Friday, November 2, 2007

E-commerce - Advanced Tips for E-commerce

Internet has made it relatively easy for everybody to do transactions online. No need to leave your house and drive at least an hour to get to the mall to shop just to find out that what you came for is out of stock. With more and more people turning to the Internet to buy their needs, E-commerce becomes the new it business that offers huge profits and convenience. I am sure you are now eager to learn more about E-commerce, read on!

1.To make it to E-commerce, you must have an interesting, attractive web site. You must present all the products and services in a way that will entice online users to click the buy now button. In addition, you must stand out by offering products and services not commonly found in the Internet.

2.Your web site must be equipped to accept several kinds of payment method especially credit cards.

3.Market research also plays an important role in E-commerce. You must study the buying patterns of online users and what exactly they are looking for. Offer products that have high demands but has low supply.

4.Come up with killer product descriptions. Include the benefits of the products and its value. Convince your customers that what you are offering is the best in the business today.

5.Throw in some freebies. This is especially effective for start-up business. Free items will surely attract attention that can lead to business relations in the long run.

Keep in mind, you may need to think outside the box to excel in ecommerce.

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Stock Research - Hedge Funds - If Bear Stearns Doesn't Know - Who Knows?

As the hedge fund world becomes bigger and bigger as more and more hot money seeks the elusive alpha of maximum performance, it is becoming apparent that more and more newspaper space will be devoted to hedge funds, and private equity. Recent news has taken us into the inner sanctum of Bear Stearns, truly a dominant investment firm in the world today. It might be argued that Bear Stearns is the best managed Wall Street firm in existence. Some might say Goldman Sachs. In any event Bear Stearns would have to be on the short list.

Investment firms for almost a decade sat by and watched hedge funds form, and amass vast investment capital pools while successfully charging 2% management fees, and 20% of the profits. Some of these hedge funds in a few years, have grown to possess capital bases equal to that of investment banking firms that have been around for generations. Taking some of the risks that were involved to achieve this performance is now coming home to roost.

Bear Stearns is the latest firm to stub its toe in the hedge fund industry. The firm is FAMOUS for quantifying and judging RISK before making its bets. This time however it seems that Bear Stearns threw its usual caution to the wind in embracing the formation of two hedge funds over the last year or so.

The second hedge fund was considered a more highly-leveraged version of Bears High Grade structured Credit Strategies fund which was formed last year. Both funds were managed by Ralph Cioffi, who up until recent events took hold, had the reputation of being a MASTER at this game, and the game is the subprime mortgage bond business.

Most people are not aware of it but Bear Stearns is the finest fixed income trading firm on the planet bar none, and this has been true for several generations. This makes recent events even more perplexing to understand.

Jimmy Cayne who is Bears CEO is embarrassed at the very least, and certainly upset enough that there will be major changes in the leadership of the units responsible for the pain being inflected on the firms reputation. This should not have happened at Bear Stearns, thats the point.

Actions Taken and Implications

Mr. Cayne has made the decision to inject $3.2 billion of Bear Stearns capital into a bail-out of the older fund. Bear is also negotiating with the banks that put up the credit facility for the other fund, the highly leveraged High-Grade Enhanced Leveraged fund. What Bear is trying to prevent is the forced sale of the debt obligations underlying the funds investments. These issues trade by appointment as they say, which means they rarely trade at all. Bear knows the Street smells blood, and will take advantage of any weakness that Bear shows.

So what are the implications of this latest hedge fund debacle? It clearly shows that the most sophisticated investors on the planet who put their money into hedge funds may in fact have NO IDEA what they are investing in. Instead, they are betting on the institutional reputation of the firms standing in back of the hedge funds. In this case nobody knew more about this market segment than Bear Stearns, yet they caught in a terrible position.

This is not Caynes fault, but as CEO, it is always his responsibility. I believe him to be the finest Wall Street executive of his generation. Nevertheless, his underlings certainly let him down, and they are among the highest paid people in the world today. Some of these industry veterans are drawing $10 million dollar annual incomes. Let the investor beware is the rule of the day, especially when it comes to hedge funds.

Richard Stoyecks background includes being a limited partner at Bear Stearns, Senior VP at Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, Arthur Andersen, and KPMG. Educated at Pace University, NYU, and Harvard University, today he runs Rockefeller Capital Partners and StocksAtBottom.com/. for a fuller version of this article please visit our website. http://www.stocksatbottom.com/bear_stearns_hedge_funds.html

Power Lift Your Trading

Successful trading requires having a firm understanding of the risk and reward picture before taking a trade. It requires having a good idea as to the trend direction of the market within a time frame that is higher than the one used to trade from.

For instance, if a trader usually takes trades that do not last more than one day, then it is likely that intraday charts are used in making trading decisions. These may be charts ranging in time-frames of 1 minute up to a few hours. For this type of trader, it is beneficial to know the daily trend, which is the next higher time-frame from intra day charting.

The trader who places trades based on a daily chart would be wise to determine what the weekly trend happens to be, the next time frame above daily. And for those who trade long-term and base trades from weekly charts, knowing the monthly trend would be expected.

As simple as this happens to be, it is quite common for traders to excuse this important step in the analysis. However, for the trader who seeks to have the power of the markets behind the move, the higher time frame should be consulted to determine whether to be a seller or buyer.

Take for example the trader who prefers to place trades based off a daily chart. Such a trader is likely interested in staying in the trade for at least a day or two, even longer. In such a case, the trader should consult the weekly chart, which is the next higher time frame, and note the likely trend.

So with the weekly chart, suppose the pattern is one of higher weekly swing bottoms and higher weekly swing tops. This is a typical pattern for a bull trend.

Acknowledging that the weekly trend is bullish, the daily time frame trader would then only consider taking trades that are designed for bullish markets. This may be long positions in the futures, buying Calls or selling Puts in options, or perhaps a spread strategy that favors the bull move.

Once the direction of the trade has been decided based on the higher time frame trend, it is important to know 'when' such trades are best taken.

For example, just because the weekly trend is bullish does not necessary mean a long position off the daily time frame will meet with favorable results. For even when a trend is bullish, it will have bearish corrections along the way. Therefore, to get the power lift from the higher time frame, it is best to get on board when those trend corrections at the higher time frame had ended.

In the case of our weekly bull trend example, the best time to buy off the daily chart is when the weekly chart is putting in a higher weekly swing bottom. These higher weekly swing bottoms occur usually at the end of a bull trend correction. Just like the best place to enter a daily chart is off a daily trend correction that is ending, the best time to do this is when the higher time frame is also ending a trend correction.

Once the trader becomes wise to this simple but important fact, all that is left is to learn the simple techniques that help determine what the trend happens to be on any given time frame. Simple methods include looking for the obvious higher swing tops/bottoms for a bull or lower swing tops/bottoms for a bear trend, noting correction ratios such as 50% pullbacks or the commonly used Fibonacci and Gann ratios, and whether a correction appears oversold or overbought based on indicators designed for this purpose (Stochastic, MACD, COT, etc.).

As a market cycle analyst, my preference to determining when trend corrections are likely ending is by calculating whether a market turn is highly probable due to dynamic cycles, such as is forecasted using my FDate algorithm amazingaccuracy.com. Along with this, I will also employ a powerful technique for figuring out trend overbought/oversold parameters to further support my findings.

However you decide to calculate the likely end of a trend correction, remember to use the trend of the higher time frame, and wait for the end of a correction to that trend, to assist your timing and trade direction on the lower time frame. By doing this, you will allow the market to 'power lift' many of your trades.

Learn more on how to increase your profit potential with other free articles found at our Precision Timing of the Futures, Commodity and Forex Markets website.