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3 Ways to Invest in Ecommerce

The percentage of consumers who has made a purchase online is breaking new records each year, with tablet and smartphone usage leading the way. Over 75% of all consumers have made an online purchase, with many making them regularly. Retailers have pushed to offer their services online, and ecommerce start-ups are seeing significant profits as a result. If you are looking for an area to invest in, ecommerce is a good one. However, finding ecommerce stocks to invest in can be a daunting task, as there is no official ecommerce sector or list of stocks out there. There are several ways to invest in ecommerce. The following are three of the most promising.

Ecommerce Stocks

If you wish to invest in ecommerce stocks, the first step is to compile a working list of the top stocks out there. This will involve some time and research, using online stocks lists to comb through multiple sectors. Common sectors to find ecommerce stocks in could include technology, retail, and services. Another way to go about this is to think of your favourite ecommerce retailers, or to research sales figures to find out who has made a strong showing in the past quarter. Review daily charts, and compare individual stock charts to the NASDAQ. In addition to sales figures, take a closer look at the ecommerce website. Do they have a large social media following? Do they have easily integrated payment gateways to enable sales? These are just a few factors to consider when picking and choosing stocks to purchase.Read More »3 Ways to Invest in Ecommerce

Investing Book Review – “International Financial Statements Analysis”

Investing Book Review – “International Financial Statements Analysis” by
Thomas R. Robinson, CFA, Hennie van Greuning, CFA, Elaine Henry, CFA, Michael A. Broihahn, CFA

This week I managed to finish reading another monster book in finance – “International Financial Statements Analysis” which is specifically targeted for the CFA (Chartered Financial Analysts) students and professionals. To be honest, I was impressed when I first looked at this book – it looked very dense, and packed with various topics which had a vague resemblance with some of my studies I had in the past. At least on the surface… So at first I was very curious – what did it contain?Read More »Investing Book Review – “International Financial Statements Analysis”

Book Review: “International Management – Culture, Strategy and Behavior” – by Fred Luthans and Jonathan Doh

Some books are great, some books are fantastic, and some are at the average. Some are really bad and some are really outstanding. For me, “International Management – Culture, Strategy and Behavior” is neither of these – but just a bit above average.

Do not get me wrong. A book on international business focused on organizational management/human resources is a new focus. In the current world, where we trade continuously across the borders, we forget very often that the most important thing to do is probably to interact efficiently with our foreign counterparts. Yet, “International Management – Culture, Strategy and Behavior” is not exactly my type of book…

…Which still means that this is a nice study text. There are very few books focused on the cultural interactions at a global level. Read More »Book Review: “International Management – Culture, Strategy and Behavior” – by Fred Luthans and Jonathan Doh

Incoming Global Status-quo Meltdown – Investing Alert

My fellow investing folks, we are in for a tough ride again. The markets are dropping all over the world with 3 to5%, led by banks and commodities. And all of these have happened only during one week.
What was behind it? Apparently, all the press hauls about Eurozone emergency bail-outs – the banks are close to a liquidity crisis again since they have less revenues from the Italy and Greece (and other European) bonds. And with the deposits fees charged by NY Mellon, with Japan trying to avoid the yen appreciation and the Turkish Central Bank dropping the reference rate, it seems that nobody wants hot money anymore in their country.
Apparently. The signs are (as one Financial Times columnist – Gillian Tett’s insight article – put it in today’s newspaper) that we are actually facing once more a confidence crisis. It seems that everybody is pulling out of the stock market and of the volatile areas of investments and running for safety. The problem is similar to the global meltdown we experienced in the US crisis – the safety areas are limited and they can only absorb so much of the hot money floating around. The safety refuges of today are the gold (already up to 1,640 USD or so), the swiss franc, the yen and a couple of other places unknown to the wide public. All of these were already crowded because of the prolonged crisis – and now they are massively overcrowded. I think this lead accidentally to over-pricing of those assets – and in turn to a loss of confidence in the financial areas of refuge.Read More »Incoming Global Status-quo Meltdown – Investing Alert

Book Review – “Investment Performance Measurement – Evaluating and Presenting Results” by Philip Lawton and Todd Jankowski (editors)

Here’s the handbook for the professional investment manager or for those who want to have in their libraries a reference volume: “Investment Performance Measurement – Evaluating and Presenting Results” not only contains almost 1,000 pages of technical articles, but it is also nicely organized.
In a sense, “Investment Performance Measurement – Evaluating and Presenting Results” represents a complete reference for the CFA (“Chartered Financial Analyst”) who wants to keep in touch with some technical issues. The book contains 5 parts, which take you from the introductions to the portfolio and risk management theories to the latest developments in the field (part 5 is named “Global Investment Performance Standard”, a right adagio for the cross-continental savvy manager).
It is hard for me to start somewhere with this review – and this is because of the content richness. “Investment Performance Measurement – Evaluating and Presenting Results” contains lots of articles on investments performance, some of them very mathematical, others very behavioral and others … well, unusual.
A very mathematical chapter (yet a very interesting one) is called “On the Performance of the Hedge Funds”, which combines a mathematical approach with a risk methodology in order to give the reader a better view on how to approach a fund. It is not easy, since a hedge fund tries to balance actually the risks inherent in the portfolio with a need for strong and constant returns. The fact that few hedge funds manage to have a constant performance over the long term just lays the nature of the game. Yet, when you invest lots of money in such a vehicle, I think you should at least try to understand its composition and the formula to calculate the average returns on the fund (or the yield of it). But the authors of the article go beyond this – they actually run a regression to see if the various fees paid to the mangers have an impact on the performance. Guess what – yes they have an effect and it is quite substantial – for the rest of the details I will just let you read the article itself.Read More »Book Review – “Investment Performance Measurement – Evaluating and Presenting Results” by Philip Lawton and Todd Jankowski (editors)

An Investment Book Review –“International Corporate Finance” by J. Ashok Robin

Well, this came as almost a treat – corporate finance, which in itself is an investment topic to be studied, on an international context. There are many textbooks on the market which study the corporate finance topics, from the main financial decisions of a corporation to financial instruments or the (in)famous weighted average cost of capital (WACC). In an international context, there are quite few study texts.
The field of International corporate finance deals with the various financial activities of international corporations or multinational companies. This book is even more focused – it concentrates on the multinational companies (MNC’s or MNE’s) and on their blood who keeps pumping and make them grow –the flow of money.Read More »An Investment Book Review –“International Corporate Finance” by J. Ashok Robin

Book Review – “Trade the Trader” by Quint Tatro

Trade the trader book review by www.doitinvest.comOne more book about trading various financial assets… Shouldn’t the world be tired about these?

I guess not. Trading is a financial knowledge field which advances at a blistering pace, not only technologically, but also behaviorally. Take for example the way the introduction of the Ipad has changed the trading behavior of the masses – now you can research, plan and place your orders online, straight from your morning coffee table. Isn’t this brave new world wonderful?

Yes it is my friends. But it is also dramatically different from one year ago. Think about it a little – how many traders are now online compared with 5 years ago? (this means increased competition, right?) How many tools are you using today compared with one year previously? How did the playing field changed?

Read More »Book Review – “Trade the Trader” by Quint Tatro