What Is Standard Deduction? The term standard deduction refers to the portion of income not subject to tax that can be used to reduce your tax bill. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) allows you to take the standard deduction if you do not itemize your deductions using Schedule A of Form 1040 to calculate taxable
What Is Standard Deviation? Standard deviation is a statistic that measures the dispersion of a dataset relative to its mean and is calculated as the square root of the variance. The standard deviation is calculated as the square root of variance by determining each data point’s deviation relative to the mean. If the data points
What Is the Standard Error? The standard error (SE) of a statistic is the approximate standard deviation of a statistical sample population. The standard error is a statistical term that measures the accuracy with which a sample distribution represents a population by using standard deviation. In statistics, a sample mean deviates from the actual mean
What Is Spot Reinsurance? The term spot reinsurance refers to an insurance contract that spreads the risk from an insurance company to a reinsurer for a single event. A spot reinsurance contract involves transferring the coverage from the original insurer to the reinsurer. As such, it is a form of insurance for insurance companies. An
What Is a Spot Trade? A spot trade, also known as a spot transaction, refers to the purchase or sale of a foreign currency, financial instrument, or commodity for instant delivery on a specified spot date. Most spot contracts include the physical delivery of the currency, commodity, or instrument; the difference in the price of a
What Is Spousal Beneficiary Rollover? A spousal beneficiary rollover is the transfer of retirement fund assets to the surviving spouse of the deceased. This situation occurs when the surviving spouse is the named beneficiary on the retirement account. Understanding Spousal Beneficiary Rollover The transfer of spousal beneficiary rollover funds is generally done in one of
What Is a Spousal IRA? A spousal IRA is a strategy that allows a working spouse to contribute to an individual retirement account (IRA) in the name of a non-working spouse with no income or very little income. This is an exception to the provision that an individual must have earned income to contribute to
What is the S&P Phenomenon? The S&P phenomenon is the tendency for stock to temporarily rise following the announcement of its addition to the S&P 500 Index. This is attributed to mutual funds and exchange traded funds that mimic the S&P 500 Index buying the stock for their portfolios. Inclusion in the index may also
What Is a Spread? A spread can have several meanings in finance. Generally, the spread refers to the difference or hap that exists between two prices, rates, or yields. In one of the most common definitions, the spread is the gap between the bid and the ask prices of a security or asset, like a
What Is Spread Betting? Spread betting refers to speculating on the direction of a financial market without actually owning the underlying security. It involves placing a bet on the price movement of a security. A spread betting company quotes two prices, the bid and ask price (also called the spread), and investors bet whether the
