You Think What?

Nearly two years ago we told you how  the once venerated Goldman Sachs Group, a full-service global investment banking and securities firm, is comprised of a bunch of piggies…greedy, smack-talking piggies.  We even told you how their behavior reminds us of the Beatles’ tune, penned by the late George Harrison, about greedy little piggies.

Earlier this month, Greg Smith, in his role as New York Times Op-Ed contributor, very publicly announced to the world, and his employer, Goldman Sachs,  he is leaving and his reasons why. We took to the article, authored by a financial insider, as confirmation of what we knew to be true and published in 2010. (more…)

In the current issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, writer Matt Taibbi has contributed a very strong investigative piece on everyone’s favorite banking institution Bank Of America. The article is
“Bank Of America: Too Crooked To Fail“.  Around here we affectionately refer to the bankster company as “Bank Of The UNIVERSE”,  for obvious reasons.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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As the movement to demonstrate utter dissatisfaction with the behavior and lack of response to the publics’ demands grows around the world we’ve found an Occupy Wall Street survey.

We suggest you take time to complete the survey found here. When you do you’ll be able to see the issues most important to those who are protesting in cities across this nation as well as to those who support their actions.

BTW… in light of the continuing and escalating violence on behalf of those who have the most to lose from the success of the protests on Wall Street, in New York City, Washington, D.C. along with big and small towns around the United States, we suggest the organizers of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations plan a day of national strike. Implementation of the idea is past overdue…so how about it? A day where everyone who works stays home…a day when everyone who shops makes no purchases; or everyone who uses transportation, personal or public, stays home. No banking, no school, no emergency medical services, no utility services. Everyone stay home, on the same day for one day. We guarantee someone among the so-called movers and shakers will be paying attention.

Be sensible…stay warm this winter, do not put your physical body in harm’s way…stay home to protest against the banksters, and the corporate scions.

CFD trading is preferred by numerous individuals since it provides great flexibility, which is required to trade in current markets. If you trade CFDs you will be able to use a mix of leverage and lower transaction costs, and consequently this means that you will be able to increase your returns.

In point of fact, there are several basic characteristics that make CFD trading so well-liked and in this article we will consider them in more details.

Characteristic #1: Leverage
In other words leverage is the ability to do more with less. But while trading contracts for difference, it is important for you to understand this may mean for you not only earnings but loss as well.

It should be pointed out that CFD trading leverage allows traders to take the best advantage of market changes. To go into more details there is a need to add that only 5 percent of the money should be put down on most trades. The balance 95 percent is financed by the trading company. So, there is a possibility to gain 50 percent or even more in just one day even in the case the market moves less than three percents.

Characteristic #2: No Contract Size
CFD trading is analogous to trading financial derivatives. The major difference is that there is no smallest size of a contract. To put it differently it is possible to trade CFD for one single stock. This means that CFD provides flexibility, for the reason that the investment need not be in multiples of lot sizes.

Characteristic #3: No Expiry Date
One more significant thing that makes CFD trading different from futures trading is the detail that there is no expiry date. As you know, when a person deals with futures contracts, as soon as the expiry date is near, the number of purchasers for a contract is significantly falling. It should be also pointed out that liquidity crunch exerts a downward pressure as the contract comes near its expiry dates. As relating to CFDs, they are absolutely free of such false price declines.

Characteristic #4: Lower Transaction Costs
You need to be ready for that CFD trading may cost more in terms of brokerage in some countries. But the whole idea was invented to take advantage of positive taxation treatment towards gain from stock markets. It will be helpful for you discover that it cuts your tax bill and boosts your returns.

Today many individuals are involved in trading and the majority of them try to negotiate in CFD. Pointing out what CFD trading implies, it is valuable to say that CFD trading is a useful trading tool that gives you the allowance of trading at the market and reaching the great success through this. Many individuals make profits negotiating in CFDs. There are many different strategies available for CFD trading, but you can pay your attention to some major trading methods that are frequently consumed by great amount of traders.

Various movements occur at the market at the time when some new information appears. The information may touch different spheres, such as modifications settled by the central bank, various kinds of reports or something like these themes. There are also events that are expected by the world sellers, but most of them are unexpected. In order to make some profits in time there is CFD trading that is stated as a great help for you to make a quick movement.

Like any trading platform CFD trading has its main trading methods by means of which people reach the success and follow the movements at the market. They are different and they even have different levels of risks. So that to select one of them to trade with you should be aware of more data about each of the system and it is very essential to understand what each of them includes.

The first main strategy is Take a Chance. This strategy includes the contracts for difference created for traders who have the wish to take a chance. This strategy should be chosen only in case the trader usually receives a very high quality of any news. It should be a truthful source of news or some analysis or research. The trader should be aware of these facts before the market understands what is going to happen. Here even a small movement may lead to the great profits. The only disadvantage of this system is when the trading movement does not go as it was planned.

By means of this system you may begin trading with little sum and when you admit the positive movements, even if they are not numerous and big, you should sell your trades off.

One more method to pay attention to is Following the Trend. In comparison with the previous strategy where the trader should catch the data before the entire market gets it, this very strategy implies the attitude of the market towards the received data and its behavior in this case. If the new data appears it takes an hour or two to be extended. The first 15 minutes are clear for your acting. When you receive some starting information you can suppose how to negotiate in CFD according to it.

These are the most frequent methods people use and the more data you know about them the more successful trading you will have.

There is no need to mention that intelligent money management is essential for a happy and financially stable life. Besides, there is a need to call attention to that inadequate money management skills usually have an effect on the ability to make good decisions and can even harm the relationships in families. This can even lead to problems with physical and mental health. That is the reason it can be said for sure that proper finance management is a very important skill and the good news is that it can be learned by everyone.

And now I would like to reveal 2 major advices that can assist to solve all your financial problems and make your family contented.

Mainly, you need to know where precisely your money is going. To go into more details it should be pointed out that there is a need to stop the financial outflow. So, start paying a particular attention to your daily, monthly and yearly spending. You should start recording your expenses, this way it will be easier to manage your finances. In fact, you will be even surprised to find out how much cash you spend on completely pointless stuff. As soon as you find out where your money is going, it will be possible to limit unnecessary expenses.

The second critical tip to have knowledge of is that in order to be able to manage your money effectively you need to generate a budget that works for your particular situation and stick to it. It should be added that you can create your own, or you may also prefer getting a free budgeting form from specialized sites online.

While dealing with a budget, you need to take care that a part of your income always goes to debt reduction and savings. In other words it means it is extremely crucial that your budget meets your financial obligations. It will be useful for you to find out that almost certainly you will have to cut down on certain expenditures in order to be able to live within your budget.

These are two key steps you should start with in order to make your financial situation better and your life stress-free.

How to manage my finances? If you want to find out the answer to this question, click the link!

Get some helpful information on how to manage finances here!

By the way, if you are serious about the way you are dealing with family money (and you better should), personal finance software can really help!

Contract for Difference trading (CFD trading) is an arrangement made between two parties, which agree that they will be exchanging the difference made from the opening and the closing value of the underlying asset.

You might have already noticed that CFD trading has radically grown in its reputation. The truth is that there are numerous reasons for this but one of the key ones is the fact that an investor is not supposed to put up a large amount of capital in order to open a position. In other words it means that investors can make larger positions. To be more accurate, there is a need to indicate that usually the leverage share is from 10:1, but it can go as far up as 20:1.

The other important thing that is a focus for investors is that CFDs do not have the expiration date on the trade, so traders can prefer going long or short. Additionally, they can close the position if they feel the market changes are not positive for them. Actually, if the trader supposes that the market movements will go up, he/ she goes long. And on the contrary, if the trader believes that the market movements will drop, he/ she takes the short position. It should be also mentioned that when the trader is the buyer, he/ she receives dividends earned on the underlying instrument from the seller. Accordingly, if the case is that the trader is the seller, he/ she is the one to pay out the dividends to the buyer.

Hedging is one of the most significant parts of dealing with CFDs. This is a general strategy, which is used by most traders. The point is that CFD hedging provides an investor with an exceptional risk exposure managing, since it is possible to hedge one to one. In simple words, if an investor takes a long position in 4505 shares of XYZ, he/ she is also able to take a short position of 4505 shares in XYZ. It will be useful for you to know that taking on a short position on the underlying asset assists to protect portfolio if the price movements decline. There is no need to mention that this is an incredible option, which allows to make a profit from the failure.

Still, you need to keep in mind that in order to avoid risks involved into CFD trading it is crucial to have a strict strategy and the right stop loss orders in place.

A common question that most people ask is ‘can my trust fund invest in CFDs?’. A typical misconception amongst traders and investors is that trust accounts are treated differently by their CFD provider to individual and corporate accounts. In fact trust accounts are treated exactly the same as as any other account, the only difference is the tax treatment of profits when the trustee decides to distribute them to the beneficiaries of the trust.

Traders and investors normally use trusts for investing in CFDs for the following reasons:

1. for members of their family or ‘family group’ to benefit from their trading profits;
2. tax benefits, providing the trust passes the family control test and makes distributions of trust income only to beneficiaries of the trust who are members of the ‘family group’;
3. protecting the assets of the family group’s from the liabilities of one or more of the family members (for instance, in the event of a family member’s bankruptcy or insolvency);
4. offer a mechanism to pass family assets on to future generations;
5. accessing favorable taxation treatment through the use of income tax “tax-free thresholds” of family members; and
6. avoiding problems including challenges to the will after the event of the death of a member of the family.

The Benefits of using a trust to invest in CFDs
The primary benefit of a family trust is that the trustee is able to disperse income earned from investments made by the trust in any way they see fit, as long as the distributions are made to the beneficiaries of the trust. Trustees do not have to make trust distributions in any particular ratio or in the exact proportion.

A trust is not required to pay income tax on earnings that are distributed to the beneficiaries, but does have to pay tax on undistributed income. Trustees can distribute trust income to several beneficiaries, and in proportions that make the most of those beneficiaries’ personal tax rates. The beneficiaries then pay the tax on distributions made to them.

For example, should an adult beneficiary of the trust only receive income from the trust and benefit from the tax-free threshold (currently $6,000) for that year, the trustee would be able to distribute part of the family trust’s earnings to this person. The result would be that the beneficiary will receive some income but may not need to pay tax if that amount is less than $6,000. If ever the allocation to the beneficiary exceeds his or her tax-free threshold, the excess amount will be taxed at the beneficiary’s personal tax rate.

Distributions received from a trust usually are not considered a special form of income, but rather form part of a beneficiary’s assessable income. If the beneficiary receives income from other sources as well as distributions from the trust, their entire income is taxed together.

Should beneficiary’s income exceed the tax-free threshold for a particular year, the rate of tax applied to the total amount of the surplus earnings over the tax-free threshold may be lower than that for other beneficiaries because of the total earnings that these other beneficiaries already receive.

Undistributed income is taxed in the hands of the trustee at the top marginal tax rate of 45% for the 2006/2007 year, giving a strong incentive for family trusts to completely allocate the trust’s income before the end of each financial year.

The trustee should also take care in relation to which beneficiaries are chosen to be given distributions, as penalty tax rates can apply to distributions made to minors.

Income Distributions
One important aspect of a family trust that must be kept in mind is to whom the distributions are made.

First, all distributions have to be made only to individuals who are eligible under the provisions of the trust deed to be beneficiaries of the trust.

Secondly, for trusts which have made a family trust election, the distributions may only be made to beneficiaries who are within ‘the family group’. In relation to this the ATO states on its website:

“A consequence of making a family trust election is that any distributions (broadly defined) outside the family group of the family trust by the trust will be taxed at the top marginal rate applying to individuals plus the Medicare levy.”

In other words, if a family trust makes a family trust election after which it pays out to someone not a part of the family group, they are taxed at the maximum rate possible.

Trust Buzz Words
Trust deed – This set out the terms and conditions under which a family trust is established and maintained. The trust is established by the trust’s settlor and trustee (or trustees) signing the trust deed, and the settlor giving the trust property (the “settled sum”) to the trustee.

The settler – The settlor’s function is to provide the assets to the trustee to hold for the benefit of the trust’s beneficiaries on the terms and conditions set out in the trust deed. The settlor executes the trust deed and then will normally, have no further involvement in the trust.

The trustee – The trustee is responsible for the trust and its assets. The trustee has broad powers to conduct the trust, and control its assets. Within a family trust, the trustees are likely to be Mum and Dad (or a company of which Mum and Dad are the shareholders and directors). Their children and other dependants are usually listed as beneficiaries.

The trust information here ought to be regarded as general in nature, and in no way interpreted as legal advice.

You can find out more about CFD trading in your trust account by downloading our free CFD guide.

Today, Friday, July 22, 2011, is the last day for Public Comment on the proposed changes to the federal regs for owner financing rules….rules that will change your ability to enjoy real estate ownership in the United States.

Read here the highlights of the proposed regulations under Regualtion “Z”. (more…)

The United States Congress is looking to tighten regulations on owner financing. THE DEADLINE TO COMMENT IS TODAY, FRIDAY, July 22, 2011,  Congress will be making it difficult or impossible for property owners to collect their equity over time. This is certainly an investor issue; it is also a property rights issue, affecting all property owners. The freedom to sell on terms agreeable to a seller and buyer is a fundamental freedom affecting real estate value.

Today is the deadline for comments on this subject! You are encouragaed to voice your concerns over this issue of freedom being threatened to be taken away from all Americans. Go here to make and submit your comment.

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