Post about "Investing"

Tips for Successful Real Estate Marketing

Real Estate Marketing is booming. However, with a rise in the potential real estate investors, the number of Realtors has also escalated. Today, there is a great competition among Real Estate Agents to expand their clientele. This rush has led to the development of many new Real Estate Marketing Strategies. Following are some tips that can help you to succeed in real estate business:Research and the First ImpressionAs you start off, you have to research the market. Know your competitors and study the strategy they use. Also be well informed about every property you include in your listing. The more authentic knowledge you have about the real estate properties, the more trust you can instill in your client. Any marketing is about winning the client’s faith. Once you accomplish this, the rest is a cakewalk.Goodwill Does MatterYou must understand that your client wants to be dealt well, just as any other human being does. Try your best to earn his goodwill. Don’t just consider him to be just another opportunity to grab. Even after he has made the purchase, keep good terms with him, helping him whenever he needs you. It is unlikely that he would buy a new home again in the same city or town, but his friends and relatives may need an agent. If he feels cheated or scorned by you, he will never refer them to you. Be good to your past customers and you can get more business, by their reference. Goodwill is actually one of the major Real Estate Marketing Strategies you stand to gain from.A Smile Costs Nothing But Buys EverythingNo matter how much stress you are in, always sport a lively smile on your face. Try being friendly to everyone; you never know, when a normal chit-chat leads to a business deal. Keep all your worries aside while communicating with your customers. It is hard to do. Success doesn’t come easy!Learn, Learn, LearnWhen devising a strategy, always remember to glance at the past. Learn from your own mistakes. The more you learn from yesterday, the better you make your today. We often make a mistake and realize it later. No problem. It is never too late. Just ensure yourself that you won’t repeat it. Avoiding one mistake may get you a successful deal.Online Real Estate MarketingHaving invaded into almost every sphere of life, the Internet has also ensconced itself in the field of Real Estate Marketing. And the best thing is that, you can continue your offline office as before, along with your website. A real estate website can be a major gateway for clients, a reason for huge numbers of Realtors going for it. A steep rise in the number of online Realtors has also led to an increase in the competition between them. If you want to enter this rat race of online real estate marketing, you must enter fully prepared. The points mentioned above are also applicable when you communicate with the potential clients guided to you by your website. However, there are some other things you have to learn so that you can make the most out of your website. And believe me, it works wonders!

Think Through Mutual Fund Investment Objectives and Styles

Every mutual fund has an investment objective that spells out its goals. The objective states what investing style fund managers pursue and how they intend to carry out that objective.For example, a typical growth and income fund’s objective could read like this: “Growth and Income Fund X seeks growth of capital and dividend income. The fund invests at least 65% of its assets in common stock of large, well-established companies with a history of paying level or rising dividends. The fund may invest up to one-third of its assets in foreign securities.”There’s a lot of information packed into those two sentences. From reading this objective, you’ve learned that the fund is traveling down the proven growth and income route, buying up stocks of large companies with solid histories of dividend payments.Keep in mind that, in some cases, a fund’s name is really not consistent with its objective, although it is in this case.Note also from this objective that Growth & Income Fund X may invest a full third of its assets outside of the United States. The key word here is “may.”To see exactly what percentage of assets is invested oversees, take a look at the global weighting, which can be found in a fund’s Morningstar report, as well as in the fund’s annual report to shareholders.Some investors are wary of funds that invest a significant proportion of their assets overseas, because it isn’t always easy to get information about foreign companies. Without adequate information, it can be hard to tell whether these foreign companies are growth companies or the type of companies you want to invest in.Investment ObjectivesWhen it comes to stock funds, investment objectives range from the most conservative to the most aggressive.Index funds attempt to replicate the performance of a portion of the market or even of the entire market. The most widely followed index is the Standard and Poor’s 500 index, which consists of the 500 largest publicly traded U.S. companies on domestic stock exchanges.Index funds are based on a variety of domestic and foreign indexes. Before you invest in an index, be sure you know exactly what types of companies your chosen index invests in.Balanced funds hold stocks and bonds. Traditionally, the proportion allocated to stocks and bonds has been close: 60/40 or 65/35 one way or the other. Make sure that whatever balanced fund you choose does divide its assets between stocks and bonds using a stated formula; otherwise, you may be purchasing a stock fund or bond fund in disguise.Stock income funds focus their investment on high-dividend-yielding companies and pay out more dividends and distributions to shareholders than other types of funds. Stocks held by a stock income fund typically account for 60% to 75% of such a fund’s portfolio.The trade-off here is that the dividend income gained by fund shareholders is often at the expense of slower growth and lower price appreciation for fund holdings.Growth and income funds hold growth and income stocks. They can also hold more bonds to generate income. These funds are designed to be less volatile than typical growth funds, and they provide some of the income potential traditionally found in stock income funds.Growth funds seek to profit from capital appreciation; that is, an increase in share prices of their individual company holdings. To accomplish this, fund managers invest in companies that exhibit rising sales and earnings.If about 90% of a growth fund’s assets are in stocks of large, established companies with a moderate rate of growth and paying high dividends, a strong degree of stability is provided, offsetting risk.Aggressive-growth funds aim for maximum gains by taking larger risks than other growth funds. Managers invest in companies with estimated potential, or by purchasing smaller companies in popular industries.Because of this aggressive investment philosophy, the turnover rate of aggressive-growth funds can be extremely high. A high turnover brings higher commissions and potentially higher capital gains that can increase your investing costs.Sector funds concentrate their portfolios in one particular industry. There are many types of sector funds, ranging from those focused on technology to others focusing on health care or the financial industry. Because these funds have a concentrated portfolio, they tend to be highly volatile.International funds invest in companies around the world. Be aware of different types of funds within the international category. Global funds can invest anywhere in the world, including in the United States. International funds invest only in countries outside the U.S. There are many narrowly focused funds that invest in one particular country or region of the world.Investment StyleInvestment style, as categorized by companies such as Morningstar and Lipper, comes in three flavors: growth, value, and blend (or core).In the growth style of investing, the fund manager seeks out companies with above-average sales and earnings growth.Under the value style of investing, managers purchase companies that appear to be undervalued. Valuation is based on certain defined measurements such as price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios, price-to-book-value ratios, or “fair value,” a ground-up valuation of the company’s business expressed in dollars per share. Fund managers assess such opportunities based on their experience with other turnaround situations.With the blend style of investing, managers blend both growth and value investing. In some cases, they follow a growth philosophy, while in others, they look for undervalued opportunities.Both growth and value investing have their proponents and both styles have done well in years past.