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Baby Bond - Bond with a face value of less than the traditional $1,000.
Back Office - Term which refers to the administrative and clerical departments within a brokerage firm.
Balance Sheet - Key financial statement showing a corporation’s assets, liabilities and shareholder capital.
Balanced Fund - Mutual fund that invests in a portfolio balanced between equity, such as stocks, and debt instruments, such as bonds.
Bank Quality - Term describing the highest quality of credit-worthiness by an issuer of bonds or other debt securities; debt rating of BBB or higher by Standard & Poor's or Moody's.
Basis Point - One hundredth of a percent; generally used to describe changes in bond yields. For example, a bond yield that changes from 6.01% to 7.11% is said to have gained 110 basis points.
Bear Market - Popular term describing a period where general market conditions are marked by declining securities prices. (See "Bull Market")
Bear Spread - In options, a strategy employing two contracts designed to profit from a drop in a stock’s price.
Bearer Bond - Class of bonds which are not registered in the name of any particular owner, rather they are the property of the party which holds physical possession of the bond certificate. As such, bearer bonds pay interest and principal to whomever "bears" the bond itself, much in the way cash in your wallet is a "bearer" certificate. Bearer bonds are rarely issued any more by U.S. corporations, and are more likely to be the subject of a Hollywood cops-and-robbers script than your portfolio.
Beneficial Owner - Person or party that really owns a security or "benefits" from the ownership. The term is used most often to describe the real, or beneficial owners of securities when those securities are held in "street name" in the person’s brokerage or bank account.
Best Efforts - In an underwriting of securities, the term refers to an agreement between the issuer and the underwriter allowing the underwriter to call off the offering if it cannot sell the minimum agreed amount of securities.
Beta - Measurement of the historical volatility of a stock, portfolio or mutual fund relative to the general market as measured by the S&P 500 stock index. A beta value greater than 1.0 represents greater volatility than the general market; less than 1.0 represents less volatility than the general market.
Bid - Highest price at which a dealer or market maker will purchase a security. (See "Ask," "Offer," "Quote")
Big Board - Nickname for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
Block - Transaction involving a large number of shares or other units of a security. Blocks may vary in size depending on the liquidity of the security traded and the number of shares in the block transaction. Often however, blocks are transacted at a discount to the current market as an accepted cost of trading a large number of shares "away" from the market.
Blowout - Slang term referring to a party selling a large number of shares into the market without regard for the demand for shares or potential effect on the market price of the security.
Blue Chip - Financially strong, established company.
Blue Sky - Refers to securities registration or broker licensing, or the securities regulatory authorities of individual states. For example, if a stock broker in the state of New York has complied with licensing or registration requirements for Florida, Texas and Illinois, then he or she is said the be "blue skied" in those states and may solicit sales from account holders residing therein. Blue sky often is referred to in private placements, IPOs and secondary underwritings to designate the states in which securities may be sold. The term also is frequently used with many securities quoted on the OTC Bulletin Board or the Pink Sheets.
Board of Directors - Persons elected by a company’s shareholders to make important decisions such as electing officers of the company. Directors are also considered control persons and as such, are generally restricted from transacting in the company’s securities without proper reporting.
Boiler Room - Term often used to describe a brokerage firm or other sales organization where investors are aggressively solicited over the telephone; often associated with high-pressure telephone sales tactics in connection with penny stocks and other risky investments.
Bond - Debt security with a maturity of greater than one year; a corporate IOU. Many different kinds of bonds are available to investors, such as convertible bonds, which may entitle a holder to shares of an issuer's stock. Bond credit-worthiness is commonly rated by Standard and Poor's and Moody’s investor services. (See "Baby Bond," "Bearer Bond," "Bond Fund," "Corporate Bond," "Coupon Bond," "Junk Bond," "Zero Coupon Bond").
Bond Fund - Type of mutual fund whose aim is to provide stable income with minimal risk. It may invest in preferred stocks as well as corporate, government or municipal bonds.
Bond Power - Form used to transfer ownership of a bond.
Book Value - Balance sheet measure of a company’s net worth. Generally calculated from total assets minus total liabilities, including any preferred shares, and often expressed as a per-share value when divided by the company’s number of outstanding common shares. Although used as a measure of a company’s fundamental net worth, it may prove deceptive. A company’s assets as expressed on its "books" often includes arbitrary adjustment for depreciation and does not take into account their fair market value if they were to be sold.
Boston Stock Exchange (BSE) - Regional stock exchange where shares of securities often traded on other U.S. exchanges, including NYSE, AMEX and Nasdaq, are traded.
Branch Manager - The person managing a branch office of a brokerage firm and supervising the activities of its affiliated stockbrokers.
Breadth - Comparison of issues traded on a stock exchange on a given day to the total number of issues listed for trading. Market trends are considered confirmed only upon reasonable breadth in the market.
Breakeven - Point at which neither a profit or loss exists. The term is applied in various ways. In options, for example, it is sometimes synonymous with "at the money," whereas "in the money" refers to a potential profit position and "out of the money" a potential loss.
Breakout - Used in technical analysis of securities, referring to a pattern where the price of a security changes significantly, either up or down, from a previous range where the price held relatively steady.
Bridge Loan - Temporary loan used to provide a company with a portion of working capital while arrangements for permanent financing are executed. In initial public offerings, the lead underwriter often will provide a bridge loan to the company, secured by shares of the company’s stock. If the IPO is successful, the underwriter will typically be repaid its bridge loan through the sale of the security's shares in the IPO, and often at a much higher price.
Broker - Stockbroker; any person who has been duly registered by the National Association of Securities Dealers and or a state’s securities regulation authority to take customer orders or to solicit the sale of a security. Brokers are also called Registered Representatives, as it is most common to become a broker by passing the NASD Series 7 examination.
Broker Loan - Rate of interest charged by a brokerage firm to its customers for securities bought on margin.
Bucket Shop - Slang term for a disreputable brokerage firm that employs high-pressure sales tactics to peddle risky stocks and/or routinely engage in illegal practices, including holding customer orders until the firm can transact at a price other than the one it reported to the investor.
Bull Market - Popular term describing a period where general market conditions are marked by rising securities prices. (See "Bear Market")
Bull Spread - In options, a strategy employing two contracts designed to profit from an increase in a stock’s price.
Bulletin Board - More correctly called the NASD OTC Bulletin Board (OTCBB), a National Association of Securities Dealers quotation service for "unlisted securities" not traded "over the counter" and not on any of the three major U.S. stock exchanges. The OTCBB lists some 7,000 securities of mostly small corporations, some with little or no operating business.
Buy In - A person or institution is forced to buy a security because of an inability to deliver the shares or make "good delivery" from a previous sale of said shares. Buy ins are often associated with short sellers that choose or are forced to buy back underlying shares due to margin requirements or other circumstances. (See "Short Squeeze")
Buy Order - Any request for a broker or other fiduciary to buy a security on behalf of a client.
Buy Recommendation - Analysts or other financial editors publish a recommendation to purchase a security. | 
