Sales Growth - The growth in sales in a company.

Sales Load - A service charge of a mutual fund that is added to the costs of owning a stake in the fund.

Savings and Loan Investment Contracts (SLIC's) - A negotiated-term deposit issued by a savings and loan.

Scallop - Chart formation in which the price dips momentarily, forming a cup, before resuming its upward course.

Scalp - a speculative attempt to make a quick profit by buying at the initial offering price in the hope the issue will increase and can be sold.

Sector Rotation - When a block of investment professionals cash out of one industry sector to invest in another.

Security Location Ratio - The percentage of trades in a given account that liquidate profitably.

Selling Short - Selling a security and then borrowing the security for delivery with the intent of replacing the security at a lower price.

Sensitivity - The rate of change of the moving average in response to the movement of the underlying data.

Serial Correlation - The systematic relationship between successive observation of a time series.

Serially Independent - A number that is unrelated to the previous number in a given series in any way.

Settlement - The price at which all outstanding positions in a stock or commodity are marked to market.

Shading - A request to narrow, or close up, the spread or margin between foreign currency buying and selling rates of exchange.

Shapiro-Wilkes Test - A statistical test indicating the likelihood that the sample of simulated net returns was drawn from a normal distribution.

Shareholder of Record - Share owner of company stock as registered in company files.

Short (Oversold) Position - Excess of sales over purchases or of foreign currency assets over liabilities.

Short Interest - Shares that have been sold short but not yet repurchased.

Short-form bill of lading (B/I) - A simplified B/L which contains a reference to or an abbreviation of the carrier’s full B/L or carriage conditions.

Sight a bill - The operation of presenting to the drawee a bill drawn at a period after sight, and obtaining their acceptance which contains the date on which the bill is sighted.

Sight draft (Sight Bill) - A financial instrument payable upon presentation or demand.

Signal - In the context of stock or commodity time series historical data, this is usually daily or weekly prices.

Signal Line - a numeric variable that is prevalued in the knowledge base.

Significance - The probability of rejection on the basis of a statistical test and a hypothesis that there is no validity to the specific claim that two variations of the same thing can be distinguished by a specific procedure.

Slippage - a mathematical technique that removes excess data variability while maintaining a correct appraisal of the underlying trend.

Special Documentary Credit Liability (Special Doc L/C) - This is a direct liability from the time of establishment of the credit.

Specialist - A trader on the market floor assigned to fill bids/orders in a specific stock out of his/her own account when the order has no competing bid/order to ensure a fair and orderly market.

Spectrum - The frequency decomposition of time series data.

Spot Exchange - Foreign Exchange bought and sold for immediate delivery.

Spot Prices - Same as cash price, the price at which a commodity is selling at a particular time and place.

Spread Rolls - Using a spread order to bridge the closing of one position and the establishment of a new one.

Spring - A two-day pattern in which on the first day, the market declines below a support point.

Stair-Steeping - In which market activity is characterized by a trend, then sideways movements, followed by another trend and further sideways movement.

Standardize Unanticipated Earnings - A company's average earnings surprise is compared with analyst earnings estimates dispersion, which can be used to estimate the likelihood of earnings surprises.

Stationarity - A distribution of a quantity that does not change over time.

Stationary Times Series - Implies that no trend is observed in the time series.

Step Function - A function defined on an interval so that the interval can be partitioned into a finite number of subinter vals on each of which the function is a constant.

Stepwise Regression - A mathematical technique to choose the independent variables that best describe the behavior of the dependent, in order of improving description.

Stop and Reverse (SAR) - A stop that, when hit, is a signal to reverse the current trading position, i.e., from long to short. Also known as reversal stop.

Stop Loss - The risk management technique in which the trade is liquidated to halt any further decline in value.

Stop-Running - After a trend, the market will enter into a trading range and have a tendency to trade to levels where stop-loss orders have been placed.

Stops - Buy stops are orders that are placed at a predetermined price over the current price of the market.

Straddle - The purchase or sale of an equivalent number of puts and calls on an underlying stock with the same exercise price and expiration date.

Straight Bill of Lading - A non-negotiable bill of lading, which specifies the consignee to whom the goods are to be delivered.

Strips - An option strategy in which an investor buys one call and two puts on the same underlying security with the same exercise price and expiration date.

Struck - The price at which an exercised option delivers the underlying securities.

Support Line - On a chart, a line drawn indicating the price level at which falling prices have stopped falling and have moved sideways or reversed direction.

Surcharge - Charges added to ocean freight, variously, for bunker (fuel), currency fluctuation, congestion, port detention, or extra risk insurance.