Finance
Money, honey, Hard cash is all that counts.
Mergers and Aquisitions
some notes on whether you can profit for M & A. I'm not paying attention and will not be able to scalp when an announcement is made. Instead I am interested in post announcement. Often the target company's share price will spike higher upon announcement.
Risk Arbitrage - Profiting from Mergers, Acquisitions and Liquidations
http://business.guardian.co.uk/viewpoint/story/0,,2136033,00.html
Glossary
General
'short covering'
How to decipher Broker Ratings and Stock Calls
Target price: fair price of the stock. The broker has calculated what the price of the stock should be. Also check if there has been a time frame mentioned, otherwise you can assume the price is for now.
Overweight:
Outperform: buy it
Buy: The current share price is cheaper than the target price. The broker recommends buying it.
Neutral:
Hold
Underperform:
Upgrades and downgrades
Fear
Its fun reading/listening to news articles but remember to keep the story in context.
Managed funds
What to look for:
MER - management expense ratio, how much the fund manager is going to take each year (usually a percentage)
Comparison to the sector the fund is focussed on
Amount of turnover - excessive turnover generates capital gains (and more tax for you). Don't forget the biggest fee
Make sure its not a fund of funds, you will be paying expense ratios multiple times.
Psychology
China shares
A shares - companies incorporated in mainland China, listed in Renminbi. Only mainlanders and some insto can trade.
B shares - companies incorporated in mainland China, listed in foreign currencies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets.
H shares - listed on the hkse and elsewhere.
Inflation
Why do we want stable prices? . This is an article about why inflation is targeted to 2-3%.
Indices
Indices give a good overview on a basket of stocks. I'm basing some of my portfolios around them.
To replicate you can buy a passive fund that attempts to mirror the index. Or build your own.
Weightings
Each constituent stock in the index can weigh a different proportion to another. A 10% increase in a large component and a 10% decrease in a small component will increase the index.
FTSE100
FTSE index company maintains the FTSE 100 and other indexes.
Weightings are calculated by float but fall into a band. Even though floated shares may change daily, the weightings are updated only in certain circumstances.
S&P 500
I can't find a list of investable weight factors.
SPDR runs an ETF, and publishes % weightings of components in its SPY ETF.
iShares runs the IVV S&P 500 Index Fund and also publishes % weightings.
ASX 200
SPDRs runs the SPDR S&P/ASX 200 Fund. Index holdings are published as a percentage to 2 decimal places
Money Market Fund
Taken from wsj
