Death Star IPO

What Does it Mean?
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A company's highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) that becomes a blockbuster with investors. The Death Star IPO is a reference to the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, also more popularly know as the "Death Star," from the movie "Star Wars." This planetary weapon had the ability to destroy entire planets with a single beam, resulting in a massive explosion. In the stock market, stocks that have the ability to explode out of the gate are usually highly anticipated tech stocks, although stocks from other sectors can also fit the bill.

Investopedia Says:
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Broadly speaking, to be considered a Death Star IPO, the IPO would have to be a multi-billion dollar offering that is also in very high demand with investors. Some examples of Death Star IPOs include Google's IPO in 2004 and Yahoo! in 1996. Both IPOs were highly anticipated events and both stocks exploded on stock markets once the shares became publicly available.

The Celler-Kefauver Act

What Does it Mean?
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A 1950 refinement of previous antitrust legislation dealing primarily with mergers. The Celler-Kefauver Act targets mergers where companies purchase suppliers, and occasionally competitor's suppliers, in order to secure production. The Clayton Act already contained language addressing horizontal mergers, but the Celler-Kefauver Act added vertical mergers and conglomerate mergers to the growing list of possible antitrust violations.

Investopedia Says:
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Vertical and conglomerate mergers aren't illegal under the Celler-Kefauver Act unless they significantly reduce competition. Similar to other antitrust acts, actions that reduce competition aren't always easy to classify under Celler-Kefauver. Both types of mergers raise the barriers for entry by making competitors internalize more production to match the cost savings that come from economies of scale. However, as long as there is at least a couple other companies capable of keeping up, barriers can be raised as high as the duo or trio can handle.

Tontine

What Does it Mean?
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A system for raising capital in which individuals pay into a common pool of money, and then receive a dividend based upon their share and the performance of investments made with the pooled money. The principle invested in the tontine is never paid back to the investor; rather the investor receives dividends until death. If a "shareholder" dies, his or her shares are divided up among the surviving investors

Investopedia Says:
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This system is attributed to Lorenzo de Tonti, a 17th century Italian banker. Government-sponsored tontines paid dividends while investors were alive, but once all the investors died the government would absorb all the remaining capital. Tontines were used in the United States as a way of increasing the sale of life insurance in the 19th century, but have fallen out of use and are illegal in many parts of the country.