Investment & Finance

HANG SENG OFFERS FIRST YUAN ETF TRACKING GOLD.

2012-02-01T04:55:00.000-08:00

Uploaded by cctvnewschannel on 31 Jan 2012 - Hang Seng Bank announced that it's going to launch the world's first yuan-denominated Exchange Traded Fund, or ETF, that will track the international gold price.

The new ETF represents another step in the offshore development of yuan-denominated gold, after the Hong Kong Gold and Silver Exchange launched physical transactions in October.

The fund tracks the London gold fixing price in US dollars, and will hedge against foreign exchange rate movements between the yuan and the greenback. One board lot of 100 units of the ETF is priced at 3,500 yuan, excluding fees.

On the Money: Taking Stock (Russia)

2012-01-30T00:58:00.001-08:00

Uploaded by RussiaToday on 28 Jan 2012 - How fast will Russia's equity markets get back to normal life after the fall in December? What can pump them back up? What about investment risk during Russia's presidential campaign? And which sectors could improve the health of the Russian economy? OtM is joined by Ben Aris, Simon Fentham-Fletcher, Artem Arkhipov and David Cranield.

FITCH DOWNGRADES 5 EUROZONE COUNTRIES.

2012-01-29T10:22:00.000-08:00

Uploaded by cctvnewschannel on 27 Jan 2012 - U.S ratings agency Fitch has cut the credit ratings of Italy, Spain and three other euro zone nations as the region's debt crisis deepened. Fitch cut Italy by two notches to A- from A+, while Spain was lowered to A from AA-. Belgium, Slovenia and Cyprus were also downgraded.

Meanwhile, Fitch put all five nations' credit outlooks as "negative". However, investors were still optimistic over the Greek debt swap deal with its private creditors and the Euro rose against the US dollar for a fifth straight day.

Part 4: Irresponsible packaging & selling of Investments.

2011-12-08T09:01:00.001-08:00

A history of the Meltdown - The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010:
The Men Who Crashed The World : 30 Dec 2010

Part 3: Irresponsible packaging & selling of Investments.

2011-12-08T08:45:00.001-08:00

A history of the Meltdown - The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010:
The Men Who Crashed The World : 28 Dec 2010

Part 2: Irresponsible packaging & selling of Investments

2011-12-08T05:38:00.001-08:00

A history of the Meltdown - The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010:The Men Who Crashed The World : 29 Dec 2010

Part 1: Irresponsible packaging & selling of Investments.

2011-12-08T05:35:00.001-08:00

A history of the Meltdown - The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010:
The Men Who Crashed The World : 28 Dec 2010

Global Financial Crisis Explained

2011-11-26T03:46:00.001-08:00

Uploaded by worldinformant on 23 Aug 2010 - The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis.By Jonathan Jarvis | Crisisofcredit.com

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Cruel paradox for struggling homeowners.

2011-09-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

Published on 29 Sep 2011 by CBS - Struggling homeowners who could benefit the most from the all-time low interest rates often don't have the equity in their homes to qualify. Cynthia Bowers reports on the cruel paradox.

America : Bank fees hit record highs

2011-09-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

Published on 29 Sep 2011 by CBS - The average fee for non-customer use of an ATM is now a record $2.40 and the average fee for a bounced check is now nearly $31 -- also a record. Anthony Mason reports on why the fees are so high.

Ask It Early: Personal finances.

2011-09-29T18:24:00.001-07:00

Published on 29 Sep 2011 by CBS - CBS News business and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis answers viewer questions about personal finance, including the best ways to pay off student loans and credit card debt.

Trader on the BBC says Eurozone Market will crash

2011-09-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

Uploaded by nsotd4 on Sep 26, 2011 - In a scary and painfully frank interview a freaked out BBC interviewer is visibly shaken when market trader Alessio Rastani predicts that the "Market is Toast." Apparently there is nothing Euro governments can do.

Making Money Out of Market Crash.

2011-08-23T10:40:00.000-07:00

Uploaded by TheRealNews on Aug 21, 2011 - Bill Black: Technical traders love volatility; Obama raising big money on Wall St.

Short-selling explained.

2011-08-12T18:27:00.000-07:00

Aug 12, 2011 - Following days of volatile activity, European markets rose today after France, Italy, Spain and Belgium imposed a temporary ban on the short-selling of financial shares. Investors who participate in short-selling borrow shares from other investors and sell them at current market prices. When the value of those shares drop, they buy them back at the new, lower price and return the shares to their original owners. Their profit is the difference between the price they sold the shares and the price they bought them back, minus lender fees. In essence, the goal of short-selling is to profit from the falling price of stock. Market analyst Aly-Khan Satchu explains to Al Jazeera's Tony Harris why short-selling can cause market problems.

Money Chat - Personal Financial Budget

2011-03-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

malaysiakini on Mar 30, 2011 - Money Chat is a brand new personal financial awareness series brought to you by Komunitikini, Malaysia's leading online community portal.

Hosted by Carol Yip, a financial coach and also author of financial books, the programme offers tips on how to manage your money wisely in easy to follow steps. Where needed workbooks and financial sheets can be downloaded free for your use.

Money Chat contains three segments per episode - a short sketch of different spending scenarios, a how-to segment to help solve your personal financial book-keeping woes, and also chats with selected celebrity guests to see how they manage their money!

For Segment 2 of Episode 1, there's a link to a financial budget planner which is downloadable free to you!

And the celebrity offering for Segment 3 is none other than radio and stage personality, Patrick Teoh! So how do you manage your money Patrick?

Street Smart: Do You Know What Deflation Is?

2010-11-27T13:04:00.000-08:00

While everyone hates inflation, deflation has instant emotional appeal: Who doesn't like a bargain? But deflation is a far more serious economic problem than inflation -- and, as we found, most folks don't really know why. Do you? If not, no worries: Economist Gary Shilling will explain the reasoning.

See full article from DailyFinance

Who Benefits From Deflation?

2010-11-21T13:47:00.000-08:00

TheRealNews | November 19, 2010 | - Pollin: Deflation is dangerous to overall economy, but Fed policy is no solution.

U.S. Bond Bubble Ready to Burst:

2010-11-20T01:23:00.000-08:00

While the World Focuses Attention Elsewhere.

Markets Rally on China's Announcement That Yuan Will Float More Freely.

2010-06-23T04:04:00.000-07:00

June 22, 2010 — Market analysts say The New York Stock Exchange and other world markets are extending a rally Monday which began after China announced it would allow its currency to appreciate against the U.S. dollar. Critics say the Chinese have kept it unofficially low to boost their exports. A stronger yuan will make imports, including American goods, more affordable for Chinese buyers. VOA's Laurel Bowman has that story. VIDEO INSIDE:

Keiser Report: Gold grows on Armageddon, Australian property rush!

2010-06-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

June 22, 2010 — In Episode №53 Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, look at the latest scandals of financial news presenters speaking in tongues, EU commissioners threatening the return of dictatorships and European fund managers piling into Australian property. In the second half of the show, Max talks to the Financial Time's John Authers about his new book, The Fearful Rise of Markets. Video Inside

The Wrong Reason to Dollar-Cost Average

2010-03-31T06:52:00.000-07:00

Pop writes about the intersection of our lives and economics at Pop Economics. There, you can find biweekly posts on everything from how your behavior affects your personal finance decisions to what the Fed’s most recent move means to you — not to mention some killer pop art. He recently wrote: Resistance is futile: Why buy-and-hold beats value investing.

The fact of the matter is: Most of us dollar-cost average when we invest because we have to. We get paid biweekly or monthly, and we invest our savings as soon as we receive it. We don’t have gigantic piles of money sitting around that we must choose to invest in a lump or over time.

But because dollar-cost averaging is personal finance 101, you’re going to find arguments as to why it’s the “best” way to invest anyway all over the place.

The refrain goes something like this: Let’s say that rather than put all your money into a mutual fund at once, you invest a set amount, say $1,000 per month, over time. When the fund is at $100 per share, you’ll buy 10 shares. When it’s at $150, you’ll only buy 7 or so shares. That way, you force yourself to buy more shares when they’re cheap and fewer when they’re expensive! You’ll see that argument at lots of reputable sites.

The problem with that explanation is that it suggests if you did have the choice between investing over time or all at once, you should invest over time. That doesn’t make sense, and here’s why.

1. Dollar-cost averaging works in reverse when you retire anyway.

Just as you might put $1,000 per month into stocks when you’re in the wealth accumulation stage of your life, you’re going to withdraw, say, $10,000 per month from your portfolio when you retire. And yes, that means you’ll be selling more shares when they’re cheap and fewer when they’re expensive — just the opposite of the supposed benefits dollar-cost averaging gave you when you started!

2. When you rebalance your assets as you age, it’s unrealistic to keep the strategy up.

Most of us invest a lot in stocks when we’re young and less in stocks (and more in bonds) as we age. Conventional wisdom holds that you should have, say, 90% in stocks and 10% in bonds when you’re in your 20s, but closer to 40% in stocks near retirement. But how do you get from one allocation to the other?

Dollar-cost averaging would seemingly dictate that you should slowly re-balance your portfolio as you age every month. In other words, when you hit, say, age 30, you’d sell a bit of your stock portfolio and buy a little bit of bonds each month as you got older. Aside from falling into the trap described in point one, how many of us could keep that up? And if we could, the transactional costs associated with the process, such as commissions from trading ETFs, would eat into our savings.

3. If you do have a lump-sum to invest, and choose to dollar-cost average, you’re throwing your asset allocation off, big time.

Pretend you’re in your 30s, have $100,000 saved so far in a 80/20 stock/bond mix, and come into a $100,000 inheritance. Hearing of the merits of the dollar-cost average approach, you choose to trickle the money into the stock market over time.

Well guess what? On day one, your asset allocation would be 40% stocks, 10% bonds, and 50% cash. Not exactly the aggressive asset allocation you intended, right? Just because you mentally put the $100,000 inheritance into a pile of money separate from your retirement savings doesn’t make it actually so.

And if you believe the stock market generally rises over long periods of time. The short-term volatility you’re trying to smooth out doesn’t matter anyway. The best time to invest will always be ASAP.

Something dollar-cost averaging is good at

At the end of the day, the completely rational individual would choose to make a lump-sum investment instead of to dollar-cost average. But exactly zero of us are completely rational. So there’s one big reason I can see someone choosing the DCA route, despite the arguments against.

In two words: “Loss aversion.” Humans fear losses more than they love gains. This tendency is well-documented by economists. So if you invested all $100,000 in a lump sum and the market dropped 5% the next day, you’d leave with an emotional scar. But alternately, if you began a DCA program and the market rocketed 5% the next day, you wouldn’t be nearly as sad.

That’s not rational — but it is the way we think. If you can’t get over that hump, you might decide that the cost of dollar-cost averaging is worth your emotional well-being. Just don’t pretend it’s making you money.

Stock Market Scares Investors.

2010-03-09T22:49:00.000-08:00

March 09, 2010 | CBS Exactly a year ago, stocks hit a 12-year low, dealing a 401-K-O to a lot of retirement accounts. As Anthony Mason reports, after a remarkable comeback, millions of investors missed out.

SC to amend the guidelines on unit trust funds.

2010-02-25T10:27:00.000-08:00

EDGETV | February 23, 2010 - The Securities Commission is amending the Guidelines on Unit Trust Funds to facilitate a multi-class structure for unit trust funds, said its chairman Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar.

Investment

2010-02-23T07:50:00.000-08:00

Investment or investing is a term with several closely-related meanings in business management, finance and economics, related to saving or deferring consumption. An asset is usually purchased, or equivalently a deposit is made in a bank, in hopes of getting a future return or interest from it. The word originates in the Latin "vestis", meaning garment, and refers to the act of putting things (money or other claims to resources) into others' pockets.

Types of Investments

The term "investment" is used differently in economics and in finance. Economists refer to a real investment (such as a machine or a house), while financial economists refer to a financial asset, such as money that is put into a bank or the market, which may then be used to buy a real asset.

Business Management

The investment decision (also known as capital budgeting) is one of the fundamental decisions of business management: managers determine the assets that the business enterprise obtains. These assets may be physical (such as buildings or machinery), intangible (such as patents, software, goodwill), or financial (see below). The manager must assess whether the net present value of the investment to the enterprise is positive; the net present value is calculated using the enterprise's marginal cost of capital.

A business might invest with the goal of making profit. These are marketable securities or passive investment. It might also invest with the goal of controlling or influencing the operation of the second company, the investee. These are called intercorporate, long-term and strategic investments. Hence, a company can have none, some or total control over the investee's strategic, operating, investing and financing decisions. One can control a company by owning over 50% ownership, or have the ability to elect a majority of the Board of Directors.

Economics

In economics, investment is the production per unit time of goods which are not consumed but are to be used for future production. Examples include tangibles (such as building a railroad or factory) and intangibles (such as a year of schooling or on-the-job training). In measures of national income and output, gross investment I is also a component of Gross domestic product (GDP), given in the formula GDP = C + I + G + NX, where C is consumption, G is government spending, and NX is net exports. Thus investment is everything that remains of production after consumption, government spending, and exports are subtracted. I is divided into non-residential investment (such as factories) and residential investment (new houses). Net investment deducts depreciation from gross investment. It is the value of the net increase in the capital stock per year. Investment, as production over a period of time ("per year"), is not capital. The time dimension of investment makes it a flow. By contrast, capital is a stock, that is, an accumulation measurable at a point in time (say December 31st).

Investment is often modeled as a function of Income and Interest rates, given by the relation I = f(Y, r). An increase in income encourages higher investment, whereas a higher interest rate may discourage investment as it becomes more costly to borrow money. Even if a firm chooses to use its own funds in an investment, the interest rate represents an opportunity cost of investing those funds rather than loaning them out for interest.

Finance

In finance, investment=cost of capital, like buying securities or other monetary or paper (financial) assets in the money markets or capital markets, or in fairly liquid real assets, such as gold, real estate, or collectibles. Valuation is the method for assessing whether a potential investment is worth its price. Returns on investments will follow the risk-return spectrum.

Types of financial investments include shares, other equity investment, and bonds (including bonds denominated in foreign currencies). These financial assets are then expected to provide income or positive future cash flows, and may increase or decrease in value giving the investor capital gains or losses.

Trades in contingent claims or derivative securities do not necessarily have future positive expected cash flows, and so are not considered assets, or strictly speaking, securities or investments. Nevertheless, since their cash flows are closely related to (or derived from) those of specific securities, they are often studied as or treated as investments.

Investments are often made indirectly through intermediaries, such as banks, mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, collective investment schemes, and investment clubs. Though their legal and procedural details differ, an intermediary generally makes an investment using money from many individuals, each of whom receives a claim on the intermediary.

Personal Finance

Within personal finance, money used to purchase shares, put in a collective investment scheme or used to buy any asset where there is an element of capital risk is deemed an investment. Saving within personal finance refers to money put aside, normally on a regular basis. This distinction is important, as investment risk can cause a capital loss when an investment is realized, unlike saving(s) where the more limited risk is cash devaluing due to inflation.

In many instances the terms saving and investment are used interchangeably, which confuses this distinction. For example many deposit accounts are labeled as investment accounts by banks for marketing purposes. Whether an asset is a saving(s) or an investment depends on where the money is invested: if it is cash then it is savings, if its value can fluctuate then it is investment.

Real Estate

In real estate, investment is money used to purchase property for the sole purpose of holding or leasing for income and where there is an element of capital risk. Unlike other economic or financial investment, real estate is purchased. The seller is also called a Vendor and normally the purchaser is called a Buyer.

Residential Real Estate

The most common form of real estate investment as it includes the property purchased as peoples houses. In many cases the Buyer does not have the full purchase price for a property and must engage a lender such as a Bank, Finance company or Private Lender. Different countries have their individual normal lending levels, but usually they will fall into the range of 70-90% of the purchase price. Against other types of real estate, residential real estate is the least risky.

Commercial Real Estate

Commercial real estate is the owning of a small building or large warehouse a company rents from so that it can conduct its business. Due to the higher risk of Commercial real estate, lending rates of banks and other lenders are lower and often fall in the range of 50-70%.

Abu Dhabi gives $10bn to Dubai to service debts

2009-12-14T13:11:00.000-08:00

Dubai's decline into financial crisis has been more spectacular than its rise.

Until a month ago, the official word from Dubai was that the emirate's finances were in good order, but in late November world markets fell on news that the Dubai World conglomerate was unable to service $26bn in debts.

Now Abu Dhabi has given Dubai $10bn, some of which will enable Nakheel, the property arm of troubled Dubai World, to pay a $4.1bn Islamic bond that has matured.

Abu Dhabi's rescue package has highlighted the differences between its cautious approach to investment and Dubai's more brash approach. Tarek Bazley reports.