Showing results by narrator "Emily Sophie Knapp" in All Categories

Learn about Gold Trading with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Gold trading is the investment in and trading of gold as a commodity. It is similar to trading in other commodities such as oil or wood, though there are factors that differentiate it. Gold has represented money and wealth for millennia in different forms. In the present day, we are able to freely own and trade gold in various forms, from gold bars to shares in gold mining companies.

Learn about Leveraged Buyouts with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Leveraged buyouts originated in the early 1960’s. It is also known as a hostile takeover, a highly-leveraged transaction, or a bootstrap transaction. In effect, it is a tactic through which control of a corporation is acquired by buying up a majority of their stock using borrowed money.

Sovereign debt is the debt of a country or government. This debt is usually comprised of bonds issued by the government. Sovereign debt can be contrasted with government debt. Government debt is when bonds are issued in a nation’s own currency. Therefore, this debt is mostly created within a country’s own economic boundaries. Sovereign debt, however, is created from bonds issued in foreign currencies or through loans.

Learn about derivatives with iMinds Money's insightful fast-knowledge series. In economics, a derivative is defined as a financial instrument or an “agreement” between two parties that is based on an “underlying” and generally tangible asset, such as a stock or a commodity.

Learn about Underwriting with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Underwriting is the process of issuing insurance policies. A company underwrites your policy when it agrees to insure you or your property in exchange for the premiums you pay. Underwriting is carried out by either an insurance company or a professional underwriter. Underwriters assess risks and decide whether to accept applications for insurance cover and, if so, under what terms they are valid.

Learn about short selling with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Short selling is the practice of selling borrowed stock at a high price and then buying back the stock at a lower price. A short seller expects to profit from the fall in a stock's price. The more common investment practice is to “go long”, that is, to buy stock with the expectation of the price rising in the future. Simply, a short transaction sells high and buys low, while a long transaction buys low and sells high.

Learn about Financial Regulation with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Financial regulation, simply put, is the supervision and control of the financial system and entities within it by a government body. It is deemed necessary to prevent abuses or failures within financial systems that affect the public or the stability of the system itself. Regulation is carried out differently in countries around the world....

Learn about subprime lending with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Originally, the term subprime lending described any loan that charged less than the prime, or base, rate of interest. This definition, however, has changed over the last twenty years to mean quite the opposite. Now subprime refers not to the interest rate charged, but to the credit worthiness of the loan taker.

Learn about Market Capitalisation with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Market capitalisation, or simply market cap, is the total tradable value of a public company, equal to the number of shares outstanding times share price. It is therefore an indicator of public opinion on the total future value or net worth of a business. This also means market capitalisation will fluctuate over time and even within the space of a day.

Learn about Carbon Trading with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Carbon trading is a scheme designed to curb the amount of greenhouse gas emissions companies produce. This is due to the widely-held view that such emissions negatively impact the planet. Carbon trading forms part of the carbon market, which can be divided into two main categories. The first of these is project-based transactions.

Learn about Monetary Policy with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Monetary Policy refers to the branch of economic policy handled by a country’s central bank. It is concerned with the management of the money supply, interest rates and financial conditions. It attempts to achieve the central bank’s and the government’s broad economic objectives of achieving high employment, stable economic growth and low inflation.

Learn about IPOs with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. IPOs or Initial Public Offerings are the sale of a company's equity to the public for the first time. By “going public”, a private company can be invested in by anyone on a stock exchange. Companies commonly “go public to” either to raise capital or to increase the company's liquidity. Previously, IPOs were limited to long established, large private firms.

Learn about Price Cartels with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. A price cartel is a group of companies that have a formal agreement to fix prices. Companies that form cartels operate within the same industry and, in theory, should be in competition with each other. By forming a cartel, the companies create monopoly power that can be used to increase profits.

Learn about Food Security with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation defines Food Security as a state when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.

Learn about securitization with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Securitization as a financial term has evolved over the decades, as different methods and products have developed from the process. At a basic level, securitization is the process of taking an illiquid asset, or a group of relatively homogenous assets, and through financial engineering, transforming them into a security. The assets are pooled together and repackaged into a single security, which is then sold to investors.

Learn about hedge funds with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. A hedge fund is a type of investment structure for managing a private, unregistered investment pool. Within this investment portfolio the fund manager is permitted to use a number of higher risk investment strategies. Although a wide range of strategies are used the most common is long/short equity. This was the strategy used by the first hedge fund in the United States in 1949 and is still the most popular today.

Learn about Reverse Swaps with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. A reverse swap is a secondary swap agreement entered into by a party to an existing swap contract. The secondary swap will offset, or reverse, the position held in the original agreement. In other words, it is a new swap with the exact opposite terms to a pre-existing swap contract is made. A reverse swap can therefore simply be thought of as the undoing, without the cancellation, of a previous swap agreement.

Learn about the World Bank with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. The World Bank is an international financial institution of the UN whose purpose is the alleviation of poverty through providing leveraged loans and technical assistance to the world’s poorest countries. The World Bank was created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 with the primary role of financing the post-war reconstruction of European and Asian countries devastated in World War II.

Learn about Antitrust Laws with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. Competition is an essential part of the free market. The competition between participants in the market promotes efficiency. This occurs as the supply of a product is improved to provide more attractive prices than a competitor can offer. Competition also drives innovation, as producers develop superior products and services to gain the favour of buyers.

Learn about the Chinese market with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. China’s market offers unprecedented opportunities. It contains a population of over 1.3 billion in the world’s second largest and strongest growing economy. Through trade liberalisation and the deregulation of its economy China has utilised its low cost labour advantage to dominate world trade in simple manufactured goods.