1. Food stocks aren't as exciting as some of the tech names, but they don't go up nearly as much when the market is going crazy and they also don't go down as much because they're not as dependent on the economy; they're steady stocks, which is why Kraft could be a good .......... holding to diversify your portfolio.

2. Much of what happens in history, Nassim Taleb notes, "comes from Black .......... dynamics, very large, sudden, and totally unpredictable outliers, while much of what we usually talk about is just noise; our track record in predicting those events is dismal, yet by hindsight bias we think that we understand them."

3. The Small Order Execution System allows small investors near-instant execution of trades of 1,000 or fewer shares on the NasdaQ, and these SOES .......... are a growing force in the market, accounting for about 15% of the trades on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

4. When the CEO or minister announces the agency is going to .......... in the name of operational efficiencies or an expanded range of services, public sector managers suspect they are really hearing "The last approach didn't work, so let's try another".

5. 'Why Bill Gates?' — this is the question for a small clique of .......... — Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Steve Jobs of Pixar; a decade ago, the four geek tycoons were all stumbling around an industry as small as their pocket protectors, but Gates graduated into the history books, while the other three seem headed for footnote status.

6. The director of a funds management company says that smaller companies focusing on a single service like sustainable living, alternative energy, etc. are less likely to be involved in big .......... like the defense industry and oil.

7. The OS/400 high availability market was a .......... market before the merger of one-time foes iTera and Vision, and that intense competitiveness continues following the merger.

8. Qß Typically Wal-Mart and other retailers debut the eagerly awaited day-after-Thanksgiving specials a few days in advance; Wal- Mart hasn't officially debuted its Black .......... ads, but the information appears to have been leaked to a few Web sites.

9. A dividend .......... is an arrangement under which sponsors of a project agree to contribute as equity any prior dividends received from the project to the extent necessary to cover any cash deficiencies.

10. Since 1975, the number of money management firms that provide research and other products and services in exchange for commissions has grown; the total value of third-party research purchased annually with .......... dollars is estimated to exceed $1 billion.