Actual for You - Finance

If You Have One Of These People-You Are Happy-If You Don't-You Can Grow Them
Yesterday I had the distinct fun and exciting privilege of having a prescription filled. If you have not had this experience I highly recommend it, as it is right up there with watching paint dry and grass grow.While I was waiting I had a chance to observe this particular pharmacy's “Rock of Gibraltar, White Knight, Unsung Hero” in action.Nearly every business has one of these individuals in their organization. This person is usually where the action is hottest. Whenever there is a fire, they show up with the fire extinguisher, a quick fix and a word of encouragement. They then move on to the next one and then the next one. Seamless and quick, never stopping, their whole day is one of accomplishment and satisfaction.This particular individual never stopped the entire time I was waiting. Between answering the phone, talking with customers who were waiting and moving the line, this “production specialist” was every bit professional and friendly even though he never stopped for one second.If you have an opportunity to grow one of these individuals, I highly recommend it. You can spot this person early in their career by watching for a few clues that this could be your “production specialist.”1. They do a little bit more than asked. They take a little bit more pride in what they do

e spilt up and filled at the next price)

You get no fills and the price goes up (one hundred shares had already been traded before your order showed up and your order prompted them to raise the price)

No trades go through but the price goes up and you do not get filled (you offered in the spread and they have no obligation to bargain- they can move it and hope you come after it).

Games:

There is definitely an element of gamesmanship that is legal. Generally the market maker will have more experience and will be better at it than you. That is not illegal but definitely painful to the rookie who may feel cheated, but if a rookie takes on the pros and loses it is not because of cheating.

Fishing:

Project Management Excellence - Beyond Colourful Status Reports Demands Much More
Project management excellence goes beyond producing project charters, detailed schedules and colourful status reports. Today's project managers must acquire the skills necessary to combat a myriad of modern challenges. Factors such as downsizing, merger mania, restricted finances, an accelerated business pace, a multidisciplinary world, rising competition and seemingly ceaseless change, acting singly and in concert, demand much more.Learning to manage time, costs, quality, scope, risks and other traditional practices is a vital foundation of good project management.. However, to achieve excellence and smoother-sailing successes, there's a dozen other competencies you need:1. Negotiation - Negotiation is a vital part of every project manager's existence ... often moment by moment. Whether you're dealing with suppliers, managing employees or contractors, you're negotiating. The quality and success of your project can be directly affected by your ability (or inability) to negotiate.2. Marketing - Project marketing methods sustain your project against competing against swarms of other initiatives that jostle for higher priorities, management's attention and valuable resources.3. Selling - Project managers reluctant to sell may soon find their projects failing. You can never stop selling yours

I just finished a training session on the internet and I answered a question that I have answered 100 times before or more. It got me a bit worked up because there is far too much mythology out there about the market and how it works and who does what to whom. I am going to attack one of the straw men of trading myths.

It is widely thought among beginners and sadly many veterans alike that there is a boogey man in the closet; a little man behind the green curtain that pulls strings and levers and takes my trade away from me. This misperception was generated in the early days of the NASDAQ electronic trading platform. In the early days when electronic (versus open outcry – face to face) trading was just getting started there were instances of market makers adjusting order flows to stretch spreads. They would delay market orders so they filled at higher or lower prices when the prices were moving fast. There were also some instances of prices being manipulated to hit pockets of stop loss orders that were visible on the screens. A number of lawsuits and firings and license revocations stopped that very quickly, but myths prevail and it seems that people need to have demons to explain calamities and excuse their shortcomings. The calamity is that trading skills often do not match the market conditions. When that happens please have the sense not to blame the mean nasty conniving market maker.

Fact: The market maker does not know or care much about you, at least not in a negative way. A market maker wants you to be there because with out you they are out of business. But you are not a target to abuse. You are a number, you are a single trade in a day of hundreds it not thousands of trades and the five to thirty cents your trade makes will not be more than a drop in a bucket to them. They want your trade and will compete with other market makers to get your business. When you place an order in the spread the market makers may debate whether to meet your request, and if it is reasonable some hungry market maker will take it even if the others don’t want to. You represent their livelihood but you are not FOOD!

Fact: Except in a few extraordinary cases, prices have to move incrementally. That means the idea of market makers jumping up or down to grab your stop bogus. It is illegal and would get picked up by the regulatory process. The exceptions are as follows; a gap in over night trading can give the market maker a right to gap prices. A Fast Market (wild irregular trading) condition gives some leeway for market makers to catch up. Market makers can in certain cases also move prices with out corresponding price action. If volatility changes in the market and there are no active orders on the ‘book’ they can adjust option prices. In that case they can adjust prices to actual changing conditions. Otherwise they can not just move prices around to look for your stop. They can push a price up or down by manipulating the bid and ask but generally there has to be stock movement and or volatility movement before prices can be adjusted.

Fact: Your stop is not visible to the market maker. Even if it is an actual order, if it is away from the price it is invisible to them. Until the price action approaches your stop (close to the money) they can not see it. Once it is close to the money it is visible but the above rules apply.

Fact: A market maker can not skip your order either. They are required to trade 100 shares or one contract before moving a price so if you place an order of 100 shares or 10 contracts and you don’t get filled they did not skip you and if you had only one or two contracts fill it would be perfectly legal. If your 10 contract order was an ‘All or Nothing’ and you got nothing, they they were not obligated to fill it for you. However if no orders had yet been traded at that price and it was not an ‘All or Nothing’, they would be obligated to take part of your order because they can not back away from a trade. At least 100 shares or one contract must be traded before prices can be moved if there are legitimate orders in line. So, if there is a Bid and Ask showing and you place an order here is what can happen…

You get filled (probably there is some volume and you are part of it)
You get partial fill and the price moves (they are reading volume and momentum and decide to move the price; orders can be partially filled and market orders can be spilt up and filled at the next price)
You get no fills and the price goes up (one hundred shares had already been traded before your order showed up and your order prompted them to raise the price)
No trades go through but the price goes up and you do not get filled (you offered in the spread and they have no obligation to bargain- they can move it and hope you come after it).

Games:

Fishing:

Marketing Plans that Succeed: Three Steps to Getting Noticed
Do you ever feel like you’re on message overload? So many commercials, ads and pop-ups you can’t tell who’s selling what anymore. Well, you’re not alone and you’re not overreacting.Today we are exposed to somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 marketing messages a day. To put that in perspective, in the 1970’s---that far less aggressive and commercial era---consumers had a paltry 500 to 2,000 marketing messages sent their way daily. While as a customer you may wax nostalgic about the good old days, as a businessperson you are responsible for sending out some of those messages.Step 1: So how can you be sure your marketing gets noticed? Chances are that yours is not a totally unique business. But there is a great probability that there are unique components to the way you run your company or treat your customers. Develop a marketing message that focuses on your target customer and the benefits you offer them, maybe it is service, location or product assortment. Whatever your differentiators, you have to key in on them and exploit their interest to potential customers.Step 2: Look for diverse marketing methods. Traditional advertising certainly works and is an important tool but there are many more tactics, some expensive and some cost little to nothing. You might consider a PR campaig

very quickly, but myths prevail and it seems that people need to have demons to explain calamities and excuse their shortcomings. The calamity is that trading skills often do not match the market conditions. When that happens please have the sense not to blame the mean nasty conniving market maker.

You get filled (probably there is some volume and you are part of it)
You get partial fill and the price moves (they are reading volume and momentum and decide to move the price; orders can be partially filled and market orders can be spilt up and filled at the next price)
You get no fills and the price goes up (one hundred shares had already been traded before your order showed up and your order prompted them to raise the price)
No trades go through but the price goes up and you do not get filled (you offered in the spread and they have no obligation to bargain- they can move it and hope you come after it).

Games:

Fishing:

Examining Online Stock Investing
The stock market can be traced back to the late 1700s, in the infancy of the United States. Beginning in Philadelphia, the first American stock exchanged was founded in order to bolster commerce in this new world. Before long the New York Stock Exchange was born which soon gave rise to the New York Stock and Exchange Board which led the now frenetic pace that exists today on Wall Street.In buying a stock, an investor becomes a shareholder - or part owner - in a company. The company then uses the money supplied by their investors to further their business and increase profits. These profits are reflected in the growing price of the stock - the money needed to purchase a share of the company. Investors who now own stock in the company have seen their investment grow and should they now decide to sell this particular stock they will make more money than they originally paid for it.This is the basic premise behind the stock market. For many generations, the stock exchange was a brick and mortar world in which investors operated through their stock brokers - professionals who would "broker" a deal between the company that was selling stock and their investor who wanted to buy it. In today's world, however, finance is conducted very differently; through a vast network of worldwide computers that act as a fac

. That means the idea of market makers jumping up or down to grab your stop bogus. It is illegal and would get picked up by the regulatory process. The exceptions are as follows; a gap in over night trading can give the market maker a right to gap prices. A Fast Market (wild irregular trading) condition gives some leeway for market makers to catch up. Market makers can in certain cases also move prices with out corresponding price action. If volatility changes in the market and there are no active orders on the ‘book’ they can adjust option prices. In that case they can adjust prices to actual changing conditions. Otherwise they can not just move prices around to look for your stop. They can push a price up or down by manipulating the bid and ask but generally there has to be stock movement and or volatility movement before prices can be adjusted.

You get filled (probably there is some volume and you are part of it)
You get partial fill and the price moves (they are reading volume and momentum and decide to move the price; orders can be partially filled and market orders can be spilt up and filled at the next price)
You get no fills and the price goes up (one hundred shares had already been traded before your order showed up and your order prompted them to raise the price)
No trades go through but the price goes up and you do not get filled (you offered in the spread and they have no obligation to bargain- they can move it and hope you come after it).

Games:

Fishing:

Save on Taxes Through Home Loan Lending
Do you find yourself groaning every time you file your tax returns? Do you cluck with anxiety and regret each time you calculate how much of your paycheck actually goes to the tax guys? If your answer is yes to both questions, buy a house! Home loan lending makes owning a house easy. Additionally, it provides you with huge tax advantages.Home Loan Lending Lets You Save on Interest When you file your income statement, the interest you pay to purchase your principal residence is deductible. In fact, you can even purchase additional land through home loan lending and claim the residence interest as a deduction. The only condition is that this land be adjacent to your home. Furthermore, you can declare as a tax deduction the interest on as much as $100,000 of your home-equity debt. The good thing about this is that even though you use the borrowed money to go on vacation or a shopping spree, the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, won't care. as long as your house has the equity and this equity secures your debt.Home Loan Lending Helps You Save on Taxes Taxes give everyone headaches, especially when it's time to pay or compute them. Home loan lending can make the headache throb just a little less painfully, however. When you purchase a house, you can declare all the real property taxe

y it is visible but the above rules apply.

You get filled (probably there is some volume and you are part of it)
You get partial fill and the price moves (they are reading volume and momentum and decide to move the price; orders can be partially filled and market orders can be spilt up and filled at the next price)
You get no fills and the price goes up (one hundred shares had already been traded before your order showed up and your order prompted them to raise the price)
No trades go through but the price goes up and you do not get filled (you offered in the spread and they have no obligation to bargain- they can move it and hope you come after it).

Games:

Fishing:

Lucrative Product Launching - 7 Best Ways to Get Started With Product Launching
With the increase in the level of competition amongst the producers of almost all kinds of goods, it has become very important for all the producers to come up with new products regularly. If the companies do not come up with newer products every now and then they are exposed to the danger of losing their market share. To retain your market share it is important that you keep on launching new products regularly. Product launching is important form this point of view. A new product when launched gives you a chance of making more money as if properly promoted the new products produce a lot of money for the producer.If you want to launch a new product, follow certain steps. These steps will help you in launching a new product successfully. First of all you need to know the market demand. The market guides you towards the kind of products which are well needed. Not all of the products have a demand. Know the demand of the market and produce new products which are according to the demand of the market. Once you know the market demand, than you enter the research end development stage. You need to pay a lot of attention towards your new product at this stage. Launch your product with proper marketing and promotion. If you launch a product with proper marketing, the chances of a successful launch are better. Keep th

e spilt up and filled at the next price)

You get no fills and the price goes up (one hundred shares had already been traded before your order showed up and your order prompted them to raise the price)

No trades go through but the price goes up and you do not get filled (you offered in the spread and they have no obligation to bargain- they can move it and hope you come after it).

Games:

Fishing:

Option trading is where most fishing goes on. Slow volume means orders come through one at a time and so there can be an electronic face off between you and the market maker. They are not trying to cheat or hurt you and generally it is the trader that pushed the button that starts the game. As stated earlier, if you hit the Bid or Ask, your order will almost always go through but, if you offer in the spread and there is light volume, it can be like poking a wasp’s nest with a stick. It’s like offering some one ten dollars for their twenty dollar chair. You started it. So you send in the order and it is not filled and the price goes up. Whoa, you think “Cool. It’s moving my way, I’ll try again but I still want to get a discount”, so you offer in the spread again. Same thing happens so you quickly raise your price to the Ask and buy before it gets away from you. Now the price settles back down and you are frustrated. If you were to check out the volume you would find that you were the only order and you were played. If you had offered at the Ask the first time it would have probably been filled but, your offer allowed them to move the bait which you hungrily chased. At the other end, a market maker smiles, nods their head and is thankful you came to play at their house today.

Taking out stops:

This is classic misrepresentation. First of all, as stated above, price movement is controlled. Secondly, they are invisible especially if you use contingent stops which technically don’t even exist. Thirdly if you are doing card tricks with three year olds, you don’t have to hide the cards really well. Look, market makers learn from experience that people are basically lazy and creatures of habit. If a stock dips to seventy dollars and rises a bit, it may indicate that buy stops kicked in. If volume increases it may indicate stops were present as stops do tend to be set at whole numbers. Well that kind of sets a precedent for the next trip to support. If you set your stop at seventy and get hit only to see it bounce you may feel violated and cheated, but remember three year olds are easily impressed and offended. When a pheasant hunter goes into a field they look for stands of tall grass. They send the hunting dog over to rustle the grass and if birds fly up, were the hunters cheating? No, they are just good hunters. Folks, this is their business and it is a competition but not a war. Businesses may fight each other but not their customers. Now salesmanship will dictate that they try to get the customer to pay the best price but they are not out to get you! If you make it easy for them by your lack of skill it is not their fault and they are not the bad guys.

I train my students to use contingency stops so that they are completely invisible to the market but not because I am afraid of market makers. I want the student to set up If –Then scenarios that keep them neutral in their trading. I also show them where the traps and land mines may be and where stops make the most sense. It is simply learning to play the game and a big part of that is learning the competition. The retailer is not your enemy, they want your business and they do provide a service but you must learn to not overpay or fall for that flashy lure because the pros are not going to dumb down the game for you.

There are effectively floor cops for the exchanges and very strict rules. The Floor Governors committee has over 20 checks and balances to monitor and regulate ALL trades. No one can operate in a vacuum or under the wire. Time stamps record every action and if you suspect foul play you have the right to request a time stamp and proof that your order was handled to the letter of the law. If there is a mistake it is corrected in your favor. If foul play was uncovered it could cost the market maker their license. By the way in 1999 a seat on the NYSE sold for 2.6 million dollars. Currently a NYSE seat goes for 1.1 million dollars and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) seats go for $590,000. Try to imagine a market maker risking that investment over a fifteen cent spread. FOLKS, listen to me… it does not happen. Manipulation happens and games are played but not like the myths and stories suggest.

So… please let go of the blame, the rhetoric and epitaphs that so conveniently hide our own deficiencies as traders. Step up and own your skill level and do something about it. I invite you to come and spend two days with me in the Trader’s Forge. I will put you through ten months of actual trading drills and you can learn to set stops and read price charts and flow with the trades by actually trading. I will make you work like a coach makes the players work until you begin to own the new skills and gain confi

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So, you are about to build your business brand and corporate identity. You know your industry like the back of your hand, and all you want to do now is get others to feel the way you do about your company. You're not alone. So, you'll need to compete well. How will you do it?

Some people have the nose for sticking into other people's business. Though some may find this annoying, it is one of the things that go with the job if the individual decides to become a private investigator.

If you are planning a car wash fundraiser then you need to consider your towel supplies and properly allocate them to each worker and make sure that they are dried in proper intervals to make sure you can complete every car, which comes thru and dry it completely to the customers satisfaction.

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