Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In finance, leverage, also known as gearing, is any technique involving borrowing funds to buy an investment. Financial leverage is named after a lever in physics, which amplifies a small input force into a greater output force, because successful leverage amplifies the smaller amounts of money needed for borrowing into large amounts of profit.
It is a problematic measure of leverage, because an increase in non-financial liabilities reduces this ratio. [3] Nevertheless, it is in common use. In the financial industry (particularly banking), a similar concept is equity to total assets (or equity to risk-weighted assets), otherwise known as capital adequacy.
Operating leverage can also be measured in terms of change in operating income for a given change in sales (revenue). The Degree of Operating Leverage (DOL) can be computed in a number of equivalent ways; one way it is defined as the ratio of the percentage change in Operating Income for a given percentage change in Sales (Brigham 1995, p. 426):
“Twenty years of subdued inflation, low interest rates, a reduced cost of capital and financial leverage have given way to a new regime,” wrote Brusuelas in a note to investors, adding, "For ...
Leverage is defined as the ratio of the asset value to the cash needed to purchase it. The leverage cycle can be defined as the procyclical expansion and contraction of leverage over the course of the business cycle.
Short-selling using leverage, however, means an investor could lose much more than 100% of their position if a stock increases, leaving them in significant levels of debt.
The crux of safe investment lies in choosing a company that is not burdened with debt, as a debt-free stock is almost impossible to find. One may buy ARCH, TITN, PBF, VLO & ACLS.
As the debt equity ratio (i.e. leverage) increases, there is a trade-off between the interest tax shield and bankruptcy, causing an optimum capital structure, D/E*. The top curve shows the tax shield gains of debt financing, while the bottom curve includes that minus the costs of bankruptcy.