Author Archives: Guest Author

The most important step before even selecting the best mutual fund companies is knowing the basics of investments. Continue reading →

The checkbook register is a paper-based method of recording banking transactions for both incoming and outgoing money. It is useful because it keeps one up-to-date on the current status of a bank account in the period between monthly statements. Nowadays many people use online banking to get instant updates on balances, but some people prefer a more immediate solution using a register. To assist in recording transactions properly, many people turn toward the checkbook calculator. Continue reading →

The use of a checkbook register is not difficult and in fact almost intuitive. First let us consider what exactly is a checkbook register? A register is an entry form or table that can be used to record information in a systematic way. The checkbook register consists of a series of tables with a number of columns for holding information about each transaction. Continue reading →

GDP and stock market values are not always correlated. But when there is a recession during which the GDP contracts, pessimism grows resulting in falling stock prices. Investors tend to move their assets around during such uncertain times as traditional investments start to lose strength. Investors try to find no load replacement high yield mutual funds that can reward with the same returns but maintain the same level of risk. This is not always possible but might be approximated with some good research. Continue reading →

What does it mean for stock market prices to be like a random walk? What is a random walk? Financial economists have come up with an interesting scenario to introduce the random walk to laymen. Imagine if you will, they say, a drunk who has been left at a lamp post. The drunk wants to get home, but every step he takes is in a random direction. What emerges is a very erratic trail, where the position of the drunk over time starts drifting away from lamp post but occasionally coming back to where he started. Continue reading →

All year round the Federal Reserve makes adjustments to its lending rates to commercial banks, which in turn has an impact on the rates a commercial bank offers its customers. When the economy does poorly, for example during the bubble bursting of the dot com era and the 2007 real estate debacle, the Federal Reserve lowered the rates severely to stave off a recessionary economy. This was a positive state for companies and small businesses that need to borrow money to survive, but was a negative for people who were net savers. Continue reading →

There are a number of choices for investing, or as financial advisers put it, ways of making your money work for you. Some investments take the form of buying property and renting it out for regular payments, and other investments involve purchasing gold and hoping that the price will appreciate. A very common type of investment is buying shares on the stock market. An investment in stocks is an expression of the belief that the issuing company will do well and the investor can share in the spoils. Continue reading →

The last ten years has been witness to an explosion in information available online for potential investors in stocks, mutual funds, and other financial instruments. This has been led in part by brokerage services who placed their customer accounts online, as well as information brokers like Yahoo and Google. Continue reading →

Two good reasons exist for people to invest their money in mutual funds. The primary one is for retirement savings because of their diversified positions. The secondary one is for investment of extra income, in contrast to storing money in a bank account with low interest rates. Continue reading →

Investments are often graded via something called the “rate of return”. From the rate of return one can calculate how much the investment makes on the dollar after a certain amount of time. For example, an investor puts $100 into a savings account which has an annual rate of return of 3%. After one year, the investor expects to get $103. Of course, the investor may have opted to withdraw from the investment much earlier, which usually means some reduced return as prorated by the length of the investment. Continue reading →