Investing World Today

by

What Is Socially Responsible Investing

Deciding how to invest your money isn’t something you should take lightly. After all, different investments come with varying implications and risks. On the other hand, it is possible to invest your money in something you can feel good about. That’s where socially responsible investing comes into play.

Also known as socially conscious investing, socially responsible investing, or SRI, is a strategy that promotes social good in conjunction with profit.Investors who identify as socially responsible typically aim to put their money into companies that better society, or, at the very least, operate in a manner that does no harm.

What Makes a Company Socially Responsible?

There are certain factors that most socially responsible investors look for when deciding where to put their money. These include, but aren’t limited to:

  •         Environmental impact. Some socially responsible investors favor companies that actively work to improve the environment. Others simply look for companies that don’t contribute to additional pollution.
  •         Public health. Some socially responsible investors make it their business to avoid companies that sell products such as tobacco and alcohol that are known to have negative health-related impacts.
  •         Morality. Many socially responsible investors will go out of their way to avoid companies that fall into a morally gray area. These might include proponents of gambling or makers of contraception, which some consider morally wrong.
  •         Peace. Some socially responsible investors will make certain to avoid companies that manufacture and distribute weapons.

How to Invest

If the idea of socially responsible investing appeals to you, you have several options. You can either seek out a company whose products or values align with your philosophy, or you can look for mutual funds with socially responsible strategies. You might also consider community investing, a subset of socially responsible investing that focuses on putting your money into low-income neighborhoods.

Vetting Your Investment

Those who adopt a socially responsible strategy tend to take one of two approaches. Some apply a negative screening strategy, where they reject companies or investment opportunities that don’t meet their personal standards. Others employ a positive screening strategy, where they choose companies whose products or philosophies they actively approve of.

If you’re an environmentally conscious person, you might use the negative screening approach to exclude a power company that releases waste and pollutes air quality. On the other hand, if you employ a positive screening strategy, you might actively choose a company that retrofits homes and buildings to make them more eco-friendly.

Don’t Forget About the Finances

While it’s noble to want to invest in a company you believe in, remember that the goal of socially responsible investing is also to make money. To that end, you’ll need to double your due diligence to make sure that the company you’re looking to invest in not only meets your social criteria, but is financially sound enough to warrant your hard-earned money. In this regard, socially responsible investing can be far more time-consuming than choosing a random stock or bond to purchase for your portfolio, but on an emotional level, there’s something to be said about sticking to your principles.

 

by

5 Myths About Financial Aid

One of the most dreadful situations for a student is lack of sufficient school funds during a college application deadline period. Surprisingly unknown to most of these students, is the fact that the federal government allocates over $150 billion a year to help students pay their college fees.

Unfortunately, students are duped by many fallacies on financial aid qualification. Consequently, they resort to less appealing borrowing methods including credit cards or personal bank loans. Sometimes, students don’t have the credit history to be considered for bank loans or credit cards. Students who find themselves in this position have other options, for example, Title Loan Resource, offers students competitive rates.

Nonetheless, it is extremely important for these students to do ample research on the federal financial aid before unknowingly denying themselves a chance to benefit from this service.

Here are 5 common myths about financial aid that every student and parent ought to know.

You Do Not Deserve Financial Aid Because Your Family Makes Too Much Money

This may sound true and sensible, but the actual fact is- there is no income cut-off for federal student aid. Although there are types of financial aid exclusively directed towards poor families, there is also need-based aid for upper to middle class families.

Additionally, the eligibility criteria for financial aid aren’t entirely based on income only- there are other critical factors used to evaluate individual student’s qualification for financial aid. Case in point is the general Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®)data which is collectively used by different states to determine whether you are qualified or not.

You Can Declare Yourself As An Independent Student

Students living alone and catering for their own bills could possibly assume that they are independent. While this could be true based on their definitions, the federal government disagrees. According to the government, an independent student is strictly defined as an adult student older than 24 years, financially responsible for a dependant, serving in the armed forces or married. Additionally, the federal government clearly states that parents are responsible for paying for the education of students who are less than 24 years old. Therefore, students under 24 can only be declared as dependants.

You Cannot Appeal Your Dependant Status

As earlier explained, it is not easy to qualify as an independent student. This however, shouldn’t limit you to the dependant status. You can actually appeal your status if you meet certain special requirements.

The United States Department of Education clearly states that students who have been unable to contact or locate their parents, are not adopted or are self-supporting and are aged between 21-24 years can appeal their dependency by meeting other special requirements. In such a case, a student should contact the school’s financial aid office to initiate a dependency ride process. Through this, one can successfully or unsuccessfully challenge their status. It should be noted though, that it is not easy to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that one’s parents’ financial information is missing.

Parents Must Be U.S. Citizens For Their Children To Receive Financial Aid

Non-citizen parents usually hesitate to give their information when their children fill the FAFSA form in fear of their children being denied aid. The federal government only denies financial aid to undocumented students  and the parents’ citizenship has no effect on the decision making process. In fact, FAFSA doesn’t request for parents’ citizenship info. The only information sought is parents’ social security numbers, where parents can enter zeros in the event they don’t have one.

Missing Parent Information Means No Financial Aid

Students can in fact submit their application without their parents’ information. Although dependant students must submit their parent’s information, the online form allows them to skip the parent information section.

Students with missing parent information could alternatively receive aid in the form of unsubsidized Stafford or Perkins loans- a process which is largely determined by the schools respective applicants attend. It’s therefore advisable for students discuss their qualification prospects with their respective colleges as soon as they submit their FAFSA forms.

In conclusion, students and parents are advised to consistently check and review the federal government financial aid website for updates and more factual information.

by

Ways to Invest No Matter the Net Worth

investingWhether you have a low starting salary, or a large business worth millions, investing is the proper way to begin building or maintaining wealth. In layman’s terms investing is placing money into a company, stock, or other fund with the expectation of a return on the money. Investing involves a broad range of products, and figuring out the correct investment depends on the kind of risk you are willing to take, and how much you expect to get back on your original investment.

Stocks are what first comes to mind for many people when thinking of the word investments. Stocks can be a good investment for all portfolios, because consumers can choose the stock of their choice, and purchase or sell their stock at any point in time. The stock market is open to those looking to purchase stock options for millions of dollars to pennies. Stocks will fluctuate in worth depending on the stock market and how the company is fairing overall, making stocks a a risky investment, but researching companies to invest with, and following stock market trends to understand how the stock market works can help to mitigate risk.

Treasury bonds are issued by the federal government, and are generally a safer investment than investments that depend on the stock market. Treasury bonds are issued as certificates and are a great addition to any investment portfolio. Treasury bonds increase in worth with age, meaning that the bonds should be held over a number of years before cashing in for the increased value. Treasury bonds are slower to appreciate in value or trade in than stock, however, treasury bonds are much more stable than other investment products on the market.

On investment strategy that is often ignored is investing money in a start up business. Company investors can help new, small businesses get off the ground and begin building their company. Becoming an investor in a business can be a risk, as some businesses fail, or never get off the ground. Investing in a business will offer a return on investment over the years, as many new business take over a year to turn a profit. Business investing is attractive, as consumers can help a small business, and also become involved in helping to build a company from the ground up. Some companies that investors can become involved in are financial companies, such as payday loans online companies. Payday loans online companies may turn an investment faster than other companies, as consumers are charged a mark up for the payday loan, along with paying back the money that was loaned originally. You can use them for cash loans too. Payday loans online are also available to consumer across th country, offer a larger customer base than other businesses.

Investing is something that everyone should get involved in no matter their net worth. Investing will help consumer understand the market and learn proper strategies to build wealth.

by

Billion Dollar Companies that are Unprofitable (And Whether they can Turn it Around)

The goal of every business is to make money. Sometimes, however, that doesn’t happen immediately. Quarter after quarter may pass by without the company generating a profit.

For public companies, this isn’t necessarily a killer right away. Often investors understand long-term business goals and are willing to keep their money in the long enough to see a major pay-off.

Just take a look at Amazon. For years, the company was notorious for not turning a profit. This wasn’t because they were failing. Rather, Amazon favored investing heavily in itself over being profitable. These investments eventually paid off: this summer, the company made a profit of $92 million that sent its stock soaring and pushed its market value up to $264 million—ahead of Walmart.

Of course, along with the successes, there are stories of failure. Sony is currently experiencing a series of losses due to waning interest in its TVs and cameras, which have traditionally been its bread and butter. HP is in the same boat, with a loss of over $12 billion.

Among the many unprofitable companies out there, some may come as a surprise. The question is whether they can eventually make it past the profitability line.

Reddit

The member-run news and social network known for its cluttered appearance and extremely rabid userbase is owned by Advance  Publications. Although the site boasts 169 million unique monthly views, it’s had an extremely hard time monetizing the traffic.

The problem is that the Reddit user community is extremely against most forms of monetization, including ads. They have also responded negatively to attempts to censor the site by eliminating hateful subreddits.

Reddit is trying to be creative by implementing features like Reddit Gold, which gives users a more personalized experience in exchange for cash.

Unfortunately, the mentality of Reddit users has created a catch-22 that I can’t see the site ever successfully getting out of.

Uber

Uber is the creative transportation solution that connects people in need of a ride to Uber drivers via a convenient smartphone app. It’s gaining a lot of traction in our frugal world and has received lots of venture capital.

Although Uber doesn’t release its financial statements, leaked documents indicate that it is still highly unprofitable.

In this case, however, this has a lot to do with the company’s rapid expansion across the world—including markets like and China. Overhead has gone way up.

Nevertheless, this looks like another Amazon case. With time, Uber will start making a profit.

Snapchat

Snapchat is a convenient app that lets you send pictures, text, and photos to people of your choice. The “snaps” you send are only available for viewing for a limited time of your choosing (one to ten seconds). This makes it appealing to people who don’t want their correspondence recorded forever.

The userbase is currently at 100 million. It’s generating somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million with its first round of ads.

Despite the revenue, it Snapchat has yet to turn a profit. Nevertheless, the forecast looks good if it can continue to grow its userbase at current rates and keep the attention of advertisers like Apple and Toyota.

Shazam

Shazam is a super-handy app that lets you identify unknown songs by comparing them against an immense sound database. The latest version integrates with the iOS virtual assistant Siri.

Shazam is one of the top apps in the world and has more than 100 million monthly active users. It’s gone through fund-raising rounds and is now valued at $1 billion. Shazam makes its money by referring people to iTunes and Spotify via links.

It’s a pretty ingenious strategy, and it’s working so far. So much so that Carlos Slim has seen the potential of the app and invested $40 million of his own money.

Twitter

It may be shocking news, but Twitter isn’t profitable. In its defense, it continues to grow and is starting to show higher revenue, although it is also incurring higher costs.

Twitter is big. It’s an important part of social media and internet marketing. There’s probably no doubt about its staying power in the long-term. But it can probably make some tweaks to increase profitability.

For instance, a better paid advertising system. The current way of promoting a business on Twitter is clunky doesn’t inspire an image of good results.

Also, Twitter could better cooperate with government entities to crack down on Terrorists who use the platform. This would greatly enhance it’s public image.

Profitability isn’t always immediate,  but reaching that point eventually is the purpose of every business. Those that don’t run effectively are likely to get left behind in the dust.

 

 

by

Four Ways in Which Automated Stock Trading System Software Can Boost Your Portfolio

dfsghshIt is little secret that the push of technology, the momentum of current systems, is certainly moving from a less automated to a more automated paradigm. We live in an era where most of the complex things are handled, at least in part, by automated systems running of specially designed software algorithms that can predict, analyze and orchestrate many different things in many myriad fields. And this is becoming no more stark than in the field of stock market trading. In this day and age, stock trading system software is far and away the biggest innovation in the industry, and it does, in fact, stand to imperil the job security of human stock brokers and fund managers all over the globe.

Here are four reasons why stock markets will, more and more, become dominated by automated trading system software.

Automation Perfects Already High Performing Stock Trading Systems

Trading on the the stock market have been around for a very long time, and many brokers have their own particular system, which looks for a certain alignment of factors in the overall market, before taking a prescribed course of action that was determined ahead of time. And these systems do yield pretty spectacular results, but the problem is that the human equation too often mitigates the overall effectiveness of these systems.

Human Error And Bias Is Removed Completely

The truth is that automated stock market trading system software is the most efficient, effective means for analyzing and forecasting the world’s stock market exchanges. Even though they are often modeled upon systems that human brokers pioneered, automated software is better able to take advantage of the system by removing the many human biases and errors from the process.

High Volume Of Data Can Be Analyzed For A Complete Market Picture

And, because computer algorithms are able to compile and process an incredibly high level of data per minute compared to a human broker, the fact is that automated trading system software is much more efficient that human analysis could ever hope to be. There is simply no way that a human broker could compile and process the same amount of data at the same rate as an automated piece of software.

Automated Trading Software Has Far Outperformed Human Brokers For A Decade

And, of course, automated stock market trading system software has a much better track record for growth and accuracy over human brokers and fund managers each and every year for the past decade.

Regardless of the direction of the market, we view every year as an opportunity to make money. By using our market timing software to navigate the markets’ short, medium, and long term trends, you have the potential to make money every year! Absolute Return Trading Systems Inc. provides a subscription based, proven and authenticated market trading system.