New Forex Trading Strategy

Friday, December 4, 2009

Things That First Time Property Buyer Should Be Aware Of

By Billy Chen

As you busy weighing the pros and cons of the idea, this article would try to help you understand what it takes to buy a new home.So family and friends have been telling you that you should buy your first new house, right?

1. Because the cost of owning the property and subsequently selling it in short time would mean that you are likely end up poorer, even if you see your property has appreciated in value.Buy only if you plan to stay long term If you are already aware of the fact that you are not going to stay there longer than three years, perhaps it is not time to own one yet. When the market is bad, the loss you have to suffer could be even unimaginable.

2. Boost your credit rating Before you head to the bank for your mortgage application to buy a house, make sure you have an impeccable credit report. When you spot problems on the report, make an effort to correct and fix them. Your credit report would play a big part in deciding if a lender is going to grant you the loan.

3. Find suitable home loan 80 percent of the purchased price is the average loan amount banks are willing to disburse, subject to qualification. But you can go to the online calculator to figure out more about the maximum loan amount the bank is willing to approve you. The calculator would require you to input information like your income, debts, and expenses to work out a loan comfortable to you, or to thee bank.

4. Deposit requirement as a rule of thumb that the banks expect that the 20 percent down payment from home buyers. If you have a problem to put in this amount is your only chance to speak with the requirement to offer subprime loans. This is based on a case by case happened and there is also a pre-qualification requirements.

5. Buy into hot location with good schools If possible find a site where there are a number of popular schools. Reason is school districts are a top consideration for buyers who have school going children. When you want to sell your property, you can ask for a premium on top of a fair evaluation price.

6. It can be a good idea to get help from exclusive buyer agent as they can help to take care of all these hassles on your behalf and acting on your interest. Enlist the help of property agent While Internet is useful disseminating valuable information like home listings, when it comes to a time to follow up, like physical home inspection, negotiating terms and price, human type interaction cannot be avoided.

Finally, if you continue with the house hunting, you ready for a serious job. Always check the property you are interested before you get to know the future seller or representative. You want to find out the sales trend of similar types of housing in the neighborhood. Check out the latest transaction price. This way, you go to meetings and self-confidence to buy on the way to talk to you your dream home. - 23305

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Knowing What Makes Up Good ETF Trading Strategies

By Patrick Deaton

Nowadays, many traders are looking to exchange traded funds and are trying to take advantage of these funds because they do, in fact, make for great investment vehicles that can actually deliver a very nice income in many cases. Knowing what makes a good ETF trading strategies, then, will be necessary in order to take advantage. It's also a good idea to know a few things about ETFs first of all.

In a way, an ETF is similar to a mutual fund in the way it is constituted and run by a fund manager. Usually, though, almost every exchange traded fund limits its membership to what are known as institutional investors. This means large investors capable of buying and selling big blocks of stocks known as creation units. There are ways, though, for small investors to get in on the action through a trading system.

Think of ETFs as similar to corporate stocks, also, because of the way they are bought or sold or traded and you'll be well on the way to understanding the general principles that underlie these funds. Just about every one of these funds also tracks one of the major market indexes such as the S&P 500, so following trends or tracking trends can be one good way to set up a trading strategy.

There are more strategies out there that can probably be counted, though they usually fall into a couple of major categories; fundamental and technical. For those with the savvy, or patience, to sit down and learn technical strategies, the rewards can be quite lucrative. Most traders using technical indices believe they can discern patterns or shapes in a stock chart, basically.

For those with the ability to pick out shapes and patterns in market movements -- by analyzing a stock chart -- the possibility of good income is very real. These movements can signal upward and downward movement in markets that can be timed through technical analysis, with the correct buy and sell orders put in at the right times.

One of the most common of technical strategies that exists today is to utilize what professional and amateur traders call the "moving average cross." With it, traders look at short-term movements in the market -- or a stock or fund -- and then overlay that short-term movement on a long-term trendline. Usually, most short-term movements are from-- to 25 days in duration to create a moving average line.

After that moving average line has been created, most traders will superimpose that over an analysis of the short-term movements in an attempt to discern the actual movement the price of the stock or stock held in the ETF will take once it crosses the moving average line. Long-term trendline analysis, which is the second element, takes a 50 day moving average, which can damp the short-term trend.

In this manner, ETF traders can look at the long-term trends and create a moving support line. Usually, traders using this technical strategy will look at purchasing a stock as it begins its upward movement or once it goes back up after it has touched or slightly penetrated the 50 day moving average. Opposite, a trader could sell the stock short. Either way can work effectively. - 23305

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Commodities Mutual Fund

By Ahmad Hassam

The first question that may come to your mind is why invest in commodities? If you have been following the breaking news that you might have come across the news that gold prices have reached historically the highest level! Recently gold broke the price barrier of $1000 per ounce. This might be the best time to invest in commodities. A mutual fund is a fund managed by an investment professional on behalf of the fund investors. Now, mutual funds by law are constrained to follow conservative trading methods. Mutual funds cannot engage themselves in such sophisticated and risky trading techniques like arbitrage trades, long short strategies and distressed asset investing. Some expert of the opinion that the secular bull market started in the commodity market a few years back and may continue for the coming decade! If you want to invest in commodities than you have many options like trading commodity futures, commodity ETF, commodity stocks or commodity mutual funds.

There are many different mutual funds like stock funds, bond funds, currency funds and even country specific mutual funds. But there are a number of mutual funds that specialize in investing in commodities or commodity related products. If you want to have a low risk investment in commodities than you should think about buying shares of a commodity mutual fund.

Now some of these commodity mutual funds invest in derivates based on commodities such as futures contracts and options based on futures contracts traded on the major exchanges in New York, Chicago and so on.

Other commodity mutual funds may invest in companies that process these raw commodities such as energy companies and mining companies. So how can you invest in these commodity mutual funds? After doing your research on these commodity mutual funds, you can select one that you consider to fit your investment objectives, simply write a check and purchase the shares of that commodity mutual fund either through your broker or directly through the fund providers.

Now I said, after doing your research. The first step in your research should be to compile a list of questions like what is the fund's investment objective, what securities does the fund invest in, who manages the fund, what kind of strategy does the fund uses, what type of people invest in this fund, what are the risks involved in investing in this fund, what is the funds track record, what is the funds fees and expenses and so on.

Once you have your list of questions, see if the fund prospectus answers these questions satisfactorily. The good thing is that most of the mutual funds send their fund prospectus free! Now the two main commodity mutual funds are the PIMCO Commodity Real Return Strategy Fund and the Oppenhiemer Real Asset Fund. Now PIMCO Commodity Real Return Strategy Fund (PCRAX) is the largest commodity mutual fund in the market with $12 Billion of assets under its management. PCRAX tries to mimic the performance of Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index by investing directly in commodity linked instruments like futures contracts, forwards contracts and options on futures.

When you talk of mutual funds than you talk about Morningstar ratings of that mutual fund! Morningstar also have got a five star rating system that can be really helpful to you in picking the best commodity mutual fund. Now as always Morningstar website is a very good resource for doing your research on commodity mutual funds. It can give you a lot of information about these commodity mutual funds such as the latest news, updates, load charges, expense ratios and other useful key data. - 23305

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Solution to Paperwork: Property Management Software

By Layla Vanderbilt

Many people have a problem trying to keep track of all of their management papers. It happens to every property manager at some point however it happens even more to property managers that have several properties that they overlook. The paperwork can become a daunting task in light of everything else that a property manager has to do such as collecting rent and keeping track of expenses. All of this information can overwhelm a person however you can solve this problem through property management software.

With software, you won?t have to worry about losing paperwork or figuring out calculations all on your own. The software stores all of the information you put into it in one, easy to understand database. With this you are able to print out reports extremely fast and few all of your tenant?s payment histories without leaving your desk.

The software also tailors to those with multiple properties by offering several customization features. This allows property managers to break down their properties into separate complexes or by room type or even by price point. Not only will this make sorting your properties easier but you can do it in multiple ways depending on how you need it sorted at that given time.

Setting up the program for the data you what is what takes the most time. However, once the program has been set you can continuously enter the data as the database can hold as much information as you need it to. For example if you want to be able to keep track of who paid rent you can enter the renter?s name, address, phone number, date the payment was received, and any side notes or other information you want. It?s also useful to have a section for available units. If you have people looking to rent out a place you can provide them with the information about all the units you have available.

If you ever have the need to make a report or summary you can do so and print it off as soon as you need it or store it for a later date. The computer will automatically do any calculations that you need done. This will not only prevent human error but it will save you the effort of having to calculate it by hand.

Just about any type of property manager is able to benefit from these software programs. If you have over fifty tenants or multiple residences under your control, you should really find a software program. Even if you do not have a lot of computer experience, learning how to use the software will help you save plenty of time and money in the long run. It can also help you avoid making costly mistakes and errors. - 23305

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Index Options (Part I)

By Ahmad Hassam

Options trading can be profitable if done correctly. Many people take the plunge in options trading without any training or understanding about the different options contracts that they can trade. In the end they don't have a clue when the options value starts going against them. Now for options buyers this option unlike futures limits their maximum liability to the option premium they had paid at the time of buying the options contract. The options market has caught the fancy of many investors and this is not surprising. The beauty of options is embedded in its very name. You have the options but not the obligation to buy or sell stocks at a given price by a given time.

You must have come across the term Index Options. So what are index options? In'78, Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) began options trading on popular stock indexes such as the S&P 500 Stock Index. The CBOE options trades in multiples of $100 per index point. This is much cheaper than the $250 multiple per index point for the S&P futures contract.

An index option allows the investor to buy the stock index at a set point within the given time period. Let's take an example. Suppose the S&P 500 Index is at 1100 points. You have a bullish opinion of the market and are of the opinion that the S&P 500 Index will go further up.

There are options Greeks that you need to understand. Time and volatility are two very important factors for an options contract. In case of an index options, what this means is that if any time for the next three months you decide to exercise your call option, you will get $100 for each point the index is above 1150. So you decide to purchase a call option at 1150 for three months for 50 points. In other words you paid an option premium of $5000.

In that case you will only lose the premium of $5000 that you had paid to buy the call index option. Now, 1150 is the strike price of the index option. In case the S&P 500 Index does not rise above 1150, you can simply decide to not exercise your call option.

So for you to make a profit with this call option, the S&P 500 Index will have to rise above 1200 point within the next three months otherwise you will lose your premium. Contrast this with S&P futures. Call options are considered to be bullish.

A Put Index Option works in exactly the same way as a Call Index Option except that you make profit when the stock index goes down. If you had bought the put index options instead of the call index option in our example above, every point below the strike price of 1150 would have given you a profit of $100. In case the S&P Index had fallen to 1100 point, you would have recouped your options premium. Put options are considered to be bearish.

Now the option premium that you pay is determined by the market and it depends on many factors like interest rates and dividend yield. But the most important factor is the expected volatility of the market. - 23305

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