Tag Archives: investments

Benefits of a Stocks and Shares ISA

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An ISA is a tax efficient way of saving. It is a scheme that was introduced by the government in 1999. There are two types of ISA that can be invested in; a Cash ISA and a Stocks and Shares ISA. These are designed for individual investors.

An ISA investment can be preferable to other forms of saving due to the tax benefits. Unlike other investments there is no capital gains tax so all gains go directly to the individual investor. Higher tax payers can also make savings in dividend incomes. Instead of paying 32.5% (higher tax rate) or 42.5% (additional tax rate) they only have to pay 10% on dividends. This doesn’t benefit those paying the basic rate of tax, though, as they have to pay the same 10% they do on dividends from non-ISA investments.

The above are benefits of both Cash ISA’s and Stocks and Shares ISA’s. There are many benefits that Stocks and Shares ISA’s have over Cash ISA’s though.

A Cash ISA depends on the interest rate and doesn’t have the potential gains of a Stocks and Shares ISA. Money paid into a Stocks and Shares ISA is invested on the stock market, meaning the potential for significantly higher gain. Gains can in some cases be three or four times more than interest on a Cash ISA.

You can invest in a number of different Stock and Shares ISA’s. You can open as many accounts as you like with a total investment of £10,680 a year across these. With a Stocks and Shares ISA you can invest more than with a Cash ISA. The maximum for Cash ISA’s is £5,340, half the limit of Stocks and Shares ISA’s. Investments can be split across the two types of ISA should investors choose.

Where a Stocks and Shares ISA is really beneficial is for long term investments. They will almost always out-perform a Cash ISA over a long period. It is not always easy to predict what will happen in the short term but over a longer period Stocks and Shares ISA’s will usual give investors more of a return.

The downside of a Stocks and Shares ISA is that there is some risk. Because it is based on stocks and shares it can go down as well as up. For this reason it is wise to spread investments, therefore spreading the risk. If you put everything towards one investment you could lose everything should it go wrong. If it is spread across different investment products then one of them falling in value is not as disastrous. However, although putting less into each investment limits the potential looses, it also limits the potential gains. It is important to get the balance right to limit the damage should one investment reduce in value while putting enough in each to benefit from any gains.

Stocks and Shares ISA’s don’t have the security and flexibility of Cash ISA’s but they do have potentially larger gains. There are some disadvantages to Stocks and Shares ISA’s but the benefits outweigh them and in most cases they will grow in value by more than Cash ISA’s.

Andrew Marshall (c)

Make money by investing in silver!

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In today’s uncertain economic times, protecting your hard-earned income is more important than ever. Traditional savings accounts net no return after you factor in inflation, and the stock market is volatile, swinging up and down based on the whims of market participants. How can you protect your family by realizing a return on the money you’ve set aside for their wellbeing? Making the jump to silver is a sure-fire way to protect the ones you love.

The first question most people have about investing in silver is why silver and not gold? Right now, gold is an excellent investment as well as silver. Gold has enjoyed a 10 year run of ever increasing prices, and based on economic indicators there is every indication that gold will continue its meteoric rise in value. The reason silver is an even greater investment right now is that it is much less expensive than gold, allowing the average investor to enter the market with even a meager investment. Silver has also enjoyed a fantastic rise in value over the past few years, and is also poised to gain more in value due to manufacturing demand and a decreasing supply. Silver has many industrial applications, unlike gold, and demand is continually on the upswing for more physical silver in manufacturing. Couple the industrial demand with silver’s traditional place alongside gold as true “money”, that is, something that retains value independent of the value of any nation’s currency, and silver presents itself as a safe investment that should realize a great deal of return for the foreseeable future.

Whether you’re seeking money making ideas to enhance your income, or a long-term hedge against inflation and central bank economic policies, consider adding silver to your portfolio. While silver’s incredible gain is not guaranteed to last forever, it is a good bet for the near term to protect your wealth.

Family Financial Planning-Planning a Great Future for Your Family

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Planning your family’s financial future is one of the most important things one can do to lead a balanced life.  If something happens to a member of the family and they need money quick if there is no money then it can cause some serious problems very quickly.  So the question becomes ‘Where do we start?’


Like all collaboration and cooperation on a team the first and foremost part of a successful team is communication.  Each person must know their role and what their part in the team is.  If one individual does not know their role then that can actually cause a lot of turmoil in the team.  A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and the same is true with teamwork especially around family financial planning.


This does not only involve good stock investments and having a financial advisor work with your family.  This also includes speaking with all members of the team or family that are involved.  I cannot stress the importance of getting the children involved in this process.  One of our major issues with the economy today is not the greedy rich or the politicians.  It is the lack of basic financial education in our country.  That is leading us to these huge problems that we are encountering today.  Knowing good stock investments can help but the main idea here is that you work as a team and have constructive financial planning and great communication among your team.


A great example of this exists within the Mormon and Jewish communities.  Many Mormon and Jewish communities are known to have wealth and work together to make sure their families are taken care of and always having and keeping money.  This is because they work together and have great family financial planning and communication.

Three Relatively Safe Fixed Income Investments

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Fixed income investing is one of the best ways to make a steady income from your money while protecting your principal. Fixed income investments usually are some type of agreement that will hold your money for a set time period during which you will receive regular payments until it matures. There are three very common types of fixed income investments that you may invest in and they are all relatively safe.

A certificate of deposit or (CD) is one of the safest forms of a fixed income investment that you can undertake. These investments are safe as they are insured by the FDIC and are virtually risk-free. Due to their low risk or risk-free status returns on these investments are not as high as with other investments but and you can rest easy knowing that the money you have invested is protected. When you purchase a CD at a certain interest rate it will stay that way until the maturity of the investment. Rather than receive payments of interest on a regular basis you will have to wait into the CD is fully matured at which time you can withdraw the principal along with any interest you have accrued.

Another type of fixed income investment is bonds. With bond investments you are basically loaning the person or company that you are securing the bond from money that they will use to invest in their own financial endeavors. The safest bonds to invest in is U.S. Treasury Bonds because they are backed by the government however depending on where the money is invested there are some additional risks involved. You will receive payments at a regular basis as well as as an interest rate that is determined at the time you purchase the bond. When the bond matures you receive your full principal back to do with as you please.

Next we have a bond fund which is a type of fund that invests in the bond market itself. These funds are traded as mutual funds or exchange traded funds. The goal of this investment is to get as much money out of the low risk- low reward bond market by diversifying into many different types of bonds. Bonds funds will allow you to diversify without taking on any additional costs. The best fixed income investments are a great way to maintain your nest egg and still have a steady level of cash flow coming in. CDs are probably the safest investment to make however bonds are pretty much just as safe. There are other forms of fixed income investments that you may want to look into and the best way to do this is by consulting with a financial advisor.

Stock Options Explained For Beginning Investors

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If you are interested in getting stock options basics explained to you, look no further than the Internet to provide a wealth of information on options, in as much detail as you could possibly require. These investments are more sophisticated than simply buying and selling shares of stock and you may feel a little intimidated initially at the prospect of trying to get a handle on them, especially as you have no doubt heard how risky they are.

I might be able to give a brief overview of the two basic ways that one may trade options. If you understand the difference specifically between buying puts and call options on the one hand and writing or selling stock options on the other, you’ll have a good idea of which side of the trade might suit your portfolio and your temperament better.

Buying stock options involves taking a relatively small amount of money in order to have a position in a given stock or Index, without having to put up enough cash to actually buy shares. In this way we say you’re taking a leveraged position-similar to a home mortgage-where a small move in the underlying asset might result in a doubling or tripling of your invested money rather quickly. The downside with leverage per se is that you will often be assuming increased risk to the funds required to take the position. That means with buying puts and calls, you might very well be risking the loss of all the money that you put into your position.

Writing or selling options means that you accept the premium paid by the option buyer for the puts or calls that you sell him, in return for a promise that you will deliver 100 shares of stock per option contract at a given price (known as the “strike price”) by a given date in the future (known as the “expiration date”). The point here is that while the option buyer takes a relatively risky, leveraged position, the option seller hopes simply to keep the premium, which would represent a small percentage of the stock position that he will (usually) have already.

The option seller is much more likely to keep this premium than the option buyer is to make multiples of the amount of the premium that he has paid. On the other hand, people who having conviction that a stock will rather quickly move up or down have in options a vehicle with which they may take advantage of the move should it occur. Broadly speaking, the point of this article is simply that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of risk that the option buyer assumes and the risk that the call or put option seller assumes. There is also an inverse relationship between the amount that each hopes to make from the trade as a percentage of his original investment.

I think there’s a value in explaining stock options to neophyte investors without getting too bogged down in details. Sometimes if someone understands basic principles, he has a better foundation upon which to build his education. One thing if you absolutely must be aware of when you’re trading stock options is that the market moves very quickly, and often the relationship between price movements of the options and underlying stocks are counterintuitive. Please paper trade options, either on the buy or sell side and possibly with the aid of some good quality stock option software before you invest real money in them.

Should I Refinance My Investment Property?

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If you own an investment property, now is one of the best times in the past 50 years to try to refinance it.  Investment property mortgage refinance gives you a lot of benefits and in most cases you should take advantage of the opportunity.  You get lower monthly payments and might end up paying back much less over the entire course of the loan.  However, there are also some other times when you shouldn’t be refinancing your property.

For example, if you don’t plan on owning your investment property for at least 10 years or your loan on the property expires before 10 years, in most case you shouldn’t be refinancing your investment property loans.  This is because lenders attach the same closing costs and legal fees to refinanced loans as they do to new home loans.  Over the course of a long loan, these costs will be negated by the savings of a lower interest rate.  However, if you sell your home sooner or your loan expires you might not end up actually covering the costs of the refinance!

Likewise, if you have an already low interest rate on your mortgage, a refinance might not be worthwhile.  While a lower interest rate may look and feel a little better, once again closing costs can eat up all of the gains that you would have gotten from the lower rate.  Make sure that you always do the math before you commit to refinancing your home.  Don’t let the fees eat up all of your savings!

There are many times when refinancing your investment property is a good thing.  In fact, more often than not it will be the right decision.  However, make sure that you consult with a financial professional or do the math yourself to make sure that over the course of your loan you will be saving a significant amount of money from the refinancing.

The Fundamentals of Future Forex Trading

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How do you make money with future Forex trading? It is actually not that difficult. Most people think this a very high risk field. While it can be dangerous, if you manage your risks you can make some very good money.

First, here is a quick explanation of what currency futures investing is. It is essentially a transaction between a buyer and seller, whereby the buyer agrees to purchase a certain amount of currency at a given time period down the road.

Here is an example: you want to buy the Australian dollar. In addition, right now it is even with the US dollar. However, you believe it is going to rise against the American dollar in three months.

In this case, you would agree to buy the Australian dollar on May 15 (three months down the road), hopefully for its’ current market value. Therefore, you agree to buy one hundred Australian dollars for the same amount of US dollars (the going exchange rate) at the appointed date.

On May 15, the Australian dollar is selling at seventy-five cents to every US dollar. That means that you just bought one hundred Australian dollars for the price of seventy-five. You just turned a twenty-five dollar profit.

How much risk is there?

It depends on how much money you invest. Obviously, you would not start out by trading one thousand dollars. You might begin with fifty, turn that into seventy-five, and reinvest that. You would then turn that into one hundred, and so on.

However, you must educate yourself before you get started.

Make sure you understand economics thoroughly. This is how you predict the future value of a currency, which is key to making money with future Forex trading. Do not ever buy just because your stockbroker told you to. Make sure you have done the research and are confident in your decision.

Why Stock Brokers Trade Penny Stocks Over Blue Chips

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A lot of trading experts in the market, particularly penny stock brokers, are trending more toward trading penny stocks instead of blue chips, due largely to the general economic situation and insider knowledge of basic fundamentals within the stock market trading industry. Those who are in the know understand that big companies with a lot of financial, political and economic power are in a position to manipulate conditions. Additionally, these big companies are used as money-making tools by a lot of other banks and financial institutions, such as Wall Street. Because of their inherent size, penny stocks cannot be manipulated in the same manner.

Unfortunately, there are drawbacks to everything these days, because while you can avoid this type of manipulation by going with penny stocks, you could possibly be exposed to smaller, yet less sophisticated, scams that manipulate these smaller stocks through groups of investors or even a single, rich individual. These small-time scams are usually only dangerous to new penny stock traders that are without a lot of knowledge or understanding about micro-cap or stock trading investments.

What this means is that if you are basing your penny stock trading knowledge on what you learned reading one of those “for Dummies” type books, you won’t be any safer trading smaller penny stocks than you would be trading blue chips, as the bigger companies usually have enough strength and capital to keep their stock values growing over time. For traders that don’t want to do a lot of analysis, it is usually a safe bet to invest in large companies on NASDAQ or the S&P 500. In most cases, if you are able to follow safe trading practices you can reduce the amount of risk that you exposure yourself to overall, which would make it just as safe for you to trade stocks with bigger, safer companies as it would be with smaller penny stocks. If you can learn to limit your risk by even just a couple of percentage points per trade on any investment through the use of stop losses, exit strategies and diversification, you will be able to take advantage of the micro-cap market.

You can find out more about learning how to limit your risk through various books, websites and technical trading education programs.

Strategies to Get Rewarding Real Property Investments

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Businessmen and entrepreneurs are now focusing on investing their money in real estate properties for it has proven to be the most safest and reliable especially in making your money grow.  However, it is not that easy as you need to carefully study and research about the premier locations you should invest into.

Simple Rules of Property Investment

Before entering real property investments, you should first learn the ropes about the procedures from choosing a prime location, size and structure to obtaining it, renting it out or refurbishing it to reselling it again.  If you choose and plan out your assets correctly, it will surely give you great profits.  You should plan out fast and efficiently as interest taxes are always increasing in this market.  There are rules to follow to assure you that you get double or triple of your investment back with the right investment:

  • Finding and choosing the right location is the key.  If you are able to acquire a prime property or location, it is assured that you will gain great profits from this investment.
  • If you do not have enough money to cash out for investment, get a precise loan but before you do, think first if your earnings and way of life can cope up with paying the mortgages.  Do not get a loan that you are not capable of paying.
  • Research more to learn how to sustain your investment as it is important to uphold it especially since you have to maintain your property too.  Be cautious in monitoring the market trends so you will know when to hold on or to sell out your property.

Entrepreneurs say, that if you keep track of these guidelines you will be assured of gaining profit.  Property investing may be the safest and finest method to be rich but it will take time.

The Right Time for Property Investment

Property investments are equally a short-time and long-time investment.  For a short term, the investor would usually just acquire properties during the time when expenditures are low or obtain properties that have been foreclosed and resell them back in the market to profit quickly.   For a long period of investment, make changes in the property or have it rented out for the meantime because with real estate, its cost will appreciate larger in time.

After evaluating all these and knowing that you’re ready to begin your real estate property investment, it is also significant to find a reliable and expert agent to guide you deal with the consumers and also get a lawyer that will be able to meet your desires.  It is best to be capable and knowledgeable with this business.  Just keep track of all these and it can guarantee that you gain more with this investment.