Money Market Funds

What are money Market funds?
These are special type of mutual funds which are generally used as temporary parking places(for short durations) for their money when investors are thinking upon the options of investments, or are switching between different investment options and need temporary places which can not only store the money but also provide a return.

• Invest in extremely short timed and highly rated investment options (which generally mature in less than 13 months)
• Investment is highly liquid in the sense that you can pull out your money whenever you want to just like in a savings bank account.
• Returns are 
• greater than Savings Account.
• lesser than Fixed Deposits. 
• invest in assets like certificates of deposits, government securities, commercial paper of companies, Euro-dollar deposits and other low-risk, highly-liquid securities.

For detailed analysis of the pros and cons of Money Market Funds click here.
To start learning about them from scratch refer here.

Stock Split and it's benefits

What is a Stock Split?
When a company decides to split a share into 2 or 3 or n number of smaller fractions, the price of the resulting shares is also reduced by the same factor of 2 or 3 or n respectively so that the market capitalization of the company remains the same.
For eg:-
Consider that Google currently has 1 million shares at a price of $50, now if Google decides to split each share into say 4 shares then
No. of shares                        = 1million * 4 = 4million
Price of each new shares       = $50/4         =  $12.5
So that the total market valuation is constant which is $50 million.

Why is it beneficial?

• Many times the price of the share becomes too high for many sections of the buyer community that they find it unaffordable to trade in the shares of the company, if the company decides to split the shares, this will result into more no. of shares but at a lower price, thus enabling the investors to invest or trade in it's shares.
• splitting also increases the liquidity of the shares of the company.

Stagflation, Philips Curve and more

What is Stagflation?
Stagflation is special form of Inflation when two worse things happen simultaneously:-

• High rate of inflation
• High rates of Unemployment (Slow Economic Growth)

Why Stagflation Occurs?

It generally happens due to sudden shocks, for example if the price of oil increases then an oil importing company will face high rates of inflation suddenly as the production and transportation costs increase, while the unemployment increases in such situations. It can also happen due to inappropriate Monetory policies, which try to reduce the unemployment rates in the short run but ultimately end up in increasing the inflation rates without the reduction in the unemployment rate. For a clear picture of causes refer here. 

Philips Curve

In early times it was considered that the inflation and unemployment were inversely related. According to this curve, the lower rates of unemployment is achieved at the cost of high rates of inflation, simply put inflation rates are high when unemployment rates are low and vice versa.

This model came under attack when situations arrived (in USA in particular), when both the rates were high, ie Stagflation occurred.  As such it was argued that the Phillips curve was only valid in the short run and in the long run unemployment and wage rates took into consideration the expected levels of inflation.

Zombie Train, the game is getting popular..!

Steve Jobs : The revolutionary Newton

The legendary man, the one who moved the APPLE up against the gravity laws. Selling was like in his BLOOD, whenever he and his friends created/designed something new he would say "I CAN SELL THAT", and he did succeed. Bill Gates had quoted "He's got a belief in excellence of products. He's able to communicate that" and considers Jobs as the best inspirational leader. He takes home just $1 salary, yeah there's no million following that...! :). The worst thing that happened to him, lost his own company (got pinkslipped). He bought pixar for 10$ million and after it's success led by his new ventures into visualized story telling, Jobs went public with the company, pixar was later bought by Disney and Jobs became one of thr oard members. After Jobs was forced out of Apple by its CEO, the company set to path of losses each year, interestingly the same person invited Jobs back to Apple, within 10 months Amelio(apple's then CEO) was removed and Jobs became the boss of the company he once started. Bas after that Jobs designed and created new softwares which went on making huge profits for the company. But the worse was still to come, he was diagnosed with a pancreatic cancer but as it is said "Nothing can happen to those who has the blessing of Nature", he got cured in the rarest case....! Then came Iphone in 2007, whose success needs no thesis, and later the ipad. Really he had a life full of adventures, medical problems, backstabbing etc., I am his fan and u'hve got to too...!
    

Living Off the grid

I just ended up reading an awesome novel named "The traveler" book one of THE FOURTH REALM (with two other books ) by John Twelve Hawks. I have never read stuff like that though some kind of glimpse is present in the movie "Inception" where also characters travelled in different dimensions of time, Only here certain blessed people are able to break free their soul or light from the body and travel to certain parallel worlds after crossing various barriers of land, air, water, fire etc. The villians called Tabula have been killing these travelers and the group called Harlequins have been saving the travelers at the risk of their own life. Due to these Tabulas only two known travelers named Corrigon Brothers are alive, but this time the Tabula want to capture these brothers alive and use their powers to build Quantum Computer and control the human population. After the death of their father, they along with their mother have been living off the grid ie used fake names, satellite phones, no electricity supply line connected instead a wind mill etc. What makes me feel this novel somewhat real is it's elusive author who is himself believed to live off the grid. No one has ever seen him, not even his publishes and editors, he communicates with them using a satellite phone and untraceable internet connection. This is mysterious. The wikipedia article confirms this and several other newspaper articles.This is some amazing stuff if this is real. You must check it out at this wikipedia article

Well, There are many ways one can popularize his/her blog i m listing some of them:-

• Get the name of your blog printed on your pants or t-shirts to get the people notice.
• Post your Blog address on the walls of your friend on facebook/twitter etc.
• You can get some pamphlets printed about your blog and distribute them in cafes,malls etc.
• Whenever you get hold of someone's notebook etc. try to leave your Blog address.
• You can go to all the internet cafe's of your city and make your Blog as the homepage of the computers, this is a bit tricky though. :)
• If u have good software skills you can even hack into other sites and leave your blog address ....!!! :P
• You can stumbleupon your blog....!!
• You can get your pet a new dress with your blog's ad and make him make a city tour....!
• You can stick a sticker of your blog on your car/bike for advertizing it.......