Terms I use loosely, defined the way I mean them

These are working definitions, not textbook ones. Where my usage differs from the standard one I have said so, because a glossary that quietly redefines things is worse than no glossary.

Rates and fixed income

Term	How I use it
Front end	Maturities out to about two years, where policy expectations dominate the price.
Long end	Twenty years and beyond, where supply and demand for duration dominate instead.
Duration	Price sensitivity to a change in yield. Not “how long until it matures”, though the two are related.
Risk premium	Whatever is left in a price after you have accounted for the expectations you can measure. A residual, not a quantity.
Visible supply	Announced municipal deals expected to price in the next thirty days.
Concession	The extra yield a new deal has to offer to clear.
Reinvestment cycle	The seasonal pattern of coupon and redemption cash flowing back to buyers.

Market structure

Term	How I use it
Turnover	Dollar volume traded divided by market capitalisation, over a stated window.
Quintile	A fifth of a ranked universe. I rebalance membership annually, which I flag whenever it matters.
Gap risk	The chance that the next print is far from the last one, with nothing tradeable in between.
Impact cost	What your own order does to the price before it is filled.

Company accounts

Term	How I use it
Working capital	Receivables plus inventory less payables. The bit of the business that eats cash while it grows.
Free cash flow	Operating cash flow less all capital expenditure, with stock compensation left as a cost.
Capitalised cost	Spend moved from the income statement to the balance sheet, to be amortised later.
Rate base	The regulated asset value a utility is allowed to earn a return on.
Allowed return	The percentage a regulator permits on that base. The number the whole sector runs on.
Interconnection queue	Applications to connect new load or generation. A wish list, not a pipeline.

Portfolios

Term	How I use it
Cap weighting	Holding each constituent in proportion to its market value, which concentrates automatically.
Effective holdings	The inverse of the sum of squared weights. How many equal positions would give the same concentration.
Tilt	A deliberate or accidental deviation from a reference weighting.
Substitute exposure	Something close enough to hold in place of a position you have sold, and rarely as close as you hoped.