Money Magic

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

If you want to learn about "Unleashing Your True Potential for Prosperity and Fulfillment" then read Money Magic by Deborah L. Price! This book is chocked full of insightful, useful information.

Ms. Price starts by explaining about the energy of money and why there are winners and loser in the money game. The most interesting part of the book was Price's description of the eight money types:

The InnocentThe VictimThe WarriorThe MartyrThe FoolThe Creator/ArtistThe TyrantThe Magician

So how do we recognize these types, and identify which type we are? I am sure we've all known people like these.

For instance my friend who has no clue of what her take home pay is and how much her monthly expenses are, she'd be The Innocent. Or my relative, The Victim, who continually makes bad choices with her money then blames everyone else and gets her mother to bail her out. And oh boy, you know The Warrior type, he is so focused on money, he sets out to conquer the world, all in an effort to prove his own self-worth. Then there's The Martyr, poor thing she spends all her time, energy and money on everyone else.

I think I dated The Fool once or twice, they play by a different set of money rules, usually rules they tried to stack in their favor! The Creator/Artist type just finds it difficult to live in the material world and would rather not have to think about money. I think we've all known The Tyrant, he dedicates his whole life to making money so he can use it to feel superior and control those in his life. Finally, there is The Magician, these are probably the millionaires and billionaires, because they know how to transform and manifest their own financial reality!

Most of us are probably a combination of money types. I could see small traits of all them in myself. At times I am The Innocent, because I would rather not pay attention to the money details, and sometimes I'm The Victim, who likes to blame the economic downturn, but then The Warrior in me will emerge briefly, until The Martyr takes over and I spend too much money on my kids, then I truly feel like The Fool, and crawl into The Creator/Artist who wonders why we need money anyway, until the Tyrant emerges reminding me that the one with the gold makes the rules. Unfortunately, cycling through all these types has never lead to The Magician, who I am sure resides somewhere in my mind.

This book challenged me to define my relationship with money through a series of exercises such "Your Money Biography" and "Identifying Your Money Archetype". Although I am still a work in progress, I feel I am on my way to developing a new relationship with money and on the path to finding or developing The Magician but maybe, The Magician is just a state of mind where we feel truly abundant, prosperous and fulfilled! I can hear the tune strumming through my head, "I'm in a Magician state of mind!"

Visit http://www.rhondahsmith.com/ for more valuable strategies to create Your Business, Your Life, Your Way! Rhonda Smith is a unique business coach and QuickBooks trainer. With her professional yet personable style she works with her clients to grow their businesses, increase their income, and gain more free time! She offers QuickBooks training, bookkeeping services, and small business development strategies. ?Rhonda H. Smith, Inc. Article may be reprinted only if complete Bio is included.

New Economic Platform - More Than Analysis

AppId is over the quota

In the next 20 years, you may get bored seeing more and more books analyzing the effects of the current economic crisis and what brought it on.

But, at the very beginning of this financial crisis, I've found the first book to advocate a new financial platform and address the biggest problem: adding more jobs and restoring worldwide financial stability.

The book didn't just suddenly appear as an analysis of the world's economic crisis. It has been stored in the brain vault of Leonard S. Johnson for more than 5 years. He has been tossing around ideas, coming up with new approaches and creating new kinds of thought for that entire time. And this was long before this financial crisis put the world on its collective knees. It was now time to come to the aid of a crumbling financial world.

That's when Johnson decided it was time to give the world a needed answer to deal with these effects of the economic crisis with his innovative book "The Bank for International Ideas." Johnson has based his book entirely on taking intellectual capital to intellectual property. He shows how to use the book's premise to create a new financial order based on worldwide innovative ideas that become businesses, scientific projects or organizations.

"The Bank for International Ideas" isn't a book of how to merely get banks to support and fund new ideas. The fact is banks are not doing that to the degree we have known in the past. BII is a complete financial platform which allows anyone in the world to submit ideas to the bank.

The process starts with the review committee. The committee, a noteworthy group of peers, decides if the idea is worthy and valid. If so, the bank actually issues credits which are then redeemed in currency in three parts: 33%, 33% and 34% totally 100%.

This means BII allows the innovator to make money on the idea while searching for investors, investment money, funding and mentor involvement. There's nothing to pay back unlike a usual bank transaction. The individual is actually paid for the idea. That's new in the world of finance. And good news for the idea-maker.

Johnson believes the world is no longer going to be run by the current skilled jobs. He believes true financial stability will be led by innovators who create areas of new job categories, not simply the skilled ones that we have known.

Johnson has created "The Bank for International Ideas" book to become the financial handbook of the upcoming new era of finance. The result is: It isn't the end-all answer to analyzing the effects of the financial crisis. It is the end-all book to the beginning of the new phase of finance in the world.

Unlike the blow-hards that puff themselves up to tell the world how they would do or would've things, Johnson has a truly remarkable way to make the entire world a better place financially.

I have also found something else he's done. He's created a 5-part YouTube explanation of the financial platform and how it works. So, you can absorb the financial concept before you get the book and delve into the details.

It just gets better and better.

"Conspiracy of the Rich" By Robert Kiyosaki - A Review

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Robert Kiyosaki launched his recent book as a viral event by having chapter by chapter released online and collecting comments from readers. The end result is a physical book "Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money".

Judging by the stream of traffic flowing to his ConspiracyOfTheRich.com website and comments from readers, it has not put the world alight, but worked fairly well.

Robert Kiyosaki is best known as author of the best-selling book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and ever since that book came out in 1997, he and his colleagues, has just held publications to come.

The controversy over the years has focused on Kiyosaki's view that your house is not an asset (instead it is an obligation, because it takes money rather than makes money) and that mutual funds are unsafe and losing investments.

You can say that by the time he writes this book in 2009 his views have, at least in part, been shown to be accurate.

Kiyosaki was controversial in 2002 when he came out with Rich Dads Prophecy predicting a crash. His assertion that the demographics of the Baby Boomer generation and the laws of their retirement investments would lead to a heavy crash in the stock market when they stopped working and began living off their investments. He predicted this to be sometime from 2010 onwards, and it seems to be panning out.

However Conspiracy of Rich is his strongest statement literary statement yet.

Kiyosaki is at both vivid and scathing; from the Introduction "The Root of All Evil", to the later section on "Hijacking of the Education System", where he compares the US to wartime Vietnam or the shanty towns of Cape Town in South Africa.

His message continues, "Today, those who have a strong financial education have an unfair advantage over those who do not."

As always, Kiyosaki is speaking in general terms, using stories and metaphors (such as the tale of the big bad wolf and the three little pigs). He also references much from his previous books. In fact, every one of his eight new rules can be found in his earlier books.

But this book also has more hard and relevant facts, and more solid warnings than ever before.

For example, in Chapter 10 he explains exactly why the recent chaos has been followed by seeming stability. The graph shows that he is instead of green shoots, are we merely in the eye of the hurricane, and Lehman Brothers etc or worse is set to occur again, he predicts, within the next two years.

Chapter 12 shows that the U.S. stock market low on the Dow of 6547 in 2009 is no bottom, and that there is still much lower to drop.

A consistent criticism of Kiyosaki is that he is very repetitive. This book keeps the same style as the previous ones. Kiyosaki response is that repetition is a part of learning, and I'd agree.

A few months ago I went back and reread Cashflow Quadrant, and was surprised at how much I felt that I was not even to pick out all those years ago when I first read it.

Personally, I ended up after much of Kiyosakis path to riches. I'd prefer say its because I've followed his advice but in reality its more because my experiences have agreed again and again with his messages.

If you just want the guts of the "Conspiracy of the Rich" you can read the final Chapter 12 "If I Ran The School System", but there are enough interesting stories in this book to make it worth reading all the way through.

If you are familiar with Kiyosaki's most important books, and you understand fractional reserve banking, Fiat currency and the notion that the Federal Reserve is not federal or U.S., it has no reserves, and it is not a bank, then you can get the few extra nuggets pretty quickly.

If you are new to Robert Kiyosaki, or have not encountered Austrian economics (a term never used in the book) then it is both a treat, and a mental work out. More than any other of his books this one covers a lot of territory for the newcomer. This is also one of his most fundamental books about money and general financial skills, and deserves to be read broadly.

Author Martin Russell discusses marketing and online strategies at http://www.carefulcash.com/

An Evaluation Framework - Economic Policy and Human Rights by Radhika Balakrishnan and Diane Elson

Economic Policy and Human Rights by Radhika Balakrishnan and Diane Elson apparently declares an intention to compare and contrast fiscal and monetary policy, public expenditure consequences, taxation, trade policy and pension reform in Mexico and the United States of America. The choice of countries is justified on several levels: they are of comparable size, differ in level of development, contrast in governmental approaches and, crucially, are both signatories of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement which, itself, suggests a commonality in certain policy areas. At the outset, the authors declare that the neoliberal economic assumptions that have dominated policy choice for thirty years have not worked, ostensibly because their main result has been the current crisis.

The authors thus attempt to illustrate this claim by examining a range of social, employment and economic indicators to assess the impact of the current paradigm on particular groups within both Mexico and the United States. But Balakrishnan and Elson also declare the intention of doing much more than this, in claiming that the framework they adopt could become transferable to other places and contexts. Their choice of framework appears to achieve exactly what they intend, and it does so quite spectacularly. And it is a position that could have benefited my own work a couple of decades ago, if only it had then existed.

My own research on education's role in Philippine development found that increased use of market forces and privatisation in an education system already heavily reliant on the private sector produced distortions that undermined some of education's potential and desired objectives. After the debt decade of the 1980s, increased reliance on market forces in Philippine education placed most high quality educational experience beyond the reach of anyone but the economic elite. And yet, declared policy stated that the promotion greater equality was one of the education system's explicit goals. In the future, work intending to identify such contradiction will benefit from employing the universal reference point of the transferable framework identified in Balakrishnan and Elson's superb study.

The authors begin with a short discussion of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Importantly, the rather general goals that this advises have been rendered more specific by subsequent declarations. And, by signing up to these, governments - presumably - declare their desire to see the declared goals achieved, both at home and abroad. Such general aims have thus become more specifically objectified via the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Thus policy objectives, if not timetables for their achievement, in the areas of race, gender, employment and several other areas can be specifically identified as having been espoused by governments because they have willingly signed up to these treaties, even though that might have been prompted more by political expediency than commitment.

Using these objectives as a framework for evaluation, the book's individual papers conduct a near-forensic examination of a range of Mexico's and the USA's recent economic and social policies in the specified areas in order to examine whether the agreed objectives have been furthered or hindered. Almost without exception, neoliberal policy conformity is shown to undermine these agreed objectives and often to impact differently from their declared intent on specific and identifiable target groups within the population. This evidence makes a strong case for greater and more active accountability of government action and thus also questions declared commitment to previously agreed - and politically convenient - principles. In more than one area, there is strong evidence to suggest that policies are mere populist window-dressing in that their stated objectives are in line with identified and desired goals whilst their implementation can only undermine their own stated intent.

Economic Policy and Human Rights thus provides much more than an examination of particular policy prescription in Mexico and the United States. Indeed it may even present an evaluative framework that could be applied by progressive analysts to any state or region that has adopted the objectives of these quite specific treaties. As such it will surely provide an important and enduring contribution to any debate on social and economic policy.

Philip Spires
Author of Mission and A Fool's Knot, African novels set in Kenya
http://www.philipspires.co.uk/
Migwani is a small town in Kitui District, eastern Kenya. My books examine how social and economic change impact on the lives of ordinary people. They portray characters whose identity is bound up with their home area, but whose futures are determined by the globalized world in which they live.

How to Trade - Book Review - John Murphy, Intermarket Analysis

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

The majority of literature that discusses asset allocation linking multiple markets has a heavy dose of macro and microeconomics. Typically, macro-micro relationships require applying econometric models to comprehend the structural linkages between the two intertwined fields of economics.  John Murphy removes the hard statistical methods while retaining the economic logic with chart-based reasoning.

John Murphy was the technical analyst for CNBC-TV for seven years and a professional analyst for over 25 years. His career includes time at Merrill Lynch as a Director of Commodity Technical Analysis.  John has his own consulting firm, JJM Technical Advisors.  He is also president of MurphyMorris, Inc., which was created to produce educational software products and online services for investors.

There are adequate reader reviews on Amazon and Google Book Search, to help you decide if you will get the book. For those who have just started or are about to read the book, I've summarized the core concepts in the larger and essential chapters to help you get through them quicker.

The number on the right of the title of the chapter is the number of pages contained within that chapter. It is not the page number.  The percentages represent how much each chapter makes up of the 246 pages in total, excluding appendices.

1.  A Review of the 1980s.  16, 6.50%.

2.  1990 and the First Persian Gulf War.  16, 6.50%.

3.  The Stealth Bear Market of 1994.  18, 7.32%.

4.  The 1997 Asian Currency Crisis and Deflation.  14, 5.69%.

5.  1999 Intermarket Trends Leading to Market Top.  16, 6.50%.

6.  Review of Intermarket Principles.  16, 6.50%.

7.  The NASDAQ Bubble Bursts in 2000.  18, 7.32%.

8.  Intermarket Picture in Spring 2003.  16, 6.50%.

9.  Falling Dollar During 2002 Boosts Commodities.  14, 5.69%.

10.  Shifting from Paper to Hard Assets.  14, 5.69%.

11.  Futures Markets and Asset Allocation.  20, 8.13%.

12.  Intermarket Analysis and the Business Cycle.  20, 8.13%.

13.  The Impact of the Business Cycle on Market Sectors.  18, 7.32%.

14.  Diversifying with Real Estate.  18, 7.32%.

15.  Thinking Globally.  12, 4.88%.

Focus on chapters 3, 7 and 11-14, which makes up about 46% of the book. Especially chapters 11-14 are relevant for practical trading purposes.  Unlike my prior book reviews, where I've summarized the key points for each focus chapter, I will summarize the key points across chapters 3, 7 and 11-14. This is to recognize the connectivity of intermarket relationships across the 4 main asset classes of Stocks (Equities), Bonds, Currencies and Commodities.  The context of the summary is to be viewed from a retail option trader's perspective.

Here are the Key Directional Intermarket Relationships in brief.

The U.S. Dollar (USD)
USD turns up as Bonds rise under normal conditions but Bonds fall during deflationary periods. USD turns down as Bonds fall but Bonds rise during deflationary periods.USD turns up as Commodities fall.  USD turns down as Commodities rise.USD turns up as Stocks rise but Stocks fall during deflationary periods. USD turns down as Stocks fall but Stocks rise during deflationary periods.

The USD remains the most liquid of all major traded currencies and maintains its position as the primary global reserve currency, despite growing sentiment for an alternative basket of currencies to replace it.

Bonds
Bonds turn up as the USD falls but the USD rises during deflationary periods. Bonds turn down as the USD rises but the USD falls during deflationary periods.Bonds turn up as Commodities fall.  Bonds turn down as Commodities rise.Bonds turn up as Stocks rise. Bonds lead Stocks and Stocks lag behind Bonds. Bonds turn down as Stocks fall. Again, Bonds lead Stocks and Stocks lag behind Bonds.
Commodities
Commodities turn up as the USD falls.  Commodities turn down as the USD rises.Commodities turn up as Bonds fall. Commodities turn down as Bonds rise.Commodities turn up as Stocks fall. Commodities turn down as Stocks rise.
Stocks
Stocks turn up as the USD rises.  Stocks turn down as the USD falls.Stocks turn up as Bonds rise.  Stocks turn down as Bonds fall. Again, Bonds lead Stocks and Stocks lag behind Bonds.Stocks turn up as Commodities fall.  Stocks turn down as Commodities rise.

Specific to Equities, as you trade the options on Sector Indexes of the S&P 500, please be aware of the correlation versus non-correlation with other equity and non-equity traded products. I am stating in brief, the more commonly known relationships that are repeatedly elaborated on in the book:
Changes in Energy (XLE) especially Oil (OIH, OSX) impacts Semiconductors (SMH, SOX).Utilities (XLU, UTH, UTY) are negatively correlated with Semiconductors (SMH, SOX).With broad-based Equity Indexes, the highest correlation is between Dow Jones and S&P 500.Canada benefits from rallies in oil being the ninth largest producer of crude oil globally.  While Japan, a major net oil importer suffers. The tickers for this inter-play would be FXC/XDC (Canadian Dollar), FXY/XDN (Japanese Yen) and OIH/OSX (Oil).Gold (XAU, GLD) behaves like the Australian Dollar (FXA, XDA). Australia is the third largest producer of gold globally.Top three currencies that have the tightest correlations with commodities are the Australian Dollar, the Canadian Dollar and the New Zealand Dollar.Gold/Silver (XAU, GLD) has very little correlation with other Indices.A deeper understanding of these inter-plays can help you construct effective pairs trading methods.

In conclusion, from a retail option trader's viewpoint, always remember that it is volatility that you are trading.  To trade the volatilities across multiple asset classes, use an optionable Index representing that particular asset class.  Remember, Implied Volatility can be added to or reduced from your portfolio, as not all Asset Classes or Sectors or Individual Companies or Countries move up/down in value ALL at the same time; and/or, ALL at the same rate.

This is not a criticism of the book but a personal observation.  It does not address the use of Relative Strength as a mechanism to cycle in or cycle out of an asset class, as one asset class weakens or strengthens against another asset class.  I have written about Relative Strength in another article, entitled "Stock Option Trading - Fundamental Flaw in Fundamental Analysis and Stock Picking". Please read it as a supplement to this article.

Thanks for reading my article,
Clinton Lee.
Founder, Home Options Trading: a uniquely retail-focused option-centric trading firm.

Please see Consistent Results (http://www.homeoptionstrading.com/consistent_results/), displaying the Model Portfolio's Performance YTD, updated each month-end. The portfolio models a typical self-directed retail option trader's account up to USD $50,000. Here's the stats in summary:
Return: Profit/Start of Year Cash Balance = up +75.62%.
Win/Loss Probability = 90.48%. 9 Wins per 1 Loss. Average Win/Average Loss = $3.09 Won per $1 Loss. Performance Ratio = (Win/Loss Probability) x (Average Win/Average Loss) = 90.48% x $3.09 = 2.80. Positive Expectancy = $1,051 per trade.

Preview an original 55 hour video-based course for online options trading from home, at http://www.homeoptionstrading.com/original_curriculum.html
Purchase the curriculum and receive a $800 options basic course as a Bonus!

Clinton's career spans 16 years of treasury, finance and banking across Hewlett Packard, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank; and, is currently a Corporate Director for Regional Business Development with ABN Amro (acquired by RBS) in Asia. Despite the years in the finance/banking industry, it did not help him directly grasp online options trading from home.

Book Review - The Flow of Time and Money

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

There are lots of books in the world about the economy, about the need to have more income as a protection against hard and lean times. There are books that toll bells of financial doom and others that try to educate. But very few tell you how to get from here to there.

Dr. Lloyd Watts, in his book*, "The Flow of Time and Money...how to create a full and prosperous life," tells you how to transition from Middle Class to Financially Independent.

What could be simpler than understanding that the transition from Middle Class to Financially Independent is to:
"...Pay Yourself First, Accumulate Capital, Buy Assets that produce Passive Income, until that Passive Income equals your expenses...." and to do this you:"...find out that changing your flow of money requires effort, self-education, and consistent daily action toward long-term goals. All of these relate to how you manage your time...."

This is where Dr. Watts' book diverges from the others. He gives clear and concise diagrams and explanations for the flow of money - how the average middle class person's income comes in and goes out in expenses - and the flow of time - how the average middle class person's time is set but goes out in "expenses" related to income. It actually all makes sense, especially when you look at his simple leaky bucket diagrams.

Dr. Watts also shows how altering the flow of time and money can transition you from middle class to financially independent. Changing the flow of money to include passive income gradually eliminates the need for a job which has a direct impact on the flow of time - what you do with your time.

A theme I find in this book is the idea of leaving a legacy. He says in his section on The Flow of Life:
"...It's no coincidence that Time and Money have the same structural form...Some people call it Life Energy, or Life...But, if they are really the same thing, how does one get converted into the other? The poor and middle class do it the easy way. They spend their time working for money, and their employer does the conversion for them...We get our 168 hours/week, which is spent sleeping, eating, bathing, watching TV, commuting and working. Our employer pays us for that work, and we spend money on taxes, food, shelter, entertainment and toys. At the end of a life, what do we have to show for it?...."

Dr. Watts is obviously a bit of a philosopher. Although his book is short and to the point, it invites thought and contemplation. He takes us from a discussion of the flow of money and time and how we can transition from middle class to financially independent - and how to get there - but also he concludes with what I call Life Questions:
"...there is more to life than just financial success. Other important aspects of a person's life can include their relationships, health, spirituality, artistic endeavors, community service, contribution to the world, etc. Ultimately, we may ask what kind of a legacy have we left behind....""...Try asking yourself this question: 'What is the biggest problem in people's daily lives that I can meaningfully address?'...Help even one person solve a problem, and you make a difference to that person. If you can generalize your solution method and share it with a lot of people, you will make a contribution to the world...."

I find that this book hits at a good time, given the current global economy and the fact that millions of Baby Boomers are beginning to ask those legacy-type of questions of themselves. Understanding where we are financially and understanding how that standing effects how we spend our time is valuable information. Add to that Dr. Watts' explanation of how to get from middle class to financially independent and what that would do to how we spend our time gives us some ammunition to change our situation.

A thought that just occurred to me - in my parents' day, their goal was to be middle class. They wanted nothing more than the comfort of a house, at least the one car, a steady paycheck and food on the table. Now, we can't even be sure we can keep the house we have, cars are expensive to keep and maintain, our paychecks are no longer a sure thing and food prices are continually rising. Dr. Watts' book comes at a good time.

*To learn more about Dr. Watts and his book, "The Flow of Time and Money" go to http://www.lloydwatts.com/

Linda C Smith, author and owner of a home-based business. I write a business blog at http://intlnat.com/ where you can also find links to my business. My joy in business is sharing my passion for my products as well as showing others how they can enjoy the benefits of a home business.

economics degree online

economics degree online