An individual buys an annuity from an insurance company and pays a lump sum or a series of payments over time. In return, the insurance company guarantees that the funds will grow at a tax-free rate. The earnings rate may be guaranteed for a period of time in a fixed account annuity.

Variable annuities are unique because the account value can change with fluctuations in market investments and other market conditions. This type of annuity can only be invested in specific investment types such as fixed investments or common stock.

Then, beginning on a specified date, the individual may elect to receive regular income payments for the rest of his or her life.

The size of the payment is determined by the account value at the time of distribution, and the duration of the payment period. Life annuity payments will generally be smaller than would the equivalent fixed period payments.

There are various policy options that may allow you to extend the life on the contact beyond the life of the account holder. With the right options, your children or spouse may be able to continue your options for the rest of your life.

Interested individuals should carefully examine the variable annuity’s prospectus to learn about any special account stipulations, rules, charges, or expenses that you may not be expecting. This information is provided before you commit to the contract, so you should spend sufficient time understanding all of the details that are unclear to you.

As a result of the account value increasing during the accumulation phase, the growth is not taxable until the distributions are made. This provides the account owner with some very beneficial account growth.

The portion of the annuity contract that is most similar to other insurance products is the guaranteed monthly distributions out of the account. These can occur for the duration of your life or for a specified period of time. Guaranteed payments allow you to plan for a steady retirement income that you cannot outlive. Many annuity contracts will also guarantee payment of the remainder of the annuity to your heirs should you die before receiving the equivalent of premiums paid in.

It is important to understand that certain actions outside of the design of your account may result in penalties, additional charges, or penalties that can affect the account value. Be certain that you have read the prospectus thoroughly and understand the ins and outs of the annuity contract. You do not want to be caught unawares of certain provisions and chargebacks.

The world of fixed rate annuities can be rather complicated. To get more details on this type of investment, take a minute to check out Luke Murray at The Fixed Annuity Guide.

Safe High Return Investments Plano

Captain Jack Sparrow in the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean” has been forced ashore by a mutinous crew. We see him stranded on an island drinking rum with his lovely companion beside a fire. They are discussing his ship. “It’s not just a keel, a hull, and a deck and sails. That’s what a ship needs. But what a ship is, what the Black Pearl really is . . . is freedom.”
As an idealistic young investor in the ’80s I felt the same way about the investment of my retirement savings. Those investments represented financial freedom. With the passage of time life gets more complicated; deciphering financial statements and reviewing all the investment options available can leave us bewildered. We may have a sense the ship has run aground. We feel disconnected from the original meaning or purpose of our investments. We aren’t sure if our money is working for us and if it is working in a way that matters to us. How can we get back to basics and recover our sense of direction? What does investing really mean to us personally?
When we invest in stocks or bonds we are essentially investing in business. Let us consider an example of investment in a small local business. A sausage maker is trying to raise half a million dollars to start his business. You may know the chef personally or know of his reputation. You’ve enjoyed his product and respect his passion for and commitment to making a wonderful sausage using the best organic ingredients. A number of people come together to invest in this business. They might lend to the business (becoming bond holders) or provide equity (becoming stockholders.) The investors provide the capital that allows the business to be born.
Think about the importance of these collective investments and the value they bring. Providing all the capital himself could be a huge personal risk for the sausage maker. So the risk is shared among the investors, none of whom assumes a risk that he or she cannot afford. In fact each investor may benefit financially while serving the needs of the community in a delicious way. The act of investing serves an important and critical function in our economy.
On a personal level, you the investor have put your hard-earned money into this project for a variety of reasons, some of which may be pride in being involved with such a high quality product, a belief that people will love the sausage and the expectation that you will receive a good return on your investment. You appreciate the man’s commitment to sustainable practices. You believe in his ability to be a good manager and careful steward of the capital you have placed in his hands.
As with any investment there are risks, but you feel you can understand them. The business may fail after a few years or you might not get the return you had hoped for. You have invested with the sausage maker based on your priorities and values, some of which you share with him. You care about his success not only because you want a good return on your money but also because you love his products. Your life seems richer for having experienced them. The relationship between the business and you as an investor is very tangible and personal.
Investing for our retirement years now seems so far removed from this paradigm. How can investing in a 401k, an IRA or a mutual fund have that kind of meaning? Making choices here is not like investing with the sausage maker. You own stocks and mutual funds. Are the managers of these companies or funds people whom you know and trust? Do you have the same faith in them as you do in the sausage maker? Do you believe that they are making decisions that reflect your priorities and values?
Certainly we care about our investments and realize they are important. They may mean the difference between subsistence and being able to afford to do some of those things we’ve always dreamt about. However, this type of investing is not the same as putting our money with the local guy, whose success we are rooting for.
Investing can start to become more personal by checking in with yourself. Remind yourself why you are investing. What do your investments really mean to you? They may represent financial freedom. Perhaps they are your security or the potential to live your dreams. They may give your children the head start that you never had. Just as you would expect the sausage maker to be a careful steward of the investment you’ve entrusted to him, your first responsibility in investing is to yourself. Your investments are important assets in your life. By making investments more personal you will derive greater satisfaction from them and increase your chances of feeling successful in the process.
How do you create a sense of purpose and meaning in relation to your investments? The very act of investing demonstrates a belief in our country and in our way of life. Your capital is precious and important. How you invest it matters. Investing in promising medical research or a daycare center in a blighted urban area allows you to get a financial return on your money while reinforcing your belief in businesses you feel deserve support. Naturally, you need to balance these two objectives in order to protect and grow your nest egg. Examine each investment by asking, “Is this working for me, and in a way that supports my priorities and vision for the future?”
Investing can be as personal and meaningful as you choose to make it. You are the captain of your ship.

Safe High Return Investments Dallas

Gold is real money, real wealth. It has endured the test of time, like no other currency. For thousands of years it has been relied upon as a measure of wealth, and for good reason too.

Currencies all over the world, every single year, go down and down in value, and that’s why every single year prices of goods and services go up. The money in your pocket or in your bank is effectively worth less and less each year. Your money is now buying way less than what it would have bought you 100 years ago, whereas an amount of gold bought a 100 years ago would now buy you way more.

Those who have been wise enough to already invest in gold have been making huge profits. At the moment, an ounce of Gold costs a record $1150; compare that to the $34 an ounce it cost in 1970, and it’s not difficult to see why it is such a good investment. There’s no need to think that you’ve already missed out on the opportunity though, and that it has already peaked in value, as the last year alone has seen a 30% increase in the value of gold, and big investment firms are predicting that the $2000 ounce is not so far away.

You have two main investment opportunities as far as gold is concerned – bars or coins. Gold bars are what most people think of when they think of gold and whilst they are a great investment, the upfront cost for them puts them beyond the reach of most investors. Gold coins on the other hand are valued in the same way, are an equally good investment opportunity, yet are much more accessible and affordable.

You can purchase gold coins through either a specialist local coin store, or an online gold coin specialist. There are plenty of both around, and you can find them through a few simple Google searches. Always seek reviews and testimonials before making any purchases though, and ask for certification that proves that what you are buying is real gold. Don’t be afraid about asking a lot of questions; it is only natural and reputable sellers should always be more than willing to answer them for you.

One final point, just in case you’re not yet convinced about the prospect of investing in gold – recent reports have shown that a $1000 investment, made in 1970, in rare gold coins, would now be valued at nearly $60,000.

For more information on the best places to buy gold coins visit http://www.gold-coins.com.au, where you can also see the latest gold price.

The options market has caught the fancy of many investors and this is not surprising. The beauty of options is embedded in its very name. You have the options but not the obligation to buy or sell stocks at a given price by a given time. Now for options buyers this option unlike futures limits their maximum liability to the option premium they had paid at the time of buying the options contract.

In’78, Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) began options trading on popular stock indexes such as the S&P 500 Stock Index. The CBOE options trades in multiples of $100 per index point. This is much cheaper than the $250 multiple per index point for the S&P futures contract.

An index option allows the investor to buy the stock index at a set point within the given time period. Let’s take an example. Suppose the S&P 500 Index is at 1100 points. You have a bullish opinion of the market and are of the opinion that the S&P 500 Index will go further up.

There are options Greeks that you need to understand. Time and volatility are two very important factors for an options contract. In case of an index options, what this means is that if any time for the next three months you decide to exercise your call option, you will get $100 for each point the index is above 1150. So you decide to purchase a call option at 1150 for three months for 50 points. In other words you paid an option premium of $5000.

So when an options contract loses value, you only lose the premium that you had paid while buying that contract. In that case you will only lose the premium of $5000 that you had paid to buy the call index option. Now, 1150 is the strike price of the index option. In case the S&P 500 Index does not rise above 1150, you can simply decide to not exercise your call option.

So for you to make a profit with this call option, the S&P 500 Index will have to rise above 1200 point within the next three months otherwise you will lose your premium. Contrast this with S&P futures. Call options are considered to be bullish.

In case the S&P Index had fallen to 1100 point, you would have recouped your options premium. Put options are considered to be bearish. A Put Index Option works in exactly the same way as a Call Index Option except that you make profit when the stock index goes down. If you had bought the put index options instead of the call index option in our example above, every point below the strike price of 1150 would have given you a profit of $100.

Options are highly dependent on the volatility of the market as well as time to expiry. As the options contract nears expiry, its premium starts decreasing. The more the options contract is away from expiry, the higher the premium you will have to pay. But the most important factor is the expected volatility of the market. Now the option premium that you pay is determined by the market and it depends on many factors like interest rates and dividend yield.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try these cash printing Forex Signals from heaven. Discover a revolutionary Forex Robot System! This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.

Capitalization or cap refers to the combined value of all the share of a company’s stocks. The division between large cap, mid cap and small cap are often blurry and not sharp. When you start looking for good stocks, you often come across these terms like large cap, mid cap, small cap, growth and value. Let’s discuss these terms for a moment.

Mid caps are companies with $1 to $5 Billion in capitalization and small caps are companies with $250 million to $1 Billion in capitalization. Anything below $250 million can be considered as micro cap. However the following divisions are generally accepted: Large caps are companies with over $5 Billion in capitalization.

What is the P/E ratio? The P/E ratio divides the price of the stock by the earnings per share. Suppose, company ABC stock is presently selling for $50. Now suppose that last year company ABC earned $5 for every share of the stock outstanding. This means stock ABC P/E ratio is 50/5=10. So the higher the P/E ratio, the more investors are willing to pay for the stock.

Now the higher the P/E ratio, the more growth the company is supposed to have. So it can be either the company is growing real fast of the investor have high hopes of its growth. Now these hopes can be realistic or foolish, you never know!

The lower the P/E ratio, the more value the company has. Low P/E ratio companies are not considered to be the movers and shakers in the market. Now, if you follow financial news than you must know that the large growth companies always grab the headlines. But do the growth stocks really make best investment? According to Fama and French, two famous researchers who did ground breaking research on stocks, over the last 77 years, large growth stocks have only seen 9.9% annualized rate of return as compared to 11.5% for the large value stocks.

So most of these growth stocks become highly popular in a small period of time! Everyone rushes to buy these growth stocks thinking that they are great investments. The most probable cause seems to be their immense popularity. Since most of the headlines are captures by high growth companies, investors seem to think that they are the best investments. Now intuitively you might have thought that growth stocks are better. What can be the reason for their lower performance over the years?

Think about Google, how its stock price shot up within a matter of weeks after it hit the market. Weeks after that it began to cool off. So large growth stocks tend to get overpriced before you are able to buy them!

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try these cash printing Forex Signals from heaven. Discover a revolutionary Forex Robot System! You can get a unique content version of this article from the Uber Article Directory.

Investing in commodities may be something that investors thought of boring and dull only a few decades back but not anymore now. If you are interested in investing in companies that are involved in the production, transformation and distribution of commodities, than one of the best ways to do so is through investing in the Master Limited Partnership (MLP).

So how do you go about investing in an MLP? The shares that an MLP issues are called Units and the investors who own them are known as Unit Holders. MLPs are public entities that trade on public exchanges. An MLP issues shares that trade on an exchange just like a company stocks that trades on an exchange. You can invest in an MLP by buying its shares on an exchange. You can instruct your broker to buy the units of an MLP that you are interested in investing.

When you invest in an MLP, you are essentially investing in public partnership. There are tax advantages to investing in MLP. Unlike regular corporations, an MLP is only taxed once. Now most of the MLPs trade on the New York Stock Exchange. A few MLPs also trade on the NASDAQ and the AMEX.

Congressional Legislation, any MLP that derives 90% or more of its income from the production, distribution and transformation of commodities qualifies for this tax exempt scheme.

Tax exemption means that MLP have to generate a lower rate of return as compared to other companies competing with it in the same sector. Since an MLP has got the tax exempt status it will only have to generate only $1.54 for each dollar that you invest in it. Suppose you invest $1 in the stocks of a regular corporation and you are in the 35% tax bracket. Corporate tax is 30% of its before tax income. This means that for each dollar that you invest you need to get at least $1/ (1-0.35) =$1.54 just in order to breakeven. So the corporation will have to generate $1.54/ (1-0.3) =$2.2 for each dollar that you invest in order to return you $1 after tax profit.

However, most GPs do a good job of running the MLP as it is in their financial interests. Now you must know as a limited partner in an MLP, you have limited voting rights. This means when you invest in an MLP, you are giving away the keys of ownership to the GP. This means you are out of the decision making in an MLP.

Investing in MLP units can give you quarterly cash flows as well as appreciation of the unit price. An MLP is obligated to distribute all available cash back to its unit holders on a quarterly basis, so you will be getting a quarterly income from your units. Secondly as the MLP expands and grows overtime, its units may give you capital gain as well.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Trade Dow Futures . Learn Commodity Trading ! You are welcome to reprint this article – but get your own unique content version here.

One thing should be clear to you. Energy markets will be a major focal point in the global financial makers and the global economy for many years to come. The key to understanding energy trading is to understand oil, natural gas, gasoline and heating oil futures.

NYMEX trades futures and options contracts for crude oil, natural gas, heating oil, gasoline, coal, electricity and propane. NYMEX is also home to trading in metals. Trading in energy futures is centralized at the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), the world’s largest physical commodity futures exchange.

For smaller traders NYMEX offers e-mini contracts for oil and natural gas that also trades on the GLOBEX network of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Trading in NYMEX is conducted in two divisions: 1) The NYMEX Division and 2) The COMEX Division. You can trade crude oil futures. If you haven’t done futures trading before than before you start trading crude oil futures, you should first educate yourself on how to trade futures contracts. The good thing is that you can paper trade on your demo account with the use of virtual money. Paper trading is something that should not be missed by even professional traders. Practice makes your trading perfect!

The relationship between energy and interest rates is very important to understand. This relationship ties together the two most important aspects of the global economy: energy (the fuel for growth) and the interest rates (the catalyst that powers borrowed money to do things). Next to interest rates, energy and especially oil is the center of the universe not only for the industry but also for the financial markets.

As a trader, you should know this fact that oil price rise often tends to slow down the economy and lower retail sales as well as consumer confidence with lower traffic on the highways. Sometimes the rise in oil prices leads to the increase in interest rates through the bond market and the actions of central banks and the other times the opposite happens. Rise in oil prices if often inflationary.

Now you need to understand the Peak Oil Concept. Peak oil is the concept that the world oil production has peaked and the production of oil will never be as high again. Oil prices and the interest rates generally move in the same direction when viewed over long periods of time.

Many oil wells have gone dry. US was a major producer of oil in the beginning of the 20th century but over time, depleted all its oil reservoirs. The last oil well went dry in Texas in the early part of’70s. Oil production in countries like Venezuela, Iran and Nigeria has peaked and is going down. Non OPEC sources of oil like North Sea and Mexico are also showing sign of declining production. There has been no major oil well discovery for the last few decades. Some people consider the Peak Oil idea as controversial but this concept is increasingly plausible given the state of the global oil industry. The peak oil concept is very important for you to know. This means that now in the next few decades, we will be witnessing an uptrend in the oil prices as the global demand increases and the supply is unable to catch up with the global demand of oil. When oil prices reach above $100 per barrel, it becomes too expensive for the industry as well as the private consumer. With this price level, chances are that more and more investment will go into the alternative energy industry. Now you should keep these facts in the background of your mind as a trader. In any case, most of the experts now agree that in the next 10-20 years, the oil production will peak and after that it will start declining.

Now this means that in the short run, following oil prices can be a highly profitable strategy. Your aim as a trader is to make quick profits by trading the price fluctuations in the oil market. So the important facts that you need to keep in the back of your mind while trading oil is: 1) Demand fluctuates but supply of oil is finite. 2) The world runs on oil and any threat to the supply of oil often leads to rising prices. As an oil trader your primary goal is to consider the effects of events on the supply of oil and correlate this effect with your charts.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Trade Dow Futures . Learn Commodity Trading ! You are welcome to reprint this article – but get your own unique content version here.

October is the month in which the most infamous crashes historically took place. The party starts in December and continues in the early part of January with some hangover effect. So what is the January Effect?

New Year is the end of a year and the beginning of a new year. This is what makes the January Effect so special. There is usually a rally in the stocks in the first few days of January. There are various reasons behind the rally. Most of the people are trying to pay their taxes at that time of the year. The companies are trying to show a good performance at the end of the year by cleaning their balance sheets. The January Effect can be quite a rally but much depends on the strength of the economy, how good December was and is there any catalyst to move the markets. There is usually a significant rally in the early part of January that actually sets the tone for the rest of the month and sometimes for the rest of the year. New Year is party time. People are in exuberant mood. Everyone wants to forget the past year and start the coming year with high hopes and good expectations. This is what is so special about the January Effect. So what is this January Effect? January Effect actually starts in the mid December and tends to favor small stocks. The most profitable period as measured statistically has been found to start from December 31st and end around February 28th with an average rate of return of 6.6% on smaller stocks.

Now January Effect may happen or may not happen but the turn of the month that is the last day of the month and first five days of the next month form a very good seasonal pattern. Now, you must know this fact that the January Effect is not guaranteed every year. The best example is the year 2007 when the market became bearish and didnt start to look to bottom out until March 2008.

If you buy stocks at the last day of the month and hold them for the first five days for the next month, chances are you are going to make some profit. This can be a good swing trading strategy. At the end of the fifth day you move your money back into the money market funds. Turn of the month is a very good seasonal pattern that actually holds up more often than not.

Why the end of each month is good for trading? This system works because the pension funds tend to put new money to work during the holidays and the overall tendency of the market to rise improves. You can do the same on the holidays. Move your money in on the day before the holiday and sell it on the day after the holiday.

Holidays are good for your mood. Everyone is happy to escape the drudgery of their daily routines. People want no worries in the holidays. People start to feel happy when the holidays approach and buy stocks before they run off to celebrate Christmas, the fourth of July, the Labor Day and so on. After the party the reality sets in the stocks are usually sold off. The holidays and those times when people traditionally take vacations often lead to higher prices. Fewer traders lead to lower trading volume which in turn tends to exaggerate price moves.

The three days before the New Year Eve and the first three days trading days after the New Year are your best holiday bet for making money. Thats because these days fall within the most bullish time period of the year, winter!

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Try This 1500 Pips A Day Forex Signal Service! Know These Candlestick Patterns! You are welcome to reprint this article – but get your own unique content version here.