Markets
40 Stock Market Terms That Every Beginner Should Know
40 Stock Market Terms That Every Beginner Should Know
Understanding the stock market can be a daunting task for any new investor.
Not only are there many concepts and technical terms to decipher, but nearly everybody will try to give you conflicting pieces of advice.
For example, if a stock in your portfolio falls in price, should you be accumulating additional shares at a lower price or should you be strategically cutting your losses?
Some experts will tell you one thing, while others will tell you precisely the opposite.
A Place to Start: Terminology
Before you drift into the many debates that the investing pundits are weighing in on, perhaps the most proactive step for a beginner is to simply learn to talk the same language as the pros.
Today’s infographic comes to us from StocksToTrade.com, and it covers the most important stock market terms that every new investor should know and understand. It’s enough to get any beginner on the same playing field, so they can start toying with the more nuanced or complex concepts in the investing universe.
While we don’t agree with the exact definitions of all of the terms, the list is adequate enough to get any new investor off the ground. It covers basic order terms like “bid”, “ask”, and “volume”, but it also goes into concepts like “authorized shares”, “secondary offerings”, “yield”, and a security’s “moving average”.
What’s Next?
Already got a handle on 40 of the most important stock market terms?
Visual Capitalist has a ton of other powerful visual resources for new investors, or anyone else hungry to learn about how markets work:
- Learn how to read stock charts
- Visualize the power of compound interest
- See this simple introduction to investing we published
- See how elite growth investors pick stocks
- Learn about the basics of ETFs and mutual funds, and even the differences between them
- Learn about the basics of creating a stock portfolio
- See how stock market indices work
- Understand 12 types of technical indicators for investing
- See how Warren Buffett’s brain works
Crush the above resources, and you’ll be market savvy in no time!
Markets
Ranked: The World’s 50 Top Countries by GDP, by Sector Breakdown
This graphic shows GDP by country, broken down into three main sectors: services, industry, and agriculture.

Visualized: The Three Pillars of GDP, by Country
Over the last several decades, the service sector has fueled the economic activity of the world’s largest countries. Driving this trend has been changes in consumption, the easing of trade barriers, and rapid advancements in tech.
We can see this in the gross domestic product (GDP) breakdown of each country, which gets divided into three broad sectors: services, industry, and agriculture.
The above graphic from Pranav Gavali shows GDP by country, and how each sector contributes to an economy’s output, with data from the World Bank.
Drivers of GDP, by Country
As the most important and fastest growing component of GDP, services make up almost 60% of GDP in the world’s 50 largest countries. Following this is the industrial sector which includes the production of raw goods.
Below, we show how each sector contributes to GDP by country as of 2021:
Country | Services (% GDP) | Industry (% GDP) | Agriculture (% GDP) | Other (% GDP) | GDP (T) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
🇺🇸 U.S. | 77.6 | 17.9 | 1.0 | 3.6 | $22.9 |
🇨🇳 China | 53.5 | 39.3 | 7.2 | 0.0 | $16.9 |
🇯🇵 Japan | 69.9 | 28.8 | 1.0 | 0.4 | $5.1 |
🇩🇪 Germany | 62.9 | 26.7 | 0.9 | 9.5 | $4.2 |
🇬🇧 UK | 71.6 | 17.3 | 0.7 | 10.4 | $3.1 |
🇫🇷 France | 70.3 | 16.7 | 1.6 | 11.4 | $2.9 |
🇮🇳 India | 47.9 | 26.1 | 17.3 | 8.7 | $2.9 |
🇮🇹 Italy | 65.0 | 22.7 | 1.9 | 10.4 | $2.1 |
🇨🇦 Canada* | 67.7 | 24.1 | 1.7 | 6.6 | $2.0 |
🇰🇷 South Korea | 57.0 | 32.4 | 1.8 | 8.8 | $1.8 |
🇧🇷 Brazil | 57.8 | 20.2 | 7.5 | 14.6 | $1.6 |
🇦🇺 Australia | 65.7 | 25.5 | 2.3 | 6.5 | $1.6 |
🇷🇺 Russia | 54.1 | 31.8 | 3.9 | 10.3 | $1.6 |
🇪🇸 Spain | 67.4 | 20.4 | 2.6 | 9.6 | $1.4 |
🇲🇽 Mexico | 59.2 | 30.8 | 3.9 | 6.1 | $1.3 |
🇮🇩 Indonesia | 42.8 | 39.8 | 13.3 | 4.1 | $1.2 |
🇮🇷 Iran | 47.3 | 38.0 | 12.4 | 2.3 | $1.1 |
🇳🇱 Netherlands | 69.4 | 17.9 | 1.5 | 11.2 | $1.0 |
🇨🇭 Switzerland | 71.9 | 24.6 | 0.6 | 2.8 | $0.8 |
🇹🇷 Turkiye | 52.8 | 31.1 | 5.5 | 10.6 | $0.8 |
🇹🇼 Taiwan | 60.6 | 38.0 | 1.5 | 0.0 | $0.8 |
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia | 46.5 | 44.7 | 2.7 | 6.1 | $0.8 |
🇵🇱 Poland | 56.9 | 27.9 | 2.2 | 13.0 | $0.7 |
🇧🇪 Belgium | 68.8 | 19.6 | 0.7 | 10.9 | $0.6 |
🇸🇪 Sweden | 65.0 | 22.5 | 1.3 | 11.3 | $0.6 |
🇮🇱 Israel | 72.4 | 17.2 | 1.3 | 9.1 | $0.5 |
🇦🇷 Argentina | 52.5 | 23.6 | 7.1 | 16.8 | $0.5 |
🇦🇹 Austria | 62.4 | 25.8 | 1.2 | 10.5 | $0.5 |
🇳🇬 Nigeria | 43.8 | 31.4 | 23.4 | 1.4 | $0.5 |
🇹🇭 Thailand | 56.3 | 35.0 | 8.7 | 0.0 | $0.5 |
🇮🇪 Ireland | 55.4 | 37.8 | 1.0 | 5.8 | $0.5 |
🇭🇰 Hong Kong | 89.7 | 6.0 | 0.1 | 4.3 | $0.4 |
🇩🇰 Denmark | 66.7 | 19.3 | 0.9 | 13.1 | $0.4 |
🇸🇬 Singapore | 70.3 | 24.4 | 0.0 | 5.3 | $0.4 |
🇿🇦 South Africa | 63.0 | 24.5 | 2.5 | 10.0 | $0.4 |
🇵🇭 Philippines | 61.0 | 28.9 | 10.1 | 0.0 | $0.4 |
🇪🇬 Egypt | 52.5 | 31.2 | 11.4 | 4.9 | $0.4 |
🇧🇩 Bangladesh | 51.3 | 33.3 | 11.6 | 3.7 | $0.4 |
🇳🇴 Norway | 51.8 | 36.3 | 1.7 | 10.2 | $0.4 |
🇻🇳 Vietnam | 41.2 | 37.5 | 12.6 | 8.8 | $0.4 |
🇲🇾 Malaysia | 51.6 | 37.8 | 9.6 | 1.1 | $0.4 |
🇦🇪 U.A.E. | 51.6 | 47.5 | 0.9 | 0.0 | $0.4 |
🇵🇰 Pakistan | 52.1 | 18.8 | 22.7 | 6.4 | $0.3 |
🇵🇹 Portugal | 64.7 | 19.6 | 2.2 | 13.5 | $0.3 |
🇫🇮 Finland | 60.3 | 24.1 | 2.3 | 13.4 | $0.3 |
🇨🇴 Colombia | 58.0 | 24.9 | 7.6 | 9.5 | $0.3 |
🇷🇴 Romania | 59.1 | 26.7 | 4.5 | 9.6 | $0.3 |
🇨🇿 Czechia | 58.8 | 30.3 | 1.8 | 9.1 | $0.3 |
🇨🇱 Chile | 54.4 | 31.3 | 3.6 | 10.6 | $0.3 |
🇳🇿 New Zealand* | 65.6 | 20.4 | 5.7 | 8.4 | $0.2 |
Industrial sector includes construction. Agriculture sector includes forestry and fishing. *Data as of 2019.
In the U.S., services make up nearly 78% of GDP. Apart from Hong Kong, it comprises the highest share of GDP across the world’s largest economies. Roughly 80% of American jobs in the private sector are in services, spanning from healthcare and entertainment to finance and logistics.
Like America, a growing share of China’s GDP is from services, contributing to almost 54% of total economic output, up from 44% in 2010. This can be attributed to rising incomes and higher productivity in the sector as the economy has grown and matured, among other factors.
In a departure from the top 10 biggest countries globally, agriculture continues to drive a large portion of India’s GDP. India is the world’s second largest producer of wheat and rice, with agriculture accounting for 44% of the country’s employment.
While the services sector has grown in India, it makes up a greater share in other emerging economies such as Brazil (58%), Mexico (59%), and the Philippines (61%).
Growth Dynamics
Services-led growth has risen faster than manufacturing across many developing nations, underpinned by productivity growth.
This structural shift is seen across economies. In many countries in Africa, for instance, jobs have increasingly moved from agriculture to services and trade, where it now accounts for 42% of jobs.
These growth patterns are supported by rising incomes in developing economies, while innovation in tech is lowering barriers to enabling service growth. As the industrial sector makes up a lower share of trade and economic activity, the service sector is projected to make up 77% of global GDP by 2035.
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