Balance Your Portfolio With This Option
Balancing your portfolio with stocks, bonds and mutual funds, provides a unilateral balance; they all face into one positive direction. That is alright for the long term.
What goes down must go up. Or was it the other way around? The question is, “Is your investment portfolio counting on this?”
So, when constructing and maintaining your investment portfolio you should never forget one (kind of) option.
Most financial advises are too positive. The amount of “Buy” and “Hold” advices outnumber the “Sell” advices. This is logical in a sense; in the long term, stocks move up.
The risks occur however in the short term. Today I read an article about The Greenspan period (managing the Federal Reserve) which is to end shortly and together with the article we got a little graph presented, showing the ups-and-downs of the Dow. Even on a yearly graph you could distinguish quite a few of those dips.
Not only investment advisors are on average more positive than negative about the market and their forecasts. Managers too are when dealing with business.
Take for instance a new project; where team members start with enthusiasm. Yet, after a while, your project is hit by many incidents. As a project manager you will know this. You know you will face many uncertainties. You can plan the project, but you should always add a risk-factor when setting up the timeline.
So what to do?
You should always address this possibility of risk. You can do this by buying put-option. You could do this for protecting up to a tenth of a percent of your portfolio or even less. The issue is not as such the fact of protecting your portfolio, but maybe more important, protecting yourself from being over confident.
Balancing your portfolio with some puts means a balance that is prepared for both the long and the short term.
By: Hans Bool
Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days.
How to Save Money and take the Vacation You Always Wanted.
Many people don’t realize how much money they spend on convenience and boy does it add up. I am going to share some of my frugal and practical tips of how to save money for the vacation you always wanted. Before we get started make sure you setup a vacation savings account, if you don’t have a savings account setup look into an ING Direct savings account.
Now that you have an account to put all of your saved money in, you will have to determine what is important to you. Is that cup of Star Bucks coffee worth having to drive to Gulf Shores for your vacation? Doesn’t a trip to Hawaii sound better? Now cutting out your Star Bucks won’t pay for your vacation to Hawaii, but it will pay for the plane ticket. If you are getting a cup of star bucks 5 days a week at $4 dollars a day that equals $20 a week. Which turns into a savings of $1040 dollars a year. Is that cup of coffee that good? Remember you don’t have to cut back completely you could only get Star Bucks two days a week and over a year you would save $624.
If you go out every weekend to see a movie, you can save a bundle by cutting back. Instead of going to the movie, rent the movie at the video store. If you rent a movie instead of spending $8.00 on a ticket and spending $10.00 on popcorn and drink, you spend only $6.00 on a movie at video store. If you have to see a movie in the theatre, choose to go once a month. Whether you cut back or rent you will save $12 dollars a week or $624 dollars a year.
Shop around for home and car insurance. Many people assume since they have been with X insurance company for so long that they have the best rate. WRONG! Shop around every 6 months or year when your policy runs out. This can save you a bundle. I have two vehicles, a 2001 Ford F150 and 2002 Mazda Protégé. We were paying around $2000 a year for full coverage insurance with $500 dollar deductible. When my policy ran out I did some calling around for the exact same coverage through a different insurance company my yearly premium went to $1400 that’s a savings or $600 a year.
Here are a few additional tips to help save money. Disconnect or reduce your cable or satellite TV channels and you will save $10 to $80 dollars a month. Bring your lunch to work 4 out of the 5 workdays will save you $20 a week. Cut back on dry cleaning can save you $10 dollars a week. Send your kids on the bus instead of driving them to school you can save $5 to $10 dollars a week.
If you do the just a few of things I mentioned above you will have over $2000 dollars in the bank for that vacation you have always wanted.
By: David Adams
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