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In my experience, people have quite some trouble with basis points ("The fund charges just 5 bp per year", which means 0.05% per year), but I doubt that "The fund charges 0.5 mU (or 500 µU) per year" will help much. It does have a certain elegance, though.


"The fund charges 5bp" doesn't make sense to me!

I understand basis points to be absolute difference in some rate, where the rate was expressed as a percentage. So, if the interest rate was raised from 5% to 5.25%, we don't say the increase was 0.25% (because that could be interpreted as understating the change) and we don't say the increase was 20% (0.25% / 5%) because likewise that would overstate the change. We say the increase was 25 basis points to avoid any confusion.


bp is a percentage of a magnitude, whether a difference or not. It's value is that it is not a percentage of a percentage or a rate.




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