage below your buy point. To adherents of these systems, it doesn't matter what your feelings are for the stock's future - you should always sell.

Cyclical companies do best when the economy is in the early stages of the business cycle. Most companies are cyclical.

Personal income beyond what is needed for life's basic expenses.

Another term for dividends.

Most financial advisors believe that it is best to have a diversified portfolio - i.e. a portfolio that does not contain several stocks of a similar nature. A classically diversified portfolio might contain a healthcare stock, a technology stock, a financial stock, a retail stock, an industrial stock, and a consumer staple stock.

Dividend yield can be calculated by dividing a stock's annual dividend by its current share price. This gives you the percent of the share price that is earned back in the form of dividends in one year.

Dividends are distributions of company earnings to shareholders. A company declares a dividend amount on a per-share basis, and mails it to shareholders. Normally, dividends are paid quarterly (four times a year).

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is the most famous approximation of the overall stock market. It consists of 30 stocks selected by Dow Jones (the publishing company responsible for The Wall Street Journal) that are chosen for their representation of the market as a whole. When people say, "The market was up by 100 points today," they are referring to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, also known as "The Dow" or abbreviated "DJIA."

When Wall Street analysts change their opinion on a stock in a negative direction, they issue a downgrade.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. EBIDTA (actually pronounced like a word, "ee-bit-dah") is one of the most infamous words in Wall Street gibberish.