Bearish options strategies are employed when the options trader expects the underlying stock price to move downwards. It is necessary to assess how low the stock price can go and the timeframe in which the decline will happen in order to select the optimum trading strategy.
The most bearish of options trading strategies is the simple put buying strategy utilised by most novice options traders.
In most cases, stock prices seldom make steep downward moves. Moderately bearish options traders usually set a target price for the expected decline and utilise bear spreads to reduce risk. While maximum profit is capped for these strategies, they usually cost less to employ. The bear call spread and the bear put spread are common examples of moderately bearish strategies.
Mildly bearish trading strategies are options strategies that make money as long as the underlying stock price does not go up on options expiration date. These strategies usually provide a small upside protection as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Options_Trading
ETF wraps are gaining market share for a host of reasons, including the fact that they are generally much less expensive than comparable mutual fund portfolios. An article published by Dow Jones Newswires earlier this year, "ETFs Are Moving Into The Spotlight" by Tara Siegel Bernard, cited the expense ratio for the average domestic stock ETF at 36 basis points, compared with 88 basis points for the average domestic stock index fund. Yes, ETF wraps charge an additional layer of fees to cover trading, administration, and so forth, but so do mutual fund wrap programs. When the wrap fee is factored out, the cost difference comes down to the expense ratios of the underlying investments, and the ETFs really shine.
ETF wraps also have greater trading flexibility than their mutual fund cousins. Unlike mutual funds, which trade once per day, ETFs offer the flexibility of intraday trading. If the markets are rising or falling, investors can make real-time decisions regarding the disposition of their portfolios. While this may not be a significant advantage to longer-term ETF wrap investors, it can be a huge bonus for more active investors who constantly trade in and out of their ETF holdings.
On the tax efficiency front, ETFs are also superior to mutual funds. New investors do not inherit embedded capital gains, and large redemptions are handled with in-kind distributions of the underlying securities, so the bulk of an investor's capital gains tax liability is deferred until the investor sells his or her holdings. (See An Inside Look At ETF Construction for more information about ETFs and tax efficiency.)
A less tangible - but psychologically attractive - benefit of investing in ETFs (and, by association, ETF wraps) is the fact that ETFs remain untainted by the scandals that have affected the financial services industry in general and the mutual fund companies in particular. Adding to this psychological comfort level is the inherent transparency of ETF portfolios - investors always know exactly what is in the portfolio. This is not the case with mutual funds, which only report holdings on a periodic basis.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/mutualfund/05/ETFwrap.asp
In business, the term Operational Risk Management (ORM) is the oversight of many forms of day-to-day operational risk including the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems, or from external events. Operational risk does not include market risk or credit risk.
Benefits of ORM
Reduction of operational loss.
Lower compliance/auditing costs.
Early detection of unlawful activities.
Reduced exposure to future risks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_risk_management
For more than a decade, Peter Zandstra has been working at the University of Toronto to rev up the production of stem cells and their descendants. The raw materials are adult blood stem cells and embryonic stem cells. The end products are blood and heart cells – lots of them. Enough mouse heart cells that they form beating tissue.
To do this, he has been applying engineering principles to stem cell research – work that has just earned him recognition by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The society will induct him as a Fellow during its Annual Conference, being held in Boston from February 14 to 18.
Starting with computer models of stem cell growth and differentiation (the process by which a stem cell matures into its final form), Zandstra has moved on to develop more sophisticated culture methods that fine-tune the microenvironments to guide the generation of the different cells types that make up the mature cells in our tissues: heart cells for the heart or blood cells for blood.
"If you describe something mathematically, you have a much better understanding of it than if you just observe it," he says. "And it's also a powerful way to test many different hypotheses in silico before going into the lab and doing the much more difficult experiments in vitro."
Dr. Zandstra, the Canada Research Chair in Stem Cell Bioengineering, also held a prestigious NSERC Steacie Fellowship. The Steacie prize - which goes to six select Canadian professors annually – allowed Zandstra to extend his work from mouse to man.
“There's only so much we can do with mouse cells,” notes Dr. Zandstra. “Now if we can also figure out how to get human embryonic stem cells to differentiate on command to generate functional adult-like cells, you can begin to think about the kinds of medical conditions you could treat with them.” -Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
http://news.nabou.com/cgi-bin/newsframe/437892yks4328903Dnabou2BInews421789994asgw3798etys6787/18A8047A97056E4D9B2CDA039BFF5E58backheadline3DHow2Bdo2BI2Bcut2Ba2Boout3Fnews26o3D0/FrameIt.cgi?Url=http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r1301593458
Symmetrical triangles are generally considered neutral, ascending triangles are bullish, and descending triangles are bearish. From a time perspective, triangles are usually considered to be intermediate patterns. Usually, it takes longer than a month to form a triangle. Seldom will a triangle last longer than three months. If a triangle pattern does take longer than three months to complete the formation will take on major trend significance.
Converging trendlines of support and resistance gives the symmetrical triangle pattern its distinctive shape. This occurs because the trading action gets tighter and tighter until the market breaks out with great force. Buyers and sellers find themselves in a period where they are not sure where the market is headed. Their uncertainty is marked by their actions of buying and selling sooner, making the pattern look like an increasingly tight coil moving across the chart.
A breakdown below the lower symmetrical support will trigger a test of the previous sub-trough at 12069.5. Support failure here increases downward pressure to break the next support at 11644.8 and retest the green parallel support line. The hammer candlestick formation needs a strong confirmation from the next candlestick bar to gain momentum to clear the previous sub-peak and trigger a challenge to breakout above the upper symmetrical resistance line. This will propel price towards the red parallel resistance line. Breakout here will result in a more positive outlook for the Dow Jones Industrial Index.
Bullish options strategies are employed when the options trader expects the underlying stock price to move upwards. It is necessary to assess how high the stock price can go and the timeframe in which the rally will occur in order to select the optimum trading strategy.
The most bullish of options trading strategies is the simple call buying strategy used by most novice options traders.
In most cases, stocks seldom go up by leaps and bounds. Moderately bullish options traders usually set a target price for the bull run and utilize bull spreads to reduce risk. While maximum profit is capped for these strategies, they usually cost less to employ. The bull call spread and the bull put spread are common examples of moderately bullish strategies.
Mildly bullish trading strategies are options strategies that make money as long as the underlying stock price do not go down on options expiration date. These strategies usually provide a small downside protection as well. Writing out-of-the-money covered calls is a good example of such a strategy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Options_Trading
A new type of memory could soon be available to device makers.
Governance, Risk, and Compliance or "GRC" is an increasingly recognized term that reflects a new way organizations focus on and manage an integrated approach to these three areas.
According to Michael Rasmussen, an industry analyst at Forrester Research, the challenge in defining GRC is that individually each term has "many different meanings within organizations. There is corporate governance, IT governance, financial risk, strategic risk, operational risk, IT risk, corporate compliance, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance, employment/labor compliance, privacy compliance . . . you get the picture."
According to Scott L. Mitchell, Chairman & CEO of the Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG), there "are substantially more processes than governance, risk and compliance playing critical roles in GRC. But 13-letter acronyms rarely catch on
Typically GRC solutions are Enterprise Software that enables businesses to comply with legal requirements. Examples for such requirements are regulation like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Basel II and local requirements for occupational health and safety. Failure to meet these standards can lead to severe legal penalties or civil liability.
Initial interest in GRC was driven by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, but GRC software requirements have changed and now are seen as a means to achieve Enterprise Risk Management. Specifically to evolve from managing risk as a transaction or compliance activity to adding business value by improving operational decision making and strategic planning.
GRC software becomes the governance platform for defining, maintaining, and monitoring risk.
OCEG, a non-profit organization that provides a performance framework for integrating governance, compliance, risk management and culture, is one of the leading voices for GRC.[citation needed] OCEG has developed a Measurement and Metrics Guide (MMG) for assisting in measuring and reporting on the performance of compliance and ethics programs. This measurement platform advocates that program objectives be aligned with and contribute to the enterprise objectives in a tangible way. In order to achieve desired program outcomes, an organization should design processes and practices that effectively measure program dimensions on three key dimensions: effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness.
i-flex solutions, is the first company to issue a GRC Framework for the financial services industry, according to BobsGuide, an industry news site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance%2C_Risk_Management%2C_and_Compliance
Smashed gap resistance turned gap support zone now. Cleared both the red downtrend resistance line and 50 days EMA resistance line. Immediate resistance zone is 20 to 22 cents follow by 25 cents resistance. Immediate support is 16.5 to 16 cents gap support zone. Support failure here will trigger test of next support at 14 cents. Interesting Monday trading expected.
An ETF wrap is similar to a mutual fund wrap, except the underlying investments are ETFs. (If you are unfamiliar with ETFs or Mutual Fund Wraps, see Introduction to Exchange-Traded Funds and Introduction To Mutual Fund Wraps.) Like mutual fund wraps, ETF wraps are available in two varieties: discretionary and non-discretionary.
Discretionary Account
From an asset allocation perspective, discretionary accounts are similar to lifestyle funds. They offer a variety of pre-selected equity, balanced and fixed-income asset allocation models designed to suit the needs of a wide range of investors. These models typically reflect a range of potential portfolios from 100% equity to 100% fixed income, with balanced models generally varying from 80% equity/20% fixed income to 20% equity/80% fixed income.
Professional money managers oversee the portfolios, selecting investments, monitoring performance and rebalancing to maintain the desired allocation. (To learn more about asset allocation, see Achieving Optimal Asset Allocation.)
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/mutualfund/05/ETFwrap.asp
In the 19th century, state corporation law enhanced the rights of corporate boards to govern without unanimous consent of shareholders in exchange for statutory benefits like appraisal rights, to make corporate governance more efficient. Since that time, and because most large publicly traded corporations in the US are incorporated under corporate administration friendly Delaware law, and because the US's wealth has been increasingly securitized into various corporate entities and institutions, the rights of individual owners and shareholders have become increasingly derivative and dissipated. The concerns of shareholders over administration pay and stock losses periodically has led to more frequent calls for corporate governance reforms.
In the 20th century in the immediate aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 legal scholars such as Adolf Augustus Berle, Edwin Dodd, and Gardiner C. Means pondered on the changing role of the modern corporation in society. Berle and Means' monograph "The Modern Corporation and Private Property" (1932, Macmillan) continues to have a profound influence on the conception of corporate governance in scholarly debates today.
From the Chicago school of economics, Ronald Coase's "Nature of the Firm" (1937) introduced the notion of transaction costs into the understanding of why firms are founded and how they continue to behave. Fifty years later, Eugene Fama and Michael Jensen's "The Separation of Ownership and Control" (1983, Journal of Law and Economics) firmly established agency theory as a way of understanding corporate governance: the firm is seen as a series of contracts. Agency theory's dominance was highlighted in a 1989 article by Kathleen Eisenhardt (Academy of Management Review).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_governance
The COSO "Enterprise Risk Management-Integrated Framework" published in 2004[1] defines ERM as: "A process, effected by an entity's board of directors, management, and other personnel, applied in strategy setting and across the enterprise, designed to identify potential events that may affect the entity, and manage risk to be within its risk appetite, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the achievement of entity objectives."
The COSO ERM Framework has eight Components and four objectives categories. It is an expansion of the COSO Internal Control-Integrated Framework published in 1992 and amended in 1994. The eight components - additional components highlighted - are:
Internal Environment
Objective Setting
Event Identification
Risk Assessment
Risk Response
Control Activities
Information and Communication
Monitoring
The four objectives categories - additional components highlighted - are:
Strategy - high-level goals, aligned with and supporting the organization's mission
Operations - effective and efficient use of resources
Financial Reporting - reliability of operational and financial reporting
Compliance - compliance with applicable laws and regulations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_risk_management
Big Boys are buying a lot and not selling.
Massive buying across all groups from Big Boys to retail buyers.
Something is brewing.
As exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have become increasingly popular and investors have discovered their benefits, financial services firms have developed more ways to package those benefits. Enter the ETF wrap, a packaging innovation that is beginning to gain attention. It offers all of the benefits typically associated with an index fund - and more. Here we'll look at the types of ETF wraps available, discuss their advantages and disadvantages, and see what the future holds for this relatively new financial product.
An ETF wrap is similar to a mutual fund wrap, except the underlying investments are ETFs. (If you are unfamiliar with ETFs or Mutual Fund Wraps, see Introduction to Exchange-Traded Funds and Introduction To Mutual Fund Wraps.) Like mutual fund wraps, ETF wraps are available in two varieties: discretionary and non-discretionary.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/mutualfund/05/ETFwrap.asp
Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws and institutions affecting the way a corporation is directed, administered or controlled. Corporate governance also includes the relationships among the many players involved (the stakeholders) and the goals for which the corporation is governed. The principal players are the shareholders, management and the board of directors. Other stakeholders include employees, suppliers, customers, banks and other lenders, regulators, the environment and the community at large.
Corporate governance is a multi-faceted subject.An important theme of corporate governance is to ensure the accountability of certain individuals in an organization through mechanisms that try to reduce or eliminate the principal-agent problem. A related but separate thread of discussions focus on the impact of a corporate governance system in economic efficiency, with a strong emphasis on shareholders welfare. There are yet other aspects to the corporate governance subject, such as the stakeholder view and the corporate governance models around the world.
There has been renewed interest in the corporate governance practices of modern corporations since 2001, particularly due to the high-profile collapses of a number of large U.S. firms such as Enron Corporation and Worldcom. In 2002, the US federal government passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, intending to restore public confidence in corporate governance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_governance
Two important ERM frameworks are COSO and RIMS. Each describes an approach for identifying, analyzing, responding to, and monitoring risks or opportunities, within the internal and external environment facing the enterprise. Management selects a risk response strategy for specific risks identified and analyzed, which may include:
Avoidance: exiting the activities giving rise to risk
Reduction: taking action to reduce the likelihood or impact related to the risk
Share or insure: transferring or sharing a portion of the risk, to reduce it
Accept: no action is taken, due to a cost/benefit decision
Monitoring is typically performed by management as part of its internal control activities, such as review of analytical reports or management committee meetings with relevant experts, to understand how the risk response strategy is working and whether the objectives are being achieved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_risk_management
