Glossary

Accumulating funds reinvest dividends automatically inside the fund. Distributing funds pay them out to you in cash.

The total dollar value of everything a fund holds. Larger AUM usually means tighter spreads and lower risk of the fund closing.

A sharp rally (the pole) followed by a brief, mild pullback or sideways drift (the flag) — often resolves in a continuation higher.

One trading period's open/high/low/close, drawn as a body (open-close range) with wicks (the high/low extremes beyond it) — the basic unit every chart is built from.

Uses derivatives to cancel out FX swings between the fund's currency and its holdings' currencies — costs a bit more, removes a risk you may not want.

Total debt divided by shareholder equity — how much of the company is financed by borrowing versus its own capital.

Two roughly equal peaks separated by a pullback — a failure to make a new high on the second attempt, often a bearish reversal signal.

A moving average that weights recent prices more heavily than older ones, so it reacts faster to new trends than a simple average.

A three-peak reversal pattern — a higher middle peak (the head) flanked by two lower, roughly equal peaks (the shoulders).

Moving Average Convergence Divergence — a momentum indicator built from two EMAs; crossovers between its two lines flag shifting momentum.

Price-to-Earnings — how many dollars investors are paying for each dollar of the company's annual profit. Lower generally means cheaper.

P/E divided by expected earnings growth rate — a P/E-like multiple that adjusts for how fast the company is actually growing.

Physical funds actually buy the underlying securities. Synthetic funds use a swap with a bank to deliver the index's return instead.

Net income divided by shareholder equity — how efficiently a company turns the money shareholders have put in into profit.

Relative Strength Index — momentum oscillator from 0-100. Above 70 is commonly read as overbought, below 30 as oversold.

The fund's annual running cost, as a % of your investment, taken out of the fund automatically — not billed to you separately.

The actual gap between a fund's return and its benchmark's return over a period — the real-world cost of holding it, beyond just the TER.