Stock Market: Restricted Stocks Are Better Than Stocks Options !!

Many companies are concerned by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recommendation that Stock Options be shown on the company's expense sheet. Especially high-tech and start-up companies are concerned because they fear losing one of their great motivating tools. They needn't worry. There is already a better compensation choice, Restricted Stocks Options.

Motivation Through Restricted Stocks Issuing restricted stock is a better motivating tool than granting stock options for two reasons. First, many employees don't understand stock options. They don't know that they have to take action to realize any gain. It is far easier for them to understand a vesting period on restricted stock. Second, restricted stock can't become worthless like stock options. Even if the stock price falls, restricted stock retains some intrinsic value.

A Stock Option grant with a strike price of $10 has no value when the stock trades at $8. Restricted Stock awarded when trading at $10 is still worth $8. A stock option has lost 100% of its value. The restricted stock has only lost 20%.

Employee Ownership Through Restricted Stocks

One of the advantages restricted stock has from a management perspective is it is better at motivating employee to think and act like owners. When a Restricted Stock Award vests, the employee who received the restricted stock becomes an owner of the company. He or she has to take no further action to make it happen. The employee is now part owner and can vote at the annual meeting.

Actual ownership of part of the company is a powerful motivating tool in trying to get employees to own the company's objectives. This makes them more focused on meeting goals.

Stock Options, on the other hand, do little to instill a sense of ownership. They are viewed by most as a high risk gamble that has a potentially great reward. An individual may very well invest a couple of years helping a company grow and prosper when compensated for that time by stock options. However, their loyalty is to raising the stock price so the can cash out and make a bundle. They have no loyalty to the company and its goals. Often, they will choose actions which raise stock price in the short term, thus increasing their potential gain, rather than taking a longer-term view that will help the company.

Restricted Stocks Supporters

The LA Times reports that Microsoft plans to replace stock options with restricted stock grants. Amazon.co.uk notes that all their employees are allocated a number of Amazon.com restricted stock units when they join. The Altria Group, Inc., points out in their annual report that "in 2003, we made equity awards in shares of restricted stock rather than fixed-price stock options". Dell Computer Corp., Cendant Corp., and DaimlerChrysler AG are also reported to be moving toward restricted stock in lieu of stock options.

Manage This Issue

Restricted Stocks awards are a better tool for motivating employees than stock options. Restricted stock awards are better than stock options for motivating employees to think and act like owners. Restricted stock awards are better treated on the financial statements than stock options. That makes restricted stock awards better for the employees, management, the investors, and the regulators. There is no reason to not make that choice.

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Stock Market: What Are Mutual Funds?

­A Mutual Fund is a company that pools investors' money to make multiple types of investments, known as the portfolio. Stocks, bonds, and Money Market Funds are all examples of the types of investments that may make up a mutual fund.

The Mutual Fund is managed by a professional investment manager who buys and sells securities for the most effective growth of the fund. As a mutual fund investor, you become a "Share Holder" of the mutual fund company. When there are profits you will earn dividends. When there are losses, your shares will decrease in value.

­Mutual Funds are, by definition, diversified, meaning they are made up a lot of different investments. That tends to lower your risk (avoiding the old "all of your eggs in one basket" problem).

Because someone else manages them, you don't have to worry about diversifying individual investments yourself or doing your own record keeping. That makes it easier to just buy them and forget about them. That's not always the best strategy, however -- your money is in someone else's hands, after all.

Since the fund manager's compensation is based on how well the fund performs, you can be assured they will work diligently to make sure the fund performs well. Managing their fund is their full-time job!

Mutual Funds can be open-ended or closed-ended. But many people consider all Mutual Funds to be open-ended, while putting closed-ended funds in another category.

"Open-Ended" means that shares are issued in the fund (or sold back to the fund) whenever anyone wants them. With closed-ended funds, only a certain number of shares can be issued for a particular fund, and they can only be sold back to the fund when the fund itself terminates. (You can sell closed-ended funds to other investors on the secondary market, though.)

Load refers to the sales charges added to a mutual fund when you purchase it. The load charge goes to the fund salesperson as a commission and payment for their research services. Load charges can be up to 8.5% percent of the selling price and can be figured in as a front-end load (meaning you pay it when you buy the mutual fund) or a back-end load (meaning you pay when you sell the mutual fund).

Many Mutual Funds are no-load funds. Yes, that means there is no sales fee charged and the fund is direct-marketed so you can buy it without the help of a salesperson. With the wealth of information on the Internet today, it is certainly easier to make smart choices yourself to save money.

In addition to "No-Load Funds", there are also funds that charge up to 3.5% percent as a sales fee. These are called low-load funds and can still be a good deal.

Mutual Funds Fall Into Three Categories:

Equity Funds - are made up of investments of only common stock. These can be riskier (and earn more money) than other types.

Fixed-Income Funds - are made up of government and corporate securities that provide a fixed return and are usually low risk.

Balanced Funds - combine both stocks and bonds in the investment pool and offer a moderate to low risk. While low risk may sound good, it is also accompanied by lower rates of return-meaning you risk less, but your investment won't earn as much. You have to decide how much risk you're willing to take on before you invest your money.

If you have invested in a College Savings Fund (529 Plans - ­Next to saving for retirement, your biggest financial challenge is probably saving for your kids' college education.) or a 401k Account (In 1978, Congress decided that Americans needed a bit of encouragement to save more money for retirement! The plan got its name from its section number and paragraph in the Internal Revenue Code - section 401, paragraph K), chances are good that already own a few Mutual Funds. Mutual Funds are great for long-term investments like these. You can also buy mutual funds directly from a mutual fund company.

Most of these offer 'No-Load Funds' (or sometimes low-load funds). You can find lists of mutual fund companies on the Internet and purchase shares by simply filling out an application and mailing a check. Once you are a shareholder, you will receive statements telling you how the fund is doing as well as how much your own investment is growing. You can also set up monthly bank transfers to automatically buy more shares every month.

Remember to do your research and select a Mutual Fund that fits the level of risk you are willing to take with your hard-earned cash. Then just sit back and hope for the best!

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To Your Online Trading Success,

A Professional Stocks and Forex Market Trader

Dan A.

Stocks Investment: What Is a "Retained Earnings" Account?

A Special kind of account, called "Retained Earnings" is an interesting and important account. Most business people know it better as "Net Profit". Net Profit is, of course, your total income less your total expenses. For example:

Sales: $1600.00 USD

Cost of stock: $1200.00 USD

Operating expenses: $300.00 USD

Net Profit: $100.00 USD

So, after this series of transactions $100 profit is made. Since net profit is usually the same as retained earnings (they are not always exactly the same and this point is discussed later) and retained earnings is a liability, then it would seem net profit is actually something we don't want...Of course, this liability is a special case. It is not money owed to our suppliers, but money owed to "us" (since the company must issue its profits to its owners). In this case, from our perspective, this is a "good" liability. In reality of course, the company may decide to keep the profit as a reserve because its managers are expecting additional expenses next month, and so on. The Net Profit or retained earnings may be eaten up before the firm gets a chance to issue it to its owners.

From an accountant's perspective, operating a general ledger involves shuffling numbers between sets of asset and liability accounts. Obviously, the higher the numbers on the assets side, the better. These types of accounts are referred to as balance sheet accounts.

One of the key concepts that accountants use to ensure that they don't miss anything when updating account totals is that of balance. Every monetary transaction involves the interaction of at least two accounts. Let's write the above example out again in a form that an accountant would be slightly more happy with:

Sales: $1600.00 + (increase by)

Stock levels: - $1200.00 (decrease by)

--------

$400.00 -

Operating expenses $300.00 (deduct expenses)

--------

Net Profit: $100.00

In the above all the amounts that make up the transaction have been accounted for. Sales have been increased by $1600. We therefore need to offset this $1600 against other accounts that balance to $1600 also. This was achieved by deducting $1200 worth of stock (or increasing the cost of the sale by $1200 depending on how you look at it), increasing operating expenses by $300 and Net Profit the remainder. The principle of balance will be discussed in greater detail in the next section when we get to debits and credits. For now, lets continue to look at retained earnings.

The major problem dealing with only asset and liability accounts is that while they tell us how much we owe and how much we own, they don't tell us how we arrived at this situation. If the retained earnings account holds $10,000 what did we do right to arrive at this figure or if the balance is negative $3000 what did we do wrong?

In order to determine how the final total was made up, it is common accounting practice to expand the retained earnings accounts into income and expenses. Income, revenue or sales are usually thought of as assets and expenses, overheads or costs are thought of as liabilities. However, they are not quite the same thing. We don't really owe money to the "vehicle maintenance" expense account, we owe it to Joe's garage, for example. Likewise, we don't strictly speaking, get money from a sales account, we get it from a customer's account when they pay their bills.


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To Your Online Trading Success,
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Stocks Trading: Beating The Stock Market !!

"Many people dream about beating the market through their stock investments. However, is this really worth the effort and is it really possible?"

Many have attempted to beat the stock market and only a few have managed. Some pundits have gone a step further to claim systems that guarantee this. Nevertheless, beating the market may not be the best goal that you can set for your stocks. The reason for this is that there are a number of other considerations that should be made.

People are generally unclear about the meaning behind the word “Market”, which leads to its different definitions. Different indexes are used when referred to the stock market one of them being the S&P 500. However, this index fails to objectively present all of the stock sizes.

Beating The Market requires the undertaking of various Stocks Deals that enjoy short term benefits. Some experts recommend that you purchase companies that have high customer satisfaction attached to them. There is logic behind this argument, because when clients are satisfied with the product or service of a particular company they use it and become loyal to the company. As a result, the returns increase as well as the popularity among investors. The price of the stock of the company will be also influenced in an upward direction. If you have managed to invest in the company while its price was still low, congratulations you have managed to beat the market.

If you fail to walk away of the stock market when the right time has come you may put your money at risk. And what actually happens is that instead you beat the stock market you are beaten by it. Beating the market requires you to know when is the right time to enter it and when to exit it. You should learn its indications and not only notice them, but also understand the signals that they send to you.

No matter how good you may be at such things, you should consider whether it is worth risking your money for such a goal. Beating The Market may reward you very well, but you should never forget that its punishment can be even higher. Winning several hundred dollars from the stock market today may result in their loss tomorrow. Because, even if you have done it once, beating the stock market twice cannot be guaranteed for sure. No matter what formulas the pundits have offered and techniques applied, it is a game in which only a few have succeeded.

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To Your Stocks Trading Success,
A Professional Stocks and Forex Market Trader
Dan A.