Disclaimer: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage.
You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
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Natural Gas
Natural gas heats homes, spins turbines, and feeds factories, and it is one of the most volatile commodities a trader can encouter. Its price swings on weather above all, a brutal cold snap or a blistering summer sends demand for heating or air conditioning surging, along with storage levels, production, and, increasingly, the flow of liquefied natural gas shipped across oceans. Unlike oil, gas is hard and costly to move, so prices can differ wildly between regions. That makes it prone to sharp spikes and equally sharp collapses. Example: A forecast for an unusually harsh winter sends natural gas prices rocketing as traders anticipate a scramble for heating fuel, only for the rally to unravel just as fast if the cold fails to arrive and storage stays comfortably full. The commodity’s sensitivity to weather that no one can reliably predict is exactly what makes it attractive to some traders seeking exposure to sharp price swings, and one that can inflict significant losses on those who underestimate its volatility.
NDF
An NDF, or non-deliverable forward, is a currency forward that settles in cash rather than by actually swapping the two currencies. It exists for currencies you cannot freely trade or move across borders, such as currencies subject to restrictions on offshore trading or delivery, including the Chinese yuan, Indian rupee, or Korean won. Rather than deliver the restricted currency, the two parties simply settle the difference between the agreed forward rate and the actual spot rate at maturity, paying out in a hard currency like the dollar. No restricted money is exchanged. Example: A foreign fund wanting to gain exposure to the Indian rupee, which it cannot easily hold or deliver offshore, may use an NDF instead. At settlement, if the rupee has moved its favour, it receives the gain in US dollars; if not, it pays the difference in dollars, gaining currency exposure without physical delivery of rupees, subject to applicable regulations.
Negative carry pair
A forex pair in which the interest rate on the base currency is lower than the interest rate on the quote currency.
Negative Interest Rate Policy (NIRP)
Normally you earn interest for lending money. Under a negative interest rate policy, you pay for the privilege. NIRP is the extraordinary step of pushing a central bank’s key rate below zero, so that commercial banks are effectively charged for parking excess reserves at the central bank rather than paid. The idea is to encourage money into motion, discouraging hoarding and encouraging banks to lend and households and businesses to spend, when even a zero rate has failed to revive a weak economy or lift inflation off the floor. Example: To fight the threat of deflation, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan both pushed their policy rates below zero in the 2010s, charging banks to hold reserves in the hope of encouraging credit out into the economy. Savers grumbled, bank profitability came under strain, and economists still argue about whether the unconventional policy measure actually worked as intended.
NEM
NEM, whose original coin trades as XEM, is a blockchain platform that launched in 2015 with some distinctive engineering under the hood. Rather than the energy-intensive mining that secures Bitcoin, NEM introduced a consensus method it called proof-of-importance, which rewards users not just for how many coins they hold but for how actively they transact and take part in the network. The project pitched itself squarely at business uses, offering features for building applications and managing assets on its own chain. For a time it was a reasonably prominent name in the crypto field. Example: A developer drawn to NEM’s proof-of-importance model, designed to reward genuine network activity rather than sheer wealth or raw computing power, might build an application on the platform to track assets or settle payments, choosing it over a proof-of-work chain partly to avoid the energy consumption associated with mining-based networks, and partly for the business-friendly tools it set out to provide.
NEO
NEO is a blockchain platform often tagged, a little lazily, as the Chinese Ethereum. Founded in China around 2014 under the original name Antshares and later rebranded, it supports smart contracts and decentralised applications much as Ethereum does, but with its own design choices and a strong early emphasis on regulatory compliance and digital identity, positioning itself as a chain that could work within, rather than against, government rules. It uses a two-token system: NEO represents a stake in the network, and a second token, GAS, pays for transactions. Example: A developer wanting to build a decentralised application with an eye on the Chinese market might choose NEO, attracted by its smart-contract support and its emphasis on identity and compliance; holding NEO tokens may generate GAS over time, the separate token used to pay the network’s transaction fees, a split that keeps the stake and the fuel as two distinct things.
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