Topic summary
Financial instruments
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Financial instrument.
Financial instruments may be categorized by "asset class" depending on whether they are foreign exchange-based (reflecting foreign exchange instruments and transactions), equity-based (reflecting ownership of the issuing entity) or debt-based (reflecting a loan the investor has made to the issuing entity). If the instrument is debt it can be further categorized into short-term (less than one year) or long-term.