Soldiers willingly, sometimes foolishly, risk their own lives to keep their comrades out of enemy hands.
It's one of the fundamental principles of the stock market: When interest rates go up, stocks go down. And along with financial companies and cyclicals, technology companies - with their sky-high price-to-earnings multiples - should be among the biggest losers in an environment of rising rates.
Big swings in the wholesale price of electricity are not unusual in the summer, when high demand taxes generators' ability to supply power.
Evidence of defendants' lavish lifestyles is often used to provide a motive for fraud. Jurors sometimes wonder why an executive making tens of millions of dollars would cheat to make even more. Evidence of habitual gluttony helps provide the answer.
Macroeconomics is the analysis of the economy as a whole, an examination of overall supply and demand. At the broadest level, macroeconomists want to understand why some countries grow faster than others and which government policies can help growth.
On the New York Stock Exchange, all buy and sell orders are routed through a single 'specialist,' guaranteeing that most small trades can be matched directly. But most larger trades are delivered to the specialist on the floor of the exchange by human brokers, a system that big investors view as increasingly inefficient.
Although not well known outside Wall Street, Freddie Mac and its corporate cousin, Fannie Mae, are two of the world's largest financial institutions and play a crucial role in the housing market.
Many legal experts note that prosecutors regularly seek indictments of people or companies for destroying evidence or impeding investigations, even if they cannot prove other charges.
Enron had already collapsed and filed for bankruptcy protection by the beginning of 2002. But despite complaints from short sellers that corporations had used accounting gimmickry to inflate their profits, many investors thought the crisis at Enron was an isolated case.
Electronic communications networks match trades between investors directly, without using a market maker or specialist as an intermediary.
At first glance, Martha Stewart, queen of artfully distressed home furnishings, might not seem to have much in common with Michael R. Milken, one-time king of junk bonds.
Wal-Mart does not do big mergers, though it will buy much smaller competitors in so-called 'tuck-in acquisitions.'
Institutions like mutual funds often worry that if they disclose their plans to buy a stock, copycats will move quickly and drive up the stock before the purchase is completed.
The American pledge not to negotiate with terrorists has been honored more in the breach than the observance from the moment President Ronald Reagan made it.
Stocks in the United States plunged in 2002 amid fears of war and terrorism, a weak economy, rising oil prices and dozens of corporate scandals. It was the third consecutive annual decline, the first time that has happened in 60 years.
The thing to do with mutual funds is to buy a couple of decent ones, set up an investment plan and then never, ever think about them again, except maybe once a quarter or so when you take a peek at your statements to make sure that you have not accidentally been buying the Fidelity Peace-in-the-Middle-East fund.
Federal laws against kickbacks bar pharmaceutical companies from directly giving money to patients for co-payments on the drugs they make.
Studies show that Avastin can prolong the lives of patients with late-stage breast and lung cancer by several months when the drug is combined with existing therapies.
Every public company depends to some extent on the trust of its investors.
As they grow, companies saturate their markets, become more complex and difficult to manage, and face larger and more entrenched competitors.