They are interchangeable. "Stock" is characteristically used in North America, and "share" is characteristically used in the United Kingdom and the commonwealth, but the mean the same thing: part of the ownership of the company's equity. The reasons are historical - all companies used to be called "joint stock companies" (merchants pooled their money to buy trading stock, and then ship it together to some far flung destination). About this time in history some Americans got antsy about taxes, tossed some tea in the water in Boston, fired a few shots at King George's finest, and went their own way on legal matters. They continued to refer to ownership of companies (which they started to call "corporations") as stock, whereas in Britain they started to use the term "share" when merchants started to own the company, rather that the company's trading stock. Some jurisdictions refer to them as "quotas", and they are referred to as a percentage of the whole, rather than a fixed number which is the usual case with stocks/shares.
What's a deemed dividend?
There is no actual cash involved in a 'deemed' dividend. The company pretends it has sent you the money. And then pretends that you used the cash to buy more shares of the company, which are issued from its treasury. Your broker's statement will show an increase in the number of shares you own. This method is frequently used to 'distribute' capital gains realized in the company that can be distributed tax-free in some countries.
In some jurisdictions, for tax purposes, certain benefits accrued from the company are considered to be "deemed dividends" and taxable. For example, in some countries if you purchase a house in the name of a company (and you are the sole shareholder) and you live in it rent free, that can sometimes be considered a "deemed dividend" of an amount equivalent to the rental income value of the property.
Is there a difference between the par value of a bond and its principal?
To my knowledge, principal is usually not used to refer to a bond. This is probably because the price of bond change, varying redemption value exists for some bonds, and the outstanding balance (principal left unpaid) change in case of an amortized bond. Par is the amount printed on the bond.
Actually principal is often used to refer to the amortized amount. So if you have a bond that doesn't amortize, Par=Principal, the principal is always the same as the original face value of the bond. But for bonds that can be paid down: Par stays the same (original face value), principal can be paid down (current face value becomes lower than par). When you carry an amortizing bond (like a capitalized lease, or a car payment) on financial statements, you show its current value as principal and interest owed. This is NOT the same as the present value of the bond which is (price*.01*principal) +accrued interest.
Zero coupons
They don't pay interest, but they accrue value toward their principal amount. Any time prior to redemption, you can refer to the amount that has accrued thus far as 'accrued interest', or 'accretion value'. It's also not really industry standard to call the final date the 'maturity date'. It's usually called the 'redemption date'. I think referring to the maturity date in the article is an attempt to avoid confusing readers with too much dissimilar jargon, and it's not technically incorrect. I'm changing the article to say "The bond holder receives the full principal amount as well as value that has accrued on the redemption date." If you prefer a different phrasing, please have at it.
Redemption/Maturity date are interchangeable though' "maturity date" is far more widely used. Note that you should never use the phrase "accrued interest" in the context of a zero coupon bond, there are subtle but important (to a bond trader anyway!) differences in considering a zero-coupon as a "zero coupon bond" or as a "single coupon paid at maturity" bond. The theoretical price of a zero-coupon bond is the net present value of its redemption amount, there is no such concept of the "value that has accrued".
What's structured finance?
From an insider at the ground level of structured finance, there are two major types of structured finance, asset backed and mortgage backed. Regardless of which, the goal of both is to secure an entire bundle of loans together into a massive pool (valued in the low billions/upper hundreds of millions of dollars). The pool is created in such a way and with a certain amount and type of loans so as to make the risk of CONSEQUENTIAL amounts of default of the ENTIRE POOL virtually nonexistent (thinks mixing low risk with high risk but more complex try searching "scratch and dent" and securitization). For instance, an example of risk sheltering is done by the originator of the loan. The originator (bank, financial institution etc) will bundle the loans and sell off 85-95% of the entire bundle, reserving 5-15% as a default cushion (much like putting 20% down on a home). The bank would therefore suffer the first 5-15% loss on the pool, if any.
Investors then purchase shares in the almost guaranteed income from interest and thereby return the money that was loaned out by the banks, back to the banks. In the end, this process enables banks/financial institutions to make more loans, repeat the process and pick up a few hundred million or so a month.
Since it is essentially making thousands of 50-250k loans or making several large loans and breaking them up, selling most of the rights to the interest payments thereto, and in the end recovering 90% of the money that you initially had to loan out. This process takes approximately 6 months from the day the loan is first contemplated. Jan 1 contemplation, Jan 30 arrives at lawyers, March 30 Closing, June loan is sold.
Are derivatives securities?
Despite the textbook by Jarrow and Turnbull of the same name, Derivative Securities, financial derivatives are not necessarily securities. From Wall Street Words, a security is "an instrument that, for a stock, shows ownership in a firm; for a bond, indicates a creditor relationship with a firm or with a federal, state, or local government; or signifies other rights to ownership." More intuitively, a security has identity and existence apart from its owner and is transferable through some means, while many if not most financial derivatives are executable contracts, with no life or existence apart from the initiating counterparties.
This is not merely nitpicking; it weighs heavily (especially in the United States) upon court proceedings when things go awry. The Federal courts in the U.S. have sometimes ruled that derivatives are securities -- thus subject to the SEC Act of 1933, and sometimes ruled they are not.
As to the introduction, it neither captures what makes derivatives derivatives, or indeed includes all flavors of derivatives.
I guess it depends on whose definition of security you use. Check the bottom of that article; I have quoted the relevant section from the 1934 act. I suppose some derivative contracts would not be covered under that but it does surprise me that federal courts would rule some things would not fall under the SEC's jurisdiction. Do you have any links to show that? Either way that is the way they are commonly known, so the name of the article is still correct. The text could be altered a bit to note the discrepancy you point out though.
Oh, and I forgot, the US is not the only thing that matters here. What about Europe, Asia, Oceana, etc? I kind of don't know...
