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Archive for August, 2008

26
Aug

Learning to invest in the Stock Market

The stock market is one of the most lucrative markets in the world. If you want to grow your wealth, then you should consider investing in the stock market. If you invest in the stock market with discipline then you will definitely be successful in making profits. This discipline usually comes from experience and knowledge about various techniques of investment. As you can see, knowledge about the various styles and techniques of investment is important.

But there are certain basic aspects that you should have a grasp on to go about the investment process successfully. This article will provide some leads to possible ways to understand the fundamental concepts of investing.

The most important idea about investing that you have to understand is that you are investing in the companies that are listed in the stock market. You should not look at stocks as merely scrips trading in the market. You should carefully analyze the company whose stock you are investing in. You should learn to read the annual reports of these companies and you should be able to make insights about a company’s operations after analyzing different parameters. Reading various books on financial statement analysis will give you the necessary tools to decipher a balance sheet. You should understand that you will only get the requisite tools to analyze a company. The various conclusions about the company you are analyzing have to be made by you at the end of the day.

You should also get a hang of the qualitative side of the analysis. This is important as the future prospects of the company should be good. The products or services that they sell should have constant demand even a few years into the future. The business model of these companies has to be stable and they should show a lot of promise profit-wise. The best way to get this level of proficiency is to go through some of the analysis on your own and understand the various aspects that the future of these companies depends on. Another way is to read about various companies and their operations, talking to people from the particular industry to get a grip on the economics of the company.

The other aspect of investing in the stock market is the price at which you are buying the stock. You should always try to buy stocks at a cheaper price than at which it is usually available in the market. This allows you to preserve your capital in case the price was to fall further. On the positive side, increase in stock price can give you the extra profits as you bought the stock at a cheaper price. Identifying whether the price of a stock is cheap requires you to project the company’s incoming cash flows into the future and discounting it back at a required rate to attach an intrinsic value on the company with which you can compare the stock market quotes.

Once you get a hang of all these concepts, you can start putting them into practise to grow your wealth in the stock market. There are various techniques and you should study each to identify the technique that suits you the most.

Arkaitz Arteaga MarketStock.net

23
Aug

Stock Market Data Grid – A tool which promotes efficiency

One of the most lucrative markets in the world is the stock market. There are scores of investors and trading buying and selling stocks at any point of time when the market is open. This means there are countless strategies being played out in the market at any point of time. As the number of market participants increase, every trader will find that the time required for a transaction to go through also increases.

This is because of the lack of data processing or computing resources in the stock exchanges. The requirements of data processing has increased at such a rate that the conventional processors cannot handle the number of transactions coming through.

Data grid is a system that uses grid computing technique. Grid computing technique essentially utilizes the processing power of several computers that are connected to form a network. This network may be private public or also the internet. The current grid computing is done centrally where all the transactions are handled. This system crumbles when there are thousands of transactions being processed at once. The traders will experience downtime in such scenarios which is totally unexpected. If there is a grid that is the size of Europe, you need scores of computers connected in a network to process the data.

This can be expensive and cumbersome. Current developments are trying to make this process much cheaper by using the internet. At any point of time, there are millions of computers that are connected to the internet and are lying unused. If a part of the processing power can be utilized, then the load on the central administrator becomes less which reduces the risk of possible downtime. By employing this technique, exchanges can reduce the administrative costs of handling each transaction. Another advantage that this type of system has is scalability. The resources can be scaled up during peak hours of trading by utilising more computers connected to the internet. This type of system is however very complex to design and it is usually done in a phased manner.

Most of the exchanges have not implemented the latest system described above as this is still in the research phase where they are trying to validate its use. The more conventional approaches are using the computing facilities in the exchange itself. There are several systems that are idle at any point of time. The exchanges try to use these resources to reduce the operational time in settlement and clearing system. This kind of grid computing needs support at the software level that can allocate resources depending upon the various needs.

Managing data is one of the biggest challenges for the stock exchanges. Grid computing technology has addressed this challenge and has provided the ideal solution. It allows the stock exchange to share and manage distributed data with its traders much more efficiently. This efficiency translates to lesser time required for transactions between buyers and sellers and reduction of the costs involved for such transactions. The world is certainly becoming faster.

Arkaitz Arteaga MarketStock.net

22
Aug

Stock market timeline

The history of stock market is very rich and the efficient system that you use now for trading and investing in companies has evolved over centuries. All the policies and regulations have evolved through time as and when the policy makers felt the need for them. Wall Street was laid out as early as in 1685. The investment market was born after a century in 1792 when five securities were traded. These included three government bonds and two bank stocks.

The Buttonwood Agreement was the historic pact that around twenty four brokers and merchants signed agreeing to trade securities for commission. It is said that the New York Stock Exchange began as a result of this pact. Slowly the market started gaining prominence and securities such as bank stocks, insurance stocks and government bonds had begun to trade. As the market gained prominence, the requirement of rules and regulations for the proper conduct of trading and investing was felt. The New York Stock & Exchange Board was formed at wall street. In 1853, the board required the companies which were listed on the exchange to produce complete statements of shares outstanding and capital resources.

The first stock market crash happened in 1853 when the market lost up to 45% of value. The reason was the collapse of the Ohio Life Insurance & Trust Company. In 1866, the first transatlantic cable was laid which enabled instant communication between New York and London. In 1867, the first stock ticker was invented and this brought the current prices of the companies to all the investors. In 1872, the specialist was created. The specialist is a trader who trades only in one stock because of which he sits in one location on the trading floor. In 1895, it was suggested that companies start providing annual reports of their performance to their shareholders. Then in the subsequent year, there was another development in the form of the wall street journal publishing the Dow Jones Industrial average for the first time.

The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913 to bring structure to the control credit and to structure the banking system. The market price was quoted as a percentage of the par value. This was changed to prices quoted in dollars. In 1929 the largest crash in terms of the volume of shares takes place. This marked the beginning of the great depression. The Dow Jones reached the lowest value from its 1929 peak in 1932. It was quoting 89% down at that point of time. The Securities and Exchange Commission is established to provide full disclosure to investors and to prevent fraudulent activities in connection with the sale of securities. Women enter the trading floor in 1943 ending the reign of men. In 1966, several important developments took place. The Securities Investment Protection Corporation was set up to provide protection to the clients of brokerage firms that collapse. The New York futures exchange was formed in 1979. In 1996, real time tickers were launched in CNBC and CNN thus bringing the stock prices to investors and traders instantly.

As you can see, the rich history is incomparable to the history of any other stock market in the world. NYSE is the biggest stock exchange in the world and it will continue to remain so for some time to come.

Arkaitz Arteaga MarketStock.net

13
Aug

1929 Stock Market Crash

Some economists regard the 1929 stock market crash as major contributing factor to the great depression. The speculative boom of the 1920’s caused the crash because of the build up of the economic bubble. The bubble was formed because in the 1920s, as the stock prices were increasing, many people invested in the market. As the prices kept increasing they continued to invest hoping the prices would go up forever. Most people borrowed money to invest in the market.

 
This continued till about 1929. Then the market started trading down. Most people panicked and this resulted in heavy selling of stocks. By the year 1933, the stock prices were down 80% from the highs in 1929.

This led to people feeling poor. This led to decrease in the demand for various products in the market. Companies that tried to raise money in the market failed miserably. This led to shortage of money for manufacturing products or providing services. Companies started firing their employees because they wanted to scale down production. As you can guess, this led to the great depression. This period lasted about 4-5 years till 1934. All this was caused due to lack in confidence. This was preceded by confidence in the stock market. This turn of confidence was caused by a small negative sentiment in the market.

The speculative boom of the 1920’s was one of the factors that contributed towards the great depression. The speculative boom was caused due to the heavy investing in the market. The heavy investing was taking place due to most people trading on margin. Some traders were trading on 90% margin. The banks were also invested in the stock market. When the stock prices went down, people lost faith in the entire financial system and this lead to banks failing by the hundreds. This could have been avoided if there were proper regulatory procedures for the banks and the stock market in place. There should have been a limit on the margin you can use to trade. There should have been some restrictions on the banks from investing the depositors’ money in the stock market.

Needless to say, the regulators learnt a lot from this cash. It required some time before the trust in the financial system came back. The federal government then set up the federal deposit insurance corporation. Due to the presence of FDIC the banks could run out of money to pay back but still escape as the government reimbursed the depositors. The regulatory rules and procedures in place now are stricter and prevent the economy from crashing like it did in 1929.

You as an investor or a trader can learn a lot from this crash. In the late 1920’s people began to invest without doing any research about the stocks they were buying. In those times, the trader who was in the floor had more information than the common people trading. This led to lack of information among investors. Now, due to internet and disclosure policies, the common investor can have all the information about a company before investing in it. Good research will give you confidence about your investment and you will not panic when your stock price goes down or the general market conditions are bad.

Arkaitz Arteaga MarketStock.net

10
Aug

Free Stock Market Tickers - Make your Investment Process Easier

Stock market ticker is used to keep track of the share price of the companies that are listed in that particular exchange. Earlier stock market tickers were only put up in the exchanges and brokerage houses. As technology evolved, the stock market ticker started appearing on TV and soon these tickers were available on the internet provided as a service by various firms. Initially these tickers were available at a price to those who trade over the internet.

Now it is a free service by various news channels and the websites of brokerages and exchanges. The power of technology has truly revolutionised the way things work.

Stock market tickers now come with other advanced features that you can use as you use the ticker. You can keep track of the prices of the shares of stocks that you have in your portfolio in real time. These tickers also give you information about the highs and lows of the share price during the day and the volume of shares traded during the day. You can keep track of the networth of your investment in the stock market. There are also portfolio management features in these stock tickers that will help manage you your portfolio so that you can make maximum returns in the stock market. There is also a stock watch feature in which you can add all the stocks whose prices you want to keep track of. As and when the stock enters your buy range, you can buy the stock and reap the benefits of technology.

The tickers that are used these days are judged on the speed with which they relay the information to you and the ease of use. It has to be quite user friendly and the prices of any share of stock should be easily accessible by you. This has to happen quickly too as these days the stock prices move up or down in a matter of minutes.

Any service is judged on the customer service that it provides. There are a lot of tickers out there that are really easy to use and that provide good speed. But if you develop a problem with your ticker then you will be banking on the customer service of the firm to bail you out. Customer service can be gauged only by experiencing it firsthand. If you are new to the stock market and you are just learning to use the ticker, then it is better to use the ticker of your brokerage firm if it provides one or the ticker of a reputed firm. As you get used to the various terms and get used to the stock market functioning, you can try out the various free tickers that are available on the internet.

As you can see, the stock market ticker is a useful tool if you are an avid investor or trader in the stock market. Your work will definitely become easier as stock prices become easily accessible for you. This will definitely increase your efficiency which will directly increase the profits you make in the stock market.

Arkaitz Arteaga MarketStock.net