Asia Value Investor

Many dream to own their own home!

Property has been a popular route to wealth for many. Buying their own home is often the first investment many people make; purchasing another property may well be the second even before shares and other assets.

But why choose to invest in property rather than the other growth asset like stock? While the Stock Market offers high returns, many investors have found it to be a volatile and dangerous place. This is especially true for the non-professional investor as there are many hidden external factors that can effect a financial investment. Some of the reasons in property investment are:

• capital growth
• rental income
• hedge against inflation
• greater degree of control

Sensible investments in property have many attractions. Property can be less volatile than shares though not always and it tends to be regarded as a safe haven when other assets are declining in value.

Property investment has the potential to generate capital growth (an increase in the value of your asset) as well as rental income. Putting our money in the bank or investing in fixed interest does not give us any capital growth. Even though properties increase in value over time, however, it is important to ensure that we buy property in the right location to maximize the capital growth. In the early stages, rental incomes often do not exceed outgoings on a property - particularly the costs of servicing the loan. But as the property increases in value, rents tend to rise faster than costs and the property generates net income.

Inflation is common everywhere. The rate of inflation varies according to the strength of the economy. One of the benefits of holding property is that property values increase at a greater rate than inflation. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Before you jump into the bandwagon and begin to trade forex, it is a wise practice to take time to learn to trade before trading real money. Formerly you need to do a bit of homework.

For you to become a successful forex trader you need to know what forex trading is and how to successfully trade foreign-exchange. Large sums of money can and are made by those who have taken the time to learn and develop proper trading skills. Sufficient knowledge is essential to foreign exchange trading. You can learn some strategies through on-line foreign exchange tutorials or by attending forex training. The more you educate yourself with foreign exchange trading the more understanding you will have and the more success.

The World Wide Web is perhaps the highest source of information on the forex market. However, there are currently many different types of training courses available on investment. A good course should offer a complete education and training experience focusing on trading fundamentals, technical analysis, risk management, and highly-developed skills of execution for virtually any trading instrument.

Taking up proper education to learn to trade forex will go a long way in your trading career. One of the forex training provider I found recently is Online Trading Academy. This is a leading trading school in the world. Their training courses are geared toward individual investors or traders, novice or experienced, who want to learn how to use the same tools and professional trading techniques as the professional traders on Wall Street. One of the benefit using Online Trading Academy is their customer are allow to come and take the class again for free for life. In addition, there are quite a number of free course available there.

Patience and practice hold the key to success, if you wish to trade forex. The most essential aspect when it comes to forex trading is to educate yourself about it so that you understand how to trade and how to trade efficiently, successfully. Start off with smaller accounts. This way a beginner can get to train in about the various intricacies of the forex market, without having to misgiving about losing money.

One of the most important and closely watched value metric in stock screening is the price-to-book ratio.

Price-To-Book Ratio is a ratio used to compare a stock’s market value to its book value. In other words, It represents the recent closing stock price divided by the theoretical dollar amount per common stock one might expect to receive from a company’s tangible book assets should liquidation take place. Book value is an accounting term denoting the net asset value of a company, calculated by total assets minus intangible assets (patents, goodwill) and liabilities.

It is calculated by dividing the current closing price of the stock by the latest quarter’s book value per share. It is also known as the “price-equity ratio”.

This ratio also gives some idea of whether you’re paying too much for what would be left if the company went bankrupt immediately.

Studies suggesting a low PTB can lead to a strong stock price rise in the future. Value investors would use a low PTB on stock screens, for instance, to identify potential candidates. A lower PTB ratio could mean that the stock is undervalued. However, it could also mean that something is fundamentally wrong with the company.
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Majority of value investment are mean for long term, hold forever. This seem to suggest that when a value stock is purchased it is held for life and this simply is not true. Not all long term investments are having good value.

Business cycles are shorten today. You may find an excellent business today, however, it’s value may not be as good as it is in after a while due to marketplace acceptance change, technology and so on. These few years, marine and petroleum industries make the best investment for investors, however, the situation changed quite dramatically since last year …

A long term value investors needs to monitor his or her portfolio carefully and try and stay diversified. It is important to sell your investment if all your assumptions about the business change. You want to make sure you lighten your load in sectors and industries that are not working and redistribute to areas that are performing better.

Holding stocks is often a way to hedge inflation.

Inflation is a rise in the general level of prices for goods and services in an economy over a period of time. It can also be described as a decline in the real value of money - a loss of purchasing power, fixed-asset values are affected, companies adjust their pricing of goods and services, financial markets react and there is an impact on the composition of investment portfolios. In short, inflation reflects a situation where the demand for goods and services exceeds their supply in the economy

Inflation is a fact of life. Consumers, businesses and investors are impacted by any upward trend in prices. It is not something that is purely good or bad, but it certainly does impact the investing environment. Investors need to understand the impacts of inflation and structure their portfolios accordingly.

Normally high rates of inflation are caused by an excessive growth of the money supply. Inflation discourages savings due to the fact that the money is worth more presently than in the future.
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An investment growth calculator is a great investment tool that investors can use to set their goal and to calculate the future growth of their investment.

Investment Growth Calculator

An investment growth calculator is use to determine the revenue or growth of an initial investment over a certain period of time or years. It can even take your initial investment amount to a certain number of years at particular earnings rate. The investment value being entered in the calculator is break down into three categories namely the compound earnings, simple earnings, and initial investment.

An investment growth calculator is a great investment tool that investors can use for their goal setting as well as the future growth of their investment calculations. Aside from being handy, this calculator is also very reliable. The operations of this calculator are just as easy as entering values by slide movements or value entering in the text field. Once data are entered in the input field, the graph is automatically drawn. The calculator enables the investor to input even hypothetical data and other variables that are not meant to reflect the performance of any current or security economic conditions.

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The Forex market is a near 24-hour market. Unlike stock trading, currency traders can usually get in or out of the market at any time without waiting for an opening bell or encountering a market gap. The following article discusses some of the basic differences between Forex and the stock markets.

Basic Differences Between Forex and Stock Markets

The word forex is a short form of the word Foreign Exchange, which is the basis of the commercial transactions which take place between two countries with their own currencies. The forex market refers to the trading that takes place within this area and is different from the stock market. Established since the ’70s, this market deals not just with one business or investment but the entire gamut of trading and selling of currencies.

While both the forex and the stock markets deal with money, the biggest difference between the two is the sheer volume of money transacted on a daily basis as well the span of operations. The forex market deals with nearly 2 trillions of dollars which in comparison to any stock market is much larger. The players in the forex market are also different, where the money transactions are done between governments, international banks and financial institutions of different countries.
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Foreign exchange or forex (FX) is the largest financial market in the world. However, it is relatively unfamiliar to retail traders. FX was primarily the domain of large financial institutions, multinational corporations and secretive hedge funds so far. However, if you search the Internet, you will know that individual investors are now hungry for information on this financial area.

Currency Forex Trading - Invest Wisely

You have probably heard from some of your friends, that investing is the thing now. Well it probably is, but there are different things that you can invest into. Some people invest into their wives and their cars. These can be nice, but are not really an investment, where you can expect any revenue. The classical investment policy that a lot of people use is the stock market.

But what a lot of people do not know, but it is an old market and even easier to understand is the currency market. Using currency forex trading means that you can buy and sell different currencies. If you buy Euros and their value towards dollar rises, then you make profit. If the value of Euro goes down, well sorry for you, but you have lost some of the money. But if you make informed decisions, you more or less can’t lose that much money.

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A business is only worth the profit that it will generate for its owners from now until doomsday, discounted back to the present, adjusted for inflation. As the “report card” of those earnings, income statement will help determining the price you should be willing to pay for a business.

Income statement, also called profit and loss statement (P&L), is a company’s financial statement that indicates how the revenue (Often called the “top line” , which is money received from the sale of products and services before expenses are taken out) is transformed into the net income (the result after all revenues and expenses have been accounted for, also known as the “bottom line”).

Income statement represents a period of time, usually one quarter of a fiscal year and the entire fiscal year. This contrasts the balance sheet, which represents a single moment in time. The purpose of the income statement is to show managers and investors whether the company made or lost money during the period being reported.
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A balance sheet is a summary of a person’s or organization’s balances. Along with the income and cash flow statements, balance sheet is an important tool for investors to gain insight into a company and its operations.

In balance sheet, assets, liabilities and ownership equity are listed as of a specific date, such as the end of its financial year. It is important to note that a balance sheet is a snapshot of a company’s financial condition at a single point in time. Of the four basic financial statements, the balance sheet is the only statement which applies to a single point in time. If you are a shareholder of a company, it is important that you understand how the balance sheet is structured, how to analyze it and how to read it.

A company balance sheet has three parts: assets, liabilities and shareholders’ equity. The main categories of assets are usually listed first and are followed by the liabilities. The difference between the assets and the liabilities is known as equity or the net assets or the net worth of the company and according to the accounting equation, net worth must equal assets minus liabilities. [Read the rest of this entry...]