Glossary of Investment Terms

Imports—a country's purchases of goods or services from other countries. U.S. imports of goods and services are reported by the Commerce Department when it releases the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report.

Income Dividends Per Share (Investment Companies)—dividends declared from net investment income on a per-share basis.

Income Statement—a financial report that lists revenues, expenses, and net income throughout a given period.

Income Stocks—stocks with higher-than-average dividend yields. (Often, but not always, stocks with dividends that are considered likely to be maintained or raised.)

Income Taxes—the total of all foreign and domestic (federal, state and city) taxes charged against income.

Income Tax Rate—total income taxes as a % of pretax income.

Industrial Production—a Federal Reserve index, published monthly, of the output of the nation's factories, mines, and utilities.

Industry Timeliness Rank—the relative Timeliness rank of an industry, updated weekly in the Summary & Index and calculated by averaging the Timeliness ranks of each of the stocks assigned a Timeliness rank in the industry. Industries with high Timeliness ranks are those with large percentages of stocks that also have high Timeliness ranks. The rank of each industry is listed on the front cover of Summary & Index, next to the name of the industry.

Initial Public Offering—a corporation's first equity offering to the public.

Initial Unemployment Insurance Claims—a weekly Labor Department compilation of new unemployment claims based on data from each of the states in the Union and Washington, D.C.

Insider Decisions—the number of decisions to buy or sell a company's shares made by officers and directors and shown by month for a nine-month period. This table is shown on the left side of the price chart on the Ratings & Reports page. (The source of this information is Vickers Stock Research Corp.)

Institutional Decisions—the number of decisions reported by investment managers having equity assets under management of $100 million or more to buy or sell a company's shares. This table appears on the left side of the price chart on the Value Line page. (The source of this information is Vickers Stock Research Corp.)

Insurance in Force (Insurance Industries)—the aggregate face amount of all life insurance policies outstanding.

Intangibles—assets such as goodwill (the excess of cost over net assets of companies acquired by purchase), patents, trademarks, unamortized debt discounts, and deferred charges. This figure, if it is material, is footnoted on the Value Line page.

Intangibles Per Share—intangible assets divided by the number of common shares at year end.

Interest—payment for the use of borrowed money. Many companies have both interest charges (for long- and short-term funds they have borrowed) and interest income (for money they have invested, usually in short-term, interest-bearing investments).

Interest Cost to Gross Income (Thrift Industry)—interest expenses for the year, expressed as a percentage of gross income.

Inventories—raw materials, work in progress, and finished products. LIFO (last-in, first-out) accounting minimizes illusory, but taxable, inventory profits in periods of rising prices because high-cost materials are expensed against income first. Under FIFO (first-in, first-out) accounting, the reverse is true. Average cost (middle-in, middle-out) is a compromise between LIFO and FIFO.

Inventory Investment—the change in inventories valued at average prices for the period, as published by the Commerce Department in its periodic Gross Domestic Product reports.

Inventory-to-Sales-Ratio—a ratio of inventories to sales, expressed as a percentage. An excessively high ratio may indicate that businesses have too much inventory on hand and are about to cut back production in order to reduce inventories. A decline in production would slow economic growth.

Inventory Turnover—sales divided by year-end inventory. A measure of the efficiency of inventory management.

Investment Company (or Fund)—a company or fund that invests in other companies (usually through the purchase of equity or debt securities) or invests in commodities or real property, etc., or any combination of the above.

Investment Income (Insurance Industries)—dividends, interest, and rents received on investments and any other investment income less the expenses of the investment department.

Investment Income Per Share (Insurance Industry)—dividends, interest, and rents received on investments less the expenses of the investment department, divided by the number of common shares outstanding at year end.