Guide to Analysing Companies

Certificate of accrual on Treasury securities
A US financial invention. Certificates of accrual on Treasury se-
curities (cats) are Treasury bonds that pay no interest
during their life. They are therefore sold at a deep discount
to their face value, and redeemed at their full face value at
maturity. For example, a parent seeking to provide for a
ten-year-old child going to college at age 18 might buy cats
with a face value of, say, $15,000 for a price of $62.222 per
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100, or a total of $9,393 including commission. On the child’s
18th birthday, the bond matures and pays the face value of
$15,000. As with zero-coupon bonds, cats are popular
with investors who need money after a specific date and not
before (for example, people about to retire or students about to
go to college).
Certificate of deposit
A certificate issued by a bank to indicate ownership of a
deposit of as little as $100 or as much as $100,000. A certifi-
cate of deposit (cd) is a negotiable instrument that can be
bought and sold on a secondary market between the time
it is issued and the time that it is redeemed. cds pay interest
at maturity and are bought and sold according to the yield
offered. In the United States, they are also issued by savings
and loan institutions, and deposits are protected by the
federal deposit insurance corporation.
CFTC
See commodity futures trading commission.
Charge
There are at least two meanings.
 Property pledged or taken as security for a loan, as in
“the bank that lent them the money to buy a house has
a charge on the house”.
 The cost of goods or services, particularly of financial
services – for example, bank charges, the fees paid to
banks by their customers for services. The basis for these
charges was often opaque. Although regulators in most
developed countries have made strides in recent years
(for example, by insisting on clearer labelling on itemised