What Is A Short Interest?

Any interest in the market represented by the aggregate sales of men who have sold stocks with the expectation of buying at lower prices.

How Are Short Interests Sometimes Created?

Taking a period when a corner is being worked in a stock, the practice of those engineering it is to freely loan the stock in a way to encourage the creation of a "short interest" 'in it. When the "short interest" has grown enough and the stock is heavily over-sold, the demand for the return of the stock brings the corner to a climax.

What Is A Short Market?

An oversold market. When the total contracts for the delivery of stocks exceed the supply at a certain range of prices, the market is said to be short.

What Is Short Selling?

It is selling stocks, then borrowing them in order to make immediate delivery. When finally bought, such stocks must be returned.

What Is A Sick Market?

When the market is suffering from previous over-speculation, and there is a lull in buying.

What Are Silver Certificates?

Notes not legal tender but receivable for public dues. They are issued in denominations of $1, $2, $5 and $10, and higher, by the Government against silver dollars deposited in the Treasury.

What Is A Sinking Fund?

Any sum or part of a corporation's income set apart at specified times for the redemption of debts.

What Is A Slump?

A serious, unexpected decline in price of stocks.

What Is A Snipe?

A curbstone broker was, in earlier days, referred to as a "snipe."

What Is A Soft Spot?

A weak point in the market, when any small orders break prices.

What Are Southerns?

A term applied to Southern Railway, Louisville & Nashville, Norfolk & Western, Chesapeake & Ohio, and other Southern Railroads.

What Are Specialists?

Brokers who make a specialty of dealing in one or two stocks only; also called "$2 brokers;" owing to many of their orders coming from other brokers, for which they receive $2 for each 100 shares bought or sold.

What Is A Split?

A "split" deal means that on the produce market when one-half of an even number of bushels of corn, etc., is sold at one price, and the other half at another, the price is split in the bill rendered. Supposing 5,000 bushels are sold at a split price of 32-32¼ -2,500 would be billed at 32 and 2,500 at 32¼.

What Is A Spread?

A double stock privilege which gives the holder the right to deliver or demand certain stock on stated terms, also grain price differences between different options, or between the same option in different cities. The difference between the put and call price of any stock.

How Do Spread And Back Spread Differ?

The difference in equivalent prices between New York and London permits two kinds of operations in stocks that are dealt in by both markets. One operation is called a "spread," and the other a "back spread."

A "spread," as employed in arbitrage dealings, means more than a normal difference in prices between London and New York. The stock is sold in London where the higher price prevails, and bought in New York, where a lower price prevails. Then, when the equality in price is restored the transaction is closed by buying and selling in New York.

In a "back spread" there must be less than the normal difference in prices between New York and London.

What Is Being Squeezed?

When the market has been sold short and the shorts become frightened and are forced to excitedly bid up prices in competition with the owners of stocks, they are said to have been "squeezed."