Business glossary

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Hard sell - A heavily persuasive and highly pressured approach used to sell a product or service.

Hardware - A term used to describe the mechanical, electrical and electronic elements of a data processing system.

Hazard Insurance - Insurance required showing lender as loss payee covering certain risks on real and personal property used for securing loans.

Hedge - A position or operation that offsets an underlying exposure. For example, a forward currency hedge uses a forward currency contract to offset the exposure of an underlying position in a foreign currency. Hedges reduce the total variability of the combined position. Business glossary.

Hedge fund - A mutual fund that takes considerable risks, including heavy investment in unconventional instruments, in the hope of generating great profits.

Hedge Quality - Measured by the r-square in a regression of spot rate changes on futures price changes.

Hedging - Reducing the risk of a cash position by using the futures instruments to offset the price movement of the cash asset.

High end - Relating to the most expensive, most advanced, or most powerful in a range of things, for example, computers.

High-pressure - A selling technique in which the sales representative attempts to persuade a buyer very forcefully and persistently.

Holding company - A parent organization that owns and controls other companies.

Home page - The "table of contents" to a Web site, detailing what pages are on a particular site. The first page one sees when accessing a Web site.  Business glossary.

Horizontal integration - The merging of functions or organizations that operate on a similar level. Horizontal integration involves the union of companies producing the same kinds of goods or operating at the same stage of the supply chain.

Hyperinflation - Very rapid growth in the rate of inflation so that money loses value and physical goods replace currency as a medium of exchange.

Hysteresis - The behavior of firms that fail to enter markets that appear attractive and, once invested, persist in operating at a loss. This behavior is characteristic of situations with high entry and exit costs along with high uncertainty.