Investing words, explained

Every term 20kobo shows you, in one or two sentences.

Ex-dividend date: The first day a share trades without its next dividend. To get the dividend, you must own the share before this day.
Qualification date: The date a company checks its register to see who gets a dividend. Shareholders on the register that day are paid.
Dividend yield: A year's dividends divided by today's share price, as a percentage. 20kobo uses all dividends declared in the last full calendar year.
Treasury Bill (T-Bill): A short loan to the Federal Government for 91, 182 or 364 days. You get back a fixed amount at the end.
Stop rate: The discount rate at which the Central Bank of Nigeria sold T-Bills at an auction. Your actual return on the money you pay is a little higher.
Return on money paid: What a T-Bill actually earns on the money you put in, worked out from the stop rate.
Return after inflation: What an investment earns once rising prices are taken into account. If inflation is higher than your return, your money buys less.
Inflation: How much prices in general have risen over the past year, measured by the National Bureau of Statistics and published by the CBN.
Monetary Policy Rate (MPR): The CBN's main interest rate. When it goes up, borrowing costs and savings rates tend to rise too.
NFEM rate: The official exchange rate from the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market, where banks trade dollars. Bureau de change and street rates are different.
External reserves: The foreign currency the CBN holds. Larger reserves give the CBN more room to support the naira.
OMO bills: Short-term bills the CBN sells to banks to take money out of the system. Individuals usually cannot buy them directly.
NGX All-Share Index (ASI): A number that tracks the value of all shares on the Nigerian Exchange, weighted by company size. If it rises, the market as a whole went up.
Rights issue: A company offering its existing shareholders new shares, usually at a discount. More shares means each existing share is a smaller slice of the company.
Bonus issue: Free extra shares given to shareholders. The share price usually falls to match, so your total value does not change.
Market capitalisation: A company's share price multiplied by the number of its shares: what the market says the whole company is worth.
IPO: Initial public offering: when a company first sells shares to the public before they start trading on the exchange.
Fund units and ETFs: Units in a fund that holds many investments. They trade on the exchange but are not shares in a company, so 20kobo lists them separately.
Move against the market: How much a share moved beyond what the whole market did on the same days. It helps separate company news from a market-wide move.
Delayed prices: Prices shown some time after trades happen. 20kobo's prices are delayed, so check with your broker before you trade.