Investment Articles

Let’s suppose you wanted to borrow $100,000.

As your lender hands you the check, you ask them exactly when you’ll be required to pay this loan back. They respond, “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you when it’s time to pay it back.”

You enquire further about the interest rate you’ll be paying and the response is much the same, “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you the interest rate I’m charging when it’s time to start paying the money back.”

Under these conditions, how safe would you feel in endorsing that check? Most people would have alarm bells going off in all directions. Yet this is essentially what most people are doing when they place their money in an IRA or 401(k).

They’re putting money into those accounts and it’s entirely up to the government through Congress or the IRS to tell you when it’s okay to pull that money out and how much in taxes you’ll be paying on it. This is because Congress can change the tax laws to reflect the government’s need for your tax revenue.

In the next year or so, taxes will likely be going up 5-8% if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire at the end of 2012. In the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is predicting that taxes could go up to 50-60%.

This means that an IRA or 401(k) is not the best place to put your money. Higher taxes will whittle your nest egg down faster than you can imagine once you start to withdraw your money.

Students of the Missed Fortune strategies know that better alternatives exist.

You’re much better off to put your serious money into cash value insurance contracts that accumulate tax-free under rules that have been grandfathered into the IRS code for decades. This is where you can use the strategy of Indexing where you lock into your gains every year and it resets.

Here’s what that means: If you were to invest $1,000 per month and you felt that the economy was going to have a rough year, you could say, “I want to lock this in at 5% this year because I don’t want to lose.”

On the other hand, if you said, “I think the economy is going to go up more than 5%”, and you linked your money to the S&P 500, your return could be even higher. If that particular index did 5%, you’d get 5%. If it did 10% you’d get 10%, etc. The better the economy does the better you’d do, up to a certain cap of say 15%.

Now if the economy did much worse than you expected, you don’t lose money because you locked in at that 5% rate and you’re protected even if you did guess wrong.

The bottom line is that with this Missed Fortune strategy, you are credited, up to a cap of 15-16%, whatever the Index your money is linked to achieves. But the best part is that if the economy or Index goes down, you don’t lose money.

With our government staring down the barrel of nearly $62 trillion in unfunded liabilities, it’s easy to see why Social Security has become such a hot button issue today. That’s $62 trillion that the government has obligated itself to pay out in benefits, but it doesn’t have a dime of this money in its coffers at the moment.

That’s money that has been withheld from our paychecks in order to pay past users of the Social Security system. When the Social Security program was instituted in 1935, there were approximately 15 workers paying into the system for every person who was receiving benefits.

Those numbers have steadily shifted until today we only have 2-3 workers paying into the system for every person receiving benefits. Fewer and fewer workers are pulling the wagon, while more and more are riding in the wagon. Obviously this is unsustainable growth in the long run.

The question people have been asking for years is “At this rate, how long can we expect the program to remain solvent?” The answer from our government has always been some variation of “No worries, we’ve got it covered-for now.”

Students of the Missed Fortune strategies would be wise to pay very close attention to my next point.

Government leaders thought that Social Security wouldn’t be operating in the red until 2042. After closer examination of the numbers, that date was revised to 2017.

But even that estimate was overly optimistic!

The reality actually hit home in October of 2009 when the government paid out several billion dollars more in Social Security and Medicare benefits than they withheld from people’s paychecks. There is no denying that we’ve already crossed the threshold of operating in the red.

This means that the nation is facing a dire situation with Social Security. The trustees of Social Security have estimated a current unfunded liability, in tomorrow’s dollars, in excess of $100 trillion. In plain language, that means that the federal government has obligated itself to pay over $100 trillion in future benefits, above any taxes it expects to receive right now.

That’s how much would have to be spent right now, at U.S. Treasury rates, to pay the future liability owed to Social Security recipients who’ve faithfully paid into the system during their careers.

While there are any Americans that depend deeply on Social Security, there are others who are not so dependent upon the program. Regardless of which camp you find yourself in, you must understand that what happens with Social Security has the potential to affect all of us.

How the government chooses to address the projected shortfall of revenue to fund these promised benefits will affect our taxes as well as future legislation.

This reality will prove a major challenge for many Americans, but it will also provide a clear opportunity for those who wish to take charge of their financial future. Instead of relying on the government to take care of our retirement and our health, we can take ownership and be proactive about our retirement planning so we’re no longer dependent upon Social Security or our government having to provide for us.

But it is essential to act now, before future legislation and higher taxes have a chance to cut further into our personal finances and retirement planning. Knowing and implementing the Missed Fortune strategies is a great place to begin.

A common question that comes up when discussing the Missed Fortune strategies and cash accumulation inside indexed universal life insurance is the one that asks, “If what you’re advocating really works, then why isn’t everyone doing it?”

It’s a fair question, though it fails to consider the possibility that what everybody else is doing may be the wrong thing.

For starters, it is true that the superior savings methods that we teach are only used by perhaps the top 1% or less of Americans. But it’s actually a good thing that more people aren’t utilizing these strategies.

Only a tiny fraction of Americans are familiar with the specific sections of the IRS Code that allow your money to accumulate tax free, that allow access to your money tax free and allow that money to be transferred tax free when you die.

Think about it.

If the majority of Americans truly understood and utilized those sections of the IRS Code, it’s a safe bet that the IRS would quickly change or eliminate those provisions. These are not carefully guarded secrets; they are simply a part of the tax code that remains largely unknown, even to many professional accountants and tax advisors.

Those financial professionals who have been shown the relevant sections of the code during a 3 day Missed Fortune training almost universally say, “I simply didn’t know what I didn’t know.”

The same can be said for millions of people who continue to pump savings into their IRAs and 401(k)s, where the tax-deferred status of their money will cost them dearly when they start to withdraw their funds. “They simply don’t know what they don’t know.”

There are legitimate vehicles through which a person’s after tax money can accumulate tax-free, remains accessible without incurring more taxes and is transferable tax-free upon death.

The clear majority of Americans who have a 401(k) or an IRA think they’ll always be in a low tax bracket. Whether future tax hikes occur or not, these folks are in for a rude awakening. They’re not just facing higher taxes, they’re also looking at the possibility of higher inflation and continued market instability eroding their nest egg.

Most people tend to follow the crowd and to listen to mainstream media advice that keeps them squarely in the middle of the pack, doing what everyone else is doing. If you want a different result than what the rest of the herd is experiencing, you’ll need to do something different. And that means you need to learn what the rest of the crowd doesn’t yet know.

There has been a surprising, although not fully unanticipated, rise in the amount of alternative investors over recent years and various specialist investment companies now exist to cater for this demand by offering investments that are not only lucrative, but are also environmentally friendly.

Investing in our own planet is becoming big business these days and now there are a number of ways solo investors and larger companies and organisations can make money whilst concentrating on reducing their own carbon emissions.

Carbon Trading

Carbon trading is basically an economical approach to reducing pollution and the resultant build up of green house gasses in the earth’s atmosphere which in turn leads to climate change and global warming, and so far it has been very effective. Industries that emit pollutants into the atmosphere are now required to purchase permits to do so. The total amount they are permitted to pollute comes under strict controls. All industries must have these permits, and these permits are effectively carbon credits. Each carbon credit is worth 1 tonne of Co2 or the equivalent amount of emitted polutants.

This credit system encourages those who pollute to reduce their emissions, and when they do so they will have spare credit that they can trade to industries and businesses that need more credit to increase their own levels. This way the polluting business that buys the excess credit isn’t really adding any more Co2 to the atmosphere because they have purchased the credit from a business that has reduced their pollution level.

This trading provides avenues for investment by identifying those companies who are attempting to gain carbon credit by reducing emissions.

Pensions

Carbon credits are also a very popular choice for SIPPs (self invested personal pensions). Because only a few, very select investments are made each year, and the tax office allows for extra revenue to be made from SIPPs, there is a very good chance of excellent returns. If you’re going to put money away for your future retirement and you want an alternative investment, then you may as well invest it in something that will give you a good return and also protect rare Earth commodities for future generations too.

This is further enabled through investment specialists being able to offer short, medium and long term investments, with exit strategies in place to allow investors to get out when they want; very unlike collective investment schemes that don’t allow this type of management and manoeuvrability.

Select-Global is one of the most influential and innovative companies in the Alternative Investment and SIPP Investment arena.  We are dedicated to guiding our investors through the sometimes complex world of investment opportunities that the global Alternative Investment markets offer. Our mission is to provide the most up-to-date information and investment advice in the world’s most favourable Alternative Investment and SIPP Investment markets. We pride ourselves on the unparalleled levels of professionalism and the ethical services we offer our clients. http://www.select-global.com

The Solar Panel Process

Long before a solar panel (called a module in the industry), can be installed on a business or household rooftop, there are some steps that must take place. It all starts with plain ol’ sand, from which silicon is extracted via various chemical processes. The refined and nearly pure silicon, called polysilicon or poly, is then heated and cast into cubes, called ingots. Cube-shaped ingots are then sawed into square wafers. Then the magic happens. The polysilicon wafers are then placed on a substrate, usually glass, to make a solar cell. A number of cells are then arranged together and set in place to form a panel. The final package is called a module. That’s how a solar panel is made in a nutshell. But hidden in those few steps are hundreds of companies, thousands of patents, and more than a few investment vehicles that can make those “in the know” a lot of money.

For nearly a decade, the industry surged ahead with a compounded annual growth rate over 40%, and investors made a lot of money on the companies making it happen.

The solar market is still set to triple in size in the next five years. By 2015, installed solar capacity will grow another 347% to over 72 gigawatts as utilities worldwide are incentivized and forced to adopt sustainable production assets, and as solar energy reaches price parity in a growing number of markets. In order for those forecasts to hold true, improved policy is going to have to do battle with current economic conditions. The Current State of the Solar Market is currently facing rapidly falling prices, both for its raw material and its finished product. A seasonal dip in demand and the related oversupply of panels coupled with the general economic slowdown and restricted lending has led to an up to ~30% decrease in selling prices for solar modules. Of course, the operating costs of solar companies have not fallen as quickly, forcing companies to reduce profit margins as they sell discounted panels. In fact, in the recent price scramble, Chinese manufacturers have opened an advantage over historically dominant European companies. Established Chinese producers are currently offering contracted prices of about €2.00 per watt, while European suppliers are struggling to break below €2.50 per watt.

As such, Chinese solar companies are poised to gain some European market share. You should see that reflected in their share prices over the next few quarters. Even with the economy in the pits, the German solar market–the largest in the world–is still set for steady growth, thanks to renewed lending by German state bank KfW and national political commitment. Funding for rooftop and small ground installations is also flowing again from large European investment banks and local savings banks. Other countries in the European Union will take longer than Germany to heat their solar markets back up. Any astute investor should thus ensure that they have exposure to the German market, which is predicted to be one of the earliest to recover from the current economic downturn. Only the most highly efficient panels with the best prices and best warranties will be purchased. Smaller Chinese companies are probably the most at risk. Balance sheets for all solar companies will be off for the next few quarters as reduced demand from the recession and cyclical seasonal patterns works its way off balance sheets.

In addition to Germany, the U.S. considered the sleeping giant of the solar industry is also doing much to ensure a robust solar rebound. Here’s a snapshot of what the U.S. recent stimulus did for the solar industry: Investors are now able to take a 30% federal refund on the value of a new installation before deducting any state incentives. So a theoretical $100.00 dollar solar system in North Carolina (35% state credit) now only costs the investor $35.00-because both federal and state incentives are now calculated from the full price. Best part is, those federal incentives have no cap and the project need only be finished by 2017 to qualify. This incentive alone will rapidly increase solar demand as homeowners and investors a like rush to get discounts on solar installations on the taxpayers’ dime. But there are many more solar provisions in the stimulus that will only magnify the gains that can be taken on the right solar stocks. There’s also $6 billion dedicated to paying the fees on guaranteed loans. This clause is aimed at encouraging banks to make loans for renewable projects. Most estimates say that $6 billion in guarantees will translate into $60 in new loans.

Today a lot of us are trying to find ways of earning extra cash for the future and one of the most popular ways of making extra money is with stock market investing. It is possible to make money on the stock market if you go about things in the right way. You should be aware that trading on the stock market does not work for everyone and you shouldn’t look at it as a way to make a fortune quickly. Even so there is ways for you to make your money work for you but you must learn all you can about trading before beginning.

Once you invest in the shares of a particular company, you are actually becoming a part owner of the company and when dividends are paid out by the company, you will receive your share depending on how many shares you may have. Dividend income is the name for this type of income.

How to Get Started

Research is always the name of the game in regards to the stock market so you’ll want to do yours before you get started. Decide on how much you want to invest and then think about how you’re going to split your investment. High dividend yields and blue chip companies are the usual options for many people. Thinking about the products or services that you might use every day is the best way to manage your portfolio and this is something you need to do. By doing this, you can then start to learn concerning the companies that provide these services or products.

Selecting a Company

Once you might have identified companies that you think you might like to invest in, the next step is to take a look at their financial statements including their balance sheet and profit and loss statement. There are also other reports worth looking at that include the director’s report or the cash in hand report. In addition, you need to check out if the performance of the company has improved by looking at their accounts throughout the last five years.

You should most likely consider going ahead with your investment if you are satisfied with the results. The best form of companies to look at is going to be those in the following industries: banking, insurance, pharmaceutical, oil, biotechnology, energy, IT, FMCG, gas and the service sector.

Your Stock Market Attitude

It’s better to try and have shares in a company for about ten or twenty years if you need to get the best return. You might also want to consider option trading and if you do then think about putting about five percent of your investment fund aside for it. Provided you know what you are doing, you can make quite a lot of money from option trading.

The best way to make money from the stock market is to try and be clever about your investments. Devise a strategy and don’t veer from this. You have to make sure that you do your research before you invest so that you can be assured that you don’t lose your money.

If you wish to get more information regarding stocks and investing, why not visit our site at stock-trading-investing.com. You won’t only find a plethora of tips, advice, information and reviews, you’ll also find answers to more specific areas such as intraday trading.

Small-scale fine wine investments are increasingly popular, especially in the UK. What was once a select investment opportunity, limited to wealthy connoisseurs, has now become much more accessible. The Internet, the growing number of investment trusts, and the greater amount of information about fine wine available have all contributed to bringing wine investments closer to mainstream. Yet investing in fine wine is not without its risks. Here’s some food for thought.

Great Wines in Great Years Are Most Rewarding

Not all fine wines can make you rich. Truth be told, most bottles, even well-know ones, bring moderate revenues, and only after they reach maturity (at least a few years). Only the top bottles from prestigious vineyards bring fantastic profits, and these are hard to get. The safest bet is to invest with care in lesser fine wines, and to be realistic. And don’t forget that you can always drink your wine instead of selling it.

Buying Wine Before It’s Bottled Is Risky

Many fine wine investments these days entail that you buy wine before it’s bottled. This is a common practice especially when it comes to Bordeaux wines. Know as ‘futures’ by insiders, this type of investing riskier, especially for starters. There are many variables involved here, such as final quality, demand, market price fluctuations, and so on, all of which need to be carefully considered. This is not too say that ‘futures’ are to be avoided; not at all, they can be the most lucrative investments. Yet they must be indulged in with great care.

It May Be Trickier With New World Vintages

American fine wine investments may be particularly challenging, because the vintage makers in the US are not as firmly established as those in Europe. There are famous California red producers, such as Opus One and Screaming Eagle, yet the prices are much more fluctuating than in the Old World. The chief factor that sets wine price in the US is not wine maker prestige, but demand. For a UK investor it can be harder to keep up with all the developments of the US market. There always, of course, exceptions.

Wine Lovers Are Less Likely to Regret Their Investment

Finally, you have to keep in mind that fine wine investments, just like any other types of investments, can always fail to bring you the expected returns. In such a scenario, are you ready to put your worries aside and enjoy a glass of fine wine, from the bottle in which you invested yourself? If not, then you may be better off considering other types of investments, such as those in contemporary art, silver, or gold.

If you are looking for best alternative investments, experts at Compare the Financial Markets will help provide valuable assistance.

One carbon credit is equivalent to one metric tonne of carbon dioxide. For every metric tonne of carbon dioxide you save you’ll be granted a carbon credit. These are presented as certificates and can be sold off to other companies to help their own profit margin. This incentive for businesses makes them more likely to be motivated to lower emissions and it can help their bottom line.

As an example if you save 1000 tonnes of carbon dioxide by running your company more environmentally friendly you will be granted 1000 carbon credits. The 1000 carbon credits that you have just saved can them be sold off to other companies that have polluted over the limit. This will then help your bottom line and besides that show others that you have an eco friendly business.

There are namely two types of carbon credits that are given out, these are voluntary and mandatory. In the Voluntary offset market business can purchase carbon credits on a voluntary basis to lower their carbon footprint and the amount of carbon emissions that result from their activities. The voluntary market is used to fund environmental projects like planting trees or diverting methane gas from farms into electricity at the power plant.

Under the mandatory market governments and companies are required by law to emit greenhouse gases by purchasing carbon credits. Under this market there is a system called cap and trade which states if you’re under polluting within a time frame you get to keep the carbon credits to sell to others. This aids them into choosing less intensive carbon activities and increasing their bottom line by selling off the extra credits they may receive from being environmentally friendly. This means that in the new age companies which produce the least amount of greenhouse gases are going to grow larger and thus help even more!

There is another type of offset and it’s called ‘Renewable Energy Credits’. Renewable energy credits which are also known as ‘RECs’ support specific renewable energy such as wind and solar power. The main advantage of RECs is that they supply an amount of renewable energy into the market which can benefit many within the surrounding area.

In the end whether it’s the voluntary or mandatory market carbon credits are used to let polluters pay for their activities while rewarding the eco companies. These both encourage the reduction of fossil fuels in the atmosphere and the need to contribute and be rewarded for it at the same time. It’s a scheme which has grown pretty rapidly over the past few years and should continue to do so. You can invest by choosing companies like select global which is a leading carbon broker-dealer to help you capitalize on this opportunity.

One of the riskiest trading options around yet is binary options trading. The payout for this kind of option is either a fixed price or asset, or none at all. It’s very risky especially for a newbie to try this type of trading. In some cases, investors give back a small percentage of the investment, at times around 5 to 10 percent of the strike price. However, the most basic cases and situations do not call for a refund or return of investment.

To trade in binary options, you must first create an account on binary options brokers online. Major online brokers are currently dealing with this kind of option. After choosing and setting an account, you start choosing an underlying asset to trade. In this event, you can either study different markets for their viability and profitability, or pick one where you’re most comfortable trading with if you’re an experienced trader. Trading knowledge is very important in binary options so as not to give an unprofitable decision. Study all markets you might possibly handle, and draw their asset values on current trading figures. It would shed a good light if a commodity has a high asset. Make a call option for those with high assets so you can profit when it expires in-the-money. On the other hand, you may still opt for those with lower assets if you feel more attached and hopeful to it, but it’ll be wise to purchase a put option for it to also profit from it.

What’s left from this stage is to wait for the result of your investment as it reaches the maturity date. At times when a contract expire in-the-money it gets up to 75% profit from it, better than losing and getting no return at all. Binary trading options come in several types, depending on which maturity date will your investment on a contract end.

The most basic binary options are cash-or-nothing and asset-or-nothing. Both of these options have the same processes of profitability, but they differ in one aspect. The latter option opts for a strike price while the former would rely on the price of the asset upon the end of the contract. Both of these options would payout if the asset price or strike price gets higher towards a maturity date. When they don’t get higher, the contract is lost. There are also other types like the one-touch and no-touch binary options that would necessitate first a level of determination. The latter, when that determined level is reached, would hand out pay. The case is inversely different for the former.

Get to know more on Binary Options Trading.

Earlier this month, Nepal announce that it will unveil 50 projects from foreign investments at the Nepal Investor Forum in 2012. Forestry is one of the areas these foreign funds will be directed.

Around the same time, People’s Daily Online reported that a total of $1.5 billion of foreign loans and grants have been invested in China’s forestry sector between 1985 and the end of 2010. According to the Sate Forestry Administration, the foreign investments, along with domestic funding of 8.7 billion yuan (about $1.37 billion) have resulted in 5.82 million hectares of afforestation.

Forestry funds, however, have to be careful and anticipate some challenges when dealing with initiatives overseas — lack of transparency, local political and economic conditions and corrupt practices. All of these can jeopardise the overall project performance, efficacy and, subsequently, investor returns.

Forestry investments are lon-term investments. Therefore, an effective and transparent monitoring and performance evaluation system is essential. It will continuously follow the financial as well as strategic development of the project, while making sure that the investment is, indeed, working and returning revenue. Reputable financial and auditing consultancies need to be involved, so that they can stingently evaluate and report back to investors on the state of the assets and the financials of the corporation.

When investing in a foreign country, there are external factors, which can influence project performance and evaluation and tamper with transparency. One of these factors is local politics, which can meddle with forestry management to a high extent. Some forests are state-owned. In the case with China, all forests are owned by the government. This means, more often than not, government interests are involved in the monitoring and reporting process, and larger political goals can result in asset misrepresentation. In a global economic recession, fear of losing foreign investments can force governments in developing countries to put pressure on local project management to misrepresent facts and figures. This misleading practice creates a snowball effect and, by the time the fraud is unveiled, investors could have lost millions.

Aside from political interests, the current state of the economy in the particular country can also play a role in forestry project management and regulations. Instability and currency volatility can cause asset values to fluctuate, making evaluation and reporting quite challenging.

And last, but not least, corrupt practices are also not unlikely in developing economies. They can severely compromise the effectiveness of the forestry operations. At the same time, greed and subsequent misuse of position and power at the highest level can rise, just as it has been observed in the last few years with corporations in some developed economies.

Investing in forestry funds overseas can be rewarding — not only monetarily, but also ethically. Many forestry projects provide jobs and income for local communities in the developing countries, thereby helping their sustainability. So when forestry projects are not functioning properly, the lives of indigenous communities are adversely affected.

Therefore, forestry funds have to use extra precaution when they put investor money in projects overseas. Commissioning an independent evaluation by a trusted third party, which is not fiscally tied to the particular forestry project, is important at the pre-investment stage as well as periodically thereafter.