Bernard Lawrence “Bernie” Madoff was an American financier who executed the largest Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding thousands of investors out of tens of billions of dollars over the course of at least 17 years, possibly longer. He was also a pioneer in electronic trading and chair of the Nasdaq in the early 1990s. He
What Is a Bespoke CDO? A bespoke CDO is a structured financial product—specifically, a collateralized debt obligation (CDO)—that a dealer creates for a specific group of investors and tailors to their needs. The investor group typically buys a single tranche of the bespoke CDO, and the remaining tranches are then held by the dealer, who
What Is a Best Efforts Mortgage Lock? A best efforts mortgage lock happens when the sale of a mortgage in the secondary mortgage market requires that the seller—usually a mortgage originator—makes their best effort to deliver the mortgage to the buyer. A mortgage originator can be either an institution or an individual that works with
What Is a Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)? A best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) is a course of action that a party engaged in negotiations has determined should be taken if talks fail and no agreement can be reached. Negotiation researchers Roger Fisher and William Ury coined the term BATNA in
What Is a Best and Final Offer? A best and final offer in real estate is a prospective buyer’s last and highest offer for a property. The best and final offer is typically submitted in response to a bidding war. A seller who has received several offers will ask all bidders or the top bidders
What Are Best Efforts? The term best efforts refers to an agreement made by a service provider to do whatever it takes to fulfill the requirements of a contract. In finance, an underwriter makes a best efforts or good faith promise to the issuer to sell as much of their securities offering as possible. While
DEFINITION of Beginning Market Value (BMV) Beginning market value (BMV) is the valuation at which a property or investment should exchange at the date of origination, and then at the beginning of each subsequent period. The beginning market value at the start of every period is thus equal to the ending market value of the
What Is Behavioral Analytics? Behavioral analytics is an area of data analytics that focuses on providing insight into the actions of people, usually regarding online purchasing. Behavioral analytics is used in e-commerce, gaming, social media, and other applications to identify opportunities to optimize in order to realize specific business outcomes. Behavioral analytics includes demographic and
What Is Behavioral Economics? Behavioral Economics is the study of psychology as it relates to the economic decision-making processes of individuals and institutions. Behavioral economics is often related with normative economics. It draws on psychology and economics to explore why people sometimes make irrational decisions, and why and how their behavior does not follow the
What Is Behavioral Finance? Behavioral finance, a subfield of behavioral economics, proposes that psychological influences and biases affect the financial behaviors of investors and financial practitioners. Moreover, influences and biases can be the source for the explanation of all types of market anomalies and specifically market anomalies in the stock market, such as severe rises
