Reference

G: Glossary Terms

Definitions of every Swoopr Investment glossary term starting with "G", from stock and crypto trading terminology to order types, risk management, and DeFi.

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Key Takeaways

Direct answer: This page lists the 358 Swoopr Investment glossary terms that start with "G", each with a short, plain-language definition and a link to the fuller guide where one exists.

By Swoopr Editorial Team

Published July 26, 2026 · Updated August 19, 2026

AI-assisted content · Swoopr Investment is responsible for the final published article.

G

growth stockStocks: A share priced on expected future expansion in revenue or earnings rather than on current cash generation, so it usually trades at high multiples of sales or profit and pays little or no dividend. Because most of the value sits in distant cash flows, the price is highly sensitive to revisions in expected growth and to changes in discount rates.
good-til-canceledStocks: A time in force that keeps an instruction working across sessions until it executes or the trader withdraws it. Brokers apply their own maximum lifetime, commonly a few months, and adjust or cancel resting interest around corporate actions such as splits and dividends. A forgotten resting order can fill on a price spike long after the original reasoning changed.
good-til-dateStocks: A time in force that keeps an instruction working until a specified expiry, after which the venue or broker cancels any unexecuted balance automatically. It sits between a day order and an open-ended one, giving a bounded window that can be matched to an event horizon such as an earnings release without leaving the instruction alive indefinitely.
good-faith violationStocks: A cash-account infraction that occurs when a security bought with unsettled sale proceeds is sold before those proceeds actually settle, meaning the purchase was never paid for with settled money. Brokers track these under Federal Reserve Regulation T, and a defined number of them within a rolling period results in the account being limited to settled funds.
gamma squeezeStocksOptions: A rapid underlying move potentially amplified by option-related hedging as dealers adjust delta on large short-gamma exposures; actual dealer positioning is often inferred, not directly observed.
gross profitStocks: Revenue minus cost of goods sold or cost of revenue, showing profit before operating expenses, interest, and taxes. Full guide →
gross marginStocks: Gross profit divided by revenue, expressing how much revenue remains after direct product or service costs.
golden ratioStocksCrypto: The proportion of roughly 1.618, the value approached by the ratio of consecutive Fibonacci numbers, whose reciprocal is roughly 0.618. Technical analysts derive retracement and extension levels from it and from related values. Its use in markets is a convention adopted because many participants watch the same levels, not a demonstrated property of price series.
gravestone dojiStocksCrypto: A candle with a long upper shadow, little or no lower shadow, and an open and close at or very near the session low, leaving the body as a line at the bottom. It shows an advance during the period that was entirely given back, read as rejection of higher prices, and it carries most weight after an extended rally. Full guide →
gap tradingStocksCrypto: Trading the price difference between one session's close and the next session's open, either by expecting that difference to close (fading it) or by expecting continuation in its direction. Such openings arise from news, earnings, or overnight flows while the regular market is shut. Because no trading occurred inside the void, there is little prior price structure to guide stop placement.
grid tradingStocksCrypto: A strategy that places a ladder of buy and sell orders at set price intervals to profit from price oscillation inside a range.
gross exposureStocksCrypto: The sum of the absolute values of long and short positions, measuring total capital at risk before offsetting opposite directions.
gamma exposureStocksOptions: The aggregate rate at which dealers' hedges change as the underlying moves, driven by the gamma of the option positions they hold. When dealers are net long gamma they buy dips and sell rallies to stay hedged, which dampens moves. When they are net short gamma they trade with the move, amplifying it. Estimates are inferred from open interest plus assumptions about who holds each side.
gross domestic productStocksCrypto: The total market value of final goods and services produced within a country's borders over a period, the broadest single measure of economic output. It can be computed by adding spending (consumption, investment, government purchases, and net exports), by summing income earned, or by totaling value added across industries. In the United States it is published quarterly in successive estimates that revise as more source data arrives.
GDP deflatorStocksCrypto: A broad price index derived by dividing output at current prices by output at base-period prices and multiplying by 100. Unlike a fixed-basket consumer measure it covers everything an economy produces, including investment goods and government services, and its composition shifts as the mix of production changes. It excludes imports, so it can diverge from consumer inflation when import prices move sharply.
genesis blockCrypto: The first block of a blockchain, serving as the starting reference for the chain's history.
gas feeCrypto: The fee paid to have a blockchain network process and include a transaction, which rises during network congestion or for more computationally intensive smart-contract interactions. Full guide →
gas limitCrypto: The maximum gas units a user authorizes a transaction to consume or the protocol permits in a block, depending on context.
gas priceCrypto: The price paid per unit of gas under legacy or network-specific fee mechanisms; EIP-1559 transactions separate base and priority fee concepts.
governance tokenCrypto: A token that grants voting, proposal, delegation, or related governance rights within a protocol or decentralized organization.
genesis allocationCrypto: The distribution of tokens established at network genesis or contract launch before subsequent emissions and market transfers.
governance rightsCrypto: The powers a token confers over how a protocol is run, typically proposing and voting on parameter changes, treasury spending, upgrades, and the composition of any council or multisig. Voting weight usually scales with the amount held or locked. These powers are not ownership of the protocol's assets and not a claim on its revenue unless the design explicitly creates one.
governance proposalCrypto: A formal request to change protocol parameters, spend treasury assets, upgrade contracts, or take another governance action.
governance attackCrypto: An attempt to use borrowed, purchased, delegated, or compromised voting power to pass changes that harm the protocol or redirect assets.
gambler's fallacyStocksCrypto: Belief that independent random events must self-correct in the short run, so that a run of one outcome makes the opposite outcome more likely next. A fair coin has no memory, and neither does any process whose successive outcomes are genuinely independent. Applied to markets it produces the assumption that an asset is due to bounce simply because it has fallen several sessions running, which mistakes a price history for a constraint on future probability.
goodwillStocks: An acquisition accounting asset representing the excess purchase price over the fair value of identifiable net assets acquired. Full guide →
guidanceStocks: A company's own forward-looking outlook for financial or operating performance, usually expressed as a range, target, or qualitative expectation.
greenshoeStocks: Over-allotment option in an underwriting agreement that lets underwriters buy additional shares from the issuer at the offering price for a limited period after pricing. Underwriters typically sell more shares than the base deal, creating a short position; if the stock trades up they exercise the option to cover it, and if it trades down they buy in the open market instead, which supports the price. The name comes from the first company whose offering used the structure.
gapStocksCrypto: Discontinuity between one interval's price range and the next, where the open lies entirely above the prior high or below the prior low, leaving a price band in which nothing traded. Gaps form when information arrives while continuous trading is closed, and in markets that run continuously they mainly appear at weekly reopens. They are commonly classed as breakaway, runaway, or exhaustion by where they occur in a move, and a later move back through the empty band is called filling the gap.
gammaCryptoStocksOptions: An option Greek measuring how delta changes as the underlying price changes. Full guide →
GEXStocksOptions: Gamma exposure, an estimate of the aggregate gamma that option dealers hold across an underlying's open interest, usually expressed as the change in dealer hedging requirement per one percent move in price. When dealers are net long gamma, hedging means selling into strength and buying weakness, which tends to dampen movement; when they are net short, hedging pushes in the same direction as the move. Estimates rest on assumptions about which side of each contract dealers hold, which is not directly observable.
GDPStocksCrypto: Gross domestic product, the total market value of final goods and services produced within a country's borders during a period. It can be measured by adding expenditure (consumption, investment, government spending, and net exports), by summing value added across producers, or by totaling incomes earned. Real GDP adjusts the nominal figure for price changes so growth reflects volume rather than inflation. United States estimates are published quarterly and revised as more source data arrives. Full guide →
gasCrypto: The unit used by Ethereum and EVM networks to measure computational and storage work consumed by a transaction or smart-contract execution.
gaugeStocksCrypto: A reward-allocation mechanism that directs token emissions toward selected liquidity pools or markets, often influenced by governance voting.
greedStocksCrypto: The behavioral state in which the prospect of further gain overrides a plan's exit rules. It appears as enlarging a winning position beyond its intended size, moving a profit target further out without new evidence, or adding leverage after a run of wins. Sentiment gauges and positioning data measure it only indirectly. Its practical cost is that risk grows fastest at exactly the point where the remaining opportunity is narrowing.
Gap (Earnings Gap, Gap Up, Gap Down)Stocks: A difference between one period's closing price and the next period's opening price with no trading in between: a gap up opens higher, a gap down opens lower. Earnings announcements are a common cause.
Gossip ProtocolCrypto: A peer-to-peer message propagation method in which nodes relay transactions, blocks, and consensus messages to neighboring peers.
GPU MiningCrypto: Proof-of-work mining using graphics processors, historically common for algorithms suited to parallel computation.
GweiCrypto: A denomination equal to one billionth of an ether, commonly used to quote Ethereum gas prices.
Governance ValueCrypto: Economic or strategic value attributed to a token's voting or control rights over protocol parameters, treasury, upgrades, or fee policies.
Guardian RoleCrypto: A limited emergency authority that can pause, veto, or otherwise protect a protocol under predefined conditions without necessarily having full governance power.
GameFiCrypto: The combination of blockchain games with tokenized assets, financial incentives, trading, lending, or staking mechanics.
Gaming TokenCrypto: A cryptoasset used within or around a blockchain game for payments, rewards, governance, ownership, or trading.
Google Trends SignalCrypto: Search-interest data used as a proxy for public attention to a cryptoasset or topic, requiring normalization and awareness of geographic and sampling limits.
Governance BribeCrypto: A direct or protocol-mediated incentive offered in exchange for governance votes or delegated voting power.
Governance CaptureCrypto: A condition where one entity or coordinated group acquires enough lasting influence to dominate protocol decisions.
Governance DelegateCrypto: A participant authorized by token holders to vote on their behalf in protocol governance.
Governance ForumCrypto: A discussion platform where protocol proposals, parameter changes, grants, and community decisions are debated before or alongside formal voting.
Governance TimelockCrypto: A delay between governance approval and execution intended to provide time for review, exit, or emergency response.
Governance-Key RiskCrypto: Security risk created when a small set of keys or signers can alter protocol parameters or upgrades through governance privileges.
Grant ProgramCrypto: A protocol-funded process that distributes treasury assets to developers, researchers, educators, or ecosystem projects under specified criteria.
Grinding AttackCrypto: An attack that repeatedly searches controllable protocol inputs to bias randomness, leader selection, or another consensus outcome.
GuardianCrypto: A person, key, contract, or service authorized to participate in smart-wallet recovery or emergency security actions.
Gauge VoteCrypto: A governance vote allocating future protocol incentives among liquidity pools, validators, or other targets.
Geographic MixStocks: The distribution of a company's revenue, profit, assets, or customers across countries or regions.
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)(GRR) Stocks: A retention metric measuring revenue retained from an existing customer cohort before counting expansion revenue.
Growth CapExStocks: Capital spending intended primarily to expand capacity, products, locations, or future revenue rather than merely maintain current operations. Full guide →
Guidance CutStocks: A downward revision by management to previously issued outlook for a future financial or operating metric.
Guidance RaiseStocks: An upward revision by management to previously issued outlook for a future financial or operating metric.
Guidance ReaffirmationStocks: Management's statement that previously issued outlook remains unchanged after new results or developments.
Gas AbstractionCrypto: Allowing users to pay transaction costs in alternative tokens or through sponsors rather than requiring the chain's native gas asset directly.
Gas SponsorshipCrypto: A model where an application, protocol, or third party pays blockchain transaction fees on behalf of the end user.
General-Purpose RollupCrypto: A rollup supporting many unrelated applications and smart contracts rather than a single application.
Good-Til-Canceled (GTC)(GTC) StocksCrypto: A time-in-force instruction keeping an eligible order active until it executes, is canceled, or reaches the broker's maximum duration.
Gamma Exposure (GEX)(GEX) StocksOptions: An estimate of aggregate option gamma exposure across strikes and expirations, often used to infer how dealer hedging may interact with underlying price moves; methodologies vary.
Gamma Flip(zero gamma) StocksOptions: A modeled transition in aggregate dealer gamma from positive to negative or vice versa around a specified underlying price.
Gamma ScalpingStocksOptions: A hedging strategy that repeatedly adjusts the underlying position against a long-gamma options position to monetize realized movement relative to option cost and friction.
Gamma-NeutralStocksOptions: A position structured so net gamma is near zero, reducing sensitivity of delta to small underlying price changes.
GreeksStocksOptions: Sensitivity measures describing how an option's modeled value changes with underlying price, time, volatility, rates, and other inputs.
Gap RiskStocksCrypto: The risk that price jumps between tradable levels, causing stops or hedges to execute materially away from intended prices.
Geometric Mean ReturnStocksCrypto: The compounded average return per period calculated from the product of one plus each periodic return.
Global Minimum-Variance Portfolio(GMV) StocksCrypto: The lowest-variance portfolio available from the specified asset universe under the optimization constraints, without targeting a return level.
Gradient BoostingStocksCrypto: An ensemble method that adds weak models sequentially to minimize a chosen loss function, often using decision trees.
Grid SearchStocksCrypto: Testing a predefined Cartesian grid of parameter combinations.
Gross LeverageStocksCrypto: Gross notional exposure divided by portfolio equity or net asset value.
Going PrivateStocks: A transaction that removes a publicly traded company from public ownership, usually through an acquisition, tender offer, or controlling-holder transaction.
Gray MarketStocks: Unofficial or limited trading interest in a security before formal exchange trading or outside standard listed venues, with meaning varying by market.
Greenshoe Option(over-allotment option) Stocks: An over-allotment option allowing underwriters to buy additional shares from the issuer or selling holders to help meet excess demand and facilitate stabilization.
Gap and GoStocksCrypto: Trader shorthand for a stock that opens with a substantial gap and continues in the same direction rather than quickly retracing the gap.
Gap FadeStocksCrypto: A strategy or price behavior that moves against the direction of an opening gap, seeking or producing partial or full gap retracement.
Gap FillStocksCrypto: A move in which price trades back through a prior gap area toward the preceding session's close or other gap boundary. Full guide →
Garman-Klass VolatilityStocksCrypto: A historical-volatility estimator using open, high, low, and close prices to improve statistical efficiency under model assumptions.
Golden CrossStocksCrypto: A widely followed bullish moving-average crossover, commonly defined as the 50-day moving average crossing above the 200-day moving average.
GutsOptions: An options strategy built from a long (or short) in-the-money call and an in-the-money put on the same underlying and expiration but different strikes; economically similar to a strangle but built from ITM rather than OTM legs, so it costs more premium and carries more built-in intrinsic value.
Gamma RiskOptions: The risk that a position's delta will change rapidly as the underlying price moves, most pronounced in short options positions near expiration or near the strike, where small price moves can sharply increase directional exposure and hedging costs. Full guide →
goldilocks economyStocksCrypto: An economic environment often described as "not too hot, not too cold" (moderate GDP growth, low unemployment, and low, stable inflation) that lets a central bank keep policy accommodative or neutral without stoking overheating, historically associated with strong, low-volatility performance in both equities and bonds. Full guide →
GDPNowStocksCrypto: A "nowcasting" model published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta that produces a running, frequently updated estimate of current-quarter real GDP growth by aggregating incoming monthly economic data using a methodology similar to the Bureau of Economic Analysis's own GDP calculation, giving traders a real-time growth signal well before the official GDP release. Full guide →
Gain-to-Pain RatioStocksCrypto: A performance measure, popularized by trader Jack Schwager, calculated as the sum of all periodic returns divided by the absolute value of the sum of only the negative periodic returns, weighting risk purely by realized losses rather than overall volatility. Full guide →
Give-Up TradeStocksFutures: An arrangement in which one broker executes an order for a client whose account is actually held and cleared at a different firm, then "gives up" the trade to that clearing firm for settlement and record-keeping.
Good-Til-Date Order(GTD, GTD order) StocksOptionsFuturesCrypto: A time-in-force instruction that keeps an order working until a specific date and time the trader sets, after which the exchange or broker automatically cancels any unfilled portion. Full guide →
Grantor TrustStocks: A legal structure used by some commodity and currency ETFs in which the trust holds the physical asset directly and each share represents a fractional, undivided interest in that specific asset.
Gartley Pattern(Gartley 222) StocksCrypto: A five-point harmonic reversal pattern (X-A-B-C-D) whose swing legs must fall within specific Fibonacci ratios of one another, most notably a B point that retraces 61.8% of the XA leg, used to anticipate a turning point at point D.
Guppy Multiple Moving Average(GMMA) StocksCrypto: A trend-analysis method developed by Daryl Guppy that plots two groups of exponential moving averages, a short-term group (typically 3-15 periods) and a long-term group (typically 30-60 periods), to visualize the interaction between traders and investors.
Gator OscillatorStocksCrypto: A histogram indicator built from the Alligator indicator's three lines that shows the degree of convergence or divergence between them, helping traders gauge whether the market is trending or consolidating.
gas griefingCrypto: An attack pattern where a malicious actor causes a transaction or contract call to consume excessive gas or fail in a way that wastes the victim's gas without directly stealing funds, often used to disrupt a protocol's function such as a cross-chain message or liquidation.
Gift TaxStocks: A federal tax on the transfer of property (including securities) by gift, generally the giver's responsibility rather than the recipient's; gifts up to an annual per-recipient exclusion amount don't require a gift tax return, and amounts above it apply against the giver's lifetime exemption rather than triggering tax immediately in most cases. Full guide →
Gross Rent Multiplier(GRM) Stocks: The gross rent multiplier is a quick valuation metric comparing a property's price to its gross, pre-expense annual rental income, used to screen deals before deeper underwriting. A lower GRM suggests a property is cheaper relative to its rent roll, but because it ignores operating expenses, vacancy, and financing costs, it is a rough screening tool rather than a substitute for cap rate or cash-on-cash return analysis.
Ground LeaseStocks: A ground lease is a long-term land lease, often 50 to 99 years, in which a tenant leases the land and constructs and owns the building on it for the lease term, after which ownership of any improvements typically reverts to the landowner. Ground leases are common for commercial development (retail pads, office towers, hotels) and let the landowner retain the underlying asset while generating steady rental income and avoiding development risk.
Gold(XAU) StocksFutures: A dense, corrosion-resistant precious metal that has functioned as a store of value and monetary reserve asset for millennia. Investors hold gold as a portfolio diversifier and inflation/currency hedge through physical bullion, futures, ETFs, or mining equities, since it produces no yield or cash flow of its own. Full guide →
Gold Bar(gold ingot) Stocks: Refined gold cast or minted into a bar, ranging from fractional-gram bars to the roughly 400-troy-ounce (about 12.5 kg) London Good Delivery bars used in institutional and central-bank trading. Good Delivery bars must meet minimum 995 fineness (99.5% pure) and come from an LBMA-accredited refiner to be accepted in wholesale markets without independent assay.
Gold ETF(GLD) Stocks: An exchange-traded fund that holds physical gold bullion (or, less commonly, gold futures) in trust and issues shares that track the metal's price, letting investors gain gold exposure through a normal brokerage account without arranging storage or insurance. The fund charges an annual expense ratio, and shareholders own fund shares rather than a direct legal claim on specific bars.
Gold Mining Stock(gold miner) Stocks: Shares of a company that explores for, develops, or produces gold, giving investors leveraged (amplified) exposure to the gold price because a miner's profit margin expands and contracts faster than the metal price itself once fixed extraction costs are covered. Mining stocks also carry company-specific risks (operational, geopolitical, and balance-sheet) that physical gold and gold ETFs do not.
Gold Miners vs. Physical GoldStocks: A comparison between owning gold mining company stocks and owning the metal itself. Mining stocks offer operating leverage to the gold price and potential dividends but add company, jurisdiction, and execution risk and correlate with broader equity markets during sell-offs; physical gold and gold ETFs track the metal price more directly and hold up better as a portfolio diversifier when stocks fall.
GradingStocks: A standardized, third-party assessment of a collectible's condition, assigned as a numeric or descriptive grade that heavily influences its market value. Coins are typically graded on the 70-point Sheldon scale (used by PCGS and NGC), while trading cards are commonly graded on a 1-to-10 scale (used by PSA), with top grades commanding disproportionately large price premiums.
Gasoline(RBOB) StocksFutures: A refined petroleum product used mainly as motor fuel, traded on futures markets as RBOB (reformulated blendstock for oxygenate blending) gasoline. Gasoline prices track crude oil costs but also reflect refining capacity, seasonal blend requirements, and regional distribution constraints, so gasoline and crude oil prices can diverge, particularly around the summer driving season.
governmental 457(b)Stocks: A deferred-compensation retirement plan offered by state and local government employers, funded through employee salary deferrals held in trust for the exclusive benefit of participants and protected from the employer's creditors. Distributions are not subject to the 10% early-withdrawal penalty that applies to most other retirement plans even before age 59½, though ordinary income tax still applies, and balances can generally be rolled into an IRA or another eligible employer plan after separation from service.
graded vestingStocks: A vesting schedule in which an employee's ownership of employer retirement-plan contributions increases gradually over a period of years, for example 20% per year over five years, rather than becoming fully vested all at once. It contrasts with cliff vesting, where 0% ownership applies until a single vesting date is reached, at which point the employee becomes 100% vested; ERISA sets minimum vesting speed requirements for both schedule types.
guaranteed income rider(guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit, GLWB) Stocks: An optional annuity rider that guarantees a minimum future income stream or withdrawal percentage regardless of how the contract's underlying investments perform, without requiring the owner to fully annuitize. It typically charges an ongoing fee based on a separate benefit base value that grows differently from the contract's actual cash value, which can create confusion about how much money is actually accessible versus how much only supports the guaranteed payout calculation.
giftStocks: A voluntary transfer of money or property to another person for which the giver receives nothing of comparable value in return, made during the giver's lifetime rather than at death. Gifts above the IRS's annual per-recipient exclusion amount require the giver to file a gift tax return and reduce their lifetime unified gift-and-estate-tax exemption, though no gift tax is actually owed until that lifetime exemption is exhausted.
generation-skipping transfer(GST, generation-skipping transfer tax, GSTT) Stocks: A transfer of wealth, by gift or at death, to a beneficiary more than one generation younger than the giver, such as a grandchild, which is potentially subject to the generation-skipping transfer tax in addition to any regular gift or estate tax. The GST tax exists to prevent families from avoiding a full round of transfer tax at each generation by skipping directly to grandchildren; each individual has a separate GST exemption, aligned with but tracked independently from the estate and gift tax exemption, that can shelter transfers, including growth on assets held in a properly structured trust, from the tax indefinitely.
grantor(settlor, trustor) Stocks: The person who creates a trust and transfers assets into it, sometimes also called the settlor or trustor depending on the jurisdiction and document. In a revocable grantor trust, the grantor is typically treated as the owner of the trust's assets for income tax purposes even though legal title has passed to the trustee, meaning trust income is reported on the grantor's personal tax return.
general obligation bond(GO bond) Stocks: A general obligation bond is a municipal bond backed by the full faith and credit of the issuing state or local government, meaning repayment is secured by the issuer's taxing power rather than by revenue from a specific project. Because GO bonds are typically repaid from general tax revenue (including property taxes), they are usually considered lower risk than revenue bonds from the same issuer, though repayment still depends on the government's fiscal health and willingness to raise taxes if needed. Voter approval is often required to issue GO bonds since they can affect a municipality's borrowing capacity and tax rates.
growth equity(growth capital) Stocks: Minority or majority equity investments in established, revenue-generating companies that need capital to expand, enter new markets, or fund an acquisition, rather than to prove out a business model. Growth equity sits between venture capital (earlier-stage, higher risk) and traditional buyouts (mature, often majority control with heavy leverage).
general partner(GP) Stocks: The entity that manages a private equity, venture capital, or hedge fund limited partnership: sourcing deals, making investment decisions, and running day-to-day operations. The general partner typically contributes a small share of the fund's capital, earns a management fee plus carried interest, and bears unlimited liability for the partnership's obligations, unlike the limited partners.
GP(general partner) Stocks: Shorthand for general partner: the manager of a private equity, venture capital, or hedge fund limited partnership responsible for sourcing and executing investments, managing portfolio companies, and directing the fund's operations in exchange for management fees and carried interest.
global macro(global macro strategy) Stocks: A hedge fund strategy that takes directional positions across currencies, interest rates, commodities, and equity indices based on top-down analysis of macroeconomic trends, central bank policy, and geopolitical events. Global macro funds often trade highly liquid instruments and can go long or short across asset classes and countries.
Governance (ESG)(governance factor, G in ESG) Stocks: The 'G' in ESG, covering how a company is run: board independence and diversity, executive compensation structure, shareholder rights, audit quality, and business ethics. Governance factors are the ESG pillar most directly tied to conventional corporate-governance analysis and are often weighted most heavily by institutional investors because weak governance has historically preceded blowups.
Green BondStocks: A fixed-income security whose proceeds are earmarked specifically for projects with environmental benefits, such as renewable energy, clean transportation, or energy efficiency. Green bonds carry the same credit and interest-rate risk as a conventional bond from the same issuer: the 'green' label describes use of proceeds and reporting commitments, not a different risk or return profile.
GreenwashingStocks: The practice of overstating or misrepresenting a fund's or company's environmental or social credentials (through vague labeling, cherry-picked metrics, or marketing that outpaces actual portfolio holdings) to attract ESG-motivated investors. Regulators including the SEC and EU authorities have brought enforcement actions against asset managers for ESG-fund names or disclosures that did not match their actual investment processes.
Glide PathStocks: The predetermined schedule by which a target-date fund's asset allocation shifts from more aggressive, stock-heavy to more conservative, bond-heavy as the fund approaches (and, for a 'through' design, passes) its target date. Two funds with the same target year can have meaningfully different glide paths: one might be 90% stocks at 20 years out while another is 80%, and they can also differ in how conservative they end up at or after the target date. Full guide →
Growth InvestingStocks: An investment style that targets companies expected to grow revenue and earnings faster than the overall market, prioritizing future growth potential over current valuation multiples. Growth investors typically tolerate higher price-to-earnings and price-to-sales ratios than value investors, betting that a company's future earnings will justify today's higher price, which makes growth stocks more sensitive to rising interest rates and to any disappointment relative to growth expectations.
Growth at a Reasonable Price (GARP)(GARP) Stocks: A hybrid investment style, closely associated with Peter Lynch, that blends growth and value investing by seeking companies with above-average, sustainable earnings growth that still trade at reasonable valuations relative to that growth. GARP investors commonly use the PEG ratio (P/E divided by expected earnings growth rate) as a screening tool, with Lynch treating a PEG near 1.0 as roughly fair value, below 1.0 suggesting a bargain and well above 2.0 suggesting an expensive stock relative to its growth rate.
GDR(Global Depositary Receipt) Stocks: A Global Depositary Receipt (GDR) is a negotiable certificate issued by a depositary bank that represents shares in a foreign company, allowing those shares to trade on an exchange outside the company's home country, most commonly the London or Luxembourg exchanges. GDRs let institutional investors gain exposure to foreign companies without navigating a local market's direct listing rules, similar in concept to an American Depositary Receipt (ADR) but typically issued for non-U.S. exchanges and aimed more at institutional investors.
Geopolitical RiskStocks: Geopolitical risk is the risk that political events between or within countries (such as war, sanctions, trade disputes, elections, or diplomatic conflict) will disrupt markets, currencies, supply chains, or the value of specific investments. It is especially relevant to international and emerging-market investing, where political instability can be higher and investor protections weaker than in developed markets.
Global Fund(World Fund) Stocks: A global fund is a mutual fund or ETF that invests in securities from markets around the world, including both the investor's home country and foreign markets, distinguishing it from an 'international fund,' which typically excludes the investor's home country entirely. Global funds give investors a single vehicle for broad geographic diversification.
Generational accountingStocksCrypto: Generational accounting estimates the lifetime net tax burden facing people born in different years, by projecting the taxes each cohort will pay and the transfers it will receive under current policy and expressing the difference in present value. Developed by Auerbach, Gokhale and Kotlikoff, it was designed to expose obligations that annual budget deficits hide, particularly unfunded pension and health commitments. Results are highly sensitive to the discount rate, productivity growth and demographic assumptions, so the comparison between cohorts is more informative than any single number.
Greenspan, Alan(Alan Greenspan) StocksCrypto: Alan Greenspan chaired the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1987 to 2006, the second longest tenure in its history. His term opened with the October 1987 stock market crash and covered the savings and loan cleanup, the 1990s productivity boom, the response to the Asian and Long-Term Capital Management crises and the aftermath of the 2001 recession. He is associated with a discretionary, data-driven style of policy, with the phrase irrational exuberance, and with subsequent debate over whether prolonged low rates contributed to the housing boom.
GSCI(S&P GSCI) FuturesStocks: The GSCI is a broad commodity futures benchmark launched by Goldman Sachs in 1991 and sold to S&P Dow Jones Indices in 2007, where it trades under the S&P GSCI name. Constituents are weighted by world production over a five-year average, which gives energy contracts a far larger share than in equally weighted or liquidity-weighted alternatives. The index rolls its futures positions on a monthly schedule, so its total return combines spot price change, the roll yield or cost and the return on collateral.
Globex(CME Globex) OptionsStocks: Globex is the electronic trading platform operated by CME Group, launched in 1992 as one of the first systems to move futures away from open outcry. It matches orders in futures and options on interest rates, equity indices, currencies, energy, metals and agricultural products across nearly the whole day, five days a week, which is why overnight moves in stock index futures are quoted long before the cash market opens. Access is through clearing member firms and their connectivity providers.
Government BondStocks: A government bond is debt issued by a national government to fund spending beyond tax revenue, promising fixed or index-linked interest and repayment of principal at maturity. Debt issued in a country own currency carries no involuntary default risk in the mechanical sense, since the government controls issuance of that currency, but it still carries inflation and currency risk, and debt issued in a foreign currency carries genuine default risk. Yields on the largest sovereign markets serve as the risk-free benchmark for pricing other assets in that currency.
Government National Mortgage Association(Ginnie Mae) Stocks: The Government National Mortgage Association, known as Ginnie Mae, is a corporation within the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development that guarantees the timely payment of principal and interest on mortgage-backed securities issued by approved lenders. The underlying loans are already insured or guaranteed by federal programs such as the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Unlike Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it does not buy loans or issue securities itself, and its guarantee carries the full faith and credit of the United States.
Gray ListStocksCrypto: A gray list is an internal register of companies on which a bank is working confidentially, typically on an unannounced merger or financing, and about which its own proprietary desks and research analysts are therefore constrained. It is circulated only to compliance and control staff, because publishing it would itself signal that a deal is in progress. That distinguishes it from a restricted list, which is distributed across the firm and openly blocks trading and research once the involvement is public.
Gross Income MultiplierStocks: The gross income multiplier values an income property by dividing its price by the gross annual rent it produces, giving a quick comparison against recent sales of similar buildings. It is simple precisely because it ignores operating expenses, vacancy, taxes, financing and capital spending, so two buildings with identical multipliers can produce very different net income. Appraisers use it for screening and for a first sanity check, then move to a capitalization rate or discounted cash flow analysis based on net operating income.
governanceStocks: The G in ESG analysis and, more broadly, the structures determining who controls a company and on whose behalf. It covers board independence and composition, dual-class share structures and voting rights, the link between executive pay and results, related-party transactions, audit quality, and shareholder rights over director elections and major transactions. Most of it is observable from filings, which makes it more comparable across issuers than environmental or social data.
government money market fundStocks: A money market fund required to invest nearly all assets in cash, United States government securities, and repurchase agreements fully collateralized by them. That composition lets it use amortized cost pricing to seek a stable share price and exempts it from the redemption liquidity fees a prime fund can be required to impose. The precise asset thresholds and fee rules are set by Securities and Exchange Commission regulation.
growth at a reasonable priceStocks: An approach that screens for companies growing earnings at an above-average rate while refusing to pay a valuation that assumes the growth runs indefinitely. It sits between pure growth and pure value investing. The common shorthand is the PEG ratio, dividing the price-to-earnings multiple by an expected growth rate, though the answer depends entirely on whose forecast is used and over what horizon it is measured.
Gemstone InvestmentStocks: Gemstone investment is the purchase of colored stones such as ruby, sapphire and emerald for value retention. Price is driven by species, color saturation and tone, clarity, cut, size, and geographic origin, and by whether the stone has been heated, filled or otherwise treated, all of which an independent laboratory report should state. There is no exchange, no fungible unit and no published reference price, so valuation rests on expert opinion and comparable sales. Retail-to-wholesale spreads are wide, and origin determinations can be revised as laboratory techniques improve.
Guarantee of OriginStocks: A guarantee of origin is a European certificate proving that one unit of electricity, typically a megawatt hour, was generated from a specified renewable or low-carbon source. It is issued to the generator by a national registry, can be traded separately from the electricity itself, and is cancelled when a supplier uses it to substantiate a claim about the energy it sells. It is the European counterpart to the renewable energy certificate used in North America. Because the certificate travels apart from the power, it evidences attribution rather than physical delivery.
Growth and Income FundStocks: A growth and income fund is a pooled fund pursuing both capital appreciation and a regular distribution, usually by holding dividend-paying shares of established companies alongside faster-growing ones, and sometimes adding bonds. The blend sits between a pure growth fund, which reinvests and pays little, and an equity income fund, which prioritizes the payout. The trade-off is that the income component tends to tilt the portfolio toward mature, larger companies, so participation in the fastest-growing part of the market is usually lower than a growth-only mandate would give.
Global Macro Hedge FundStocks: A global macro hedge fund takes positions based on expected moves in economies and policy rather than on the merits of individual companies. Managers express views on interest rates, currencies, sovereign bonds, equity indices and commodities, usually through liquid futures, forwards and options, and can be long or short in any market. Approaches range from discretionary judgment to systematic models. Because positions are liquid and directional, the strategy can change exposure quickly, and its return pattern has historically differed from that of long-only equity portfolios.
Government BillStocks: A government bill is a short-term debt instrument issued by a national treasury, with an original maturity of a year or less. It pays no coupon; instead it is sold at auction below face value and redeemed at face, so the investor's return is the difference between the two. Bills are the benchmark for short-term risk-free rates in their currency, are held as core assets by central banks and money market funds, and trade in deep secondary markets where prices are quoted on a discount basis.
grainsFuturesStocks: Grains are cereal crops traded as standardized commodity contracts, principally corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, and oats. A contract specifies grade, quantity, and delivery location and month, and prices respond to planted acreage, weather during critical growth stages, realized yields, export demand, currency moves, and government stock and trade policy. The market follows an annual production cycle, so a crop year's supply is largely fixed after harvest and prices then react to inventory relative to consumption. Quotes are per bushel or per tonne depending on the exchange.
grazing rightsStocks: Grazing rights are the legal right to run livestock on land owned by someone else, granted by lease, permit, or recorded easement. On private ranchland they are usually leased and priced per animal unit month, the amount of forage one cow and calf consume in a month. On public land they take the form of permits issued by the managing agency, carrying stocking limits, seasonal windows, and range condition requirements. Because the right is separable from ownership of the land, it can be valued, transferred, or retained when the parcel itself is sold.
growthStocksCrypto: Growth in macroeconomics is the increase in an economy's output over time, most commonly measured as the percentage change in real gross domestic product, which strips out price changes so only volume is counted. It is published quarterly and annually, sometimes annualized from a single quarter, and early estimates are revised as fuller data arrives. Over long horizons it comes from more workers, more capital per worker, and higher productivity. Because growth shapes corporate revenue, employment, and central bank policy, the data and its revisions move interest rate expectations and asset prices. Full guide →
Gold BugFuturesStocks: A gold bug is an investor who holds a persistent conviction that gold is the soundest store of value and allocates heavily to it regardless of the price cycle, usually on grounds that fiat currencies are debased over time by deficit spending and monetary expansion. The stance tends to come with expectations of high inflation, currency crisis or banking failure. The term is descriptive market slang for a style of positioning, not a defined strategy, and it carries no view on outcomes.
General Collateral Financing Trades(GCF Repo) Stocks: General collateral financing trades are blind-brokered repurchase agreements between dealers, arranged through interdealer brokers and cleared by the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation, in which the borrower pledges any securities within an agreed general category rather than one specific issue. Because the lender is indifferent to which bond arrives, the trade is about cash funding rather than obtaining a particular security. Anonymity and central clearing let participants net large volumes efficiently, and the resulting rate is a widely watched gauge of secured funding conditions.
General LedgerStocks: The general ledger is the master accounting record holding every account a business uses, organised into assets, liabilities, equity, revenue and expenses under a chart of accounts. Transactions enter as double entries, with equal debits and credits, either directly or posted in summary from subsidiary ledgers such as accounts receivable and payable. A trial balance drawn from it confirms that debits equal credits, and after closing entries the financial statements are prepared from its balances, which is why reconciliation of the ledger precedes any reporting.
Go-Go FundStocks: A go-go fund is an aggressively managed equity fund that concentrates in high-growth, high-volatility shares and trades actively in pursuit of large short-term gains. The label comes from the mid-1960s United States bull market, when a group of star managers drew heavy inflows with this approach and then suffered severe losses in the 1969 and 1973 declines. The term survives as a description of a style characterised by concentration, rapid turnover and dependence on continued momentum rather than as a formal fund category.
Gold StandardFuturesStocks: The gold standard is a monetary system in which a currency's value is fixed to a defined weight of gold and, in its full form, notes are redeemable for the metal on demand. Because the money supply is tied to gold reserves, the arrangement constrains discretionary monetary expansion and keeps exchange rates fixed between participating countries, at the cost of forcing domestic prices and employment to absorb external shocks. Major economies abandoned it during the interwar period, and the final formal link ended when United States dollar convertibility was suspended in 1971.
Government SecurityStocks: A government security is a debt instrument issued by a national government to fund spending, ranging from short-dated bills sold at a discount to long-dated coupon bonds and inflation-linked issues. Debt issued in a country's own currency is treated as the local benchmark for credit risk, because the issuer controls the currency of payment, which is why such yields form the reference curve for pricing other debt. Securities issued in a foreign currency carry genuine default risk, and sovereigns have defaulted on both kinds.
GreenmailStocks: Greenmail is a targeted repurchase in which a company buys back a large block of its own shares from a specific investor at a premium to the market price, in exchange for that investor dropping a takeover attempt or proxy fight. Other shareholders receive nothing and bear the cost through the cash spent and the reduced likelihood of a bid. United States tax law imposes an excise charge on gains from such payments and many companies adopted charter provisions against them, so the practice has become rare since its 1980s peak.
Grey MarketOptionsStocks: In securities, the grey market is unofficial trading in an instrument before it is formally issued or listed, such as dealing in an initial public offering allocation ahead of the first day or in a bond between announcement and settlement. Trades are conditional and settle only if the issue completes, and the prices give underwriters an early read on demand. The same phrase carries a separate meaning in commerce: legitimate goods sold through channels the manufacturer did not authorise.
Gross InterestStocks: Gross interest is the amount of interest credited on a deposit or paid on a debt before any tax is deducted and before fees or charges are applied. Net interest is what remains afterwards. The distinction matters where a paying institution withholds tax at source, so the depositor sees a smaller figure arriving than the quoted rate implies, and it matters when comparing accounts across jurisdictions or account types with different withholding treatment. Applicable withholding rules are set by each jurisdiction's tax authority.
Gross Working CapitalStocks: Gross working capital is the total of a company's current assets: cash, marketable securities, receivables, inventory and prepaid items. It measures the resources circulating through the operating cycle without netting off what is owed in the short term. Net working capital, which subtracts current liabilities, is the more common figure because it shows the surplus available to fund operations. The gross measure is used chiefly in working capital management to size the asset base being financed and to assess how much of it is tied up in slow-moving items.
Growth CompanyOptionsStocks: A growth company expands revenue and often earnings materially faster than the broader economy or its industry, and typically reinvests most or all of its cash flow into that expansion rather than paying dividends. Valuation therefore rests on expectations far into the future, which makes the shares more sensitive to changes in discount rates and to any disappointment in the growth rate itself. The label is descriptive rather than defined, and index providers classify shares into growth and value buckets using published quantitative criteria.
Guaranteed Investment (Interest) CertificateStocks: A guaranteed investment certificate is a Canadian deposit product in which a bank or trust company takes a sum for a fixed term and undertakes to return the principal with interest at a stated rate. Redeemable versions permit early withdrawal on set terms, while non-redeemable ones lock the money until maturity. Market-linked variants tie the return to an index while still protecting principal. Eligible deposits are covered by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation up to the limit that agency sets, and provincial schemes cover credit union equivalents.
Guaranteed Investment ContractStocks: A guaranteed investment contract is an agreement in which an insurance company accepts a deposit from a retirement plan and undertakes to repay it with interest at a specified rate over a set term. Plans use it in stable value options because it lets participants see a steady book value regardless of what the underlying bonds are worth day to day. The undertaking is backed only by the insurer's general account, so the holder carries the insurer's credit risk, and contracts commonly restrict withdrawals prompted by plan-level events.
Guaranteed Investment FundStocks: A guaranteed investment fund is an insurance-based pooled product, known in Canada as a segregated fund, that invests like a mutual fund while contractually returning a stated percentage of the money paid in at maturity or on death regardless of market performance. The protection is provided by the issuing insurer and paid for through higher ongoing fees than a comparable unprotected fund. Because the contract is an insurance policy, holdings may pass directly to a named beneficiary and can receive creditor protection that a plain fund account would not.
GunslingerStocksCrypto: A gunslinger is a portfolio manager who runs a concentrated, high-turnover book and takes aggressive positions in volatile securities in pursuit of outsized short-term returns. The term entered use during the 1960s go-go era, when a handful of managers built public reputations on this approach before heavy losses in the subsequent bear markets. It describes a style rather than a strategy with defined rules, and the concentration that produces large gains produces losses of similar scale.
Garman-Kohlhagen ModelStocks: The Garman-Kohlhagen model prices European options on foreign exchange by extending Black-Scholes to two interest rates. The foreign currency is treated as an asset paying a continuous yield equal to the foreign interest rate, so the spot rate is discounted at that rate while the payoff is discounted at the domestic rate. Inputs are spot, strike, both interest rates, time to expiry and volatility. Its assumption of constant volatility is why traders quote currency options through a volatility smile instead.
Gather in the StopsStocksCrypto: Gathering in the stops is a trading tactic of pushing a price to a level where clusters of stop orders are expected to sit, so that those stops trigger and produce a burst of market orders that extends the move in the initiator's favour. Stops often accumulate just beyond round numbers, recent highs and lows and obvious chart levels. Where a price move is engineered specifically to trigger them, it can amount to prohibited manipulation, and exchanges monitor for it.
Good Till Cancelled OrderStocksCrypto: A good till cancelled order remains active until it executes or the trader cancels it, rather than expiring at the end of the session as a day order does. In practice brokers impose a maximum life, commonly a set number of calendar days, after which the order lapses automatically. Because it can rest for weeks, it may execute during a fast move or after news the trader has not reviewed, and corporate actions can cause brokers to cancel it.
Gross YieldStocks: Gross yield is the income an investment produces before deducting costs and taxes, expressed as a percentage of its price or value. For a rental property it is annual rent divided by purchase price, ignoring management fees, maintenance, insurance, vacancy and taxes, while the net yield subtracts those. For a fund or bond it is the return before management charges and withholding. Because the deductions can be substantial, gross and net yields on the same asset can differ widely.
Gyosei ShidoStocks: Gyosei shido is the Japanese practice of administrative guidance, in which ministries and regulators steer the behaviour of banks and companies through informal advice, requests and expectations rather than through binding orders. Compliance is nominally voluntary but has historically been strong, because agencies control licences, approvals and future discretion. Since it operates outside formal rulemaking, it is difficult for outsiders to observe or challenge, which is a recurring criticism from foreign firms and trading partners.
going publicStocks: Going public is the process of selling shares to public investors and listing them on an exchange, converting a privately held company into a reporting issuer. The conventional route is an underwritten initial public offering: the company files a registration statement, banks assess demand through a roadshow, a price is set, and new or existing shares are sold. Alternatives include a direct listing, which admits existing shares without raising capital, and a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. The consequences are continuing disclosure obligations, governance requirements imposed by the regulator and the exchange, a public valuation, and a tradable currency for acquisitions and employee compensation.
granny bondStocks: Granny bond is a colloquial United Kingdom name for index-linked National Savings certificates, which were originally sold only to savers above a stated age. The instrument pays a return linked to a measure of retail price inflation plus a small fixed margin, so the real value of the holding is protected over the term, and returns from National Savings products are set by the Treasury-backed issuer rather than by a market. Eligibility was later widened, so the nickname refers to the product's history rather than to a current restriction. Terms, availability and index reference are set by the issuer and change between issues.
gross premiumStocks: The gross premium is the amount an insurer actually charges a policyholder, made up of the net premium needed to fund expected claims plus a loading for acquisition costs, administration, taxes, the cost of holding capital and a profit margin. Life insurers calculate it by setting the present value of expected premium income equal to the present value of expected benefits and expenses under the pricing assumptions for mortality, lapse and investment return. Comparing gross with net premium shows how much of a quoted price is pure risk transfer and how much is expense and margin. Reinsurance ceded is deducted separately to reach net written premium.
guaranteeStocks: A guarantee is a promise by one party to answer for another party's obligation if that party fails to perform. In lending, a guarantor becomes liable for the borrower's debt, and the drafting decides how far: a full guarantee covers the whole amount, a limited guarantee caps it, and a payment guarantee lets the lender demand from the guarantor immediately while a collection guarantee requires exhausting remedies against the borrower first. Guarantees usually sit off balance sheet as contingent liabilities until called. Related instruments include standby letters of credit and financial guarantee insurance, which achieve a similar result through a bank or insurer instead.
Guaranteed BondStocks: A bond on which a third party, commonly a parent company, an affiliate or an insurer, promises to pay interest and principal if the issuer fails to. Investors therefore assess the guarantor's credit standing as well as the issuer's, and rating agencies often rate the bond off the stronger of the two. The value of the promise depends on its legal terms: whether it covers full and timely payment, and whether it is unconditional and irrevocable.
Global Registered ShareStocksCrypto: A share that is registered and trades in more than one country and more than one currency while remaining the same security, with a single global registrar keeping the ownership record and shares moving freely between markets. It differs from a depositary receipt, which is a separate certificate issued by a bank against foreign shares held in custody. The structure was used by a small number of large cross-border companies to give investors direct ownership rather than a receipt.
Gamma HedgingOptionsStocks: Adjusting an options position so its delta stays stable as the underlying price moves, rather than being neutral only at the current price. Because delta hedging with the underlying alone leaves exposure to the curvature of the payoff, traders offset gamma by buying or selling other options whose own curvature cancels it. A book that is short gamma must trade with the market, buying as prices rise and selling as they fall, which is why large short gamma positions can amplify moves.
GappingStocks: Deliberately mismatching the maturities of assets and liabilities to profit from the shape of the yield curve, most often by funding longer-dated assets with shorter-dated borrowing so the position earns the difference between long and short rates. It produces income while the curve slopes upward and turns against the holder when short rates rise or the curve inverts, and it creates refinancing risk. In chart reading the same word describes a price opening away from the prior close with no trading in between.
Gearing RatioStocks: Any measure of the proportion of a company's funding that comes from borrowing rather than from shareholders, with debt to equity and debt to capital the most common forms. It is the British term for leverage. A higher reading amplifies both returns and losses to shareholders and reduces the cushion available if earnings fall. Interpretation depends on the stability of the cash flows: a regulated utility can carry a level that would be untenable for a cyclical manufacturer.
General ProvisionsStocks: Amounts a bank sets aside against losses it expects somewhere in a portfolio but cannot yet attribute to a specific borrower, as distinct from specific provisions raised against an identified impaired loan. They are built from historical loss experience and the current economic outlook. Bank capital rules allow a limited amount of them to count as supplementary capital, and accounting standards have moved the calculation toward forward-looking expected credit loss models rather than incurred loss triggers.
Global Financial Stability ReportStocks: A publication of the International Monetary Fund, issued twice a year, assessing risks to the global financial system, including bank and non-bank leverage, asset valuations, credit conditions, capital flows to emerging markets and sovereign debt burdens. It sits alongside the Fund's World Economic Outlook, which covers growth and inflation, and its analytical chapters examine structural themes. Policymakers and investors read it for the Fund's view of where vulnerabilities are accumulating rather than for price forecasts.
Golden RuleStocks: A fiscal policy constraint under which a government borrows only to fund investment, financing current spending from taxation over the economic cycle. The reasoning is that capital projects create assets whose benefits accrue to future taxpayers who help service the debt, while day-to-day spending does not. The United Kingdom adopted it formally in the late 1990s and abandoned it after the financial crisis. The same label is used loosely in accounting and personal finance for a range of unrelated maxims.
Growth FundStocks: A fund that invests in companies expected to expand revenue and earnings faster than the market, accepting higher valuation multiples and little or no dividend income in exchange for that expected growth. Holdings cluster in sectors where reinvestment opportunities are large. Price behavior is more sensitive to changes in interest rates and to earnings disappointments than in value-oriented portfolios, because more of the valuation rests on cash flows expected far in the future.
GDAXCrypto: GDAX, short for Global Digital Asset Exchange, was the professional trading venue Coinbase operated for active and institutional traders, offering a central limit order book, maker and taker fee tiers and programmatic access through an application programming interface, alongside its simpler retail brokerage. Coinbase renamed it Coinbase Pro in 2018 and later folded its functionality into an advanced trading product, so the GDAX name is now historical rather than an active venue.
Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions ActStocks: The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act is a United States law enacted in 1982 that deregulated savings institutions after they suffered heavy losses during a period of high interest rates. It let them offer money market deposit accounts competing with money market funds, broadened their lending powers beyond residential mortgages, and authorized adjustable-rate mortgages. It also barred lenders from enforcing due-on-sale clauses on certain transfers, such as a borrower moving a home into a living trust.
Gas Guzzler TaxStocks: The gas guzzler tax is a United States federal excise tax charged on new passenger cars whose measured fuel economy falls below a statutory threshold. The manufacturer or importer pays it, the amount rises as fuel economy falls, and the figure is disclosed on the vehicle's window label. Sport utility vehicles, minivans and pickup trucks fall outside it because of how the statute defines a passenger automobile. Thresholds and amounts are written into law and change only when Congress amends them.
General PartnershipStocks: A general partnership is a business owned by two or more partners who share management and profits and are each personally liable for the whole of the partnership's debts, without limit. Liability is joint and several, so a creditor can pursue any one partner for the full amount. The structure needs little formality to create, and profits pass through to the partners' own tax returns. A partnership agreement sets profit shares, decision rights and what happens when a partner leaves.
George SorosStocks: George Soros is a Hungarian-born investor who built Quantum Fund into one of the most prominent global macro hedge funds, taking large positions in currencies, rates and equities based on views about economies and policy. He is widely associated with the 1992 position against sterling during the exchange rate mechanism crisis. He also developed the idea of reflexivity, that participants' beliefs alter the fundamentals they are assessing, and has directed much of his wealth into philanthropic foundations.
GiltsStocks: Gilts are bonds issued by the United Kingdom government through the Debt Management Office. Conventional gilts pay a fixed coupon twice a year and repay par at maturity, index-linked gilts uprate both coupon and principal with a retail price measure, and a small number of undated issues carry no maturity date. They are the benchmark for sterling interest rates, are widely used as collateral, and are held heavily by pension funds and insurers matching long liabilities.
Give UpStocks: A give up is an arrangement in which one broker executes a trade but records it in the name of another firm, which then clears and carries the position for the client. It arises when a client wants execution from a specialist desk while keeping all positions at a single clearing broker. A give-up agreement between the executing broker, the clearing broker and the client sets out fees, limits and responsibility if a trade is rejected.
Glass CliffStocks: The glass cliff describes the observed pattern in which women and members of under-represented groups are more likely to be appointed to senior leadership when an organization is already in crisis, so the role carries an elevated risk of failure. Researchers Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam named the effect after studying company appointments and share price performance. It extends the glass ceiling idea by focusing on the conditions attached to promotions rather than on access alone.
Google TaxStocks: Google tax is the informal name for measures aimed at multinationals that book profit in low-tax jurisdictions while earning revenue elsewhere. The United Kingdom and Australia introduced diverted profits taxes charging a higher rate on profit judged to have been artificially shifted out, and several countries added digital services taxes on revenue from local users. These sit alongside international work on profit allocation and minimum taxation, and rates and thresholds are set by each country's own legislation.
Government GrantStocks: A government grant is a transfer of resources from a public body to an entity in return for compliance with specified conditions, rather than in exchange for goods or services at market value. Accounting standards require the benefit to be recognized in income over the periods in which the related costs arise, so a grant toward an asset is either deducted from its carrying amount or released to income across the asset's life. Grants are usually repayable if conditions are breached.
Government PurchaseStocks: Government purchases are spending by public bodies on goods and services, covering everything from the salaries of public employees to defense equipment and road construction. In the national accounts they form the G term in gross domestic product. Transfer payments such as pensions and unemployment benefits are excluded, because they move purchasing power to households without the government buying output itself, and that spending is counted when the recipients use it.
Government of Singapore Investment CorporationStocks: GIC is one of Singapore's sovereign wealth managers, established in 1981 to invest the government's foreign reserves over long horizons. It runs a globally diversified portfolio spanning public equities, fixed income, real estate, private equity and infrastructure, and it reports performance as a rolling real return measured over a twenty-year period rather than annually. It operates alongside Temasek, which holds and manages a separate portfolio of direct company stakes.
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999Stocks: The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act is a United States law that repealed the parts of the Glass-Steagall Act restricting affiliations between commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies, allowing them to combine within a financial holding company supervised by the Federal Reserve. It also created a privacy regime requiring financial institutions to explain their information-sharing practices, give customers an opportunity to opt out of certain sharing, and safeguard customer data.
Grant-in-AidStocks: A grant-in-aid is money transferred from a higher level of government to a lower one, or to an institution, to fund a defined purpose. Categorical grants are restricted to a specific program and often require the recipient to contribute matching funds, while block grants give broader discretion within a policy area. The transfers let central authorities pursue national objectives through bodies they do not directly run, and the conditions attached shape recipient behavior.
Great ModerationStocksCrypto: The Great Moderation is the name given to the period from roughly the mid-1980s to 2007 in which output growth, inflation and employment in major developed economies fluctuated much less than in the preceding two decades. Explanations offered include better monetary policy anchored on credible inflation targets, structural changes such as improved inventory management and deeper financial markets, and simply a run of smaller shocks. The financial crisis ended the period and weakened the confidence it encouraged.
Great RecessionStocks: The Great Recession is the sharp global downturn that followed the collapse of the United States housing market and the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. Losses on mortgage-backed securities impaired bank balance sheets, funding markets froze, and the failure of Lehman Brothers turned a credit contraction into a worldwide slump in output, trade and employment. Governments responded with fiscal stimulus and bank recapitalization, and central banks cut rates toward zero and began large-scale asset purchases.
GreensheetStocksCrypto: A greensheet is an internal document a lead underwriter circulates to its own sales force about a forthcoming securities offering, summarizing the issuer, the terms, the intended use of proceeds and the selling points the syndicate wants emphasized. It is prepared for internal use and is not given to investors, who receive the prospectus. Because it is promotional in tone, regulators expect it to be consistent with the prospectus and it is subject to supervisory review.
Gross DividendsStocks: Gross dividends are the total dividends an investor received during a period before deductions for tax withheld or fees, and before the total is separated into its components. In United States reporting, the figure on the annual dividend statement combines ordinary dividends, qualified dividends taxed at long-term capital gain rates, capital gain distributions and any return of capital, each carrying different tax treatment even though they arrive as one payment stream.
Gross EarningsStocks: Gross earnings means total income before deductions, and what is deducted depends on context. For an individual it is pay before tax withholding, retirement contributions and insurance premiums, and it is the figure most lenders use in affordability tests. For a company it usually means gross profit: revenue less the cost of goods sold, before operating expenses, interest and tax. The distinction matters because the two are not comparable measures.
Gross EstateStocks: The gross estate is the total value of everything a person owned or controlled at death, measured for estate tax purposes before any deductions are applied. It includes property held solely, the deceased's share of jointly held property, life insurance proceeds where the deceased held incidents of ownership, retirement accounts, business interests and certain lifetime transfers. Deductions for debts, administration expenses, charitable gifts and transfers to a spouse reduce it to the taxable estate.
Gross Expense RatioStocks: The gross expense ratio is a fund's total annual operating costs, including management fees, administration, distribution charges and acquired fund fees, divided by its average net assets, before any waivers or reimbursements the manager has agreed. The net expense ratio shows the figure after those temporary reductions. Because waivers can expire, the gross ratio indicates what shareholders would pay if the manager stopped subsidizing the fund. Trading commissions sit outside both figures.
Growing-Equity MortgageStocks: A growing-equity mortgage is a fixed-rate home loan whose scheduled payment rises each year on a set schedule, with every increase applied entirely to principal. Because principal is repaid faster than under a level-payment loan at the same rate, the balance clears well before the nominal term and total interest paid is lower. The structure suits a borrower expecting income to rise, and the payment increases are contractual rather than tied to any market index.
Guarantee FeesStocks: Guarantee fees are the charges a securitization guarantor collects for promising timely payment of interest and principal to investors regardless of whether the underlying borrowers pay. In the United States mortgage market the government-sponsored enterprises charge them to lenders who deliver loans into their pools, pricing partly by loan risk characteristics, and the cost is passed into the mortgage rate borrowers see. The fee compensates the guarantor for credit risk absorbed and funds its reserves.
Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal BenefitStocks: A guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit is an optional rider on a variable annuity under which the insurer commits to a stream of withdrawals of at least a stated amount for a defined period or for life, even if the underlying investments fall to zero. The rider is charged as an annual percentage of a benefit base tracked separately from the account value. The commitment depends on the insurer's ability to pay, and excess withdrawals typically reduce or void it.
GainStocks: A gain is an increase in the value of an asset above the amount recorded as its cost basis. It is unrealized while the asset is still held and realized when it is sold or otherwise disposed of, and generally only the realized amount enters taxable income. Gain equals proceeds minus adjusted basis, where basis is original cost adjusted for items such as commissions, improvements, depreciation taken and returns of capital, and the holding period determines which rate applies.
Generation-Skipping TrustStocks: A generation-skipping trust holds assets for beneficiaries more than one generation below the person who funded it, typically grandchildren, while often giving the intervening generation limited rights to income or principal. Because assets stay in trust rather than passing into a child's estate, they avoid a second round of transfer tax at that child's death. The generation-skipping transfer tax exists specifically to limit this, applying its own exemption and rate, both set in the tax code and adjusted over time.
Global BondStocks: A global bond is a single issue offered simultaneously in more than one major market and structured so that it can settle in the domestic clearing system and the international ones at the same time. The purpose is one larger, more liquid line rather than several separate issues, and it broadens the investor base across regions. Issuers are typically sovereigns, supranationals and large corporations, and the documentation must satisfy the disclosure requirements of every market where it is offered.
Goal-Based InvestingStocks: Goal-based investing organizes a portfolio around specific funding objectives, each with its own target amount, date and tolerance for shortfall, rather than around a single risk score applied to all the money. Assets are assigned to each goal and invested according to that goal's horizon, so near-term commitments sit in stable instruments while distant ones can carry more variable exposure. Progress is measured as the probability of meeting each objective rather than as return relative to a market index.
Gordon Growth ModelStocks: The Gordon growth model values a share as next year's expected dividend divided by the difference between the required rate of return and a constant perpetual dividend growth rate. It is the constant-growth case of the dividend discount model, and rearranging it shows the value is extremely sensitive to that difference: as growth approaches the discount rate the value rises without limit, and a growth rate above it produces a meaningless answer. It suits mature payers, not early-stage firms.
Government Pension Fund of NorwayStocks: The Government Pension Fund of Norway is the collective name for two state savings funds. The larger, the Government Pension Fund Global, receives revenue from Norway's petroleum sector and invests it entirely outside Norway in listed equities, fixed income, unlisted real estate and renewable energy infrastructure, managed by Norges Bank Investment Management under a mandate from the Ministry of Finance. A separate domestic fund invests mainly in Nordic markets. A fiscal rule limits how much may be transferred to the budget each year.
Government Securities Clearing CorporationStocks: The Government Securities Clearing Corporation was the central counterparty that compared, netted and guaranteed settlement of United States Treasury and agency securities trades between its members. It cut settlement volumes by netting each member's obligations down to a single position per security, and stood between the two sides so a default did not fall directly on the surviving party. It merged with the MBS Clearing Corporation in 2003 to form the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation, a subsidiary of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation.
Government-sponsored enterprises(GSEs) Stocks: Government-sponsored enterprises are privately owned financial corporations created by United States federal statute to improve the supply of credit to targeted sectors, principally housing and agriculture. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Banks and Farmer Mac buy or lend against loans made by others, funding themselves in capital markets. Their debt is not formally guaranteed by the federal government, but investors have priced an implied backing, which the 2008 conservatorship of the two housing enterprises effectively confirmed.
Grantor Retained Annuity Trust(GRAT) Stocks: A grantor retained annuity trust is an irrevocable trust into which someone transfers assets and from which they receive a fixed annuity for a set number of years, after which whatever remains passes to the named beneficiaries. The taxable gift at funding is the value transferred minus the present value of the retained annuity, discounted at a rate the Internal Revenue Service publishes monthly. Growth above that rate passes free of further transfer tax, while death during the term returns the assets to the estate.
Grantor Trust RulesStocks: The grantor trust rules are the provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code that treat the person who created a trust as the owner of its income for tax purposes when they retain specified powers or interests, such as the power to revoke it, to substitute assets of equivalent value, or to control who benefits. The grantor then reports the trust's income on their own return and the trust pays no tax on it, even where the assets sit outside the grantor's estate.
Gross Debt Service RatioStocks: The gross debt service ratio, used in Canadian mortgage underwriting, divides a household's annual housing costs by its gross annual income. The numerator covers mortgage principal and interest, property taxes, heating, and half of any condominium fees. Lenders and mortgage insurers apply a maximum, and test the payment at a qualifying rate higher than the contract rate so the borrower has room if rates rise. The total debt service ratio is the companion measure adding all other debt payments.
Gross Margin Return on Investment(GMROI) Stocks: Gross margin return on investment measures how much gross profit a retailer earns for each unit of money tied up in inventory, dividing gross margin by average inventory valued at cost. A result of three means three units of gross profit for every unit invested in stock. It combines margin and turnover into one figure, so a low-margin product that sells quickly can score better than a high-margin one that sits, which is why buyers use it for assortment decisions.
Group of 20(G20) OptionsStocks: The Group of 20 is a forum of nineteen countries plus the European Union and the African Union, whose leaders, finance ministers and central bank governors meet to coordinate on the global economy. It has no treaty, no permanent secretariat and no power to bind members; its output is communiques whose implementation depends on each member acting at home. It took its present leaders-level form during the 2008 financial crisis, when it drove the coordinated stimulus and bank regulation agenda that followed.
Growth RatesOptionsStocks: Growth rates express how much a quantity has changed over a period as a percentage of its starting level: ending value divided by beginning value, minus one. Comparing periods of different lengths requires annualizing, and the compound annual growth rate does this by taking the ratio of end to start to the power of one over the number of years, minus one. A compound rate smooths the path and therefore hides volatility, so it describes the average, not the experience.
GuarantorStocks: A guarantor is a party that promises a creditor it will meet another party's obligation if that party fails to. The guarantee may be secondary, requiring the creditor to pursue the principal debtor first, or payable on demand, allowing immediate recourse. A guarantor that pays acquires rights against the debtor by subrogation. Parent companies guarantee subsidiary borrowings, individuals guarantee small business loans, and financial guarantors sell the promise as a product, in which case their own credit standing determines its worth.
gamingStocksCrypto: Gaming is trading designed to exploit the mechanics of a market or a counterparty's algorithm rather than to express a view on value. Examples include probing a dark pool with small orders to detect a large resting block and then trading ahead of it, entering and cancelling orders to influence a benchmark or an auction imbalance, and structuring activity around a rebate schedule or an index rebalance. Venues respond with minimum sizes, anti-gaming logic, randomised auction timing and participant surveillance, and conduct that crosses into creating a misleading impression of supply and demand is treated as manipulation.
gamma hedgeStocksOptions: A gamma hedge is an adjustment to an options position intended to reduce its gamma, the rate at which its delta changes as the underlying moves. Delta hedging alone leaves exposure to large moves, because the hedge ratio itself shifts, which is why a short options book loses on a big move in either direction. Since the underlying asset has no gamma, reducing gamma requires trading other options, typically near the same strike and maturity, and only then rebalancing delta with the underlying. Gamma hedging costs premium, so books usually manage it within limits rather than eliminating it.
general insuranceStocks: General insurance covers property and liability exposures for a defined period, in contrast to life insurance, which is written on the duration of a human life. It includes motor, household, commercial property, marine, aviation and liability lines, usually on annually renewable contracts, so premiums can be repriced as experience changes. Because claims arrive as unpredictable events rather than as a certainty of timing, insurers hold reserves for claims incurred but not yet reported and measure performance with the loss ratio and the combined ratio. United States usage calls the same business property and casualty insurance.
ghostingStocksCrypto: Ghosting is an illegal practice in which two or more market makers coordinate their quoting or trading in a security to push its price in an agreed direction, creating the appearance of independent market activity where none exists. Participants who see the moving price assume it reflects genuine competing supply and demand, so the conduct manipulates the market and breaches securities law and exchange rules. It is difficult to prove without communications evidence, which is why surveillance focuses on correlated quoting patterns and why regulators pursue such cases through trading records and message data rather than price behaviour alone.
Gini coefficientStocks: The Gini coefficient measures how unequally a quantity such as income or wealth is distributed across a population, on a scale from zero to one. Zero means every unit receives an identical share, and one means a single unit holds everything. It is derived from the Lorenz curve, which plots cumulative share of the total against cumulative share of the population: the coefficient is the area between that curve and the line of perfect equality, divided by the whole area beneath the equality line. It compresses a full distribution into one number, so two very different distributions can share the same value.
gross incomeStocks: Gross income is total income before deductions, but which deductions depends entirely on context. For an individual under United States federal tax rules it means income from all sources unless a provision specifically excludes it, covering wages, business profit, interest, dividends, rents and gains, and it is the starting point from which adjusted gross income and then taxable income are calculated. For a business the phrase usually means revenue less the cost of goods sold, the figure reported as gross profit. The statutory definition, its exclusions and its thresholds are set by legislation and adjusted periodically.
gross leaseStocks: Under a gross lease the tenant pays a single rent and the landlord covers the operating costs of the property: taxes, insurance, maintenance and often utilities. The tenant gets a predictable outgoing, while the landlord takes the risk that those costs rise faster than expected, which is normally priced into the headline rent. It is the opposite arrangement to a net lease, where the tenant pays some or all of those expenses directly on top of base rent. A modified gross lease sits between the two, splitting specified costs or passing through increases above a base year.
gun jumpingStocksCrypto: Gun jumping is starting to promote or sell a securities offering before the law permits it. Under United States securities rules an issuer preparing a registered offering faces restrictions on written and oral offers before the registration statement is filed and until it becomes effective, so publicity that conditions the market can force a cooling-off delay or create rescission rights for buyers. The phrase carries a separate meaning in merger control, where it describes an acquirer taking control of or coordinating with the target before required antitrust clearance, conduct that can bring civil penalties.
Gaussian copula modelStocks: The Gaussian copula model describes how the default times of several borrowers move together, by mapping each name's own default probability onto a standard normal variable and joining those variables through a multivariate normal dependence structure summarised by correlation. It made portfolio credit derivatives tractable, allowing collateralised debt obligation tranches to be priced from single-name credit spreads plus a correlation input. Its weakness is that a normal dependence structure assigns very little probability to many names defaulting at once, so the model understated tail losses, a limitation exposed during the credit crisis of 2007 and 2008.
Gap AnalysisOptionsStocks: An interest rate risk technique that sorts assets and liabilities into time buckets by when they reprice or mature, then subtracts liabilities from assets in each bucket. A positive gap means more assets reprice than liabilities, so net interest income rises when rates go up, and a negative gap does the reverse. It is simple and widely used by banks, but it ignores the size of rate moves, embedded options and the effect on economic value.
GlobalizationStocks: The growing integration of national economies through cross-border trade, investment, migration, technology transfer and finance. Falling transport and communication costs, liberalized trade rules and open capital markets let firms split production into supply chains spanning many countries. The result is lower prices and faster diffusion of technology alongside concentrated adjustment costs for displaced workers and industries, and greater transmission of shocks from one economy to another.
GARCH ProcessStocksCrypto: A time series model of volatility in which the variance of the current period depends on both recent squared shocks and recent variances, so turbulent periods cluster together and then decay. The common GARCH(1,1) form writes conditional variance as a constant plus a weight on the previous squared residual plus a weight on the previous variance, and the sum of those two weights governs how slowly volatility returns to its long-run level. It is fitted to return series to forecast risk, price options, and set position limits, and it reproduces fat tails a constant-variance model misses.
General AccountStocks: The pool of assets an insurer holds to back its general obligations, funded by premiums and supporting products whose payouts the insurer guarantees, such as whole life policies and fixed annuities. Investment risk sits with the insurer rather than the policyholder, so the assets are invested conservatively, mostly in bonds and mortgages, under state investment rules. It contrasts with a separate account, which backs variable products where the policyholder bears the investment result. Claims on the general account rank against the insurer's overall solvency.
General Agreements to BorrowStocks: A standing credit arrangement under which a group of major economies agreed to lend their currencies to the International Monetary Fund when its own resources looked insufficient to counter a threat to the international monetary system. Established in 1962 among the countries that became known as the Group of Ten, it gave the Fund a supplementary line to draw on with the lenders' consent. It was later supplemented by the broader New Arrangements to Borrow, which drew in more participants and larger commitments.
General Business Tax CreditStocks: The combined total of many separate United States business credits, such as the research credit and various energy and employment credits, aggregated on one form and applied against income tax after other credits. It is a nonrefundable credit limited by a formula tied to the taxpayer's regular tax and tentative minimum tax, and unused amounts generally carry back one year and forward for a period set by statute. Because the component credits are enacted, extended, and expired separately, the mix available in any year comes from current law.
Geographical DiversificationOptionsStocks: Spreading investments across countries or regions so that the portfolio does not depend on the economic cycle, policy decisions, or market conditions of one place. It works to the extent returns in different markets are imperfectly correlated, which is driven by differing sector mixes, currencies, and monetary regimes. Its limits are real: correlations tend to rise during global stress, exactly when the diversification is most wanted, and holding foreign assets adds currency, custody, tax, and political risk that a domestic portfolio does not carry.
Gift LetterStocks: A signed statement from a donor confirming that money given to a borrower toward a home purchase is a genuine gift with no expectation of repayment. Lenders require it because a hidden loan would add a debt obligation the underwriting never counted, changing the borrower's capacity to pay. It names the donor, the relationship, the amount, the property, and the date, and lenders normally also want evidence of the transfer and sometimes proof the donor held the funds.
Gift in TrustStocks: A transfer of assets into a trust for the benefit of another person rather than directly to that person, so a trustee controls the timing and conditions of access. It is used to make gifts to minors, to protect assets from a beneficiary's creditors or spending, and to keep future appreciation outside the donor's estate. For the gift to qualify for the annual gift tax exclusion in the United States it must be a present interest, which is why Crummey withdrawal rights are commonly written in. Exclusion amounts are set annually by the IRS.
Godfather OfferStocks: A takeover bid pitched so far above the target's market price that the board would struggle to justify rejecting it to shareholders, effectively leaving no realistic alternative. The pressure is legal and reputational rather than physical: directors face the risk of shareholder litigation or a proxy revolt if they turn down a clearly superior price. Bidders use it to shut out competing offers quickly, and the premium paid is the cost of removing the auction.
Going ConcernStocks: The accounting assumption that an entity will continue operating for the foreseeable future and will not be forced to liquidate or curtail its activities. It is what justifies carrying assets at cost less depreciation rather than at fire-sale value and classifying obligations as long-term. When management or the auditor concludes there is substantial doubt, the financial statements must disclose it and the auditor adds an explanatory paragraph, which frequently triggers covenant breaches and rating actions because lenders treat it as a formal warning signal.
Gold OptionOptionsStocks: A contract giving the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a fixed quantity of gold, or a gold futures contract, at a set strike price on or before expiry, in exchange for a premium paid upfront. Exchange-listed versions usually settle into a gold futures position rather than metal. Buyers use them to take a directional or volatility view with a loss capped at the premium, while producers and holders sell or buy them to shape exposure to the metal's price.
Golden HandshakeStocks: A severance package promised in an executive's contract that pays cash, accelerates equity vesting, or extends benefits when employment ends, typically after dismissal without cause or a change of control. It is agreed at hiring rather than negotiated at exit, which is what distinguishes it from an ordinary redundancy settlement. Boards argue it lets executives take necessary risks without fearing personal ruin, while critics note it can reward departure after poor results, which is why disclosure of the terms is required for listed companies.
Golden ParachuteOptionsStocks: A contractual promise of substantial payments and benefits to senior executives if their employment ends following a change of control, commonly a multiple of salary and bonus plus accelerated vesting of equity and continued benefits. It is meant to keep management neutral while evaluating a bid rather than resisting one that would cost them their jobs. Critics see it as a reward for losing independence. In the United States, excess amounts can trigger a corporate deduction disallowance and an excise tax on the recipient under a specific code section.
Goodwill ImpairmentStocks: A write-down recorded when the carrying amount of goodwill on a balance sheet exceeds what the acquired business is now judged to be worth. Goodwill arises when a buyer pays more than the fair value of identifiable net assets, and it is not amortized, so it must be tested at least annually and whenever events suggest a decline. The charge reduces reported earnings and equity but uses no cash, which is why analysts treat it mainly as a delayed admission that the price paid was too high.
Graham NumberStocks: A valuation reference point derived from Benjamin Graham's screening criteria, calculated as the square root of 22.5 multiplied by earnings per share multiplied by book value per share. The factor of 22.5 comes from combining his suggested ceilings of 15 times earnings and 1.5 times book value. The result is a price above which a defensive investor, on those criteria, would not consider the shares cheap. It suits asset-heavy companies with steady earnings and breaks down for firms whose value sits in intangibles or whose earnings are negative.
GrantOptionsStocks: The award by a company of stock options, restricted shares, or similar rights to an employee or director, made on a stated grant date that fixes the exercise price and starts the vesting clock. The grant itself conveys no immediate ownership: the recipient must satisfy the vesting conditions, usually continued service or performance targets, before the award can be exercised or the shares released. Accounting standards require the fair value measured at grant to be expensed over the vesting period, and tax treatment depends on the award type.
GranteeStocks: The party who receives a right, interest, or asset transferred by another. In property law the grantee is named on the deed as the person taking title from the grantor. In equity compensation the grantee is the employee or director receiving options or restricted shares. In lending or licensing the grantee holds the right conveyed under the agreement. The word carries no implication about payment: a grantee may have paid full value, paid nothing, or earned the right through service.
Granular PortfolioStocksCrypto: A portfolio spread across many small positions rather than concentrated in a few large ones, so no single holding materially changes the result. Granularity is the property that makes statistical diversification work in credit and lending books, because idiosyncratic default losses average out and remaining variability comes mostly from shared, systematic factors. Regulatory and rating models for securitizations assume it explicitly, which is why a pool with a handful of oversized obligors is penalised through concentration adjustments.
Greenspan PutOptionsStocks: The belief, named after Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, that the central bank would ease policy after sharp market declines, giving investors something resembling a free downside hedge. It arose after rate cuts followed episodes of market stress in the late 1980s and 1990s. The term is a criticism as much as a description: if participants expect a rescue, they take more risk than they otherwise would, which is the moral hazard argument. Later chairs have had the same phrase attached to their own names.
Gresham's LawFuturesStocks: The observation that when two forms of money must legally be accepted at the same official value but differ in intrinsic worth, people spend the cheaper one and hoard or export the better one, so bad money drives good money out of circulation. It requires a legally fixed exchange rate between the two: without one, the market simply prices them differently and both circulate. Historical examples include clipped or debased coin displacing full-weight coin, and it is invoked in debates about currencies of differing quality circulating side by side.
Gross Leverage RatioStocks: An insurance solvency measure combining an insurer's net premiums written, net liabilities, and ceded reinsurance leverage, all expressed relative to policyholders' surplus. It captures total exposure per unit of capital, including the credit risk taken on reinsurers, which a net measure ignores. A higher figure means more business and more reinsurance recoverable resting on the same capital base, so rating agencies compare it against peers writing similar lines rather than against a single universal threshold.
Gross fiscal deficitStocks: The amount by which a government's total expenditure exceeds its total revenue excluding borrowing, so it measures how much the government must raise from debt in a given year. It is commonly expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product to allow comparison across time and countries. Subtracting interest payments gives the primary deficit, which shows whether current spending is covered before servicing past debt. A persistent gross deficit adds to the debt stock, and the cost of financing it rises with market interest rates.
Group of 30Stocks: A private, non-profit body of senior current and former central bankers, regulators, commercial and investment bankers, and academic economists that publishes analysis on international financial and monetary issues. It has no regulatory authority: its influence comes from the seniority of its membership and the fact that its reports on subjects such as clearing and settlement, derivatives practice, and banking conduct have repeatedly shaped later official standards. Membership is by invitation and is limited to a small number of individuals.
Growth IndustryStocks: A sector whose revenue and output are expanding faster than the wider economy, typically because of new technology, a demographic shift, or a change in regulation that opens demand. Companies in one usually reinvest heavily and pay little or nothing out, so their valuations rest on expectations of future cash flow rather than current earnings. Rapid growth attracts entrants, so early margins often compress, and industries lose the label as penetration matures and growth converges toward the economy's rate.
Grunt WorkStocksCrypto: Slang for the repetitive, detail-heavy tasks that junior staff perform in finance, such as building and checking spreadsheet models, assembling comparable-company data, formatting pitch materials, and reconciling documents for diligence. The work is unglamorous but consequential, because errors in it propagate into valuations and disclosure. Firms treat it as apprenticeship: it teaches the underlying data and conventions that later judgement relies on, and increasing amounts of it are being pushed into software.
Guaranteed LoanStocks: A loan on which a third party, often a government agency or a parent company, promises to repay the lender if the borrower defaults. The guarantee transfers most of the credit risk away from the lender, which is why guaranteed loans reach borrowers who would otherwise be declined and usually carry lower rates than the borrower's own standing would support. Guarantees are typically partial, cover a stated percentage of the loss, and require the lender to follow prescribed underwriting and collection procedures to stay covered.
Guaranteed Minimum Accumulation BenefitStocks: An optional rider on a variable annuity promising that the contract value will be at least a stated amount after a defined waiting period, regardless of investment performance, provided the owner holds the contract and follows its conditions. If markets leave the account below that floor at the end of the period, the insurer tops it up. The protection is paid for through an explicit annual rider charge, and insurers commonly restrict which investment options may be used while it is in force.
Guaranteed Renewable PolicyStocks: An insurance contract, most often health, disability, or long-term care, under which the insurer must renew coverage for as long as premiums are paid and cannot cancel it or change the benefits because the insured's health has deteriorated. The insurer retains the right to raise premiums, but only for an entire class of policyholders rather than for one individual. It sits between a non-cancellable policy, where premiums are also locked, and a conditionally renewable one, where the insurer keeps broader grounds to decline renewal.
Guaranteed StockStocks: Preferred or common stock whose dividend is guaranteed by a party other than the issuer, most often a parent company or a lessee corporation. The classic case arose among railroads, where a leasing company guaranteed the dividend on the leased line's shares as part of the lease terms. The guarantee makes the payment depend on the guarantor's ability to pay rather than solely on the issuer's earnings, giving the shares some characteristics of a bond, though holders still rank behind creditors of both entities.
Guideline Premium and Corridor TestStocks: One of two alternative tests a life insurance contract must satisfy under United States tax law to be treated as life insurance rather than as an investment. The guideline premium limb caps cumulative premiums relative to the death benefit, and the corridor limb requires the death benefit to exceed the cash value by a specified percentage that steps down as the insured ages. Failing the test costs the contract its tax treatment, making inside build-up currently taxable. The cash value accumulation test is the alternative.
Guilder ShareStocksCrypto: A form of share used by Dutch companies to allow their equity to trade in the United States, also called a New York share. The certificate was denominated for the American market and registered in the holder's name rather than issued in the bearer form long common in the Netherlands, which made ordinary settlement and dividend payment possible for US investors. The arrangement predates the widespread use of depositary receipts, which now serve the same purpose for most cross-border listings.
General EquilibriumStocksCrypto: An analysis in which all markets in an economy clear at the same time and every price is determined jointly, rather than one market being studied with the rest held fixed. Households maximise utility, firms maximise profit, and the price vector that makes total demand equal total supply in every market simultaneously is the equilibrium. It is the framework behind results on when competitive outcomes are efficient, and it matters in finance because it shows how a shock in one market transmits into others through prices.
Glass-Steagall ActStocks: The common name for the provisions of the United States Banking Act of 1933 that separated commercial banking from securities underwriting and dealing. It barred deposit-taking banks from affiliating with firms principally engaged in the securities business, and the same statute created federal deposit insurance. The separation was eroded by regulatory interpretation over several decades, and the affiliation restrictions were repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, though the deposit insurance framework it established remains in place.
Global OfferingStocksFutures: A securities offering marketed at the same time to investors in several countries through separate tranches, each governed by its own jurisdiction's rules but coordinated under one price and timetable. A typical structure pairs a registered or public tranche in the issuer's home market with international tranches sold under private placement or offshore exemptions. Syndicate members can reallocate shares between tranches as demand emerges, and the purpose is to widen the investor base and support aftermarket liquidity across time zones.
GnomeStocks: Market nickname for a Freddie Mac mortgage pass-through pool backed by fifteen-year fixed-rate loans rather than thirty-year loans. The shorter amortisation schedule returns principal faster, which shortens duration and reduces sensitivity to prepayment, so these pools trade as a distinct sector with their own price relationships against the long pools. The equivalent short-term pools from the other agencies carry their own nicknames, dwarf for Fannie Mae and midget for Ginnie Mae.
Going Concern ValueStocks: The value of a business as an operating whole, reflecting its assembled workforce, customer relationships, processes and reputation, rather than the sum of what its individual assets would fetch if sold off separately. It is measured by discounting the cash flows the business is expected to generate while it keeps trading. The excess over liquidation value is what an acquirer pays for beyond the balance sheet, and it disappears if the business stops operating, which is why solvency analysis keeps the two bases apart.
Gold FixingFuturesStocks: A twice-daily auction that sets a published benchmark price for gold, used to value holdings and to settle contracts that reference it. Participants submit buy and sell volumes at a proposed price, and the price is adjusted between rounds until the imbalance falls within a set tolerance, at which point the auction is declared and the price published. The London process was reformed after conduct investigations into the older telephone procedure, moving to an electronic, auditable auction with a wider set of direct participants.
Gold ReservesFuturesStocks: Gold held by a central bank or treasury as part of official reserve assets, recorded on the balance sheet and disclosed in official reserve statistics. It is held for diversification away from foreign currency claims, because it is nobody's liability and carries no credit risk, though it pays no interest and costs money to store and insure. Purchases and sales by official holders are watched closely because their size relative to annual mine supply is large enough to move the price.
GoldbricksStocks: Securities promoted as valuable but in fact close to worthless, the term borrowed from the confidence trick of selling lead bars plated with gold. It is applied to shares in companies with no real operations and to bonds of issuers with no capacity to pay, typically sold through high-pressure marketing that stresses an unusual opportunity and discourages verification. Checking registration status, audited financial statements and the seller's licence with the relevant securities regulator is the standard defence.
Good For Month OrderStocksCrypto: An order instruction that keeps an unexecuted order live until the close of the last trading day of the current calendar month, after which any unfilled balance is cancelled automatically. It sits between a day order, which expires at the session close, and an open or good-till-cancelled instruction with no fixed end. Brokers apply it to limit orders resting away from the market, and any quantity filled during the period reduces the balance rather than cancelling the whole order.
Government StockStocks: British terminology for a marketable bond issued by the national government, more commonly called a gilt. The instrument pays a stated coupon, usually semi-annually, and repays a fixed principal at maturity, while index-linked versions adjust both to a published inflation measure. Because the issuer can tax and issues debt in its own currency, such stock serves as the domestic benchmark for the risk-free curve, and yields on other sterling bonds are quoted as a spread over the nearest maturity.
Graveyard MarketStocksCrypto: A prolonged bear phase in which existing holders face large losses if they sell while potential buyers stay away, so turnover dries up and prices drift lower on thin volume. The name captures the position of those already in: getting out means realising the loss, and staying in means holding through further decline. Low participation widens spreads and makes prices more sensitive to small orders, which describes a market state rather than predicting when it ends.
Group of 7StocksCrypto: An informal grouping of advanced economies whose finance ministers, central bank governors and heads of government meet to coordinate on economic and financial policy. Members are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, with the European Union also represented. It has no treaty basis or permanent secretariat and issues communiques rather than binding rules, but its statements on exchange rates, sanctions and financial regulation are watched because members control a large share of official reserves and set standards other bodies adopt.
Guaranteed Income BondStocks: A single-premium life assurance contract, sold mainly in the United Kingdom, that pays a stated rate of income for a fixed term and returns the original capital at the end. Despite the name it is an insurance policy rather than a bond, so the guarantee is the insurer's own obligation and the holder is exposed to that insurer's solvency rather than to a traded market price. Taxation follows the life policy rules, with the treatment and any compensation scheme protection set by United Kingdom legislation.
Girsanov's TheoremStocksCrypto: A result in stochastic calculus showing that changing the probability measure applied to a Brownian motion changes its drift but leaves its volatility unchanged. In derivatives pricing it is the step that moves from the real-world measure to a risk-neutral one, replacing an asset's expected return with the risk-free rate so that discounted prices become martingales and a claim's value is its discounted expected payoff. The change of measure is valid only when both measures agree on which events have zero probability.
Global public goodsStocksCrypto: Benefits whose availability crosses national borders and from which no country can practically be excluded, such as a stable climate, containment of infectious disease, financial stability and open sea lanes. Because every country gains whether or not it contributes, voluntary provision falls short of what is collectively worthwhile, and the shortfall is larger than in the domestic case because no government can compel other states to pay. Treaties, conditional funding and international institutions are the mechanisms used to narrow it.
Guaranty FundStocks: A pool of money set aside to pay claims when a member institution fails. In United States insurance, state guaranty associations assess surviving licensed insurers after an insolvency and pay covered policyholder claims up to limits fixed by each state's statute. At a clearing house, the equivalent fund is prefunded by clearing members and sits behind the defaulter's own margin in the loss waterfall. Both designs share one mechanism: surviving members absorb losses that exceed the failed party's own resources.
GadflyStocks: A shareholder who persistently questions management at annual meetings and files proposals on governance, executive pay, disclosure or social issues, often while holding only a small stake. The activity works through publicity and proxy voting rather than through capital at stake, and regulators set eligibility rules on holding size and duration before a proposal must be included in the company's proxy materials. Several ideas first raised this way, such as annual director elections, later became mainstream.
Galloping inflationStocksCrypto: Rapid price increases, conventionally described as running at double or triple digit annual rates, fast enough that money loses value noticeably within a year but short of hyperinflation. Contracts shorten, wage and price indexation spreads, savers move into foreign currency or real assets, and the tax base erodes as collections lose value between assessment and payment. It usually reflects persistent monetary financing of fiscal deficits rather than a single supply shock.
GamificationStocks: Applying game design elements such as points, streaks, badges, leaderboards, progress bars and celebratory animations to activities that are not games. Brokerages and trading apps have used it to raise engagement and order frequency, which draws regulatory concern because features rewarding activity can encourage trading that does not serve the user. Regulators in several jurisdictions have examined whether such prompts amount to a recommendation, which would trigger suitability obligations.
Gann AnglesOptionsStocks: Lines drawn on a chart at fixed ratios of price movement to time, following W. D. Gann's method, with the one-by-one angle representing one unit of price per unit of time and steeper or shallower lines at ratios such as two-by-one and one-by-two. Practitioners treat them as moving support and resistance and read a break of one angle as a shift to the next. The technique depends on the chart's price and time scaling and has no accepted statistical validation.
Garage Liability InsuranceStocks: Commercial cover for businesses that service, store, sell or park customers' vehicles, such as dealerships, repair shops, valet operations and body shops. It responds to bodily injury and property damage arising from garage operations and from the business's own autos. Damage to a customer's vehicle while in the business's care is handled by a separate garagekeepers coverage part, which is why claims are frequently disputed over which section of the policy applies.
Gemini ExchangeStocksCrypto: A cryptocurrency exchange and custodian founded in 2014 by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, operating in the United States as a New York limited purpose trust company chartered by that state's Department of Financial Services. The charter subjects it to state banking supervision together with capital and custody requirements. It offers spot trading, custody and a dollar-referenced stablecoin. Its yield-bearing lending product was halted in 2022 after the failure of its lending partner.
General ManagerStocks: The executive accountable for the overall results of a business unit, division, region or site, holding responsibility for its profit and loss rather than for a single function. The role combines revenue and cost decisions, resource allocation across functions, and local strategy within corporate limits. It is a common training ground for senior leadership because it is the first position where someone owns a complete set of trade-offs instead of optimising one department.
Generally Accepted Principles And Practices(Santiago Principles) Stocks: A voluntary standards framework for sovereign wealth funds, agreed at Santiago in 2008 and generally known by that city's name. Its twenty-four principles cover legal structure and objectives, coordination with domestic fiscal and monetary policy, transparency of reporting, and governance arrangements keeping investment decisions independent and commercially driven. They were developed to address recipient-country concern that state-owned investors might pursue political rather than financial goals. Compliance is self-assessed.
Geographical PricingStocks: Setting different prices for the same product in different locations, reflecting freight cost, local taxes and duties, income levels, competition and willingness to pay. Methods include uniform delivered pricing, zone pricing, freight absorption and basing-point pricing. The binding constraint is arbitrage: where buyers can move goods between markets cheaply, price gaps invite parallel imports, so the practice works best where transport cost, regulation or product differences keep the markets separate.
Giffen GoodStocks: A good whose quantity demanded rises as its price rises, breaking the usual demand relationship. It requires an inferior good absorbing a large share of a poor household's budget: when its price rises the household becomes so much worse off that it cuts the more expensive substitute and buys more of the staple, so the income effect outweighs the substitution effect. Empirical examples are contested, with rice and wheat studies in poor regions offering the closest evidence.
Gift Inter VivosStocks: A transfer of property made during the donor's lifetime rather than by will, requiring intent to give, delivery of the property or of control over it, and acceptance by the recipient. A completed lifetime gift removes both the asset and its future growth from the donor's estate. United States rules allow an annual exclusion per recipient and a lifetime exemption, both set by statute and adjusted for inflation, with amounts above the exclusion reported on a gift tax return.
Gift of EquityStocks: A sale of property to a relative or close connection at below market value, where the difference between the sale price and the appraised value serves as the buyer's down payment instead of cash. Lenders accept it when a gift letter documents that no repayment is expected and an appraisal supports the value. The forgone amount can be a reportable gift for United States gift tax purposes, and the seller's original cost basis still determines their own taxable gain.
Gilt-Edged BondStocks: A bond of the highest credit quality, issued by a borrower whose ability to pay interest and repay principal is regarded as beyond serious doubt. The label originally described certificates printed with gilded edges and now signals minimal default risk rather than any legal status, so these instruments trade at low yields and their prices move mainly with interest rates rather than credit news. Holders use them for capital preservation and as collateral.
Global Industry Classification Standard(GICS) Crypto: A hierarchical scheme developed by MSCI and S&P Dow Jones Indices assigning each listed company to one sub-industry, which rolls up through industry and industry group to a sector. Assignment follows the source of the majority of a company's revenue, so a firm is classified by what it sells rather than by how investors think of it. Index construction, sector funds and peer group analysis all depend on it, and periodic revisions move whole groups of companies at once.
Global RecessionStocksCrypto: A broad contraction in world economic activity, which the International Monetary Fund identifies from a decline in real world output per head together with weakness across trade, industrial production, capital flows, oil consumption and employment. Because population growth means aggregate world output rarely falls outright, the per-head basis is what makes the definition workable. Synchronisation is what makes it severe: when many economies contract together, exports cannot cushion domestic weakness anywhere.
Gold CertificateFuturesStocks: A document representing ownership of a stated quantity of gold held by an issuer, transferable without moving the metal itself. The United States Treasury issued circulating certificates redeemable in coin until private gold ownership was restricted in 1933, and the term now covers instruments from banks and mints evidencing allocated or unallocated bullion. The distinction matters in insolvency: allocated metal remains the holder's property, while an unallocated claim ranks as an unsecured creditor.
Golden ShareFuturesStocks: A share, usually retained by a government after privatisation, carrying special rights out of proportion to its economic value, such as a veto over a change of control, the sale of strategic assets, or amendments to the company's constitution. It preserves influence over defence, energy, telecommunications and transport businesses after sale. European Court of Justice rulings have struck several down as restrictions on the free movement of capital unless justified on narrow public security grounds.
Good CreditStocks: A borrowing record lenders read as low risk, built from consistent on-time payments, low balances relative to available limits, a long history, a mix of instalment and revolving accounts, and few recent applications. Bureaus condense the file into a score, and higher bands attract lower interest rates, larger limits and easier approval, which is where the financial value sits. The exact band labelled good differs between scoring models and between lenders using the same model.
Government Accountability Office(GAO) Stocks: The audit and evaluation agency of the United States Congress, headed by the Comptroller General on a fifteen-year term. It audits federal spending, evaluates whether programmes achieve their stated objectives, issues legal decisions on appropriations and bid protests, and publishes a list of areas at high risk of waste, fraud and mismanagement. Its reports are public and its recommendations are not binding, so influence comes through congressional attention rather than enforcement power.
Government ShutdownStocks: A suspension of non-excepted federal activity occurring when appropriations lapse because Congress has not enacted funding legislation. Agencies furlough staff whose work is neither funded from other sources nor excepted for safety of life and protection of property, while mandatory spending such as social security payments continues. Markets feel it through delayed economic statistics, paused regulatory reviews and registrations, and lost output that is only partly recovered once funding resumes.
Government securities auctionStocks: The competitive sale process by which a treasury issues debt directly to the market. Bidders submit competitive bids stating a yield and quantity, or non-competitive bids accepting whatever the auction produces, and the treasury fills from the lowest yield upward until the offering is covered. Most sovereigns use a single-price format in which every successful bidder pays the highest accepted yield. Bid-to-cover ratios and the tail between average and highest accepted yield measure demand strength.
Grace PeriodStocks: A window after a payment due date during which an obligation can be met without penalty, or during which a benefit continues despite non-payment. Credit cards apply the idea narrowly: interest is waived on new purchases only where the previous balance was paid in full, and the waiver disappears once a balance revolves. Insurance policies stay in force through a stated period after a missed premium, and student loans defer repayment for a set period after study ends.
Graduated LeaseStocks: A lease in which rent increases on a defined schedule over the term, either by fixed steps agreed at signing or by a formula tied to an index, a periodic appraisal, or the tenant's sales. It lets a landlord accept a lower initial rent while preserving long-term income, which suits a tenant whose revenue is expected to build. Accounting standards require the total lease cost to be recognised on a straight-line basis regardless of the payment schedule.
Great Leap ForwardOptionsStocks: A campaign launched in China in 1958 to move rapidly from an agrarian economy to an industrial one through mass collectivisation, communal farming and small-scale backyard steel production. Grain output collapsed as labour was diverted, procurement quotas were set from inflated production reports, and the resulting famine caused tens of millions of deaths before the policy was abandoned in the early 1960s. It is cited as a case of planning failure driven by distorted information.
Green FundStocks: An investment fund selecting holdings on environmental criteria such as renewable energy, efficiency, water, waste and low-carbon transition, and typically excluding fossil fuel extraction and heavy emitters. Approaches range from negative screening through thematic investing to funds whose stated objective is measurable environmental impact. Labels are not standardised across jurisdictions, so two funds described the same way can hold very different portfolios, and regulators have tightened rules on fund naming and disclosure.
Green-Field InvestmentStocksCrypto: A cross-border investment in which a company builds new facilities in the destination country from the ground up, hiring staff and installing capacity rather than acquiring an existing business. It adds productive capacity and employment directly, which is why host governments favour it over acquisitions, and it lets the investor set technology, layout and workplace culture. The trade-off is a longer path to revenue and full exposure to local permitting, construction and hiring risk.
GreenbackStocks: Paper currency issued by the United States government during the Civil War under the Legal Tender Acts, printed with green ink on the reverse and not redeemable in specie, which is where the nickname came from. Issuing it financed war spending and produced inflation and a floating gold premium until convertibility resumed in 1879. The word survives as informal shorthand for the United States dollar, particularly in foreign exchange commentary.
Gross Net Written Premium Income(GNWPI) Stocks: An insurer's written premium after return premiums and cancellations, and after premiums ceded for reinsurance that inures to the benefit of the cover being rated, but before deducting the reinsurance being purchased. It is the exposure base written into an excess of loss treaty, so the reinsurance premium is expressed as a rate applied to it. Because the definition sits in treaty wording rather than an accounting standard, two contracts can compute it differently on the same book.
Gross Processing Margin(GPM) FuturesStocks: The difference between the market value of the products obtained from processing a raw commodity and the cost of the raw commodity itself, measured per unit of input. It is the processor's gross return before operating costs, and it drives run rates: a wide margin encourages plants to raise throughput, a narrow one to cut it. Traders replicate it with futures spreads, buying the input contract and selling the output contracts in the appropriate yield proportions.
General CollateralStocks: Securities that are close enough substitutes in a repurchase agreement that the lender of cash accepts any of them from a defined pool, so the trade is about borrowing money rather than obtaining one specific bond. Repo done on this basis prices at the general collateral rate, the market's benchmark secured overnight funding cost. A bond in heavy demand for borrowing trades special instead, at a lower repo rate that compensates the cash lender for supplying that particular issue.
GhararStocksCrypto: Excessive uncertainty or ambiguity in a contract, which Islamic commercial law treats as a defect that can make the contract invalid. It arises where the subject matter, price, quantity or delivery is not sufficiently known, or where one party's obligation depends on a chance event. The principle is why conventional insurance and most derivatives are usually considered impermissible in Islamic finance, and why sharia-compliant structures are built on identified assets with defined terms.
Global Medium-Term Note(global MTN) Stocks: A note issued from a documentation programme that lets a borrower sell debt continuously into several markets, including the United States and the euromarkets, under one set of legal papers. Rather than launching each issue as a separate deal, the issuer files the programme once and then draws down in whatever currency, maturity and structure investors demand. That flexibility supports reverse enquiry, where an investor specifies the terms and the issuer prints a small tranche to match.
Golden HandcuffsFuturesStocks: Compensation arrangements designed to make an employee expensive to leave, typically unvested share awards, deferred bonuses, retention payments contingent on service and loans forgiven over time. The value is forfeited on resignation, so the employee weighs a new job against giving up accrued but unvested pay. Boards use them to retain staff whose departure would take clients or expertise, and disclosure of the awards is required for senior executives in most listed company regimes.
Golden HelloFuturesStocks: A payment or share award made to an incoming senior employee on joining, often to compensate for bonuses and unvested equity forfeited at the previous employer. It is usually subject to clawback or to vesting over a service period, so the recipient must stay to keep it. Because the payment rewards arrival rather than performance, shareholder bodies scrutinise it and many governance codes expect the buyout to be no more generous than what was actually given up.
Good DeliveryStocks: Securities or commodities tendered in settlement that meet the market's rules on form, so the receiving party must accept them. For physical certificates that meant correct denominations, valid endorsements and unmutilated documents. In bullion it means bars from an accredited refiner meeting specified weight, purity and marking standards with unbroken custody records. Failing the standard makes the delivery rejectable, leaving the seller to replace it and bear any resulting cost.
Gross LineStocks: The total amount of cover an insurer writes on a single risk before any reinsurance is deducted, representing the full limit shown on the policy. Subtracting the reinsurance ceded leaves the net line, which is what the insurer actually retains for its own account. Underwriters track both because the gross figure governs the promise made to the policyholder and the aggregate exposure to an event, while the net figure drives capital and earnings volatility.
Gross Redemption Yield(GRY) Stocks: The United Kingdom term for the annual return on a bond held to maturity, calculated before deducting any tax on the income. It is the single discount rate that makes the present value of all remaining coupons plus the redemption payment equal the dirty price, and so is the same measure as yield to maturity. Deducting income tax at the holder's rate from the coupon stream gives the net redemption yield instead.
Group CaptiveStocks: An insurance company owned jointly by several unrelated businesses, usually from a similar industry, that insures the risks of its member owners rather than the general public. Members fund it with capital and premiums, share in underwriting results and buy reinsurance above an agreed retention. The structure gives smaller firms access to wholesale reinsurance pricing and to investment income on reserves, while exposing each member to the claims experience of the others.
Guidance LineStocks: An internal ceiling a bank sets on how much credit it is prepared to extend to a customer, recorded for its own planning and control but not communicated to the borrower and not a legal commitment. Because nothing is promised, the bank pays no capital or commitment charge for an advised facility and can withdraw the intention at any time. Drawings are still approved transaction by transaction against the guidance level.
Gap OptionOptionsStocks: An option with two strikes: one determines whether the contract pays at all, the other determines how much. A gap call pays the underlying price minus the payoff strike whenever the price exceeds the trigger strike, so if the two differ the payoff jumps discontinuously at the trigger and can even be negative for the holder. Pricing follows the Black-Scholes framework with the exercise condition and the settlement amount evaluated at different levels.
Gaussian QuadratureStocksCrypto: A numerical integration method that approximates an integral as a weighted sum of the integrand evaluated at a small number of carefully chosen points, rather than at evenly spaced ones. Choosing both the points and the weights optimally makes the rule exact for polynomials up to a high degree, so far fewer evaluations are needed than with simple grid methods. In finance it is used to compute expected payoffs and to integrate over risk factors in option pricing and credit models.
Geometric Brownian Motion(GBM) StocksCrypto: A continuous-time process in which an asset's proportional change has a constant expected drift plus a random shock scaled by constant volatility, so the level can never go negative and its logarithm follows a normal distribution. It is the assumption behind the Black-Scholes option pricing formula. Real return series depart from it through fat tails, volatility clustering and jumps, which is why stochastic volatility and jump models were developed.
Government ExpenditureFuturesStocks: Total spending by the public sector, split between current spending on wages, goods, services and interest, transfer payments such as pensions and benefits, and capital investment in infrastructure. It enters national accounts directly through purchases of goods and services, while transfers affect output indirectly by changing household income. The gap between expenditure and revenue is the fiscal deficit, financed by issuing government debt, so the spending path drives future bond supply.
Government RevenueStocks: The money a state raises to fund its spending, mainly from taxes on income, profits, consumption, payroll and property, plus social contributions, customs duties, fees, dividends from state assets and any resource royalties. Receipts move with the economic cycle because tax bases such as wages, profits and spending shrink in downturns, which is why deficits widen automatically in recessions. The revenue mix also determines how the tax burden falls across households and sectors.
goal independenceStocks: The ability of a central bank to set its own policy objectives, such as choosing the inflation target it will pursue, rather than having them fixed by government. Most modern arrangements deny it deliberately: the elected government sets the target and the central bank is left free to choose how to hit it, which is instrument independence. Separating the two keeps the choice of objective democratically accountable while insulating the interest rate decision itself from short-term political pressure.
Gross SalesStocks: The total value of all sales invoiced in a period before any deductions. It is the sum of unit prices times units sold, counted at the gross invoice amount, with nothing subtracted for customer returns, allowances for damaged goods, or early-payment discounts. Removing those three items produces net sales, the revenue figure reported at the top of an income statement. A wide and widening gap between the two totals points to discounting pressure or product quality problems rather than to genuine demand.
Gross Value Added(GVA) Stocks: A measure of the output a producer, industry or region contributes to an economy, equal to the value of goods and services produced minus the cost of the inputs consumed in producing them. It relates to headline output through the identity GVA = GDP + subsidies on products - taxes on products, so it strips out the distortion that product taxes and subsidies introduce into market prices. Statistical agencies publish it by sector, which is why it is the standard basis for comparing the relative size of industries within one economy.
Gross investmentStocks: Total spending on new capital goods during a period, before subtracting the capital used up through wear and obsolescence. In national accounts it covers business purchases of equipment, structures and intellectual property, residential construction, and the change in inventories. Subtracting depreciation gives net investment, the amount by which the capital stock actually grows. When the gross figure only matches depreciation the capital stock is flat, and when it falls below depreciation the stock shrinks even though spending remains positive.
Group Universal Life Policy(GULP) Stocks: A universal life insurance contract offered to the members of a group, usually the employees of one employer, under a single master policy. Each participant holds a certificate rather than an individual contract, pays premiums by payroll deduction, and receives the flexible premium and cash value account that universal life provides. Underwriting is simplified because the group is assessed as a whole. Coverage is commonly portable, meaning someone who leaves the employer can continue it by paying the insurer directly.
Group of 10(G10, Group of Ten) Stocks: An eleven-country grouping of major industrial economies whose central banks and finance ministries coordinate on international monetary questions. It grew out of the General Arrangements to Borrow, a 1962 commitment to lend supplementary resources to the International Monetary Fund, and kept the original name after Switzerland joined. Members are Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. In currency markets the same label is used loosely for the most heavily traded developed-market currencies.
Group of 3(G3, Group of Three) Stocks: A shorthand for the three largest developed-market currency and government bond blocs: the United States, the euro area and Japan. Traders use it when describing rate differentials, funding conditions or policy divergence among the dollar, euro and yen, which together dominate reserve holdings and cross-border settlement. The same label was applied historically to a free trade agreement signed by Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela in the 1990s, so the intended meaning depends on whether the context is markets or trade policy.
Guaranteed Minimum Income Benefit(GMIB) Stocks: An optional rider on a deferred annuity that sets a floor under the income the contract will pay once the owner annuitizes, regardless of how the underlying investments performed. The insurer tracks a separate benefit base, often credited with a stated roll-up rate or stepped up to account highs, and applies contractual annuity factors to that base rather than to the actual account value. The rider carries its own annual charge, normally requires a waiting period before it can be exercised, and the guarantee rests on the insurer's ability to pay claims.
Guaranteed Payments to PartnersStocks: Amounts a partnership pays a partner for services or for the use of capital, fixed without regard to whether the partnership earns any income. Under United States tax rules they resemble a salary or interest economically but are not wages: the partnership deducts them in computing its own income, and the receiving partner reports them as ordinary income, generally subject to self-employment tax. Because they are fixed, they are paid even in a loss year, which increases the loss allocated to the remaining partners.
GAFAM StocksStocksCrypto: An acronym for the shares of five large United States technology companies: Google's parent Alphabet, Apple, Facebook's parent Meta Platforms, Amazon and Microsoft. The label is used mainly in European commentary as shorthand for concentration risk, because the group's combined weight in capitalisation-weighted United States indices means index returns depend heavily on a handful of names. These acronyms are journalistic rather than defined by any index provider, so lists such as this one, FAANG and the Magnificent Seven overlap without matching.
GIP(Gibraltar pound) StocksFutures: The ISO 4217 currency code for the Gibraltar pound, issued by the Government of Gibraltar. It is pegged at par to the pound sterling, and sterling circulates alongside it within the territory, so its external value moves exactly with the pound and it carries no independent monetary policy. Gibraltar notes and coins are not legal tender in the United Kingdom, so holders normally exchange them rather than spending them, though the fixed parity keeps the conversion at one for one.
GarnishmentStocks: A legal process in which a creditor obtains an order directing a third party who holds money owed to a debtor, most often an employer or a bank, to pay part of it to the creditor instead. Wage garnishment takes a portion of each paycheck until the judgment is satisfied. Federal and state law cap the fraction of disposable earnings that can be taken and protect certain funds such as many federal benefit payments. Child support, unpaid taxes and defaulted federal student loans can be collected by administrative order without a court judgment.
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT) StocksCrypto: A multilateral treaty signed in 1947 governing international trade in goods by binding tariff rates and requiring signatories to extend any concession granted to one member to all others under the most-favoured-nation rule. Successive negotiating rounds lowered tariffs and extended the rules to subsidies, dumping and non-tariff barriers. The Uruguay Round created the World Trade Organization in 1995, which absorbed the agreement, so the text survives as one of that organization's covered agreements rather than as a standalone body.
General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) StocksCrypto: The European Union regulation governing how personal data of people in the union may be collected, stored, transferred and used. It requires a lawful basis for processing, limits collection to what is necessary for a stated purpose, and gives individuals rights to access, correct, port and erase data held about them. Controllers must report qualifying breaches to a supervisory authority within a short deadline, and the maximum fine is set as the greater of a fixed sum or a percentage of worldwide annual turnover.
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles(GAAP, US GAAP) Stocks: The body of accounting standards, conventions and interpretations that United States public companies follow when preparing financial statements. The Financial Accounting Standards Board sets them, the Securities and Exchange Commission recognises them for filings, and the codification organises them by topic. They are more rule-driven than International Financial Reporting Standards, differing on inventory costing, capitalisation of development costs and reversal of impairments, so cross-border comparison needs adjustment. An auditor's opinion states whether statements conform to them in all material respects.
Genuine Progress Indicator(GPI) StocksCrypto: An alternative aggregate measure of economic welfare that starts from personal consumption and then adjusts it for factors gross domestic product ignores. Additions include the value of household and volunteer work. Deductions include income inequality, commuting time, crime, pollution, resource depletion and defensive spending that only offsets harm. Because the compiler chooses which adjustments to make and how to value them in money, results are not standardised across studies, so it is used to complement output measures rather than replace them.
Geometric MeanCrypto: The nth root of the product of n positive numbers, used when quantities compound rather than add. For returns it is computed by converting each period's return to a growth factor of one plus the return, multiplying the factors, taking the nth root and subtracting one. Because it captures the effect of compounding on a single sum of money, it is never higher than the arithmetic mean of the same figures, and the gap widens with volatility. It is the correct average for multi-period growth rates and for index construction.
Gift SplittingStocks: An election by a married couple in the United States to treat a gift made by one spouse as though each had given half, which doubles the annual exclusion available against that gift. Both spouses must consent, and the election is made on a federal gift tax return for the year, which must be filed even when the split brings the gift under the exclusion. The election applies to all gifts either spouse made during the year rather than selectively. The exclusion amount is indexed annually.
Gift Tax Return(Form 709) Stocks: The United States federal return, Form 709, on which a donor reports gifts exceeding the annual exclusion per recipient, gifts of future interests, and gifts a married couple elects to split. Filing does not by itself create tax: amounts above the exclusion reduce the donor's lifetime unified credit, and tax becomes payable only once that credit is exhausted. The return also records allocations of the generation-skipping transfer exemption. The donor, not the recipient, is responsible for filing and for any tax due.
Go-Shop PeriodStocks: A window written into a signed merger agreement during which the target's board may actively solicit competing offers, despite having already agreed to a deal. It suspends the usual no-shop restriction for a limited number of days, and a superior proposal emerging within it typically triggers a lower break fee than one arriving afterwards. Boards use it to show they tested the market when a deal was negotiated exclusively, particularly in management buyouts where the conflict of interest is direct.
Good Faith EstimateStocks: A written itemisation of expected costs given to a customer before a transaction completes. In United States mortgage lending it was the standard disclosure of estimated settlement charges until the integrated disclosure rules replaced it with the Loan Estimate for most consumer mortgages, though it survives for reverse mortgages. Under federal health care price transparency rules, providers give uninsured and self-paying patients an estimate of expected charges before scheduled care. In both settings it is an estimate, and final charges can differ.
Good This Week(GTW) StocksCrypto: An order instruction telling a broker to keep a limit or stop order working until the close of the current trading week, after which any unfilled portion is cancelled automatically. It sits between a day order, which expires at the end of the session, and a good-til-canceled order, which persists until filled or pulled. Traders use it to hold a resting price level across several sessions without leaving a stale order in the book indefinitely. Availability varies by broker and by venue.
Gray Box(grey box) Stocks: A trading system whose logic is partly disclosed to the user, sitting between a black box that reveals nothing and a fully transparent rule set. The vendor typically describes which inputs and general techniques drive the signals while withholding exact parameters and weightings. Users can therefore reason about when the model is likely to work and where it may break, but cannot fully reproduce or independently backtest it. The same phrase describes software testing where the tester knows some internal structure.
Great DepressionStocksCrypto: The worldwide economic contraction beginning in 1929 and persisting through much of the 1930s, marked in the United States by collapsing industrial output, unemployment reaching roughly a quarter of the workforce, thousands of bank failures and sharply falling prices. Causes identified by economists include monetary contraction, banking panics that destroyed deposits, transmission of deflation across countries through the gold standard, and trade restriction. It produced federal deposit insurance, securities regulation and, for decades, the separation of commercial from investment banking.
Greater Fool TheoryStocks: The idea that an asset can be worth buying above any defensible estimate of its fundamental value, provided someone else will pay more later. It shifts the basis of the decision from the cash flows the asset will produce to the expected behaviour of the next buyer, which is why it is associated with the late stages of speculative episodes. The chain depends on a continuing supply of new buyers, so prices fall abruptly when that supply stops and no valuation anchor exists to arrest the decline.
Green Chip StocksStocksFutures: Shares of companies whose main business is environmental: renewable power generation, energy storage, water treatment, pollution control equipment, recycling or efficiency technology. The label plays on blue chip but carries none of its implication of size or stability, and many of these firms are small, capital-intensive and dependent on subsidies, tariffs or renewable mandates that legislatures can change. Returns for the group have historically tracked energy prices and policy announcements more closely than broad economic growth.
Green InvestingStocks: An investment approach directing capital toward companies, projects or bonds whose activities reduce environmental harm, such as renewable generation, energy efficiency, water infrastructure or emissions control. Implementation ranges from negative screening that excludes fossil fuel producers, to thematic funds holding only environmental businesses, to use-of-proceeds instruments such as green bonds where the issuer commits to fund eligible projects and report on them. What counts as green is set by frameworks and taxonomies that differ between jurisdictions, so labels are not directly comparable.
GrexitStocksFutures: Shorthand for a hypothetical Greek exit from the euro area, coined during the European sovereign debt crisis when Greece's debt burden and bailout conditions raised the possibility that it would leave the single currency and reintroduce a national one. The mechanics discussed included redenominating domestic contracts, capital controls to stop deposit flight, and a sharp devaluation of the new currency. It did not happen, and the word survives as a template for naming similar exit scenarios.
Gross National Happiness(GNH) StocksCrypto: A composite index used by Bhutan as an official development objective alongside economic output, built from survey responses across domains including psychological wellbeing, health, education, time use, cultural diversity, governance, community vitality, ecological resilience and living standards. Indicators are aggregated with fixed weights and a sufficiency threshold, so improvement counts only until a respondent passes an adequate level in a domain. It is intended to expose tradeoffs that output measures hide. Cross-country comparison is limited because the survey instrument is country-specific.
Gross National Product(GNP) StocksCrypto: The total market value of final goods and services produced by the residents of a country, wherever in the world that production takes place. It equals gross domestic product plus income residents earn abroad minus income foreigners earn domestically, so a country hosting large foreign-owned production reports a figure below its domestic product, while one whose nationals earn heavily overseas reports the reverse. National accounts now favour gross national income, which measures the same concept from the income side.
GNP Deflator(Gross National Product Deflator) StocksCrypto: A price index measuring the change in prices of all goods and services produced by a country's residents, calculated as nominal gross national product divided by real gross national product, multiplied by 100. Unlike a consumer price index it uses no fixed basket: its weights shift with what is actually produced each period, so it captures substitution but is not a cost-of-living measure. It differs from the gross domestic product deflator by including net income earned abroad in the aggregate being priced.
Gross Rate of ReturnStocks: The total return an investment produces over a period before deducting fees, expenses, commissions, taxes or other costs. It is calculated as the change in value plus income received, divided by the beginning value. Subtracting management fees, fund operating expenses and trading costs gives the net return, which is what the investor actually keeps, and the gap compounds over long holding periods. Regulated performance advertising generally requires the net figure, so a gross number measures manager output rather than investor outcome.
Gross primary deficitCrypto: A government's fiscal deficit excluding interest payments on existing debt, showing whether current spending and revenue would balance if past borrowing carried no cost. It equals the gross fiscal deficit minus interest payments, so it measures how much new imbalance a budget creates rather than how much it inherits. A primary surplus alongside an overall deficit means debt is rising only because of interest, and a primary balance is the condition for stabilising the debt-to-output ratio when growth exceeds the effective interest rate.
Group Health InsuranceStocks: Health coverage bought by an employer, union or association and offered to its members, with risk pooled across the whole group rather than priced for each individual. Because enrolment is broad and tied to employment, insurers can rate the group on its aggregate characteristics rather than on individual medical history, and premiums are typically shared between employer and employee. In the United States the employer's share is generally excluded from the employee's taxable wages, which is a large part of why coverage is delivered through employment.
Group of 11(G11) Stocks: An association of developing countries formed in 2006 to press creditor nations and multilateral institutions for debt relief and increased development assistance for lower-middle-income economies. Members are drawn from Latin America, Africa and Asia, and it has no permanent secretariat, budget or treaty basis, operating instead through joint declarations at United Nations meetings. It carries far less weight in financial markets than the Group of Seven or Group of Twenty, which coordinate macroeconomic and regulatory policy directly.
Group of 8(G8) StocksCrypto: The Group of Seven advanced economies together with Russia, a format that held summits from 1998 until Russia's participation was suspended in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea. Meetings covered macroeconomic coordination, energy security, trade and foreign policy, with communiqués agreed by consensus rather than binding members to anything. Finance ministers continued meeting as the Group of Seven throughout the period, so the wider format never governed financial policy in the way the narrower one does.
Guarantee Company(company limited by guarantee) Stocks: A company whose members undertake to contribute a fixed sum toward its debts if it is wound up, instead of subscribing for shares. It has no share capital and pays no dividends, so any surplus is retained for its stated objects. The form is used in the United Kingdom, Ireland and other common law jurisdictions for clubs, trade associations, charities, professional bodies and property management companies, where limited liability is wanted but distributing profit is not. Member liability is capped at the amount stated in the constitution.
Gunnar MyrdalStocksCrypto: A Swedish economist and sociologist who shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Friedrich Hayek for work on the interdependence of economic, social and institutional forces. He developed circular cumulative causation, the idea that an initial change sets off reinforcing effects widening regional and social inequality rather than restoring balance, and argued that development analysis cannot be separated from institutions and values. His earlier monetary work distinguished planned quantities from realised ones.
Guyton-Klinger Guardrails(guardrail withdrawal rules, Guyton Klinger rules) Stocks: A set of decision rules that adjust retirement withdrawals up or down when the current withdrawal rate drifts outside a band around its starting value. Spending is cut after portfolio declines and raised after gains, which allows a higher initial withdrawal than a fixed inflation-adjusted rule at the cost of a variable income.
Grant Anticipation Note(GAN) Stocks: A short-term municipal note issued in expectation of a committed grant, most often a federal transportation grant, and repaid when the grant is disbursed.
Going-In Cap Rate(entry cap rate, acquisition cap rate) Stocks: The capitalisation rate implied at purchase, calculated as the property's net operating income at acquisition divided by the purchase price.

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