Guy Work

By Haywood Dickerson

 Traders deal with two different kinds of returns when they speak of profits and losses made in the markets. Realized returns, often referred to as “booked”, are those which come about as the result of a position which has been closed out. Unrealized, or “paper”, gains and losses are those which involve open positions. An example of a paper return would be when one buys a stock at $100 and it rises to $110, but the trade remains open. In this case the trader has an unrealized gain of $10. Were the trade to be closed out at that price, that $10 gain would become a realized, or booked, profit.

While it may seem a fairly trivial point, the concept of paper vs. booked returns is an important one in the realm of trading and money management. Debates are often had as to whether paper losses are real, or whether they only become real when actualized. This is a key distinction which can play a major role in how one trades, depending on the market in question.

Where one is trading primarily in cash terms in a market like stocks, the differentiation between paper and booked returns is not very important. No matter how much the market moves either in favor or against a trader’s open position, it does not impact her/his ability to enter further trades. Imagine, for example, a trader has a $10,000 account, and buys 100 shares of XYZ at $50. That leaves $5000 remaining in the account ($10,000 - $50 x 100, not accounting for transaction fees). It matters not at all whether XYZ rises or falls. The trader will still have $5000 available to enter new positions. This only changes when the XYZ shares are sold and the profit or loss booked.

When one trades a market such as futures and spot foreign exchange, however, there really is no such thing as paper returns because these markets are based on margin. As such, all profits and losses are realized because they directly impact one’s available margin. Let us again imagine a trader with a $10,000 starting account value, this time in the futures market. If the margin requirement for a 10-year note futures contract is $2500, and the trader buys two contracts, then the account is left with $5000 in available margin. If that 10-year note contract rises by a point, the trader would have a profit of $2000 on the position (1 point on a 10-year futures contract is equivalent to a 1% move in the value of a $100,000 position, or $1000). Unlike in stocks, this $2000 gain is very real in that the trader now has $7000 in available margin to put to use on other trades. Were the 10-year note to instead fall by a point, however, the trader would only have $3000 free to use as margin on new positions.

Understanding the impact of realized and unrealized returns is something key in the development of both money management schemes and trading systems. Failure to recognize how these differences play-out in one’s account can lead to major errors in the assumptions underlying position sizing, and exposure. It can mean the difference between a worthwhile system and a useless one, or between a safe risk profile and a reckless one.

Visit the Gardening Central website to learn about dring roses, how to dry roses, caring for roses, growing strawberries, hydroponic strawberries , strawberry plant care and other information.

Find Physical Labor Job Listings Online

Securing Personal Loans in the UK

By Haywood Dickerson

 The UK is a nation of debtors. It is estimated that 15 million people in the UK are struggling with personal debt, while in 2004 some 46,000 people filed for bankruptcy with personal debts running at an average of more than 50,000. Despite these figures though, we continue to borrow on loans and finance agreements, mainly because it is still very cheap to do so.

Competitive personal loans rates

With the Internet making personal loans more accessible it is now easier than ever to apply for a personal loan. Just a quick glance online reveals that adverts for personal loans are everywhere. In fact, the competition between lenders is so fierce that many personal loans now come with added benefits such as discounted interest rates, air miles and even free insurance products to entice customers to choose a particular loan.

Loans companies too are relaxing their lending criteria, opening up personal loans to people who they may not have been willing to consider some five or ten years ago. Adding to the incentives for the borrower to apply for loans is the fact that the base interest rate has maintained a relatively steady course over the past few years, and looks set not to increase dramatically over the next year or so either. All in all, this combination of factors has fuelled the personal loans market, pushing the nation’s total debt past the 1 trillion mark for the first time in history.

Choices in the personal loans market

When taking out a personal loan, borrowers are confronted with a plethora of offers from lenders. These personal loan offers are essentially divided into two categories - unsecured loans and secured loans.

Unsecured personal loan products are available to homeowners, tenants, and people living with their parents. The borrower can normally apply for loans of between 1000 and 25000 without the need to commit to any collateral on the loan. Fixed interest rates from as low as 5.7% are currently available on some loans, however the rate is normally subject to a high credit score. For people with a less than ideal credit score, a higher APR than advertised may be offered on the personal loan.

Secured personal loan products on the other hand are more in the domain of the homeowner. This is because collateral is required against the personal loan, so should the borrower default on the personal loan repayments then the lender can repossess the borrower’s home to recoup their losses. Secured loans of up to 100,000 are available from many lenders, the limit on how much can be borrowed being dictated by the equity in the homeowner’s property. Overall, secured loans have lower interest rates than unsecured loans.

Whichever type of personal loan you decide upon, you must be confident in your ability to pay back the loan. If you are unable to meet your personal loan repayments then you will attract a bad credit rating making it very expensive for you to obtain credit in the future. If you are a homeowner, you could also lose your home.

Want to find out about flowers, flamingo flower, flamingo flowers, grass seed germination, grass seed advice , grass seed care and other information? Get tips from the Gardening Central website.

A High-Paying Part-Time Job

By Haywood Dickerson

 I’m going to tell you a little story.

In March of this year I was looking at the markets, reviewing the price charts to see if there was anything worth trading. In this particular instance it was the foreign exchange (forex) market I was scanning and I did come across an interesting development.

You see, the Euro was setting up to making what looked to be a big break higher against the Dollar. Based on my analysis, which took all of about two minutes, I saw a pattern forming which told me to prepare for an uptrend. Now I don’t want to imply that in two minutes I found a great trade. It probably took me 30 minutes to go through all the charts that day. Oh, and since I actually wrote up the analysis of the trading strategy for my report subscribers, you can add on maybe another 30 minutes. That makes an hour.

The strategy I devised that day had me buying the Euro against the Dollar at about $1.21 (meaning each Euro was worth $1.21). That was mid-March. About two months later I exited the position at around $1.28. If you are familiar with forex trading, you will know that’s a nice profit. If you don’t have forex experience, let me explain.

Let’s say that I bought 100,000 Euros against the Dollar. That’s a position size of about $121,000. Because forex is a leverage market, I would only need a margin deposit of maybe $2500 to put on that trade - potentially less. At the time I exited the trade, the 100,000 Euros had increased in value to approximately $128,000. That’s a gain of $7000, which is not a bad return at all on the initial $2500 deposit.

Now let’s say I checked on the trade once per day during the time I held it. That’s about eight weeks, which is forty trading days. If I spent five minutes each day looking at that trade - which is probably quite a generous figure - then I accumulated 200 minutes of trade monitoring time. Add that to the sixty minutes I used identifying the trade and creating a strategy and you have 260 minutes. Rounding that up, we’ll call it 4 1/2 hours.

So if I had put on a 100,000 Euro position I would have spent 4 1/2 hours to make $7000 - more than $1500 per hour. That’s one heck of a part-time job!

This story isn’t about telling you how great a trader I am. Rather, the point is that I was able to make those kinds of profits in the market without having to spend hour upon hour in front of the computer screen watching the charts and trying to interpret news events. This is something you can do as well.

Let’s face it. There are a heck of a lot more people who trade part-time than full-time. The day traders, though, account for more of the noise and they have a great many people convinced that one has to be dedicated heart and soul to the markets to make good returns. That just simply isn’t true.

Part-time traders are at least as capable of doing well in the markets and making a positive contribution to their financial well-being as those who spend long days focused on the market. It is just a question of managing their time well and finding an approach which suits their situation.

Want to find out about chrysanthemum flowers, chrysanthemum plants, chrysanthemum care, cilantro benefits, cilantro plant , cilantro herbs and other information? Get tips from the Gardening Central website.

physical therapist jobs

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.