[00:00.10]Now, Words and Their Stories,
[00:12.39]a VOA Special English program
[00:15.09]about American expressions.
[00:17.48]I'm Rich Kleinfeldt with some financial words
[00:21.19]and expressions used in business and the stock market.
[00:26.04]Our first expression is "in the red."
[00:30.59]It is another way of saying
[00:32.69]that a business is losing money.
[00:35.30]In the past,
[00:37.35]numbers in the financial records of a company
[00:40.60]were written in red ink to show a loss.
[00:45.04]A business magazine recently published a report
[00:49.00]about a television company.
[00:51.25]The report said the company was still in the red,
[00:55.96]but was able to cut its loss from the year before.
[01:00.71]A profit by a business is written in black numbers.
[01:06.75]So a company that is "in the black" is making money.
[01:11.95]An international news service reported
[01:16.38]that a private health insurer in Australia
[01:19.48]announced it was "back in the black
[01:23.04]with its first profit in three years."
[01:26.49]Another financial expression is "run on the bank."
[01:32.34]That is what happens when many people
[01:35.87]try to withdraw all their money from a bank.
[01:39.67]A "run on the bank" usually happens
[01:43.87]when people believe there is danger a bank may fail or close.
[01:49.87]Newspaper reports about a banking crisis
[01:54.62]in Russia used that expression.
[01:57.52]They said the government acted because of fears
[02:02.57]that the crisis would cause a run on the banks.
[02:06.22]"When a run on the banks was starting,
[02:09.97]there was not much they could do," said a banking expert.
[02:15.12]"Day trading" is a new expression about a system
[02:20.73]that lets investors trade directly
[02:23.38]on an electronic market system.
[02:26.03]The system is known as NASDAQ,
[02:30.13]short for The National Association
[02:33.34]of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation.
[02:36.61]It was the first completely computerized stock market.
[02:41.95]It sells stocks of companies not listed on any stock exchange.
[02:48.06]Many high technology companies are listed on it.
[02:53.01]Day trading companies provide a desk and a computer system
[02:59.10]to an investor who wants to trade.
[03:02.41]Individuals must provide fifty thousand dollars or more
[03:07.50]to the trading company to pay for the stocks they buy.
[03:13.04]Thousands of other investors do day trading
[03:17.34]from computers in their homes.
[03:19.39]A day trader watches stock prices carefully.
[03:25.29]When he sees a stock rise in price,
[03:29.30]he uses the computer to buy shares of the stock.
[03:33.45]If the stock continues to rise in price in the next few minutes,
[03:39.61]the day trader sells the shares quickly to make a small profit.
[03:45.41]Then he looks for another stock to buy.
[03:49.16]If a stock goes down instead of up,
[03:53.81]he sells it and accepts the loss.
[03:56.90]The idea is to make a small profit many times during the day.
[04:03.73]Day traders may buy and sell stocks hundreds of times each day.
[04:10.49]Many day traders lose all their money in a week or so.
[04:16.18]Only about thirty percent succeed in earning enough
[04:22.28]from their efforts to continue day trading.
[04:25.64](Music)
[04:36.79]This VOA Special English program, Words and Their Stories,
[04:42.25]was written by Frank Beardsley.
[04:44.99]This is Rich Kleinfeldt.