Posts Tagged ‘personal finance’

How To Use Excel For Trading

Wednesday, August 12th, 2015

Excel is widely used by hedge funds and professional traders to manage trades, calculate P&L, compute buy and sell signals, and much more. These capabilities are available to the average trader, many of whom already use charting software to help with their trade strategies, often with limited success. Including Excel in your trading workflow process can deliver high value in terms of profitability, discipline and consistency. There are a few things you need to learn, but it is achievable with a little effort and the benefits can be very significant to your bottom line.

There are many ways to use Excel for trading, and your first consideration should be narrowing down your intended use of the tool. Will you use it to compute trading signals? Is your interest importing data automatically into Excel? How about calculating profits, drawdowns, risk and other analytics? Do you have many open positions you need to track? Would you like to integrate Excel with a charting platform? Are you interested in automating your workbooks with VBA to increase speed and accuracy?

Bringing price and volume data into a spreadsheet automatically is one way to implement Excel for trading. This uses DDE links to a price data database, either an internal or vendor provided database. DDE links are efficient and can capture fast moving prices (with certain limitations relevant to algorithmic trading). Importing price and volume data into Excel with web query functionality is an alternative to DDE links. This works if you want to capture a smaller volume of prices or economic data from websites like Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, etc. You can also import data into Excel using the Data from Other Sources function. This connects to SQL Server, MS Analysis Services, XML files and ODBC — this is a good option for the technically minded.

Using Excel for trading is highly dependent on data. Importing prices and fundamental data into Excel automatically is a great first step to implement Excel for trading. In fact, not much else can be achieved until you import data, so this is a basic foundation step. There are multiple ways to do this. DDE links can be used to import data from a data vendor. Your broker\’s API can be used to connect to the actual prices your broker uses. Internal or vendor provided databases can be connected using SQL or web queries. How you implement the data import will have a lot to do with your strategy and the data types you want. For automated intraday trading with fast moving prices a DDE link is best. The Data from Other Sources function in Excel uses SQL Server, XML files or ODBC to connect to a database if you have one internally at your office or home. Web queries can work for end of day and fundamental quarterly type data. Economic data comes out infrequently so speed is not an issue.

Best practices of Excel for trading involve planning your spreadsheet workflows and relationships so everything works together correctly and you can find what you need when you need it. You have a choice here of building a multiple spreadsheet environment or creating a single workbook with lots of tabs. The prior approach is modular and tends to work well because each separate workbook is for a specific purpose, small, and easy to manage. The downside is you may need to manage lots of links and Excel links have a tendency to break and get corrupted. Big workbooks with lots of sheets can be useful in Excel for trading since you have everything in one place. However, Excel tends to bog down and the files get huge when you start using more than 10,000 rows of data, charts, and multiple tabs together. It can also be a bit risky to have your whole daily trading operation in one file. Just make sure you back up your files in an external location every day!

These ideas should help you get started using Excel for trading to improve your trade processes and increase profits with less risk.

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Some Saving Money Tips That Everyone Should Be Aware Of

Saturday, January 12th, 2013

Life is actually quite difficult today and even if an individual has a full-time occupation, he still cannot have the ability to lengthen his financial arm to put a lot more food onto his family’s dining room table and buy not just what they need but in addition what they desire. That is why, some people would adventure into having more than one full time jobs simply to enhance their income and some would try to start their own business opportunity. Furthermore, it’s also very strongly suggested that everyone should learn different saving money tips as a way to “save for the rainy days”.

An individual may earn a lot of money, that’s absolutely right. However, what good are his earnings if he doesn’t know the best way to save some for future years, right? The idea is, he needs to discover the very heart and soul of saving money. He can be making lots of money but all of these can be gone if he doesn’t understand how to manage his income by conserving some of it.

There are many ways or many various saving money tips which will definitely help any person save lots of money. Some of those tips accessible is to open up a bank account with a business banking organization. According to different financial institutions and some monetary experts or specialists and life coaches, if a person wants to have adequate income, a person must deposit, at least, ten percent of what he is earning, place it inside a bank and then forget all about it temporarily. Consistent with this, other people who have learned relating to this tips, would go for a special family savings like time deposit instead of going for the regular bank account kind.

Opening up a time deposit account is probably the best ways to keep your hands off your hard earned money. Time deposit has maturation periods ranging from thirty days, sixty days and ninety days. There are a few financial institutions, however, that provide special kind of bank account like hi-yield savings account that has a one-year maturity period. This way, an individual can make sure that he will not be able to withdraw his hard earned money for longer period of time unless, of course, when an emergency occurs and needs money quickly. Some financial institutions call this as “pre-termination” of accounts.

Aside from financial institutions, a person who wants to save lots of money may also apply for life insurance policy. It is the same as depositing money with a banking institution only that when the time comes that the person needs the amount of money, what he can receive is an insured amount that is far bigger than what he had invest in. This can be among the best ways to save money that anyone can learn and choose and it will absolutely help him save for a better future for him and his family.

Want to find out more about saving money, then visit Jennifer Lewis’s site on how to choose the best money investment and savings for your needs.

Gold – Ways to generate a financial gain by betting against the crowd

Sunday, November 11th, 2012

Gold has been viewed as being an alternative investment tool for many decades. Why? It’s got no intrinsic value, just the perceived value that fear hooked up to it: uncertainty of inflation, torment of war and paper money devaluation. Who’d would like to relive the era when an incredible number of German citizens with their investments in worthless Papiermark in 1920’s? Acquire gold, but only at the appropriate time.

For thousands of years, humans have been fascinated by gold for its unique color and soft metallic element. Sadly to say, gold is useless in engineering terms, except for plating electrical contacts, for purpose of ensuring their conductivity. You will find gold plated contacts on good quality hi-fi components and electronic equipment, such as computers and mobile devices. The metal is too soft, with too low a tensile strength to be used for much besides jewelry such as necklaces and rings.

Being an investment vehicle though, gold is usually a different story completely. The value of gold falls and rises, in accordance mainly to the level of fear that people have about the long run. When war is imminent, gold costs soar, as much more demand on gold. They’re shopping for gold for quite a few factors. The gold will be there for them when they need it, no matter what happens to the paper money and for the reason that war tends to bring about higher inflation, paper dollars gets worthy of much less and less. Buyers outside the war zone obtain gold simply because they see the price heading up. They believe it’ll continue heading up and they are planning to sell at the major turning point of the marketplace and cash in their profits.

People also buy gold when economic conditions are good. When inflation is low and employment rate high, gold prices fall. The prices fall because gold has no intrinsic value, only the value attached to it by people’s fear. In calmer times, it is possible to invest in shares and gain from the rising share prices that usually accompany economic growth.

Therefore, savvy investors often go against the trend when comes to gold investing – buy gold when everyone is saying to invest in the stock market. Sell gold when things are looking grim and there are many buyers out there.

In the not too distant past, it was illegal to own gold bars or bullion in many countries. Men and women could buy gold coins and also other items nevertheless. The South African Krugerrand was minted to take advantage of this opportunity and to bring in significantly necessary international exchange as hard currency for that nation during the a long term financial embargo. Nowadays it is possible to buy gold, silver and platinum coins in quite a few denominations, like Canadian and US dollar, sterling crowns and sovereigns etc.

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Invest with the Best

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

It long has been said the bigger the risk the bigger the reward. Although I am a person who tends to agree with this statement; when it comes to securities trading however, an area I’m not acquainted with, the risk seems much greater. I had a buddy who would always rant to me about the financial gains he made from his personal investments with Morgan Wilshire Securities, Inc. He got into trading and securities investments through one of his pals at his fancy marketing agency and had been telling me that I should get into it, so finally I started listening to him. I did some research on securities and investing and here’s what I found.

I’m majorly into saving money. I seldom ever spend money without obligation and this encourages me to save as much money as I possibly can. I have a pretty little nest egg/rainy day fund just waiting in my savings account and I thought this was the best place for it to grow and be conveniently available if I ever were to need it. However there are so many different ways I can get my money to grow, whether I want to play it safe or take a little risk.

On the grounds that I was and (I like to think) still am a young professional with many years ahead of me I checked more into increased retirement. These type of investment accounts are likely to have lower amount of annual taxes owed and if managedcorrectly can allow investors to contribute more to investments and subsequently, better prepare for retirement. This was the investment that I was most psyched about because I don’t want to have to work late into my golden years.

While I was scouring the internet for investment information I also found another kind of investment that sparked my interest. Like I mentioned before I live on the wild side and a risky investment is right up my alley, my husband however is nothing like me. When it comes to money he is sir-saves-a lot so a mutual fund would be right up his alley. They tend to be more long-term investments and depending on which type of mutual fund you choose they can be pretty safe.

Whether you’re ready to dive in and take some serious financial risks or you want to take a small dip in the investment pond, there are a number of routes you can take. From mutual funds to retirement accounts Morgan Wilshire Securities, Inc. can help you figure out exactly what your goals are. They can also set you up with a great financial and investment strategy and you can be well on your way to saving for your future, your kids future, or whatever you like!

Visit here today if you’re seeking some more information about investing with Morgan Wilshire.. Check here for free reprint license: Invest with the Best.