Mobilizing Savings for Investment

Stock exchange or bourse is a mutual organization which provides facilities for stock brokers and traders, in trading company stocks and other securities, and for the issue of redemption of securities and other financial tools and capital events like the payment of income and dividends.

• Government & Corporate Bonds Investment
  Most people know about the basics of investing in the stock market but many people are puzzled as to what bonds are. In one word a bond is a loan. The loans can be form

The securities traded on a stock exchange include shares issued by companies, unit trusts and other pooled investment products and bonds. To be able to trade a security on a certain stock exchange, it has to be listed there.

Usually there is a central location at least for record keeping, but trade is less linked to such a physical place. Electronic networks run modern markets are, providing them great speed and cost of transactions.

Stock exchange is often called the most important element of a stock market. The Demand and Supply in the stock markets is attracted by number of factors that affect the price of stocks.

Mobilizing savings for investment:
When people draw their savings and invest in shares, it leads to a more balanced allotment of resources because funds, which could have been consumed, or kept in idle deposits with banks, are mobilized to promote business activity that benefits several economic sectors like agriculture, commerce and industry, resulting in a stronger economic growth.

History of stock exchanges:
In 12th century France, the courratiers de change were concerned with managing the debts of agricultural communities on behalf of the banks and these men also traded in debts. These men were the first brokers. In the middle of the 13th century, Venetian bankers traded in government securities. In 1351, the Venetian Government outlawed spreading rumors about lowering the price of government funds. Because of this rumor people in Pisa, Verona, Genoa and Florence also started trading in government securities which was possible because there were independent city states ruled by a council of powerful citizens during the 14th century.

Raising capital for businesses:
The Stock Exchange helps current and newly-formed companies raise capital for building and expanding their business through selling shares to the investing public.

Creating investment opportunities for small investors:
The Stock Exchange provides opportunity for small investors like the big investors to own shares of the same or different companies.

Government capital-raising for development projects:
Governments at various levels may decide to borrow money for financing infrastructure projects like sewage and water treatment works or housing estates by selling another category of securities known as bonds. These bonds are raised through the Stock Exchange where public buy them, thus loaning money to the government. The issuance of such municipal bonds can prevent the need to directly tax the citizens in order to finance development, although by securing such bonds with the full faith and credit of the government instead of with collateral, the result is that the government must tax the citizens or otherwise raise additional funds to make any regular coupon payments and refund the principal when the bonds mature.

Listing requirements:
Listing requirements are the set of conditions forced by any given stock exchange upon companies that want to be listed on that exchange.

Requirements by stock exchange:
For companies to have their stock and shares listed at the stock exchange have to meet certain requirements of the exchange. But requirements vary in different exchanges.

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Shorting Stock: What are the Basics of & How to do it?

You need a securities brokerage account before you can trade stocks, bonds, options or other financial instruments.

How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short (Wiley Trading) by William J. O'Neil, Gil Morales The mechanics of short selling are relatively simple, yet virtually no one, including most professionals, knows how to sell short correctly. In How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short, William J. O'Neil offers you the information needed to pursue an effective short selling strategy, and shows you with detailed, annotated charts on how to make the moves that will ultimately take you in the right direction.

There are many reputable discount brokers that will establish an on-line account for you. You can open the account without depositing any funds, but, obviously, you must fund the account before you can trade securities. Normally, a new account must be funded with a minimum of about $1000. Some may let you start with a minimum of $500.

If you don’t want to trade on-line, your discount brokerage account is usually also accessible via touch-tone phone, either via automated menu or dealing directly with an account representative. Be aware that on-line commissions are generally the cheapest, with phone commissions being a little higher. You’ll pay the highest commissions if you deal directly with a human account representative.

Normally, if you are inexperienced in trading securities, you broker will restrict the type of securities you can trade in your new account. Novice investors are usually only allowed to buy shares of stock, and later sell shares they bought previously.

Options for the Stock Investor by James B. Bittman Straightforward option strategies that reduce your risk and increase your profit potential in virtually any investing or trading program, provide you with new option techniques and strategies, this comprehensive handbook explores: Risk-reduction strategies for conservative investors, including buying calls and covered writing Profit-generating strategies for aggressive traders, including vertical spreads, straddles, and strangles Flexible strategies for improving your risk/return profile, including covered straddles, covered combos and ratio spreads

After the account has been active for awhile, investors must ask their broker, in writing, for permission expand the account’s capabilities, such as trading stocks on margin or trading options. It’s not likely that many brokers will permit new investors to “short” stocks.

Short selling, or “shorting” a stock, is, simply, selling shares of stock you do not own. It’s where you, the investor, have identified a stock whose price you expect will fall. You want to profit from the price decline, so you ask your broker to permit you to sell the stock, even though you don’t own any shares of it.

If your broker has granted your permission to sell short in your account, he will either loan you the shares from his portfolio, or he will have to enter the market to see if he can find shares to borrow for you to sell short.

Most likely your short sale will be subject to a time limit, perhaps 30 or 60 days, at the end of which you will have to buy the shares back to repay the loan of the shares you sold short. Buying stock you have previously sold short is called “covering” or “short covering”.

Borrowing stock to short is similar to trading stocks on “margin”, which is when you put up part, say 50%, of the purchase price, and your broker loans you the other 50 percent. If you “short” stocks, don’t be surprised if your broker charges you interest, probably at the same rate as a “margin” trade, on the dollar value of the borrowed shares.

So, for a simple example, if you short 100 shares of XYZ Corporation at $10 per share, your account is credited $1000. Then, if the price declines, as you expect, to, say, $6 per share, you buy the 100 shares and your account is debited $600. You keep the difference, which is $400 (minus your broker’s commissions and interest).

But, if you guess wrong and the stock price goes to $14 per share, you are $400 down on this deal. Remember, you may be working under a time limit for replacing the shares you shorted. Let’s say your time’s up and you must replace the shares at $1400. You must come up with $400, in addition to the $1000 you got when you shorted the stock, to buy the stock back (“cover the short”). In this case, you have lost $400 (plus commissions and/or interest).

Even if you do not have a time limit for covering, you need to decide in advance how long you will stay short if the price goes against you (up). A general rule of successful investors is to bail out of a position if the price goes against you by 5 to 10 percent.

An alternative to selling short is to buy “put” options. “Options” are the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a stock at a fixed price, called the “strike” price, before the date the option expires. Buy options are “calls”, sell options are “puts”.

Options are bought and sold in “contracts”. One contract “controls” 100 shares of the associated stock.

Put and call options are not available on all stocks. As a rule, a stock must have a substantial daily trading volume, perhaps 500,000 shares or more, before an options market will develop for it.

You can go two ways with options. If the price of the associated stock moves they way you had hoped, you can instruct your broker to “exercise” the put - sell the stock at the strike price and buy it back at its current price, which is lower than the strike price. If you exercise your put option, you profit on the difference between the strike price of the stock and the price you buy it back at, but you eat what you paid for the put.

Or, you can simply trade options as if you were trading stocks. If you buy a put expecting the price of the associated stock to fall, and it does, then the put will increase in value. You can sell the put at a profit under 2 conditions: It has not expired, and there is a buyer willing to buy it.

Be advised that broker commissions for options are higher than for stocks.

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The Money Trading: G7 Forex Trading System Review

The forex, or foreign currency exchange market, is the largest market in the world. The daily trading volume for the forex is over 1.9 trillion dollars dwarfing the stock market. This article will explain how to make money trading successfully and avoid the pitfalls of first-time forex traders.

The forex is referred to as an interbank market because it has no specific location like New York Stock Exchange. The market is open from Sunday afternoon eastern time twenty four hours per day until Friday afternoon eastern time making it very desirable to trade because it doesn’t close at the end of the day like the stock market.

To make money trading is accomplished by going through a forex broker and buying and selling currency pairs such as the GBPUSD (British Pound/US Dollar). A person can make money when the market is going up or going down. It used to be that to make money trading the forex market you had to be a bank, an institution like a large company, or be a millionaire. In the past decade this has changed and forex brokers will allow someone to open an account for only a few hundred dollars. I will explain later in this article why you should not open an account for as little as $250 in the forex market to make money trading.

Let me give you an example of a trade. You might buy the EURUSD (euro/us dollar) pair at 1.3660 with a stop of 1.3630 and an open limit. Your forex broker will give you a free trading platform where you can buy and sell these currencies. 1.3660 is the level you buy at. The stop is in case your trade goes the wrong way and you don’t want to wipe out your account, so you would limit it to a 30 pip stop or stop loss. A pip means price interest point. We are trying to make pips in our forex account with each currency making different dollar values. The EURUSD trades at about a dollar a pip and we might make 50 pips or 50 dollars on our trade when we reach our limit or target in a mini account or 500 dollars in a regular account.

There are two different kinds of forex accounts to make money trading. A forex mini account which you can open with a few hundred dollars or a regular forex account which you can open with about five thousand dollars. In the mini account, you make about a dollar a pip and in a regular account, you make about 10 dollars a pip.

How can one get started in the forex market to make money trading? Our company, Provident Trading, is a forex education company. We buy inexpensive forex e-books ($100 or under), trade the methods, and publish the results for our subscribers in our free forex newsletter. We have recently reviewed the G7 Forex Trading System. While many make claims that their systems are profitable, we prove it by trading them.

For the forex trading beginner, you can start out with a free demo forex account. You can practice in the demo account before you put your money into a real account. What is remarkable about the G7 Forex Trading System is that with the purchase of the book, you can get a month of free daily trading signals or trades like the example above.

Forex trading signal companies generally charge hundreds of dollars for their trades which makes it difficult for a forex beginning trader to start with signals in a forex mini account. The author of the G7 Forex Trading System charges less than a hundred dollars per month for his signals. When Provident Trading purchased the forex system, we received 8 weeks free of forex trading signals. We made 300 pips in June trading just the signals and as of today, July 27th, we have made 312 pips. We feel this is the best system we have ever evaluated and in an industry that charges thousands of dollars and typically doesn’t teach people how to trade profitably, this is truly the way to get started in the forex market to make money trading.

So why not open a forex account with as little as $250? In a word, drawdown. In the forex world, drawdown means when your account goes down. Not every trade will make you money. You might have a drawdown of 220 pips before your account goes back up. Forex brokers entice new forex traders to open a mini account with a couple of hundred dollars, the new trader has a few losses and their account is gone. 95% of new forex traders lose their accounts. So in order to make money trading in the forex market, we recommend opening a forex mini account with no less than $1,000.

Provident Trading recommends FX Solutions as a forex broker for the beginning trader opening a forex mini account. If you begin with something like fifty thousand dollars, we recommend Dukascopy. In summary, the best way to begin in the forex market to make money trading is to purchase the forex e-book of the G7 Forex Trading System for under one hundred dollars and receive one month free of forex trades, a value of one hundred dollars. After the free month of trades, the forex trades are only one hundred dollars a month, the best value we can find in the forex and will work with even a forex mini account. The forex trading beginner can make money trading by learning the system in the book, all the while trading the free signals and making money.

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