The world of money

For many people, spring is the most beautiful season of the year. In economic terms, this is the phase of an early recovery, as introduced in the previous chapter. New jobs, new perspectives and new confidence are dominating this stage in the real world. During this enjoyable economic awakening, the investor’s focus should be on technology or consumer stocks. They …

In our journey through the cycles of economy and markets, we just arrived in stage 3. In other words, the economy is in full recovery, the markets are looking ahead and paying attention to the upcoming economic recession. Recovery vs recession – in the markets, this fight translates into a tug of war between bulls and bears. The bull is …

A bear market, as described in the previous chapter, is something any investor could renounce. But they know, they have to get through. It’s just like making it through a sunless November without getting depressed. In some stock market-cycles of the past, the bear market faded out fairly quiet, no one got killed, and stocks started to recover. But many …

What would you prefer? A high salary and expensive goods – or a low salary with cheap prices? • If your answer is ‘a high salary with cheap prices’ I would advise you to visit your travel-agency and buy a ticket to fantasy-land. The purpose of this chapter is to find out, what’s better for people with an average salary …

You certainly heard, the price of oil has fallen from 100 USD in July 2014 to 30 USD today on international markets. The price-unit for oil, the barrel, contains 160 liter. So 30 USD for 160 liter – I think this goes without a calculator – equals 0,18 USD or 0,8 RON per liter of oil. The difference to the …

Many participants of the stock-market, in general pretty rational fellows, are paying a great deal of attention to seasonal or calendar trends. One of the best known trading adage is appearing each year towards the end of April: • ‘Sell in May and go away’ followed by • ‘Remember to come back in September‘. The rationale behind is to avoid …

You don’t need to have a lot of money to invest, but you need to invest to have a lot of money. And you have to be patient. Invest today and profit tomorrow is simply not working, if you are looking for a quick buck – casinos are open 24/7. I noticed over and over again, that the long term-view …

In the 2nd quarter of 2015, the value of the international debt capital market transactions amounted to 1 trillion USD – that’s 1000 billion USD in 3 months. This huge market is called bond-market. In the financial world, a bond is a paper that determines a debt from the issuer to the holder. If a company or a government issues …

To find out the level of financial literacy worldwide, Standard & Poor’s, Gallup, the World Bank and the George Washington University conducted a survey: More than 150’000 adults in 140 countries were quizzed on their understanding of financial concepts: Here’s the quiz: 1. Risk Diversification: Question: Suppose you have some money. Is it safer to put your money into one …

Question 1: Suppose you have some money. Is it safer to put your money into one business or investment, or to put your money into multiple businesses or investments? Answer: multiple ‘The financial concept of diversification’ sounds terrible complicated. But it’s actually just the reduction of a business-risk. Let’s say, I give you an order to transport 5 very precious …