What is the New York Stock Exchange?

By Samantha Asher

The New York Stock Exchange, also known as the NYSE, is one of the biggest stock exchanges in existence. It lists over 3,200 companies and is located in New York City. Just like any other exchange, buyers and sellers are able to buy and sell stock easily through their broker over the NYSE. Like any kind of market, the NYSE permits stock to be bought and sold.

Since January 24, 2007, the Hybrid Market has allowed all NYSE stocks to be traded electronically, whereas before all business was conducted on the floor of the NYSE. The NYSE has a very specific way of doing business. Stock brokers have to go to the right location to buy their stock and it is run like an auction.

In order to trade on the floor, stock brokers must hold one of the 1,366 seats available. These seats are bought and sold similar to stocks. The price goes up and down just like stocks do and are generally very expensive.

Two of the most common U.S. stock indexes are the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or the Dow for Short, and the Standard & Poor 500, or S&P 500. The Dow includes 30 large companies, and the S&P 500 includes, you guessed it, 500.

Indexes are often used as a measuring point for how well the market is doing as a whole. The Dow is calculated through a price weighted average. Instead of a simple average, it is calculated by adding together the price of each of the 30 stocks and dividing it by 30 in order to keep it proportional.

The S&P 500 is often considered a better index to look at because it includes 500 stocks and is market value-weighted. They compute the value based upon the market value of the shares outstanding. An example would be if one stock has three times as many stock outstanding, it will be counted three times as much.

Financial experts use Market Value Indexes to rate the overall progress of the stock market. For example, they will compare the value of the S&P 500 last month to this month to see if it went up or down. The Dow is used as well the same way, as are other indexes.

If you want to succeed in the stock market, you must understand the exchanges you buy from and the indexes well. They will help you tremendously and have been proven to be effective.

About the Author:

How does investing in stocks work? Learn about investing in stocks and learn how to buy stocks before you purchase so that you can maximize your gains.

A One Tenth Full Glass

By Louis R Burns

Do you focus on the positive even when there's much less than half of it there?

When you have a choice, it's usually better to tell people what they can do rather than can't. Here are three examples:

Jamie Smart of Salad Seminars wrote an e-book titled, "The Top Ten Secrets of Instant Wealth." If I hadn't recently got some flash cards from Salad, I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought.

Jamie talks about asking better questions for wealth. Instead of seeing something and saying, "I can't afford it," he suggests asking, "How can I afford it?" The glass being half full significantly affects your attitude as it will with your audience.

A second example is bad mouthing "hypnotic techniques." Here's a quote from an article in an e-zine which shall remain nameless:

"Don't try to be a copywriter. Just explain what you've got and why anyone should care - and then just get out of the way.

"In other words, don't mess around with mystical, manipulative tactics that are supposed to magically vacuum money out of your prospects' wallets while they grin stupidly in a hypnotic trance.

"Just talk to people. Be interesting. Be respectful of their time. Share value. Make your pitch. And shut up."

No doubt the point the author was trying to make was to avoid the mistake of sounding like you're trying too hard or using hype. He's telling you to do exactly what a copywriter does while starting by telling you not to try to be a copywriter.

The take away from that is that the writer must not know how to use hypnotic language patterns. There's more opportunity then for those of us that do.

This post was prompted this last example. I went to see a movie at our IMAX last week. The theater is inside a state history museum. While everyone was waiting in line, one of the museum employees made an announcement with an interesting one tenth full twist.

He makes the announcement that food and drinks are allowed in the theater as long as they are water with screw top bottles and candy bars still sealed in their wrappers. There's no doubt that this approach was better received than telling people that no food or drinks were allowed except bottled water.

One of Henry Ford's famous quotes was that you could have any color of Model-T car as long as it was black.

Whether people noticed the approach at the museum or not, it was humorous. That was actually much less than one tenth full but you get the point... be positive as much as possible for best results.

About the Author:

Louis Burns is a certified NLP Copywriter. He has created a comprehensive home study course on hypnotic writing. Follow his blog at www.louisrburns.com.

Forex Trading - The Fundamentals

By John Eather

Everyday, more than 2 trillion bucks is traded in the Foreign Exchange market and without exclusion the greatest trading worldwide. The FX is open 24 hrs a day, but only 5 days a week, including public vacations. The global financial centres begin trading in Sydney, then to Tokyo, and finally London and New York.

There are always active buyers and sellers at any given time anywhere in the world. This allows the FX market the most fluidity the world has ever had or known. Currency in the Forex market is traded only in pairs, for example, EUR/USD, GBP/USD or UDS/JPY. All trades coinside with the selling of one and the purchase of another. The basis for the buy or sell is the base currency. Consider the currency as an object to be bought or sold and the first of the pair is the base currency.

The principal currency of the Forex marketplace and in general the base for quotes is the U.S. dollar includeing the USD/JPY, USD/CHF and USD/CAD. There are exclusions and they are the EUR/USD and GBP/USD. These and a lot of other currencies quotes are expressed in units of one dollar ($1) USD per the other half of the currency pair. For instance, a quote of USD/CAD. 1.1302 merely entails that one US ($1) equals 1.130 Canadian dollars. You will frequently discover whilst trading Forex, a double-sided quote. It'll be a bid' and ask' price quote. Bid' is the price to sell the base currency whilst, simultaneously, buying the other currency. Ask' price is the purchase price of base currency and, simultaneously, selling the other currency from broker.

The differences between bid' and ask' prices is the spread and is paid to the Forex broker as commission. Commission-free trading is offered by majority of brokers, and they instead profit from trades' spread. On major currency pairs the spread is usually 3-5 pips. Rollovers, what are they? The process by which the completion of a deal is rolled to another value date. The cost is based on the differential rate of the pair of currencies. Almost all brokers will roll your open positions thus allowing the position to be held over indefinitely.

Trading on the margin or leverage and trading this in reality permits Forex brokers the advantage of not bearing the full payout on the complete cost of the positions value. Forex trading brokers, at any rate nearly all of them, provide more leverage than futures or stocks. The total amount of leverage access in Forex trading could be up to 500 times higher in value of your forex trading account. In Forex trading the leverage availableness is amongst the first worries of numerous traders of Forex.

Brokers who take advantage of the leverage can make larger, much larger profits and as this can sometimes be a double edge sword and they can also ecru very large losses. However, with a careful, affordable and properly prepared plan and persistence this may never be an issue. A properly put together investment plan will aid you in your success. Here I will issue a word of caution. As in gambling, you should never, never ever invest more than you can comfortably afford to lose and when you do profit, begin using the profit for investment purposes. Go online and open and practice in fun and when ready go for it and good luck.

About the Author:

If you have a plan to trade forex online, you definitely should check John Eather's brilliant free ecourse and reports on trading forex online. Youll get the most recent info on the most state-of-the-art trading robots and trading systems you can find on the internet these days. Go to Money Making FX Trader for more details.