The Stock Market Drop – How to Make Money in a Tough Economy
Posted by admin in Money Stocks on January 15, 2012
Imagine your friends laughing when you say you made a lot of money as the stock market dropped. Then imagine their faces when you show them your incredible gains. They won’t laugh any more. They’ll beg for help.
Everybody loves it when the stock market goes up. Many people panic when it falls. But they don’t need to. An American market exists that allows traders to make money regardless of whether stocks are going up or down.
Professional investors know how to hedge their bet. They take precautions because they know the economy will move through various cycles. What goes up will eventually come down.
The common man and woman are different. They assume investing is difficult so they don’t take time to learn simple methods that might benefit their lifelong effort to get ahead. They throw their money into mutual funds or a 401-K account and hope for the best. This may work when things are going well in the financial markets. In a crisis, this method will be the cause of many a sleepless night.
Every family could use some extra money each month. And it’s not a pipe dream, if you are capable of taking simple direction and absorbing new information.
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Operating a Business: Understanding Financial Statements
Posted by admin in Financial Statement on January 15, 2012
When operating a business, whether online or offline, understanding financial statements is an essential skill if you are to be able to identify its strengths and weaknesses. A financial statement can offer a great deal of information about a business if you have been trained to read it properly.
Understanding financial statements is distinctly different from analyzing them, and you must have that understanding before you can operate a business properly and maintain a feel for its progress. There are several types of financial statement involved in operating a business, the principal of which are Aging Reports, Profit and Loss statements, the General Ledger and the Balance Sheet.
Each of these is important in keeping track of the financial state of a business:
The Balance Sheet
The balance sheet provides a snapshot of the assets, liabilities and equity of a business at a stated period of time, usually a stated date at the end of each financial year.
Assets: Current and Fixed
Current Assets:those that can be realized as cash or used to pay current liabilities relatively quickly, usually within one year. Examples are cash assets, bank accounts, accounts receivable, inventory and any prepaid expenses for services that will be provided within a year.
Fixed Assets:assets that cannot easily be converted to cash, such as real estate, plant and equipment, biological assets (animals and plants), certain investments and others that are amortized over an extended period.
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Effective Problem Solving Requires Team Building
Posted by admin in Team Building on January 15, 2012
Truly complicated problems necessitate team solutions. If your team does not function well, its’ problem solving capability will be limited. To tackle intricately detailed problems a team must successfully answer these questions. I recommend answering the questions in sequence and posting the team responses on some visual media. I recommend spending approximately 5 minutes on each question. This keeps your meeting moving quickly and helps keep all team members involved.
What specifically is the problem?
Yogi Berra said, “You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” Before you can solve a problem you must define it. A good definition clearly states the current situation and the desired situation. It should be a concrete, comprehensive statement that is realistic and without any implied causes or solutions. For example: Less than 5% of the targeted 20% of first time customers are returning for additional purchases. Failure to be specific, as in the example, will lead you down the path Yogi suggested earlier in this paragraph.
What are the causes of the problem?
The team must search for the underlying causes, not the superficial. When you go to the doctor with an unusual abdominal pain, you want to know why. It is not enough for the doctor to prescribe something to ease the pain. Similarly in business don’t look at the symptoms. This is an excellent opportunity to use creative problem solving or brainstorming, which I address in a separate article, Twelve Steps to Effectively Manage a Creative Meeting. Keep in mind while looking for “the” cause that there may be multiple causes.
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