Yield
For bonds and other fixed-income securities, yield is a rate of return on those securities. There are several types of yields and yield calculations. "Yield to maturity" is a common calculation for fixed-income securities, which takes into account total annual interest payments, the purchase price, the redemption value, and the amount of time remaining until maturity.
Alpha: Typically used to represent the value added or subtracted by active investment management strategies. It shows how an actively managed investment portfolio performed compared with the expected portfolio returns produced simply by benchmark volatility (beta) and market changes. A positive alpha shows that an investment manager has been able to capture more of the upside movement in the benchmark while softening the downswings. A negative alpha means that the manager's strategies have caught more benchmark downside than upside.
Beta: Standard measurement of potential investment risk and return. It shows how volatile a security's or an investment portfolio's returns have been compared with their respective benchmark indices. A benchmark index's beta always equals 1. A security or portfolio with a beta greater than 1 had returns that fluctuated more, both up and down, than those of its benchmark, while a beta of less than 1 indicates less fluctuation than the benchmark.
R-Squared: Portfolio performance and risk measure that indicates how much of a portfolio's performance fluctuations were attributable to movements in the portfolio's benchmark index. R-squared can range from 0-100%. An r-squared of 100% indicates that all portfolio performance movements were attributable to movements in the benchmark index-they correlate perfectly to the benchmark. Conversely, an r-squared of 0% indicates that there is no correlation between the performance movements of the portfolio and the benchmark.
Standard Deviation: Statistical measurement of variations from the average. In financial literature, it's often used to measure risk, when risk is measured or defined in terms of volatility. In general, more risk means more volatility, and more volatility means a higher standard deviation-there's more variation from the average of the data being measured. In this context, reducing risk means seeking lower standard deviation.
Sharpe Ratio: Simple but useful risk-adjusted measure of returns, showing the amount of return (reward) earned per unit of risk from any asset with a risk component. The higher the Sharpe Ratio, the better, theoretically, the portfolio's risk-adjusted performance-portfolios with higher Sharpe Ratios tend to provide more return for the same amount of risk. The Sharpe Ratio is useful, but not perfect. It can be skewed by irregular return factors that can upset the standard deviation calculation, and it doesn't take into account the market risk (beta) exposure of the portfolio.
Investment Blend: Reflects the blend of securities owned by a fund. For example, the percentage of foreign or domestic stocks held by an equity fund or the percentage of corporate and government securities owned by a bond fund. The U.S./Foreign Convertibles grouping includes Convertible Bonds, Equity Linked Securities and Convertible Preferred securities.
Top Holdings: This value represents the top holdings included in the portfolio on a percent of assets basis. Equity holdings are grouped to include common shares, depository receipts, rights and warrants issued by the same company. Holdings are rounded to the nearest whole number, which may result in the display of less than ten holdings.
Quality: Describes the portfolio of the fund in terms of the quality ratings of the securities it holds. Cash and cash equivalents include payable amounts related to securities purchased but not settled at period end. Credit quality ratings on underlying securities of a fund are obtained from three Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations ("NRSROs"), Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch. Ratings are converted to the equivalent Standard & Poor's rating category for purposes of presentation. For municipal funds, each security is assigned the highest rating provided by the NRSROs. A "non-rated" designation is assigned when a public rating is not available for a security. This designation does not necessarily indicate low credit quality. The letter ratings are provided to indicate the credit worthiness of the underlying bonds in the portfolio. Long-term ratings generally range from AAA (highest) to D (lowest). Includes payable amounts related to securities purchased but not settled at period end.
Maturity: Describes the portfolio of the fund in terms of the different maturities of the securities it holds.
Weighted Average Life to Maturity (WALM): Is a measure of the sensitivity of a fixed income portfolio to interest rate changes. WALM is the average time in years to receive the principal repayments. Accordingly, WALM reflects how a portfolio would react to deteriorating credit or tightening liquidity conditions.
Coupon: Describes the portfolio of the fund in terms of the different coupons of the securities it holds.
Duration: Describes the portfolio of the fund in terms of the different durations of the securities it holds.
For detailed descriptions of indices or investing terms referenced above, refer to ourglossary.
