Prajna Capital - An Investment Guide

THE mark-to-market accounting rules are being brought a little closer to economic reality — accompanied by misplaced howls of outrage. True, the ostensibly independent Financial Accounting Standards Board agreed to alter a portion of the rules only under extreme pressure. Still, the standards have forced many financial institutions to overstate losses on trillions of dollars worth of assets, intensifying the global financial crisis. Defenders of the rules say they protect bank investors and changing them will allow institutions to hide future losses. To the contrary, they have helped drive down the value of bank stocks, made shorting the shares much easier and caused bank stockholders to lost hundreds of billions of dollars in such companies as Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. William M. Isaac, a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., told a House Financial Services subcommittee “MTM accounting has destroyed well over $500 billion of capital in our financial...

Trading in currency futures helps you speculate and hedge against daily market volatility. But you should be aware of the associated risks as well WORRIED over your investment growth in the light of volatile currency exchange rate? Put your fears aside. After a long wait, currency futures’ trading was launched on NSE (India’s largest stock exchange) at 8.45 am, on August 29, 2008. Currency future is a standardised futures contract with currency as the underlying instrument. Put simply, it is a contract or an agreement to buy or sell any currency at a specified future date before contract expiry date. For those who are new to futures trading, the key factor to understand is the leveraging character of the product and the associated risk. The currency movements in the last few months bear out the importance of having currency in your portfolio and how the futures platform, with the availability of the one-year contract, makes it possible. START HERE If you want to trade in currenc...