Glossary
Financial Analyst Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential financial analyst terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key financial analyst vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in financial analyst training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Balance sheet
- A report of assets, liabilities and equity.
- Cash flow statement
- A report of cash coming in and going out.
- Discounted cash flow (DCF)
- Valuing future cash flows in today’s dollars.
- EBITDA
- Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
- Financial model
- A spreadsheet that projects financial performance.
- Forecast
- An estimate of future results.
- FP&A
- Financial planning and analysis.
- Income statement
- A report of revenue and expenses.
- IRR
- Internal rate of return.
- KPI
- Key performance indicator.
- NPV
- Net present value of future cash flows.
- ROI
- Return on investment.
- Sensitivity analysis
- Testing how results change with assumptions.
- Valuation
- Estimating what a company or asset is worth.
- Variance analysis
- Explaining differences between actual and planned results.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Financial Analyst practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Financial Analyst training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.