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Posts Tagged ‘Diversifying’

Assessing risk, diversifying portfolio keys to investing

Assessing risk, diversifying portfolio keys to investing
Q: Dear Rick: I just had a $100,000 Certificate of Deposit come due. I am a conservative investor, so I was just going to buy another CD, but the rate is very low so I decided not to do anything. What should I do with the money? I am in my early 50s with a decent job. I plan to retire in about 15 years. I am conservative and don’t like volatile investments. The money from the CD is the money I …

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A Lesson in Diversifying

Each day, Inc.’s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here’s what we found today:

Vera Wang’s business strategy.The name “Vera Wang” may call to mind an image of high-profile celebrities on the red carpet or, more recently, Chelsea Clinton on her wedding day, but today’s Wall Street Journal explains how the fashion maven has diversified her line to appeal to all markets. Not only is she working on affordable wedding dress designs for national David’s Bridal stores, but her diffusion line for Kohl’s has become one of the biggest parts of her business since it launched three years ago. She tells the Journal, “Just because you’re from a city 10 miles outside of St. Paul, it doesn’t mean you don’t read magazines or the incredible Internet and what’s going on in the world…I never, ever take a client, or women for granted.”

The death of the dead zone? If you’ve ever wandered around a train station or airport, laptop in hand, searching for that elusive WiFi signal, you’re in for some good news. The New York Times reports that, by September 23rd, the F.C.C. will most likely approve plans to allow for extensive WiFi networks–or “WiFi on steroids.” This would eliminate the need for wireless hot spots, as the new capabilities utilize bands of frequency once used by television networks before they all went digital early last year. The “supercharged” WiFi will reach rural users more easily and even assist in remote health care. In an interview with the Times, Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the F.C.C., pointed out that this is a great moment for entrepreneurs and innovators to capitalize on the new technology. There is every chance of this leading to the development of one or more billion-dollar industries, he said.

Keep it simple, stupid. We’ve asked the question before: Why is business writing so awful? Today, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington gives usthe answer. He says the problem is in the lack of simplicity out there — people just don’t know how to succinctly describe what their businesses do. For a while, Arrington writes, he thought he was the one missing the point, but having spent years covering all things tech, he’s found that even the most complicated businesses can be easily described with a few analogies. The founders who can’t boil it all down, he says, just “aren’t doing their job.” According to Arrington, “Its a problem that pervades Silicon Valley. Sometimes people think that a simple description of a product means there isnt much there. But really its the opposite.”

YouTube takes on live TV. YouTube has officially launched the trial version of YouTube Live, which hopes to bring live streaming on the Web mainstream. This type of technology is already available on a small scale, through sites like Qik and Ustream, but now that go-to source of online video content is entering the stage, Fortune’s Seth Weintraub wonders if television will soon become a thing of the past. “Sports and News are, in my mind, the last reason to keep a traditional TV in the house,” he writes. “With YouTube sucking up that content too, why keep the $100 cable TV plan?”

The work may not be worth it. In a blog post published this morning, entrepreneur and marketing guru Seth Godin explains his three stages of preparation (“For a speech, a product, an interview, a sporting event”): beginner, novice, and expert. And the conclusion he comes to about which level to avoid is an interesting one. “If all you’re going to do is go through the novice stage before you ship, don’t bother,” he writes. “If you’re not prepared to put in the grinding work of the expert stage, just do the beginner stuff and stop screwing around. Make it good enough and ship it and move on.” The included chart explains why.

For-profit schools bend but don’t break. Despite the dramatic success of for-profit learning institutions like University of Phoenix and Kaplan, many of them are now coming under fire for their questionable business practices. The Government Accountability Office has reportedly found evidence of deceptive recruitment tactics, ranging from misleading students about tuition costs and post-graduation salaries to encouraging them to file fraudulent loan applications. Now, The Economist is explaining what these institutions are doing to combat the accusations and keep student tuition coming in. While some may remain wary of for-profit colleges, don’t expect them to go anywhere any time soon. They still stand by the fact that they are significantly cheaper for the taxpayer than public and non-profit schools.

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Retail Investors Trends in UK – Diversifying Investments

Retail investors embracing diversity?

Are the retail investors embracing more diversity than ever before?

The analysis of retail investor trends done by IMA, UK for the year 2009 reveals some interesting facts.

Investors in UK are diversifying their portfolio more than ever before to include asset classes like bonds, properties and commodities rather than just equities alone(Fig-1).

Even within the equities asset, investors are diversifying to include equities from different geographical locations (Fig-2). It’s seen that the proportion of equity investments for Asia has been increasing while that for UK and Europe has been reducing. Investors are now more willing to invest outside of UK and Europe. In a period of ten years the investments for Asia has increased by whopping three folds.

In line with the trend, the fund management companies are coming up with new breed of multi-asset, multi-location portfolio investments. For instance HSBC, which brands itself as world’s local bank valuing diversity, has come up with a series of World selection portfolio with investments spread across 15 asset classes in 11 different countries. The company is also offering choices in the investment styles. Based on the risk appetite, the investors can choose to invest from any one of Cautious, Balanced or Dynamic portfolios.

The fund management style for these investments is also different and is diversified as well. Instead of traditional single fund manager managing the portfolio, the multi-asset portfolio is managed by a team of investment professionals who are located in different countries. The World selection portfolio fund of HSBC is managed by a multi-manager team with 40 investment professionals based in 11 different countries.

Why are the investors investing in multi-asset portfolios? And  Would the investor’s trend towards diversification continue?

To know more please refer to the link

http://probebusiness.blogspot.com/2010/01/retail-investors-embracing-diversity.html