The VA home loan program helps eligible military borrowers buy, build, or refinance a home.

VA Home Loan

Vacancy rate is the ratio of rental units not rented versus the total number in the building, city, state, etc.

Vacancy Rate

A vacation home is a house that the owner uses only a few days or weeks per year.

Vacation Home

Vagit Y. Alekperov is the founder of Russian oil giant Lukoil.

Vagit Y. Alekperov

Valuable papers insurance is a kind of property insurance that protects documents such as wills, share certificates, or other crucial paper items.

Valuable Papers Insurance

VAT is the most common type of consumption tax and currently used in more than 160 countries, including each member of the EU. The notable exception to this rule is the US.

Value Added Tax (VAT)

Value averaging is a strategy in which an investor places a variable dollar amount into a given investment (usually common stock) on a regular basis to ensure that the investment grows by a certain dollar amount or percentage over time.

Value Averaging

The value chain is the process through which a company turns raw materials and other inputs into a finished product.

Value Chain

A value network is a system that organizations, departments, operating units or people use to do work, buy or sell products, or create plans that benefit the entire organization.

Value Network

A value proposition is a marketing statement that positions a company’s products in the mind of the consumer as the best one for their needs. It clearly, easily, and concisely articulates what the company sells and why it is better to buy this particular product or service (instead of a competitor’s product or service).

Value Proposition

A value stock is a security that is trading at a lower price than expected given the performance of the company and key performance indicators of the stock itself.

Value Stock

A value-added reseller (VAR) is an entity that adds features or services to a product and resells the combination as a package.

Value-Added Reseller

Vance D. Coffman is the former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Vance D. Coffman

The Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund, or VMFXX, is an investment fund offered through Vanguard that invests in U.S. government securities.

Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX)

The Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund, or VMMXX, is an investment fund offered through Vanguard that invests in U.S. government securities and foreign bonds.

Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund (VMMXX)

A vanilla option refers to a normal option with no special features, terms, or conditions.

Vanilla Option

Variability is the degree to which a data series deviates from its mean (or in the accounting world, how much a budgeted value differs from an actual value).

Variability

A variable annuity is a contract sold by an insurance company. The contract provides the holder with future payments based on the performance of the contract's underlying securities. The insurer guarantees a minimum payment, but the rate of return on the underlying securities may vary. The performance of these securities, usually mutual funds, dictates the size of the eventual

Variable Annuity

Variable costs are the direct costs that a company incurs when producing goods or services.

Variable Cost

A variable interest rate is an interest rate that can change from time to time.

Variable Interest Rate

A variable life insurance policy allows the account holder to invest a portion of the premium paid for the policy.

Variable Life Insurance Policy

Variable universal life insurance is a type of life insurance policy that allows the account holder to invest a portion of the premium dollars.

Variable Universal Life Insurance (VUL)

A variable-rate certificate of deposit (CD) is a CD with an interest rate that can change.

Variable-Rate Certificate of Deposit

Variance is a statistical measure of how much a set of observations differ from each other.

Variance

A vault receipt is a document that proves ownership of gold, silver or other precious metals stored elsewhere.

Vault Receipt

A Veblen good is a good or service whose demand increases when its price increases. The term is named after economist Thorstein Veblen.

Veblen Good

The velocity of money is the average frequency with which a unit of money is spent in an economy.

Velocity of Money

A vendor is a company or person that sells goods or services.

Vendor

Vendor financing is lending to a customer.

Vendor Financing

A vendor note is a short-term loan to a customer.

Vendor Note

A Venn diagram is an illustration of common characteristics.

Venn Diagram

Venture capital is money for new, young, and/or small businesses that typically have little or no access to capital markets.

Venture Capital (VC)

Venture capitalists provide funding (called venture capital) to start-up companies which they see as promising investments, but which otherwise are unable to obtain business loans. Venture capitalists are active primarily in the technology sector.

Venture Capitalist

Vernon L. Smith is an American economist who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002.

Vernon L. Smith

Vertical equity is the concept of increasing tax rates on higher incomes. Vertical equity is similar to the concept of progressive taxes.

Vertical Equity

Vertical integration describes a company's control over several or all of the production and/or distribution steps involved in the creation of its product or service.

Vertical Integration

A vertical market is a niche market in which a company supplies goods or services to a very specific type of customer. Its goods or services do not have broad appeal or application.

Vertical Market

A vertical merger (also called vertical integration) is a merger between a manufacturer and a supplier. This is different from a horizontal merger between two companies that manufacture similar products.

Vertical Merger

A vest fleece occurs when a company accelerates the vesting of its employee stock options.

Vest Fleece

A vested interest is a right of ownership which is not dependent on something else.

Vested Interest

Vesting occurs when a financial instrument or account becomes wholly owned by an investor.

Vesting

A viager is a French method of real estate sale whereby the buyer makes a down payment and agrees to make a series of payments for the rest of the seller's life.

Viager

A viatical settlement occurs when a person who is chronically or terminally ill sells his or her whole or universal life insurance policy to a third party that maintains the premium payments and receives the death benefit when the insured dies.

Viatical Settlement

In the insurance world, a viator is a terminally ill person who sells his or her life insurance policy.

Viator

Vittorio Mincato was the former CEO of Italian oil and gas company Eni.

Vittorio Mincato

Vladimir Illyic Ulyanov, also known as Vladimir Lenin, was the first leader of the Soviet Union and a key player in its October Revolution.

Vladimir Lenin

The Volatility Index (VIX) is a contrarian sentiment indicator that helps to determine when there is too much optimism or fear in the market. When sentiment reaches one extreme or the other, the market typically reverses course.

Volatility Index (VIX)

Volume represents the total number of securities traded during a certain period of time.

Volume

Voodoo accounting refers to any accounting practices that artificially inflate the profits reported on a company's financial statements.

Voodoo Accounting

Also called “Reaganomics,” voodoo economics is the nickname for the hallmark economic policy of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States (1981-1989), who was trying to stimulate an economy that lay stagnant after the Jimmy Carter years.

Voodoo Economics

Voting shares are shares of stock that allow the owner to vote on company matters.

Voting Shares

A vulture fund is a pool of investor money that makes investments in securities from distressed issuers (usually bonds).