Trading The Seasonality

By Ahmad Hassam

Our lives are affected by the seasons during the year. Spring makes you happy! Autumn is sad. Winters are good. Summers are hot. Do the seasons affect the markets too? Are there any seasons in the markets too? Do the markets become exuberant too? Are there any gloomy days in the market? Yes, for the last one year the markets are gloomy. The first question that comes to your mind is that are these seasonal cycles real in the markets and how you can time your trading with these cycles? The stock market is full of sayings like, Sell in May and go away, as well as the conventional wisdom about the, summer rally, the Santa Claus rally, the dark days of autumn, the presidential cycle, and so on.

Markets are always changing; money keeps on moving in and out of stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities and so on with the stroke of a mouse and speed of electron thousands of times every day. Markets are about big banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, governments, mutual funds and individual investors creating a very diverse and dynamic environment.

Still such fast action, there is some seasonality in the markets that you should know if you are trading these markets. In 1960s when big Wall Street players would go on summer off, volume dried up and the market tended to have a slight upward bias. Now, with the high speed internet connection and satellites, any money manager can stay in touch with the market on his laptop or mobile phone even on family vacations in a remote island of Pacific!

With globalization and the ability to communicate in real time, money has started to move in a less predictable fashion. This has altered the trading patterns. What used to work yesterday does not work today. In the past markets were a whole lot less complicated. Most of the money moved between US and Europe.

You shouldnt rely on seasonal analysis as your main method of trading stocks, bonds, currencies or commodities. At the same time, you should be aware that there are times when the markets do tend to follow these seasonal patterns.

During the last 50 years the stock markets had an upward bias. It meant if you had bought stocks and kept them for a few years, there would have been an invariable price appreciation. No doubt, minor downturns were always there in the market but the overall trend in the markets had been up. Historically, September tends to be the toughest month of the year. For the past 50 years, the average return on S...P 500 for the month of September has been around 0.6%. Dow Jones Industrial Average has even preformed worse with return of -1%. Now stock markets have a certain tendency to move in certain directions during certain months of the year. This general seasonal trend is a good one to keep in the background of your mind.

September has been traditionally a bad month and November has been a good month for the bulls. The S...P 500 Index has the general tendency to rise in the month of November. December is another typically strong month. December is the month of holidays and the end of the year. Holidays means investors are in a cheerful and exuberant mood and the money managers want to show a good performance at the end of the month. - 23222

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Try This 1500 Pips A Day Forex Signal Service! Know These Candlestick Patterns!

Jobs at Trading Desks

By Zeke Lee

Have you ever seen a trading floor?

No, were not talking Liars Poker here

Weve all seen the so-called pit traders on CNBC yelling and screaming at each other. But whats it like on a typical trading floor at a large bank that you might work at?

Usually, youll see one large open room " no cubicles. On the edges of the trading floor youll see meeting rooms and sometimes the offices of the Managing Directors.

On the floor itself, youll see rows of really long tables that are sectioned off per person. Traders within the same group will naturally sit within close proximity of each other. So you might see the foreign exchange group in one area, the credit group in another, and the equity guys somewhere else.

But youll notice something unique about each traders desk: the computer screens. No, not that they are eco-friendly and conserve energy " but that there are so many monitors on each desk and that some of them are constantly blinking.

Got Monitors?

If youve never worked in trading before, you might think theres no reason you would actually need between 3 and 8 monitors " the other 7 must be for playing World of Warcraft or catching up on 24, right?

Wrong.

Partly, its for showing off: some traders view the number of monitors they have as a status symbol on the trading floor. Hey, even if you cant see my BMW, my 8 monitors mean that I own a really expensive car, right? Or at least that our P...L is higher than that of the other group over there with only 2 monitors.

The actual rationale " status symbols aside " is that timing is extremely important in trading, and you dont want to waste time toggling between windows. Alt + Tab is for bankers.

You need to be able to look up and know that Apple surged 4% in the last 10 minutes.

Then you need to monitor the market news and major headlines coming in through Bloomberg " is Steve Jobs OK? Is some analyst raising his/her forecast for the number of iPhones sold? Was there an news release that just came out regarding Apples contract with AT...T or talks with Verizon? Did consumer spending numbers just come out?

As an active prop trader, youre multi-tasking all the time and constantly thinking about these kinds of questions, assessing risk, and making quick decisions.

Bloomberg

Bloomberg is an expensive news/finance information service that all banks and trading firms have access to.

Beyond just watching the news, you also need to track stocks youre interested in and see their prices updated in real-time " so you use another monitor for that. These screens are constantly blinking as the prices of securities are changing every second.

Bloomberg has a price feature that lets you organize and track stocks by sector (Technology, Financials, Energy, etc.) and lets you see where everything is trading.

You can also get a real-time heat map of the market, so you can see which sub-sectors of the S...P are up, and by how much.

Trading Platform

Next, you use another screen to actually transmit your trades " this might be Merrills MLX platform, Goldmans REDIPlus platform, FlexTrade, Fidessa, or anything else.

If youre trading equity derivatives, you need to enter your orders for stocks, puts, and calls quickly and monitor any pending orders that are waiting to be filled.

Why do you need an entire monitor just for making trades?

Because you might be trading over 100 individual stocks, and each of those stocks might have over 20 positions in option contracts, with various maturities and strike prices.

Depending on what youre trading, you might actually need 2 monitors to track everything.

Option Valuations / Other Calculations

If youre not trading derivatives, you wont need to value options " but you may well have to make other calculations, whether youre valuing bonds, analyzing the yield curve, or back-testing a trading strategy.

While the math itself is not quite rocket science, it goes beyond what most bankers deal with: simple arithmetic. While investment bankers may come from liberal arts, finance, or engineering backgrounds, derivatives traders primarily come from mathematical / engineering backgrounds.

Your firm might have a proprietary way of valuing options, developed by a senior IT programmer (see, the back office may have some merits after all) " and depending on what youre trading, it might be very complex.

Getting these programs working properly can be difficult because they need to be synced up with other programs you use. Getting the # of shares and contracts held, exposure to risk, and other variables linked together dynamically rarely works perfectly " and this complexity means youll be calling the back-office tech guy or floor IT guy to fix technical issues quite frequently.

Messages

Of course, youll also need a monitor for Outlook " the standard email program at any bank " to handle email and see incoming messages from brokers and the rest of your team.

The Rest of Your Desk

So what else is on your desk?

Just like at a bank, you get a phone terminal along with a headset and regular phone " but be careful about the conversations you have, because anything between brokers and clients is recorded.

Talking about bottles may not get you fired " but you probably want to postpone talking with your model(s) until later. Even if its not recorded, everyone else on the desk will hear what youre saying.

The phones are also connected to CNBC audio, so you can listen to whats going on in the news throughout the day.

So What Else Do You Do On the Phone Besides Chatting with Models?

For one, the phone actually rings quite often " especially between the trading hours of 9:30 AM and 4:00 PM.

Most of the time, brokers call to tell you what their clients are looking to buy and sell and see if you have any interest. Some of this is shifting to online chat instead, but its still common for brokers to call to get your attention on larger orders.

Junior traders will have often help deal with the influx of phone calls by screening the phone calls and taking down broker quotes.

Forget About the Bathroom " or Trips to Starbucks

This also brings up another key point and a major difference between banking and trading: most traders hate leaving their desks for fear of missing out on something important.

Lunch breaks are limited to 15 minutes (and often the junior guys or interns will go get the food for them). Bathroom breaks are rare unless you really need to go. Forget about 10 trips to Starbucks during the day: bankers can do that only because they have so much down time. No friendly chats with the cute marketing intern " at least not until the market is closed. This also means that its common for traders to gain weight: they pretty much just sit there all day, eyes glued to the monitors, only taking the occasional break to eat.

If you walk up and try to talk to a trader, half the time he wont even look at you: this might seem rude to you, but to him not paying attention for even a few seconds might result in a loss of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

And part of it is just habit: theyre so used to having their eyes glued on the screen that its almost weird to look away from it.

Hey, if you had that much money on the line constantly, you probably wouldnt give the time of day to bright-eyed interns or newbie traders either - 23222

About the Author:

This text was contributed by Zeke Lee, a Stanford graduate, former management consultant with Booz ... Company, and current derivatives trader on Wall Street. He founded the GMAT Pill (GMAT Prep course) based on his experience scoring in the 98th %ile on the GMAT in just 2 weeks with a unique study method.

A landlords Guide To Eviction Proceedings

By Layla Vanderbilt

If you?ve been a landlord long enough, you know that sooner or later you?re going to have to deal with a difficult tenant. Maybe you have a tenant who refuses to pay his or her rent. Perhaps he is engaging in conduct that threatens to damage your property. It could be that he?s making a nuisance of himself and causing problems for your other tenants. If you have a tenant who has made it impossible for you to continue the landlord/tenant relationship with him, you do have remedies available to you. This article sets forth some of what you can do if you find yourself in this position.

Evictions for Non-Payment of Rent An eviction for non-payment involves serving a formal notice to the tenant informing them that their rent is overdue, and that he or she faces possible eviction if payment is not made on time. Pre-printed forms which fulfill all legal requirements for a notice are available for those landlords that aren't familiar with the appropriate terms. If the rent in arrears is not paid after the legally defined period (usually a week), a landlord can then begin eviction proceedings. It's important to remember that if a landlord accepts a partial payment during the eviction process, this can result in the dismissal of the eviction proceedings for non-payment of rent in most jurisdictions.

Violation of Lease Terms If a tenant hasn't complied with the terms of the lease they have signed, a landlord is required to provide a written warning detailing the lease clause being violated. The landlord must then allow the tenant time to remedy the problem so that the tenant cannot later claim either ignorance of the lease violation, or that they received no notice of the violation. A judge will generally rule in favor of the landlord if he or she is able to establish that the tenant ignored a prior notice.

Health and Safety Issues In many jurisdictions, it is permissible for a landlord to evict tenants whose conduct is deemed hazardous to the health of other tenants, or if they pose a safety problem. To begin with, a landlord should serve the tenant with a fixed notice period (typically a week) to remedy the problem or move out. If the tenant takes no corrective action, eviction proceedings can ensue. Even if the tenant resolves the health or safety issue, a landlord can still serve a notice of eviction on health or safety grounds if the landlord deems it necessary.

Bankruptcy If a tenant files for bankruptcy, an automatic stay stops eviction proceedings until the bankruptcy is resolved or the bankruptcy court lifts the stay and allows the eviction to proceed. Lifting a stay in any circumstance may require a motion to be brought before the bankruptcy court.

Tenant Counter-Claims Tenants can bring counter-claims against a landlord after eviction proceedings have begun. The basis of these counter-claims may be inadequate maintenance, or violation of the lease, and the tenant may ask the court to stop eviction proceedings or a substantial decrease in the amount of rent in arrears. As a result, it's a good practice to keep written records of complaints received from tenants about individual units or common areas that also detail steps taken by the landlord to resolve them. A landlord can then address the tenant counter-claim by demonstrating the actions taken to resolve problems reported.

Trials you must make sure you have all your paperwork together before you go to court. You don't want to find out that there is something missing, when its too late. Unless you are very familiar with all the rules and regulation of your states rental laws, hiring a lawyer who is up to date on this, will be a plus. This article should give you a good grasp on what exactly it is that you need to do in order to begin the eviction process on one of your tenants. - 23222

About the Author:

Layla Vanderbilt is the webmaster for a leading property management solution review website which connects people with the leading property management tools.

Why You Should Purchase Real Estate Investment Software

By Layla Vanderbilt

Real estate is one of the soundest investments you can make if you know what you?re doing. You might want to buy a piece of property, improve it and sell it for profit. This is easy to do as long as you have a budget you can work with. But if you want to buy several different properties over time, perhaps it?s best to get a hold of real estate software that can help you maximize your profits and minimize your losses. But how do you choose software that?s right for you? Obviously you have to know what you?re looking for. You want a piece of software that can take all your rental property variables into account so that you know when to sell, when to hold and how to maximize your gains.

There's a wide range of investment software today: from a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to complex financial applications created specifically for real estate investors. Regardless of which program you choose, you'll want to make sure the software gives you a quick way to see if your investments are profitable or not, how much rent you should charge, and possibly compare and contrast multiple properties in your portfolio.

When shopping for real estate investment software, it is important to make certain that any program you opt to use can calculate each of the sums that you need it to calculate. A good investment program will help you in comparing and contrasting properties so that you can make an informed determination as to which would be the better and more lucrative investment for you.

In addition, a good investment real estate software program can assist you in setting a reasonable rent for a particular property. Having a thorough understanding of the amount of rent that you can charge a tenant will enable you to ascertain if your internal rate of return (IRR) and modified internal rate of return (MIRR) figures are logical or not.

One of the greatest things about real estate investment software is that it can help you decide when to sell a particular piece of property. After all, why hold onto something that isn?t making you any money? Why not sell it and buy something more profitable?

One of the best features of real estate investment software is the ability to forecast when it would be most profitable to sell a given property in your portfolio. The software is able to alert you when a property begins to generate fewer profits, enabling you to sell it and purchase another, more profitable property.

For investors with multiple properties in their portfolio, real estate investment software is a great way to track your mortgages, taxes, and insurance costs. This enables you to pay your bills on time, and know when it makes sense to refinance to take advantage of better rates. While a pencil and paper are in theory enough to manage your investment portfolio, software can do the job much more efficiently and reliably. By using the latest technology, you'll be able to avoid unprofitable properties, and maximize your investments. - 23222

About the Author:

Layla Vanderbilt is the webmaster for a leading property management solution review website which connects people with the leading property management tools.

Getting Started In Residential Property Investment

By Layla Vanderbilt

A residential investment property is a real estate property which is not occupied by the owner. Acting as a landlord, the owner rents out the property to tenants, or contracts tenant management to a property management company. There are a number of different types of residential investment property, and many people are introduced to the world of real estate investing through such properties, gradually acquiring skills which allow them to invest in bigger projects and to explore other types of real estate investment options.

While it is good to have luck on your side, you need more than luck to make this work. The more information you have when making an investment, they better off you will be. You must research the residential property investment that you are considering. Your money is valuable and you will want to protect yours with a well-thought out strategy.

Once you have finished your research, you are ready for the next part of the process: visiting the properties. The biggest mistake new investors make is falling into the hype of what is being advertised as hot properties, specifically overseas properties. These might be nice for tourists, but this is not the market for property investors.

Anxiety, fear and a feeling of being overwhelmed is common to first time property investors. While these feelings are normal, you need to be aware of the pitfalls they can lead you into. Sometimes excitement can get in the way of common sense and may keep you from making the best deal. Fear can stop you from doing the right thing.

You need to start by asking yourself these questions: -What do I want to do? -What are my long-term goals? -What do I expect at the end of this? -What are my finances like?

In buying and selling investment real estate each investor has their own strategies and goals. What are yours? Is is income or is capital growth of more importance to you? Or do you want to strike a balance between the two? The best advice for the novice investor is to start by determining and focusing on their investment property strategy goals. Here are four basic options for property investments are:

1.Flipping Property ? in this case the profit is made at the sale. 2.Purchasing Developed Land 3.Income Generating Property such as rental or commercial property 4.Invest in a Property Development Company

After you have figured out a strategy that works with your circumstances and one which will help you achieve your goals, you will need to think about these things: you need to consult with professionals in this field. Consult with a lawyer for legal advice, see a banker to get some pointers in the area of finance, talk to your accountant so you don't make errors in the area of taxes and you will want to work with a real estate agent so you can find the best investments. Get advice from professionals who are specialists in their area. Watch out for media and false, misleading information. Use only the best sources for your property market information. - 23222

About the Author:

Layla Vanderbilt is the content coordinator for a leading property management software review website which connects people with the leading property management tools.