Glossary
51 terms used across this site, defined in plain English. Every term has its own page.
A
- A-shares
- Mainland-China listings in Shanghai and Shenzhen, in renminbi, under mainland rules — historically hard for foreigners, now reachable via funds and Stock Connect.
- Accessibility criteria
- The plumbing tests behind classification: currency convertibility, foreign-investor registration, custody, settlement reliability, short-selling and transfer rules.
- ADR
- American Depositary Receipt — a US-traded certificate representing a foreign company's shares, held by a depositary bank. Dollar prices, US settlement.
- ADR ratio
- How many local shares one depositary receipt represents — one, several, or a fraction. Needed to compare an ADR's price to the local line.
B
- Bid-ask spread
- The gap between the best buying and selling price — an invisible cost paid on every trade, wide on thinly traded funds and frontier stocks.
- BRVM
- The regional stock exchange shared by eight West African countries in the CFA franc zone — one bourse, one currency, eight economies.
C
- Capital controls
- Rules limiting converting or moving money across a border. Can trap foreign capital during crises — exactly when investors most want out.
- Citizenship by investment
- The stronger, rarer product: a passport rather than a permit, at higher cost and heavier due diligence.
- Currency peg
- A policy fixing a currency's rate to another (most Gulf currencies peg to the dollar). Removes daily FX noise; breaks rarely but violently.
- Custody
- Who physically holds your securities. In direct local investing your shares sit with a local custodian — custody quality is a genuine risk in some markets.
D
- Delisting (fund)
- A fund's removal from trading, usually via liquidation: holders are cashed out on a schedule. This site badges such funds Delisted and keeps the record.
- Depositary bank
- The bank that holds the local shares underlying an ADR and issues the receipts; charges small pass-through fees, usually against dividends.
- Devaluation
- A deliberate or forced fall in a currency's value. A market can rise in local terms while devaluation erases the gain in dollars.
- Developed market
- A large, deeply liquid, tightly regulated market fully open to foreign capital — the US, Japan, Germany, Australia.
E
- Emerging market
- An economy industrializing and opening its capital markets, investable at scale but short of developed-market standards on income, liquidity, or accessibility. See the guide: what is an emerging market?
- ETF
- Exchange-traded fund — a basket of securities trading as a single stock. The most common route into emerging markets for foreign investors.
- Expense ratio
- A fund's annual fee as a percentage of assets, deducted inside the fund. EM funds cost more than developed-market equivalents; niche funds cost most.
F
- Free float
- The share of a company actually available to trade — excluding state, founder, and strategic holdings. Indexes weight by it; EM floats are often small.
- Frontier market
- A market one tier earlier than emerging: smaller, less liquid, harder to access, with the highest potential growth premium and the highest practical friction.
- FTSE Russell
- An index provider whose market classifications sometimes differ from MSCI's — the same country can sit in different tiers at each.
G
- GDP per capita
- Economic output per person — the quickest single gauge of an economy's income level, shown on every country page here.
- GDR
- Global Depositary Receipt — the same mechanism as an ADR listed outside the US, typically in London.
- Global broker
- A broker offering direct access to many exchanges from one account (Interactive Brokers, Saxo are common examples). Coverage thins exactly where markets get interesting.
- Golden visa
- Residency granted in exchange for a qualifying investment (real estate, funds, business). An immigration product, not a securities investment.
H
- H-shares
- Chinese companies' Hong Kong listings, in Hong Kong dollars under Hong Kong rules — an ordinary purchase at most global brokers.
- Hard currency
- A globally trusted, freely convertible currency (dollar, euro, yen). EM debt is often issued in it; local currencies are 'soft' by contrast.
- Home bias
- Investors' tendency to overweight their own country. The mirror image of the diversification argument for emerging markets.
I
- Index provider
- A firm (MSCI, FTSE Russell, S&P Dow Jones) whose indexes funds contractually track — making its market classifications financially binding.
L
- Liquidity
- The ability to transact in size without moving the price. The scarcest resource in frontier markets and the first thing to vanish in a stress.
- Local exchange
- A country's home stock market — the only place most of its companies trade. Reachable via global brokers (coverage permitting) or local brokers.
M
- Market capitalization
- Share price × shares outstanding. Used to rank companies and size markets — this site shows it per company and per country.
- MSCI
- The index provider whose emerging/frontier classifications this site follows; runs an annual market-classification review.
N
- NAV
- Net asset value — the per-share value of everything a fund holds. Market price can deviate from it (premium or discount), especially on thinly traded funds.
P
- Parallel exchange rate
- An unofficial market rate coexisting with the official one — a warning sign that convertibility is impaired.
- Premium / discount
- The gap between a fund's market price and its NAV. Buying at a premium that later closes is a real cost no fee document lists.
R
- Reclassification
- A market's move between tiers (frontier, emerging, developed, standalone). Forces index-tracking funds to buy or sell, concentrated around the implementation date.
- Replication
- How a fund holds its index: fully (every stock), by sampling, or synthetically via swaps. Matters for tracking and counterparty risk.
- Residency by investment
- The broader category of programs granting the right to live in a country for investing there; minimums and rules change frequently.
S
- Settlement
- The transfer of securities and cash after a trade. Cycles and reliability vary by market and are part of index accessibility reviews.
- Single-country ETF
- A fund concentrated on one market — a focused bet on one economy, currency, and government wrapped in a diversified-looking instrument.
- Sponsored ADR
- An ADR issued in cooperation with the company, at disclosure levels 1 (OTC) through 3 (exchange-listed, can raise capital).
- Standalone market
- A market excluded from the main index tiers entirely, usually after sanctions, capital controls, or a shutdown made it uninvestable at index scale.
- State-owned enterprise
- A listed company controlled by the government. Common atop EM indexes; may be run for policy goals rather than shareholder returns.
- Stock Connect
- The Hong Kong–mainland trading link routing foreign orders into eligible A-shares without a mainland account.
T
- Tax treaty
- An agreement between countries reducing withholding rates for each other's residents. Getting the treaty rate can be automatic or require forms and reclaims.
- Tracking error
- How much a fund's returns deviate from its index. Driven by fees, replication method, taxes, and trading frictions — larger in EM than developed markets.
U
- UCITS
- The EU fund framework. UCITS funds are Europe-listed and generally unavailable to US retail investors through US brokers — this site badges them.
- Unsponsored ADR
- An ADR created by a depositary bank without the company's involvement — tradable, but with thinner disclosure.
V
- VIE structure
- Variable-interest entity — the contractual structure behind many US-listed Chinese companies, giving economic exposure without direct equity ownership.
W
- W-8BEN
- The US form a non-US investor files to certify foreign status and claim treaty rates on US-source income; the model other markets' paperwork resembles.
- Withholding tax
- Tax a country deducts from dividends or interest before paying foreign investors — commonly 10–35%, sometimes reduced by treaty, sometimes reclaimable.
Esta guía es información general, no asesoramiento financiero, fiscal, legal o de inmigración personalizado.