Investment Glossary
Plain-language definitions for financial and technical terms used on the ACIS platform.
A
Adaptive Strategy
ACIS strategy that dynamically adjusts to market conditions using ML signals. Rebalances daily for optimal positioning.
Alpha
A measure of investment performance that represents the excess return of an investment relative to a benchmark index. Positive alpha indicates outperformance.
API
Application Programming Interface. ACIS provides REST API access for programmatic portfolio data retrieval and integration.
B
Backtesting
Testing a strategy using historical data to evaluate performance. ACIS performs walk-forward validation to ensure model robustness.
Benchmark
A standard against which investment performance is measured. ACIS portfolios are typically compared against the S&P 500 (SPY).
Beta
A measure of a stock's volatility in relation to the overall market. A beta of 1 means the stock moves with the market, above 1 is more volatile, below 1 is less volatile.
C
CAGR
Compound Annual Growth Rate. The mean annual growth rate of an investment over a specified period longer than one year.
D
Diversification
A risk management strategy that mixes different investments to reduce exposure to any single asset. ACIS portfolios typically hold 15-25 positions.
Dividend Investing
A strategy focused on stocks that pay regular dividends. ACIS Dividend strategy is available to all tiers and rebalances annually.
Dividend Yield
The annual dividend payment divided by the stock price, expressed as a percentage. It shows how much cash flow you get for each dollar invested.
E
ETF
Exchange-Traded Fund. A security that tracks an index or basket of assets. ACIS focuses on individual stocks, not ETFs.
Expense Ratio
The annual fee charged by a fund as a percentage of assets. ACIS charges subscription fees instead of asset-based fees.
F
Feature Engineering
The process of creating input variables for ML models from raw data. ACIS uses 50+ engineered features for stock ranking.
G
Growth Investing
An investment strategy focused on companies with above-average growth potential. ACIS offers Growth strategies for Professional+ tiers.
H
Hit Rate
The percentage of predictions that correctly forecast the direction of stock movement. ACIS targets hit rates above 52%.
L
Large-Cap
Companies with market capitalization above $10 billion. ACIS offers Large-Cap Value and Growth strategies for Enterprise tier.
LightGBM
Light Gradient Boosting Machine. A fast, distributed machine learning algorithm used by ACIS for stock ranking and prediction.
Liquidity
How easily an asset can be bought or sold without affecting its price. ACIS only includes liquid stocks in its universe.
M
Machine Learning
A type of artificial intelligence that enables systems to learn patterns from data and make predictions without explicit programming. ACIS uses ML to rank stocks.
Market Capitalization
The total market value of a company's outstanding shares. Calculated by multiplying share price by total shares. Used to categorize companies as small, mid, or large-cap.
Maximum Drawdown
The largest peak-to-trough decline in portfolio value. A key risk metric showing the worst-case loss scenario.
Mean Reversion
The theory that prices and returns eventually move back toward their historical average. Used in some trading strategies.
Momentum
The rate of acceleration of a security's price. Momentum strategies buy stocks with strong recent performance.
P
P/E Ratio
Price-to-Earnings ratio. The stock price divided by earnings per share. A valuation metric showing how much investors pay per dollar of earnings.
Position Sizing
Determining how much capital to allocate to each investment. ACIS uses ML-optimized equal weighting with target percentages.
PPO (Proximal Policy Optimization)
A reinforcement learning algorithm used by ACIS to optimize portfolio allocation and position sizing while managing risk.
R
Rebalancing
The process of adjusting portfolio holdings to maintain desired asset allocation. ACIS performs daily surgical rebalancing, updating 1-5 positions to optimize performance.
Reinforcement Learning
A machine learning paradigm where an agent learns to make decisions by receiving rewards or penalties. ACIS uses RL for portfolio optimization.
Risk Level
A user-selected preference (Conservative, Moderate, Aggressive) that influences portfolio composition and position sizing.
ROI (Return on Investment)
The percentage gain or loss on an investment relative to its cost. Calculated as (Final Value - Initial Value) / Initial Value.
S
Sharpe Ratio
A risk-adjusted return metric that measures excess return per unit of volatility. Higher Sharpe ratios indicate better risk-adjusted performance.
Small/Mid-Cap
Companies with market capitalization between $300M and $10B. ACIS offers Small/Mid-Cap strategies for Enterprise tier.
Spearman IC
Information Coefficient measured using Spearman rank correlation. Measures how well predicted rankings correlate with actual returns. ACIS targets IC > 0.03.
Subscription Tier
ACIS offers three tiers: Starter (2 strategies), Professional (4 strategies), and Enterprise (8 strategies + API access).
V
Value Investing
An investment strategy focused on buying stocks trading below their intrinsic value. ACIS offers Value strategies for Professional+ tiers.
Volatility
A statistical measure of the dispersion of returns for a security. Higher volatility means the price can change dramatically in either direction.
W
Walk-Forward Validation
A backtesting method that simulates real trading by training on past data and testing on unseen future data in rolling windows.
Most Common Terms
P/E Ratio
Stock price divided by earnings
Market Capitalization
Total value of company shares
Dividend Yield
Annual dividend as % of price
Beta
Stock volatility vs. market
Alpha
Returns above/below benchmark
Rebalancing
Adjusting portfolio allocations
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