Posts Tagged ‘currency’
I’ve been working on some new code that delivers product placements from service providers directly onto my site and here it is. The great thing about this is that the service offerings are changing all the time keeping it fresh and new.
Lending and borrowing is pretty simple when it comes down to it: somebody lends and somebody else borrows. Zopa have made a few small tweaks to this time-honoured method, to ensure everything is safe, secure and legal.
Social Lending is a smarter, fairer and more human way of doing money. It’s like borrowing and lending with your friends and family – except there are thousands of people you can lend and borrow with.
Both lenders and borrowers get better rates, because Social Lending is more efficient than the traditional banking model. Banks have massive overheads, with thousands of employees to pay and hundreds of branches to maintain. So they have to take large margins on the money that passes through them.
There’s no smoke and mirrors here. Banks use your money to make even more money for themselves. They lend some of it out, gamble some of it on the price of tin or the Yen depreciating, and invest the rest in any other money-making schemes they can think of.
Whereas at Zopa, people who have spare money lend it directly to people who want to borrow. There are no banks in the middle, no huge overheads and no unethical investments
Zopa was the world’s first lending and borrowing marketplace. By demonstrating that Social Lending works on a large scale, Zopa has changed the financial sector for good.
So hit the link (the big picture above) and see what you think. If you dont need a loan but have money you want to loan out you can do this as well and guess what – you’ll get better returns thatn leaving it your bank paying a paltry rate.
Financial review
It’s good to see a company promote itself and make statements for future development, especially during these lean times when so many businesses have gone to the wall or are struggling to survive. I recently invested in Evolution Group as you’ll know from a previous blog so it was good to find this press release from Evolution Group declaring their position for the future.
In summary:
- It aims to grow revenue and profit further in 2010, despite continuing market uncertainty.
- It has swung back to a full-year pretax profit on rising assets under management and a much better year for its investment banking arm.
- The company’s initial public offering pipeline was “fairly reasonable” and it “absolutely” expects to grow assets under management in 2010.
- It would continue to hire this year to support growth.
- It would also look at opportunities to bolster assets by bringing in new teams that could bring between GBP1 billion to GBP2 billion of assets with them.
So a positive outlook indeed – so jump on board now whilst the price is right.
Image from the free section in Fotolia – http://www.fotolia.com/id/6146042
When the financial markets are in turmoil around the world people fall back to what they see as a strong and safe position. They withdraw from the market and sink their cash into Gold or Silver.
Well this sounds a good option at first glance but is it really the best option to take?
When you buy gold or silver you pay the market price and you’re then the proud owner of your physical lump of metal. But how do you make money from it? The only way is to wait for the market to rise and then sell it on. There is no dividend payout every year so that’s your only option. when you come to sell you also run into the problem of where to sell your lump. Most gold and silver traders offer only a percentage of the current market value so the growth has to be significant if you;re going to see a meaningful return.
But there is another way of investing in Gold and Silver and that is buying stocks in a mining company. OK so you have to do your homework on the right company but once you’ve done that you’re working the metal market in a more efficient and effective way. As metal prices rise the mining company’s stock price rises, after all every rise in product price is a direct increase in mining profits.
Take Avocet Mining for example, a great company who is pulling gold out of the ground at a cost of about $600 per oz. They’re selling this at $900 per oz currently, a huge return on their investment. As the gold price increase their margin increases. Do some calculations on gold price rises and you’ll soon see just how lucrative this little investment can be.
So my advice is to buy into Avocet Mining, sit back, wait for the price of gold to rise further and watch your investment soar… oh and you’ll get your dividends along the way too.
OK so I know we are pretty much now officially out of recession, but hey it doesn’t really feel like it does it. I have not yet seen all those businesses who went under come back to life, start trading again, start employing people again. We all know the stats might show we’re out but reality takes a little longer to deliver a world we left behind when all this recession stuff kicked in.
So whilst we wait for the world to get back on its feet is there anything we can do for ourselves to improve things?
Well we could look at the Internet as a way forward couldn’t we?
Millions of potential customers, potential ideas, potential ventures out there on the Internet – but where do you start in finding the right one for you?
Well I have my own strategy and method and here it is.
1. Look at the things you do that could possibly generate income. I listed things I like doing. If you like doing something you’ll invest your energy into it.
2. List them down in any old order, you’re going to cross some out later.
3. Along side write how you could use the internet to make money from each idea. Online auction, direct selling of goods, offering services etc.
4. Along side that for each one list the level of investment required to set up.
5. Anything that requires any real money to invest cross out. We’re here to make money not spend it. Investing time is fine.
6. Start a free blog and start sharing your ideas. I’m doing that right now.
7. Search other sites where the product or service your looking to work with gets some air time.
8. Get involved in that community, comment, share, invest your time. Above all always leave your contact name and web address to link back to the site where you’re looking to sell your product or service from. The more links the better you’ll be placed in search engines.
9. Get a twittter account and use that as a doorway allowing more connections with potential customers as well as potential partners.
10. Search out other businesses who will pay you to advertise their products and services. They are out there and the more you promote yourself the better coverage and income you’ll receive from such sites.
In a nut shell that’s it. It doesn’t really matter what product or service you’ve come up with, it’s all down to you promoting it sufficiently well to get noticed. Even if you’re a niche market player there are still loads of potential customers out there after the very thing you have to offer.
Be patient and allow a year to build up your profile, your Internet energy level, your visibility what ever you want to call it. It takes time but the Internet has this great ability to suddenly show exponential growth. The more you do the more it gives back.
So why not give it a try, you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Now click on my sponsors and buy their products 
It seems to be true you really can use Twitter to make some cash bu getting sponsored to tweet. I’m very new to Twitter so need to wait 60 days before the sponsorship will come through but in the mean time I want to share the love and for those of you with an account older than 60 days, more than 100 followers it’s worth giving this little money maker a shot. Just click the little picture and get yourself signed up.
Thought I’d update you on my latest stock acquisition so you too can jump aboard and make some cash to beat the bank. This time I’ve purchased some stock in Avocet Mining Plc. (AVM.ISE) I made my purchase at £0.9974 per share and I’m expecting good things over the next few months. Get in now and make some easy money. Bail out target for me is around £1.45 but I’ll keep an eye on the trends and related news stories in case I need to change this.
and for those who are interested in what this company does read on…
Avocet Mining Plc is involved in the exploration, extraction and production of gold and tungsten.
The Group was listed on the London Stock Exchange in April 1996, having been previously listed on the Vancouver Stock Exchange since 1986 under the name Avocet Ventures Inc. Avocet is a gold mining company operating in Indonesia and Malaysia and a focus on expansion in South East Asia. It has two operating gold mines a new mine in the making and a number of exploration projects.
That’s all from me for now….
I knew my investment in Greene King would be well worth my while. Apart from drinking their beers I now see my shares on the move in the right direction, still plenty to go but they are on their way.
In the mean time to keep me happy they have just announced a dividend payout of £0.15 per share so another nice little earner in my journey into beating the system, playing the stock market, doing it myself rather than pay others to under-perform – what ever… it’s always fun as a mate of mine tells me.
onto other share news as today has been a busy time for me…
Decided to sell my Tesco shares today. My buy price was £3.45 and I’ve punted them back onto the market at £3.93 so a good growth and all this achieved in 135 days. didnt make the 15% profit I was after when taking all costs into account, more like 10% but the growth is still strong and pays much more than any bank can offer me. A key reason for shifting this stock was the desire to buy into another company. I could have sold some of my others but thought Tesco would be the best option. So Tesco it was.
The stock I purchased to replace my Tesco shares was in a company called Tenon (TNO). Watch this space for news on this company as I monitor my investments.
A nice little bonus greeted me when I came back off my holiday. Two dividends one (Babcock) paying £0.10 per share and the other (Vodafone) paying £0.05 per share. The Babcock one was really good to received as I’d actually sold the shares earlier but still qualified for the pay out. So you can even earn money from share dealing when you don’t hold the stock!
A short recap from my fisrt blog on share dealing…
Cadbury – currently showing a 7.5% profit. I’m hanging on for more profit (around 12%) as I think during times of need people turn to comforting things and chocolate is just one of those comforts.
and onto today…
So I’ve just sold these shares now as I hit my 12% profit marker after all buying, selling and stamp duty costs, so another good investment. So that has put me in a position where I have cash waiting for the next investment. Looking at my items on watch I’m not quite ready to make the move on one of them. They still show great promise but I think I can squeeze some more out of them if I buy a litter later.
Keep watching this space for more deals.