Pride/Hughes/Kapoor Business, 10th Edition

Audio Review Transcript
Chapter 20 Understanding Personal Finances and Investments

1. Explain why you should manage your personal finances and develop a personal investment program

When you have accumulated enough money to begin investing, the best place to start is by determining your current financial condition. You can accomplish this by preparing a personal balance sheet, which is a list of your assets and liabilities on a specific date, and a personal income statement, which lists your income and expenses for a period of time. Based on these statements, you can determine your current financial condition and construct a budget. A personal budget is a specific plan for spending your income. It is important to balance your budget so that your income is equal to the money you spend or invest each month. Personal investment is the use of your personal funds to earn a financial return. Your investment goals must be specific, measurable, tailored to your needs, and oriented toward the future.
Once you have formulated goals, you can begin to assess different investment opportunities, including the potential return and risk. Many investors seek help from a financial planner, an individual who has had at least two years of training in investments, insurance, taxation, retirement planning, and estate planning and has passed a rigorous examination. Many financial planners suggest you begin by establishing an emergency fund, a certain amount of money you can access quickly in case of an immediate need. It should probably equal about three months’ living expenses. Then you may begin acquiring investments, according to your program. And once you have put your program into operation, you must continue to monitor it and modify it as necessary. (LO 1 ends)

2. Describe how the factors of safety, risk, income, growth, and liquidity affect your investment program
How can you tell which investments are right for a program and which are not? One way is to analyze such features as safety, risk, income, growth, and liquidity. Safety and risk are inversely related. A high degree of safety generally has very low risk, and vice versa. If safety is very important you, you may invest more heavily in blue-chip stocks, a safe investment that usually attracts conservative investors. To earn higher returns, you must generally give up some safety. Some investors base their decision on a projected rate of return. To calculate rate of return, take the total income you receive on an investment over a specific period of time, and divide by the amount invested. Investment income is the periodic return from and investment and is generally achieved through CDs, corporate and government bonds, and certain stocks. Growth means that stocks will increase in value. Mutual funds and real estate offer growth possibilities. Liquidity is the ease with which an investment can be converted to cash. Cash and cash equivalents are the most liquid. (LO 2 ends)

3. Understand how securities are bought and sold

The world of securities and exchanges and brokerage can be fast, exciting, complex, and confusing. Individuals and organizations buy and sell securities—stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and many other investments. They generally work through an account executive or stockbroker, who in turn buys and sells in either the primary market or the secondary market.
The primary market is a market in which an investor purchases financial securities, through an investment bank, directly from the issuer of those securities. An investment banking firm is an organization that assists corporations in raising funds, usually by helping sell new issues of stocks, bonds, or other financial securities. You may recall that a new stock issued for the first time is an initial public offering, or IPO. An IPO is generally classified as a high-risk investment, which means that the investment is made in the uncertain hope of earning a relatively large profit in a short time.
The decision to sell securities is a complicated, time-consuming, and expensive proposition for an organization. Large firms that need a lot of financing often use an investment banking firm to sell and distribute a new security issue. Analysts for the investment bank examine the corporation’s financial condition to determine the level of risk. If the analysts are satisfied, the bank will buy the securities and resell them to its customers, both individuals and institutional investors. Institutional investors are pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, banks, and other organizations that trade large quantities of securities. The investment banking firm charges a commission to sell the securities. The other way to obtain financing through the primary market is to sell directly to current stockholders. Usually this is done by mailing the promotional material describing the new issue to current stockholders. This more direct route avoids the investment bank’s commission fee.
After securities are originally sold through the primary market, the shares are traded on a regular basis on the secondary market. The secondary market, then, is a market for existing financial securities that are traded between investors. Secondary market transactions are traded through a securities exchange or on the over-the-counter market. A securities exchange is a marketplace where member brokers meet to buy and sell securities. In order for securities to be sold on a particular exchange, they must be listed, or accepted for trading, at that exchange. Securities may be listed on a national exchange, such as the New York Stock Exchange, on a regional exchange, or on foreign securities exchanges.
Not all securities are traded on organized exchanges, some are traded on the over-the-counter counter or OTC, market. The OTC market is a network of dealers who buy and sell the stocks of corporations that are not listed on a securities exchange.
The Nasdaq is a computerized electronic exchange system through which most over-the-counter securities are traded. To buy or sell shares of a stock that trades on the Nasdaq, the account executive enters the order into a computer where it is combined with other buy or sell orders for a particular security, and a dealer, sometimes called a marketmaker, puts together the buy and sell orders.
An account executive is an individual, sometimes called a stockbroker or registered representative, who buys and sells securities for clients. Choosing an account executive can be difficult. Although you are interested in the broker’s recommendations, the broker is interested in your trades as a means of earning commissions. Some engage in churning, a practice that generates commissions by excessive buying and selling. You must also decide whether you need a full-service broker, who charges higher commissions but provides personal investment advice and research, or a discount broker, who simply executes buy and sell orders. It is also possible to trade securities online with a computer.Once investors have decided on a security, most call their broker and place either a market order, which is a request that a security be purchased or sold at the current market price; a limit order, a request that a security be bought or sold at a price that is equal to or better than some specified price; or a discretionary order, an order to buy or sell a security that lets the broker decide when to execute the transaction and at what price. Although some people still prefer to use the phone to place buy and sell orders, a growing number of investors are using computers. Many software programs help evaluate potential investments, monitor their value, and place orders. Another kind of computerized transaction is program trading, a computer-driven program to buy or sell selected stocks. The computer monitors certain stocks, and when the prices increase or decrease to certain levels, an automatic order to buy or sell is entered. Investors may pay commission fees when buying, selling, or both, depending on the type of security.

Securities are regulated by state and federal laws. First, Congress passed the Securities Act of 1933 to provide for full disclosure, the requirement that investors should have access to all important facts about stocks, bonds, and other securities so that they can make informed decisions. This act also requires that corporations issuing new securities file a registration statement and publish a prospectus, a detailed, written description of a new security, the issuing corporation, and the corporation’s top management. Additional legislation has been passed to curb insider trading, the practice of board members, corporate managers, and employees buying and selling a corporation’s stock.
Several federal laws control securities trading, and these laws are enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC. The SEC also supervises all national exchanges, investment companies, OTC brokerage firms, and most other organizations involved in trading securities. In addition, most states require that new security issues be registered with a state agency and that brokers and securities dealers operating in the state be licensed. (LO 3 ends)

4. Identify the advantages and disadvantages of savings accounts, bonds, stocks, mutual funds, and real estate investment

The process of spreading assets among several types of investments to lessen risk is called asset allocation. While the term asset allocation is a fancy way of saying it, simply put, it really means that you need to diversify and avoid the pitfall of putting all of your eggs in one basket—a common mistake made by investors. Two other factors—the time your investments have to work for you and your age—also should be considered before deciding where to invest your money. Now, let’s take a brief look at some traditional investment alternatives. Bank accounts are the most conservative of all investments; corporate bonds, are long-term income-producing investments; convertible bonds, which can produce interest income or be converted to common stock; government bonds, which include treasury bills, treasury notes, treasury bonds, and savings bonds; and municipal bonds, or munis, which are a debt security issued by a state or local government. Although bank accounts and bonds can provide investment growth, they generally are purchased by investors who seek a predicable source of income. Both corporate and government bonds are a form of debt financing. As a result, bonds generally are considered a more conservative investment than stocks or most mutual funds. Another traditional form of investment is buying stock. One reason why investors buy stock is dividend income. A corporation’s board of directors likes to keep investors happy by declaring a dividend from after-tax profits. The board may declare a cash dividend or a stock dividend, which is a dividend in the form of additional stock. Another way to make money in stocks is through capital gains, the difference between a security’s purchase price and selling price. To earn a capital gain, you must sell when the market value of the stock is higher than the original purchase price. The market value is the price of one share of a stock at a particular time. If the directors of a corporation feel that the price of the firm’s stock is getting too high, and thus less likely to attract new investors, they may declare a stock split, the division of each outstanding share of a corporation’s stock into a greater number of shares. Owners of preferred stock make money on dividends as well, but preferred stockholders receive theirs before common stockholders do. In addition, preferred stock may have cumulative or convertible features that make them attractive investments.
Another type of investment is mutual funds. A mutual fund is a professionally managed investment vehicle that combines and invests the funds of many individual investors. Mutual funds are safer than single stocks because they are diversified. A mutual fund may be closed end, meaning it is open to investors only when first organized, or open end, meaning it sells to any investor at any time. An exchange-traded fund (ETF) invests in the stocks contained in a specific stock index. The share value of any mutual fund is determined by calculating its net asset value (NAV), which is the current market value of the mutual fund’s portfolio minus the mutual fund’s liabilities, divided by the number of outstanding shares. Mutual fund managers tailor their investment portfolios to provide growth, income, or a combination of both. With respect to costs, mutual funds may be load funds, where the investor pays a sales charge every time he or she purchases shares, or no-load funds, with no sales charges at all. Most mutual funds are managed funds, meaning that a professional manager chooses the securities contained in the fund. Others are index funds, sometimes called passive funds, which contain only stocks or bonds in that particular index. Mutual funds are available to meet just about any conceivable investment objective. In fact, to help investors achieve their investment objectives, most investment companies allow shareholders to switch from one fund to another fund within the same family of funds. A family of funds is a group of mutual funds managed by one investment company.
The last low-risk investment alternative is real estate. Although one of the best hedges against inflation, it too has risks. If you are forced to hold your investment longer than originally planned, the payments can be a heavy burden. (LO 4 ends)

5. Describe high-risk investment techniques

Now let’s look at more high-risk investment alternatives. These include selling short and buying stock on margin. If you buy stocks expecting that they will increase in value and can then be sold at a profit, you are buying long. But you can use a procedure called selling short to make a profit when the price of an individual stock is falling. Selling short is the process of selling stock that an investor does not actually own but has borrowed from a brokerage firm and will repay at a later date. The procedure works like this: You arrange to borrow a certain number of shares of a stock from a brokerage firm. You sell the borrowed stock immediately, assuming that the price will drop in a reasonably short time. After the price drops, you buy the same number of shares that you borrowed earlier. Then you give the newly acquired stock back to the brokerage firm to replace the borrowed stock.
An investor buys on margin by borrowing part of the purchase price, usually from a stock brokerage firm. The margin requirement is the portion of the price of a stock that cannot be borrowed. This requirement level is set by the Fed. Stock purchased on margin serves as collateral for the borrowed funds. If the value of the stock bought on margin decreases to approximately half its original price, you will receive a margin call from the brokerage firm requiring additional cash or securities as collateral. Other high-risk investments include stock options, commodities, precious metals, gemstones, coins, and antiques and collectibles. (LO 5 ends)
6. Use financial information to evaluate investment alternatives
Where do people get information about investments? On the Internet you can find interest rates on CDs, current price information for stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, and experts’ recommendations. By using a search engine you can search for the investment alternative you want to explore. Newspapers carry several pages of business news and some are devoted entirely to financial and economic news, including information on common and preferred stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Also, for a fee, various investors’ services provide information about investments to subscribers. Other sources include brokerage firm reports, business periodicals, and corporate reports. Finally investors often gauge the stock market through security averages reported in newspapers and on TV news programs. A security average or security index is an average of the current market prices of selected securities. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index are two of the most common. (LO 6 ends)