{
  "generatedAt": "2026-10-10T20:16:39Z",
  "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/",
  "disclaimer": "Analysis and opinion, not investment advice.",
  "api": "https://deepstack.ltd/api/v1/glossary.json",
  "approvedBy": "Marco Cauduro",
  "approvedAt": "2026-10-10T18:28:41.702Z",
  "count": 31,
  "terms": [
    {
      "id": "remaining-performance-obligations",
      "term": "remaining performance obligations",
      "aliases": [
        "RPO"
      ],
      "short": "Contracted revenue a company has not yet recognized; the filing's name for backlog.",
      "long": "Remaining performance obligations are the revenue a company is contracted to deliver but has not yet recognized. Filings split them into the part due within twelve months and the part due later; the split is the near book and the far book of Part 11.",
      "parts": [
        11
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#remaining-performance-obligations"
    },
    {
      "id": "treasury-international-capital",
      "term": "Treasury International Capital",
      "aliases": [
        "TIC"
      ],
      "short": "The Treasury's monthly report of foreign holdings of U.S. securities, including each country's Treasuries.",
      "long": "The Treasury International Capital system reports, with a lag of about six weeks, how much of U.S. securities foreign holders own, country by country. Its table of major foreign holders settles the question of whether Japan bought or sold Treasuries in a given month (test p07-t02).",
      "parts": [],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#treasury-international-capital"
    },
    {
      "id": "forward-multiple",
      "term": "forward multiple",
      "aliases": [
        "forward P/E",
        "forward earnings",
        "forward price-to-earnings",
        "times forward earnings"
      ],
      "short": "The share price divided by the next twelve months' expected earnings per share.",
      "long": "The forward multiple divides today's price by the earnings analysts expect over the next twelve months. It is a valuation, not a forecast: a lower multiple can mean a cheaper market or earnings expectations that have run ahead of what will be delivered, which is the denominator question of Part 10.",
      "parts": [
        10,
        11
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#forward-multiple"
    },
    {
      "id": "residual-value-guarantee",
      "term": "residual-value guarantee",
      "aliases": [
        "residual value guarantee",
        "residual-value guarantees"
      ],
      "short": "A promise to make up the difference if an asset is worth less than expected at the end of a lease.",
      "long": "A residual-value guarantee is a commitment to cover the gap if a leased or partnered asset is worth less at the end of the term than the contract assumed. Meta's $28 billion guarantee on its data-center venture (Part 11) is a liability that lives outside the balance sheet until the asset's value is tested.",
      "parts": [
        8,
        11
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#residual-value-guarantee"
    },
    {
      "id": "token",
      "term": "token",
      "aliases": [
        "tokens",
        "per million tokens",
        "price per million tokens"
      ],
      "short": "The unit a language model is priced by: a fragment of text, roughly three quarters of a word.",
      "long": "A token is the unit a language model reads and writes, about three quarters of an English word. Model prices are quoted per million tokens, input and output priced separately. When the price per token falls while usage rises, the question is whether the lab is paid for the token or for something else: Part 12.",
      "parts": [
        3,
        4,
        5,
        8,
        9,
        10,
        12
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#token"
    },
    {
      "id": "option-adjusted-spread",
      "term": "option-adjusted spread",
      "aliases": [
        "OAS"
      ],
      "short": "A bond index's spread over Treasuries after adjusting for the options embedded in the bonds.",
      "long": "The option-adjusted spread is the spread of a bond or index over the Treasury curve after removing the value of embedded options such as early redemption. ICE BofA publishes it daily for its indices, and FRED carries the series, which is why the Docket uses it to settle questions about investment-grade credit.",
      "parts": [],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#option-adjusted-spread"
    },
    {
      "id": "days-sales-outstanding",
      "term": "days sales outstanding",
      "aliases": [
        "DSO"
      ],
      "short": "How many days of sales sit unpaid in receivables; longer terms raise it.",
      "long": "Days sales outstanding measures how long customers take to pay: receivables divided by daily sales. When a supplier stretches terms from 90 days to a year, as Nvidia did for its best-rated customers (Part 11), the number rises and the quarter's revenue arrives in cash much later.",
      "parts": [
        11
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#days-sales-outstanding"
    },
    {
      "id": "depreciation",
      "term": "depreciation",
      "aliases": [
        "useful life",
        "useful lives",
        "depreciation schedule"
      ],
      "short": "The accounting charge that spreads an asset's cost over the years it is assumed to last.",
      "long": "Depreciation spreads the cost of a long-lived asset over its assumed useful life. The assumption is a choice: a server depreciated over six years looks more profitable each year than the same server over three. When chips go obsolete faster than the schedule says, reported profits flatter the economics; that is the argument of Parts 03, 05 and 10.",
      "parts": [
        1,
        3,
        5,
        6,
        10
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#depreciation"
    },
    {
      "id": "capacity-auction",
      "term": "capacity auction",
      "aliases": [
        "Base Residual Auction",
        "capacity price",
        "capacity auctions"
      ],
      "short": "The auction in which a grid operator buys commitments to be available in a future year; its clearing price lands on every bill.",
      "long": "In a capacity auction a grid operator such as PJM buys commitments from power plants to be available in a delivery year three years out. The clearing price, set by the last unit needed, is paid on every customer's load. A price cap limits it; whether the December 9, 2026 auction clears below the cap is a test on the Docket.",
      "parts": [
        13
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#capacity-auction"
    },
    {
      "id": "capital-spending",
      "term": "capital spending",
      "aliases": [
        "capex",
        "capital expenditure",
        "capital expenditures"
      ],
      "short": "Cash a company spends on long-lived assets: data centers, chips, networks, power.",
      "long": "Capital spending, or capex, is the cash a company puts into assets that last years: land, buildings, servers, chips, grid connections. It leaves the cash-flow statement at once and reaches the income statement slowly, through depreciation. The AI buildout is measured in capex because that is where the money moves first.",
      "parts": [
        1,
        3,
        4,
        5,
        6,
        7,
        8,
        10,
        11,
        12
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#capital-spending"
    },
    {
      "id": "new-issue-concession",
      "term": "new-issue concession",
      "aliases": [
        "concession",
        "concessions"
      ],
      "short": "The extra yield a borrower offers on a new bond, above where its existing bonds trade, to get the deal done.",
      "long": "A new-issue concession is the extra yield a borrower pays on a new bond relative to its outstanding bonds, so that buyers absorb the supply. Widening concessions mean lenders are charging more scrutiny; DeepStack reads them as evidence, and settles tests on public spread series instead.",
      "parts": [
        1,
        3,
        4
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#new-issue-concession"
    },
    {
      "id": "credit-default-swap",
      "term": "credit default swap",
      "aliases": [
        "CDS"
      ],
      "short": "Insurance on a borrower's debt, priced in basis points a year; a higher price means a riskier borrower.",
      "long": "A credit default swap pays the buyer if a borrower defaults. Its price, in basis points a year, is the market's running estimate of that risk: Oracle's five-year CDS at a record 227 basis points (Part 08) said lenders had started to charge for the buildout.",
      "parts": [],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#credit-default-swap"
    },
    {
      "id": "pjm",
      "term": "PJM",
      "aliases": [
        "PJM Interconnection"
      ],
      "short": "The grid operator for thirteen states and the District of Columbia, from New Jersey to Illinois.",
      "long": "PJM Interconnection runs the wholesale electricity market and the transmission grid for about 65 million people across thirteen states and the District of Columbia. Its capacity auctions set the price every household in the region pays for reliability, which is the mechanism of Part 13.",
      "parts": [
        6,
        13
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#pjm"
    },
    {
      "id": "real-yield",
      "term": "real yield",
      "aliases": [
        "TIPS",
        "inflation-protected",
        "real yields"
      ],
      "short": "The yield on a Treasury whose principal rises with inflation: the price of money after inflation.",
      "long": "A real yield is the yield on Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, whose principal follows the consumer price index. It is the cost of borrowing after inflation, the number a lender financing a data center locks in. The nominal 10-year yield minus the real yield is the breakeven inflation the bond market prices.",
      "parts": [
        7,
        10
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#real-yield"
    },
    {
      "id": "interconnection",
      "term": "interconnection",
      "aliases": [
        "grid connection",
        "interconnections"
      ],
      "short": "The physical and contractual link that lets a site draw power from the grid; the queue to get one can take years.",
      "long": "Interconnection is the connection of a load or a generator to the transmission grid, with the studies, upgrades and approvals it requires. A contracted megawatt is not a connected megawatt until the interconnection is energized, which is why Parts 06 and 13 separate the two.",
      "parts": [
        6
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#interconnection"
    },
    {
      "id": "free-cash-flow",
      "term": "free cash flow",
      "aliases": [
        "free cash flows"
      ],
      "short": "Operating cash flow minus capital spending: the cash left after the company has paid for its own buildout.",
      "long": "Free cash flow is the cash from operations minus capital spending. A company with strong profits and negative free cash flow is funding its buildout from outside: debt, leases, partners or investors. Alphabet's first negative quarter since its IPO (Part 04) is the example DeepStack keeps coming back to.",
      "parts": [
        1,
        3,
        4,
        5,
        8,
        9,
        11
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#free-cash-flow"
    },
    {
      "id": "earnings-yield",
      "term": "earnings yield",
      "aliases": [
        "earnings yields"
      ],
      "short": "Expected earnings divided by price: the inverse of the forward multiple, comparable in shape to a bond yield.",
      "long": "The earnings yield is expected earnings divided by price, the forward multiple turned upside down. At 19 times forward earnings the yield is about 5.3%. It is compared with the 10-year Treasury as a valuation sensitivity, not as a like-for-like return: earnings are not contractual, and the two assets differ in duration, growth and risk.",
      "parts": [
        10
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#earnings-yield"
    },
    {
      "id": "private-credit",
      "term": "private credit",
      "aliases": [],
      "short": "Loans made by funds rather than banks or public bond markets, usually to one borrower at a time.",
      "long": "Private credit is lending by investment funds outside banks and public bond markets, often secured on specific assets such as chips or data centers. It financed the compute platforms of Part 01 and the facilities of Part 03; its terms are rarely public, which is why DeepStack reads them from filings and dated reports.",
      "parts": [
        1,
        3
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#private-credit"
    },
    {
      "id": "spread",
      "term": "spread",
      "aliases": [
        "credit spread",
        "spreads"
      ],
      "short": "The extra yield a borrower pays above a Treasury of the same maturity, in basis points.",
      "long": "A credit spread is the yield on a bond minus the yield on a Treasury of the same maturity. It is the market's price for the risk that the borrower does not pay. Spreads are quoted in basis points; a wider spread means dearer credit. DeepStack reads spreads on FRED series and in filings, never from a dealer's note.",
      "parts": [
        3,
        6,
        7,
        8,
        10,
        13
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#spread"
    },
    {
      "id": "eia-861m",
      "term": "EIA-861M",
      "aliases": [
        "Form EIA-861M"
      ],
      "short": "The federal monthly survey of electricity sales and revenue by state and customer class.",
      "long": "Form EIA-861M is the U.S. Energy Information Administration's monthly survey of electricity sales, revenue and customers by state and customer class. Revenue divided by sales gives the average price per kilowatt-hour; DeepStack computes the household price from it, as first published, for the tests of Part 13.",
      "parts": [],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#eia-861m"
    },
    {
      "id": "hyperscaler",
      "term": "hyperscaler",
      "aliases": [
        "hyperscalers"
      ],
      "short": "One of the largest cloud and platform companies that build data centers at continental scale.",
      "long": "A hyperscaler is one of the handful of companies, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Oracle among them, that build and run data centers at a scale measured in gigawatts and tens of billions of dollars a quarter. Their capital budgets, backlogs and cash flows are the largest single inputs to the AI economy.",
      "parts": [
        1,
        3,
        4,
        5,
        6,
        7,
        8,
        10,
        11,
        12
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#hyperscaler"
    },
    {
      "id": "open-weights",
      "term": "open weights",
      "aliases": [
        "open-weight",
        "open-weights",
        "open weight"
      ],
      "short": "A model whose trained parameters are published, so anyone can run it without paying the lab.",
      "long": "An open-weight model publishes its trained parameters. Anyone can download and run it, which puts a ceiling on what a closed model can charge for comparable capability. The gap in months between the best open model and the frontier is one of the numbers DeepStack tracks.",
      "parts": [
        5,
        12
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#open-weights"
    },
    {
      "id": "basis-point",
      "term": "basis point",
      "aliases": [
        "basis points",
        "bp",
        "bps"
      ],
      "short": "One hundredth of a percentage point: 25 basis points is 0.25%.",
      "long": "A basis point is one hundredth of one percent. Yields and spreads move in basis points because the differences that matter are small: a 10-year Treasury moving from 5.00% to 5.31% has risen 31 basis points.",
      "parts": [
        7,
        8,
        10
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#basis-point"
    },
    {
      "id": "term-premium",
      "term": "term premium",
      "aliases": [
        "term premia"
      ],
      "short": "The extra yield investors demand to hold a long bond instead of rolling short ones.",
      "long": "The term premium is the part of a long-dated yield that compensates for holding duration rather than rolling short bills. When the Fed raises short rates and long yields rise more, the market is charging for time: supply, deficits and a thinner buyer base, as Part 07 argues.",
      "parts": [
        7
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#term-premium"
    },
    {
      "id": "large-load",
      "term": "large load",
      "aliases": [
        "large loads",
        "large-load"
      ],
      "short": "A customer, typically a data center, whose demand is big enough to need its own grid rules.",
      "long": "A large load is a single customer whose electricity demand is large enough that grid operators and regulators write rules for it: deposits, batch studies, requirements to bring its own capacity. Data centers are the large loads of this cycle.",
      "parts": [
        13
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#large-load"
    },
    {
      "id": "backlog",
      "term": "backlog",
      "aliases": [
        "order book",
        "backlogs"
      ],
      "short": "Orders a company has accepted but not yet delivered or recognized as revenue.",
      "long": "A backlog is the stock of orders a company has accepted but not yet delivered. It is a promise of revenue, not revenue: it converts at the pace of capacity, and the part due within a year is worth more to the quarter than the part due later. Filings split the two, which is why DeepStack reads the near book and the far book separately.",
      "parts": [
        1,
        3,
        4,
        5,
        6,
        7,
        11,
        12
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#backlog"
    },
    {
      "id": "ccc",
      "term": "CCC",
      "aliases": [
        "CCC-rated",
        "CCC spread"
      ],
      "short": "The lowest rating tier of bonds that still trade actively; the riskiest corner of the credit market.",
      "long": "CCC is the rating tier just above default. The spread of CCC bonds over Treasuries, published daily on FRED, is the price of the riskiest credit; at 1,146 basis points on September 28 (Part 08) it measured how much lenders charged the weakest borrowers while financing the strongest.",
      "parts": [
        3,
        8
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#ccc"
    },
    {
      "id": "ratepayer",
      "term": "ratepayer",
      "aliases": [
        "ratepayers"
      ],
      "short": "A customer who pays a regulated electricity bill; in the AI buildout, the household that pays first.",
      "long": "A ratepayer is any customer billed under a regulated tariff. The word matters because a data center that pays for its own wires still raises the capacity price every other ratepayer pays, which is the argument of Part 13.",
      "parts": [
        6,
        13
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#ratepayer"
    },
    {
      "id": "megawatt",
      "term": "megawatt",
      "aliases": [
        "MW",
        "gigawatt",
        "GW",
        "megawatts",
        "gigawatts"
      ],
      "short": "A unit of power: a megawatt serves a few hundred homes, a gigawatt a city; data centers are sized in both.",
      "long": "A megawatt is a million watts of power; a gigawatt is a thousand megawatts. Data centers are sized by the power they draw because electricity is the binding constraint: a gigawatt campus needs its own substation, its own interconnection and, increasingly, its own generation.",
      "parts": [
        1,
        2,
        3,
        4,
        6,
        10,
        13
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#megawatt"
    },
    {
      "id": "duration",
      "term": "duration",
      "aliases": [],
      "short": "How far in the future a payment or a return sits, and how sensitive its value is to interest rates.",
      "long": "Duration measures how far out a stream of payments sits and therefore how much its present value moves when rates change. A fifteen-year data-center lease, a far backlog and a growth stock are all long-duration promises; a higher 10-year yield taxes each of them.",
      "parts": [
        3,
        4,
        7,
        11
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#duration"
    },
    {
      "id": "re-let",
      "term": "re-let",
      "aliases": [
        "re-lets",
        "relet"
      ],
      "short": "Renting out compute capacity again when a contract ends, at whatever the market then pays.",
      "long": "A re-let is the second lease of the same capacity after the first contract ends. The re-let rate, as a share of the original price, says whether the hardware kept its value: near 95% supports durable economics, and a fast decay exposes the depreciation argument.",
      "parts": [
        3
      ],
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/glossary/#re-let"
    }
  ]
}