The words on the screens

Every term as the desk uses it, one paragraph each, with the screen it lives on. Where a number is computed, the arithmetic is here.

Ownership and filings

13F (Funds). The quarterly holdings report a US investment manager with more than a hundred million dollars files with the SEC, due forty-five days after the quarter ends. It lists US long positions only: no shorts, no cash, no non-US listings, and it is a snapshot as of the quarter's last day.

13D and 13G (Funds). The forms filed within days of crossing five percent of a company's shares: 13D when the holder may seek to influence the company, 13G when it holds passively.

Form 4 (Desk · Home, the ticker page). The SEC form an officer, director or ten-percent holder files within two business days of buying or selling the company's stock. Cluster buy: several insiders buying in the same short window, which the desk marks on the insider tape.

PTR (Capitol). A periodic transaction report, the form a member of Congress files within forty-five days of a trade over a thousand dollars, with the amount as a band rather than a figure. The lag column is the days between the trade and the disclosure.

CIK (Funds). The SEC's number for a filer, which is how a fund is added to your list.

The options tape (Flow)

Open interest is the number of contracts standing at a strike. Put/call on open interest is total put open interest over total call open interest; put/call on volume the same on today's traded contracts.

Put wall and call wall: the strike below spot with the most put open interest, and the strike above spot with the most call open interest, within the ninety-day window.

Expected move: the move the options market has priced to the nearest expiry, from the at-the-money straddle, shown as a percent of spot with the expiry date.

IV30: implied volatility thirty days out, annualised. Skew: the implied volatility of a put against a call at the same distance from spot; positive when puts are dearer.

Unusual strikes: today's volume at least twice the standing open interest, with real premium; positions that did not exist yesterday. OI build: open interest against the previous day's snapshot on disk.

Short interest (Short)

Short interest: open short positions at the settlement date, from FINRA's consolidated report, twice a month, published about nine days after settlement.

Days to cover: short interest divided by average daily volume; how many days of normal trading it would take to buy the short position back.

Short-volume ratio: the share of one day's off-exchange volume that was marked short, from FINRA's daily file. Forty to fifty percent is normal market-making; the signal is a change against a name's own twenty-day average. It is flow, not open positions, and the desk keeps it on its own side of the screen.

Macro (Macro)

2s10s: the ten-year Treasury yield minus the two-year, in percentage points; negative means the curve is inverted.

10Y breakeven: the ten-year Treasury yield minus the ten-year inflation-protected yield; the inflation the bond market has priced. 5y5y forward: the same, for the five years starting five years from now. 10Y real yield: the inflation-protected ten-year itself.

OAS: option-adjusted spread, the extra yield a corporate bond index pays over Treasuries, high yield and investment grade on separate cards.

Delta on a card: the change over about a month. The sparkline is two years.

Risk (Risk)

Beta: how much the book moves for a one percent move in its index, from the last year of daily closes; 0.5 means a one percent index day is half a percent here.

Volatility: the annualised standard deviation of daily returns; a normal day is about that figure divided by sixteen.

Max drawdown: the worst fall from a peak in the past year.

Tracks index: the correlation of the book's daily returns with the index's; the square of it is the share of daily movement the index explains.

The five percent line: beta times five percent times the account, what a five percent index day costs by that estimate.

Leverage: positions at full underlying value over the account; futures count at underlying value, so a leveraged book shows more than the account.

The ticker page

DCF sandbox: a discounted cash flow, seeded from the provider's statements, every input yours to change; it needs a data provider key.

Street view: the average analyst target and the count of strong buy, buy, hold, sell and strong sell, from the free feed or the provider.

Receipt (Chain): how firm a link on a value chain is: disclosed in a filing, on record, or reported.