How does a party enforce a civil judgment? Collecting on a judgment can be a difficult process. There are three primary methods by which a party may enforce a court's judgment. Encumbrance Execution Garnishment What is Encumbrance?  A judgment holder may file a lien on the property of the debtor, such as the real property registered to the debtor. T...

What is Strong Form Efficiency?  Strong form efficiency refers to a market efficiency in which prices of stocks reflects all the information in a market, be it private or public. In strong form efficiency, stock prices reflect public and private information about a market. Strong form efficiency is the strongest of the three forms of the efficient m...

What is a Bank Insurance Fund? Bank Insurance Fund (BIF) is a unit of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that deals with the provision of insurance protection for banks that are not grouped as a saving and loan association. Given all FDIC covers, BIF provides coverage with a limit of $250,000 for every customer in insolvent banks. Creation...

What is Neoliberalism? Neoliberalism is an ideology and policy model that advocates for the free market economy and argues in favor of transferring the power of controlling the economy from public sector to private sector.  What are the Principles of Neoliberalism? The ideology is based on the basic principles of neoclassical economics that recommen...

What is a Leverage Ratio? A leverage ratio is any kind of financial ratio that indicates the level of debt incurred by a business entity against several other accounts in its balance sheet, income statement, or cash flow statement.   The most common leverage ratios are:  debt to equity, and  debt to capital. How Does a Leverage Ratio Work?  Most bus...

What is an Accrual Rate? Accrual rate refers to the interest percentage rate charged on financial instruments such as bonds, pension, credit card, and mortgage loans among other loans. Accrual rates vary according to the financial instrument. However, it is commonly applied on bonds to find out the amount of interest expense accrued for various inte...

What is the International Financial Reporting Standards? International Financial Reporting Standards refer to an international accounting standards set which states how specific transaction types and other activities ought to be reported in financial statements. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issues IFRS, and they dictate precis...

What is a Dark Pool? A dark pool is also known as a black pool. It is a forum for the exchange and trade of securities and financial instruments in which investors trade without the trade being exposed until after execution. Securities, derivatives and financial instruments traded in this forum cannot be publicly accessed by other investors. Investo...

What is a Certified Fund Specialist? The Institute of Business and Finance (IBF) issues a certificate to individuals with expertise in mutual funds who pass their certification exams. The professional holds the designation Certified Fund Specialist (CFS).  CFS Test Outline To obtain a CFS certification, applicants are required to pay a registration ...

What is Data Mining? Data mining is a method used by companies to generate new and useful information from existing raw data. When a company searches through existing databases, analyzes patterns of the raw data to get useful information, this is data mining. There are certain techniques that a company can adopt when it comes to data mining. For ins...