Sunday, April 5, 2009

ONLINE BUSINESS



A lot of people now are doing online business and this business is booming. The reason why it is easy to have such business is because there are so many resources teaching people how to establish one. One of the strategies to save time and costs while doing an online venture is to outsource some business process or task.
Initially, the online business has to be handled by the owner. This is needed to be able to have a good grasp of the processes that are involved. However, when the business grows bigger, orders are coming in steadily, products have to be updated and new ones entered on the site then work will be tedious for the owner and this is the time when there is a need to outsource some if not all processes. The business owner has to be free to do activities like marketing and promotions for the business to prosper.
There are some aspects of the business that you might not want to handle. Processes like accounting, product inputs, website design or maintenance and some others.
The tasks you are outsourcing might not be ones that you have desire to learn about, whether they are troubleshooting, manufacturing, taking orders, website design and maintenance, or something else. By handing the work over to an expert who enjoys and makes it their business to know these things, you'll be able to take advantage of their knowledge in the area without having to learn it yourself. This in turn will give your customers or clients more than you could possibly give them yourself. 

Thursday, April 2, 2009

SPECULATION



Controversy about currency speculators and their effect on currency devaluations and national economies recurs regularly. Nevertheless, economists including Milton Friedman have argued that speculators ultimately are a stabilizing influence on the market and perform the important function of providing a market for hedgers and transferring risk from those people who don't wish to bear it, to those who do. Other economists such as Joseph Stiglitz consider this argument to be based more on politics and a free market philosophy than on economics.

Large hedge funds and other well capitalized "position traders" are the main professional speculators.

Currency speculation is considered a highly suspect activity in many countries. While investment in traditional financial instruments like bonds or stocks often is considered to contribute positively to economic growth by providing capital, currency speculation does not; according to this view, it is simply gambling that often interferes with economic policy. For example, in 1992, currency speculation forced the Central Bank of Sweden to raise interest rates for a few days to 500% per annum, and later to devalue the krona. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is one well known proponent of this view. He blamed the devaluation of the Malaysian ringgit in 1997 on George Soros and other speculators.

Gregory J. Millman reports on an opposing view, comparing speculators to "vigilantes" who simply help "enforce" international agreements and anticipate the effects of basic economic "laws" in order to profit.

In this view, countries may develop unsustainable financial bubbles or otherwise mishandle their national economies, and foreign exchange speculators allegedly made the inevitable collapse happen sooner. A relatively quick collapse might even be preferable to continued economic mishandling. Mahathir Mohamad and other critics of speculation are viewed as trying to deflect the blame from themselves for having caused the unsustainable economic conditions. Given that Malaysia recovered quickly after imposing currency controls directly against IMF advice, this view is open to doubt.

FINICING TIPS






Spot

A spot tran

saction is a two-day 

delivery tra

nsaction (except in the case of the Canadian dollar and the M

exican Nuevo Peso, which settle the next day), as opposed to the futures

 contracts, which are usually three months. This tr

ade represents a “direct exchange” between two 

currencies, has the shortest time frame, involves cash 

rather than a contract; and interest is not included in the agreed-upon transaction. 

The data for this study come from the spot market. Spot transactions has the 

second largest turnover by volume after Swap transactions among all FX 

transactions in the Global FX market.


Forward

One way to deal with the foreign exchange risk is to engage in a forward transaction. In this transaction, money does not actually change hands until some agreed upon future date. A buyer and seller agree on an exchange rate for any date in the future, and the transaction occurs on that date, regardless of what the market rates are then. The duration of the trade can be a one day, a few days, months or years. Usually date is decided by both parties


Future

Foreign currency futures are exchange traded forward transactions with standard contract sizes and maturity dates — for example, $1000 for next November at an agreed rate . Futures are standardized and are usually traded on an exchange created for this purpose. The average contract length is roughly 3 months. Futures contracts are usually inclusive of any interest amounts.


Swap

The most common type of forward transaction is the currency swap. In a swap, two parties exchange currencies for a certain length of time and agree to reverse the transaction at a later date. These are not standardized contracts and are not traded through an exchange.


Option

A foreign exchange option (commonly shortened to just FX option) is a derivative where the owner has the right but not the obligation to exchange money denominated in one currency into another currency at a pre-agreed exchange rate on a specified date. The FX options market is the deepest, largest and most liquid market for options of any kind in the world.

FOREX RATES




















The following theories explain the fluctuations in FXrates in a floating exchange rate regime (In a fixed exchangrate regime, FX rates are decided by its government): Internation aparonditions viz; purchasing power parity, interest rate parity, Domestic Fisher effect, International Fisher effect. Though to some extent the above theories provide explanation for the fluctuations in e

xchange rates, yet these theories falter as they are based on challengeable assumptions [e.g., free flow of goods, services and capital] which seldom hold true in the real world. Balance of paymelnts mode. This model, however, focuses largely on tradable goods and services, ignoring the increasing role of global capital flows. It failed to provide any explanation for continuous appreciation of dollar during 1980s and most part of 1990s in face of soaring US current account deficit.

(c) Asset market model  views currencies as an important asset class for constructing investment portfolios. Assets prices are influenced mostly by people’s willingness to hold the existing quantities of assets, which in turn depends on their expectations on the future worth of these assets. The asset market model of exchange rate determination states that “the exchange rate between two currencies represents the price that just balances the relative supplies of, and demand for, assets denominated in those currencies.”

None of the models developed so far succeed to explain FX rates levels and volatility in the longer time frames. For shorter time frames (less than a few days) algorithm can be devised to predict prices. Large and small institutions and professional individual traders have made consistent profits from it. It is understood from above models that many macroeconomic factors affect the exchange rates and in the end currency prices are a result of dual forces of demand and supply. The world's currency markets can be viewed as a huge melting pot: in a large and ever-changing mix of current events, supply and demand factors are constantly shifting, and the price of one currency in relation to another shifts accordingly. No other market encompasses (and distills) as much of what is going on in the world at any given time as foreign exchange.

Supply and demand for any given currency, and thus its value, are not influenced by any single element, but rather by several. These elements generally fall into three categories: economic factors, political conditions and market psychology


FOREIGN MARKET

The foreign exchange market (currency, forex, or FX) market is where currency trading takes place. It is where banks and other official institutions facilitate the buying and selling of foreign currencies. FX transactions typically involve one party purchasing a quantity of one currency in exchange for paying a quantity of another. The foreign exchange market that we see today started evolving during the 1970s when worldover countries gradually switched to floating exchange rate from their erstwhile exchange rate regime, which remain

ed fixed as per the Bretton Woods system till 1971.

Now, the FX market is one of the largest and most liquid financial markets in the world, and includes trading between large banks, central banks, currency speculators, corporations, governments, and other institutions. The average daily volume in the global foreign exchange and related markets is continuously growing. Traditional daily turnover was reported to be over US$3.2 trillion in April 2007 by the Bank for International Settlements. Since then, the market has continued to grow. According to,money's annual FX Poll, volumes grew a further 41% between 2007 and 2008.[3]

The purpose of FX market is to facilitate trade and investment. The need for a foreign exchange market arises because of the presence of multifarious international currencies such as US Dollar, Pound Sterling, etc., and the need for trading in such currencies.



There is no unified or centrally cleared market for the majority of FX trades, and there is very little cross-border regulation. Due to the over-the-counter (OTC) nature of currency markets, there are rather a number of interconnected marketplaces, where different currencies instruments are traded. This implies that there is not a single exchange rate but rather a number of different rates (prices), depending on what bank or market maker is trading, and where it is. In practice the rates are often very close, otherwise they could be exploited by arbitrageursinstantaneously. Due to London's dominance in the market, a particular currency's quoted price is usually the London market price. A joint venture of theChicago Mercantile Exchange and Reuters, called Fxmarketspace opened in 2007 and aspired but failed to the role of a central market clearing mechanism.

The main trading center is London, but New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong andSingapore are all important centers as well. Banks throughout the world participate. Currency trading happens continuously throughout the day; as the Asian trading session ends, the European session begins, followed by the North American session and then back to the Asian session, excluding weekends.

Fluctuations in exchange rates are usually caused by actual monetary flows as well as by expectations of changes in monetary flows caused by changes ingross domestic product (GDP) growth, inflation (purchasing power parity theory), interest rates (interest rate parity, Domestic Fisher effect, International Fisher effect), budget and trade deficits or surpluses, large cross-border M&A deals and other macroeconomic conditions. Major news is released publicly, often on scheduled dates, so many people have access to the same news at the same time. However, the large banks have an important advantage; they can see their customers' order flow.

Currencies are traded against one another. Each pair of currencies thus constitutes an individual product and is traditionally noted XXX/YYY, where YYY is the ISO 4217 international three-letter code of the currency into which the price of one unit of XXX is expressed (called base currency)

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

FOREX A PROFITABLE ICON

Trading foreign exchange is exciting and potentially very profitable, but there are also significant risk factors. It is crucially important that you fully understand the implications of margin trading and the particular pitfalls and opportunities that foreign exchange trading offers. On these pages, we offer you a brief introduction to the Forex markets as well as their participants and some strategies that you can apply. Terms of trading are agreed individually depending on the volume of your transactions, but are generally much lower in cost when compared to banks and brokers. Your margin deposit can be cash or government securities, bank guarantees etc. Large corporate or institutional clients may be offered trading facilities on the strength of their balance sheet. The minimum deposit accepted for an individual trading account depends on the account type. 

Trading foreign exchange is exciting and potentially very profitable, but there are also significant risk factors. It is crucially important that you fully understand the implications of margin trading and the particular pitfalls and opportunities that foreign exchange trading offers. On these pages, we offer you a brief introduction to the Forex markets as well as their participants and some strategies that you can apply.