There is no question that quality loose leaf tea is better tasting and offers more flavors and varieties that bagged tea. But quality loose leaf tea has another feature that appeals to tea drinkers and that is ease of ordering on the internet.Internet shopping or e-commerce as it is often called offers variety, lower cost and convenience and now, with the security safeguards offered by security providers like Verisign and others, e-commerce is absolutely safe.Over the years, e-commerce sites have become easier and easier to use and now orders can be placed quickly and easily. In addition, many e-commerce sites offer a variety of low cost shipping choices that can arrange delivery to the customer’s home, place of work or other locations.Prices are low with e-commerce shopping because the human element is removed and often the consumer can make a purchase without paying annoying and costly sales tax.Loose leaf specialty tea is a particularly attractive product for e-commerce. There are a wide variety of tea choices that can be included on the tea e-commerce site and, in addition to tea products, many suppliers offer high quality accessories.E-commerce sites can also provide value added information that the consumer needs ranging from in depth articles about tea and the history of tea to caffeine levels and compatible menu choice that enhance the tea experience. Some sites even provide for customer feedback that allow the consumer the ability to rate the product and service.Some e-commerce suppliers make ordering and trying the tea even easier by offering packaging that includes sampler packages (avoids the high cost of trying new flavors and blends), attractive tea tins, and ½ lb and 1 pound packages for bulk buyers. Of course, as the quantity of tea increases in each package, the unit cost of the product decreases.Loose leaf tea is also easy to ship and store and has a long shelf life so in these days of rising fuel prices, the cost impact of shipping becomes minimized.Some tea e-commerce sites are particularly good at promoting their products on the market by creating links and providing rich content that is used by search engines that list the sites. This type of promotion is definitely value added in that only new, fresh content about tea is rated by the search engines. In addition, those sites with relevant content links are counted by the major search engines.In the end, however, it is the quality of the product and service that create customer satisfaction. If the product is low in quality or the service of ordering and shipping is substandard, aggressive promotion will not create business in the long run. Successful specialty tea e-commerce sites offer the highest quality products combined with the most efficient, customer oriented service.When buying specialty tea through an e-commerce site always look for quality tea products from a site with a reputation for customer service and satisfaction.
Quality Specialty Tea and E-Commerce
Understanding The Most Important Investment Concepts
It’s always good to have at least a basic foundation of fundamental investment knowledge whether you’re a beginner to investing or working with a professional financial advisor. The reason is simple: You are likely to be more comfortable in investing your money if you understand the lingo and basic principles of investing. Combining the basics with what you want to get out of your investment strategy, you will be empowered to make financial decisions yourself more confidently and also be more engaged and interactive with your financial advisor.Below are a few basic principles that you should be able to understand and apply when you are looking to potentially invest your money or evaluate an investment opportunity. You’ll find that the most important points pertaining to investing are quite logical and require just good common sense. The first step is to make the decision to start investing. If you’ve never invested your money, you’re probably not comfortable with make any investment decisions or moves in the market because you have little or no experience. It’s always difficult to find somewhere to begin. Even if you find a trusted financial advisor, it is still worth your time to educate yourself, so you can participate in the process of investing your money and so that you may be able to ask good questions. The more you understand the reasons behind the advice you’re getting, the more comfortable you will be with the direction you’ve chosen.Don’t Be Intimidated by the Financial Lingo If you turn on the TV to some financial network, don’t worry that you can’t understand the financial professionals right away. A lot of what they say can actually boil down to simple financial concepts. Make sure you ask your financial advisor the questions that concern you so you become more comfortable when investing.IRAs Are Containers to Hold Investments-They Aren’t Investments Themselves The first area of confusions that most new investors get confused about is around their retirement vehicles and plans that they may have. If an investor has an individual retirement accounts (IRA), a 401(k) plan from work, or any other retirement-type plan at work, you should understand the differences between all the accounts you have and the actual investments you have within those accounts. Your IRA or 401(k) is just a container that houses your investments that brings with it some tax-advantages.Understand Stocks and Bonds Almost every portfolio contains these kinds of asset classes. If you buy a stock in a company, you are buying a share of the company’s earnings. You become a shareholder and an owner at the same time of the company. This simply means that you have equity in the company and the company’s future – ready to go up and down with the company’s ups and downs. If the company is doing well, then your shares will be doing well and increase in value. If the company is not doing well or fails, then you can lose value in your investment.If you buy bonds, you become a creditor of the company. You are simply lending money to the company. So you don’t become a shareholder or owner of the company/bond-issuer. If the company fails, then you will lose the amount of your loan to the company. However, the risk of losing your investment to bondholder is less then the risk to owners/shareholders. The reasoning behind this is that to stay in business and have access to funds to finance future expansion or growth, the company must have a good credit rating. Furthermore, the law protects a company’s bondholders over its shareholders if the company goes bankrupt.Stocks are considered to be equity investments, because they give the investor an equity stake in the company, while bonds are referred to as fixed-income investments or debt instruments. A mutual fund, for instance, can invest in any number or combination of stocks and bonds.Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket An important investment principle of all is not to invest all or most of your money into one investment.Include multiple and varying types of investments in your portfolio. There are many asset classes such as stocks, bonds, precious metals, commodities, art, real estate, and so on. Cash, in fact, is also an asset class. It includes currency, cash alternatives, and money-market instruments. Individual asset classes are also broken down into more precise investments such as small company stocks, large company stocks, or bonds issued by municipalities, or bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury.The various asset classes go up and down at different times and at different speeds. The purpose of a diversified portfolio is to mitigate the ups and downs by smoothing out the volatility in a portfolio. If some investments are losing value at some particular period, others will be increasing in value at the same time. So the overarching objective is to make sure that the gainers offset the losers, which may minimize the impact of overall losses in your portfolio from any single investment. The goal that you will have with your financial advisor is to help find the right balance between the asset classes in your portfolio given your investment objectives, risk tolerance, and investment time horizon. This process is commonly referred to as asset allocation.As mentioned earlier, each asset class can be internally diversified further with investment options within that class. For example, if you decide to invest in a financial company, but are worried that you may lose your money by putting everything into one single company, consider making investments into other companies ( Company A, Company B, and Company C) rather than putting all your eggs in one basket. Even though diversification alone doesn’t guarantee that you will make a profit or ensure that you won’t lose value in your portfolio, it can still help you manage the amount of risk you are taking or are willing to take. Recognize the Tradeoff Between an Investment’s Risk and Return Risk is generally looked at as the possibility of losing money from your investments. Return is looked at as the reward you receive for making the investment. Returns can be found by measuring the increase in value of your investment from your original investment principal.There is a relationship between risk and reward in finance. If you have a low risk-tolerance, then you will take on less risk when investing, which will result in a lower possible return at any given time, relatively. The highest risk investment will offer the chance to make high returns.Between taking on the highest risk and the lowest risk, most investors seek to find the right balance of risk and returns that he/she feels comfortable with. So, if someone advises you to get in on an investment that has a high return and it is risk-free, then it may be too good to be true.Understand the Difference Between Investing for Growth and Investing for Income Once you make the decision to invest, you may want to consider whether the objective of your portfolio is have it increase in value by growing overtime, or is it to produce a fixed income stream for you to supplement your current income, or is it maybe a combination of the two?Based on your decision, you will either target growth oriented investments or income oriented ones. U.S. Treasury bills, for instance, provide a regular income stream for investors through regular interest payments, and the value of your initial principal tends to be more stable and secure as opposed to a bond issued by a new software company. Likewise, an equity investment in a larger company such as an IBM is generally less risky than a new company. Furthermore, IBM may provide dividends every quarter to their investors which can be used as an income stream as well. Typically, newer companies reinvest any income back into the business to make it grow. However, if a new company becomes successful, then the value of your equities in that company may grow at a much higher rate than an established company. This increase is typically referred to as capital appreciation.Whether you are looking for growth, income, or both, your decision will fully depend on your individual financial and investment objectives and needs. And, each type may play its own part in your portfolio.Understand the Power of Compounding on Your Investment Returns Compounding is an important investment principle. When you reinvest any dividends or other investment returns, you begin to earn returns on your past returns.Consider a simple example of a plain bank certificate of deposit (CD) that is rolled over to a new CD including its past returns each time it matures. Interest that is earned over the lifetime of the CD becomes part of the next period’s sum on which interest is assessed on. At the beginning, when you initially invest your money compounding may seem like only a little snowball; however, as time goes by, that little snowball gets larger because of interest compounding upon interest. This helps your portfolio grow much faster. You Don’t Have to Go at It Alone Your Financial Advisor can give you the investment guidance that you need so that you don’t have to stop yourself from investing in the market because you feel like you don’t know enough yet. Knowing the basic financial principles, having good common sense, and having your Financial Advisor guide you along the way can help you start evaluating investment opportunities for your portfolio and help get you closer toward achieving your financial goals.
US Markets in green on Friday; Dow 30 up over 345 points, Nasdaq Composite, S&P 500 up nearly 1%
US Markets were trading in the green on Friday with Dow 30 trading at 30,678.80, up by 1.14%. While S&P 500 was trading at 3,701.66, up by 0.98% and Nasdaq Composite 10,690.60 was also up by 0.71 per cent
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US Markets in green on Friday; Dow 30 up over 345 points, Nasdaq Composite, S&P 500 up nearly 1%
Earlier today, Indian stock markets ended the week on a winning note. It was the sixth straight gains for equity markets. Source: Reuters
US Markets were trading in the green on Friday with Dow 30 trading at 30,678.80, up by 345.25 points or1.14 per cent. While S&P 500 was trading at 3,701.66, up by 35.88 points or 0.98 per cent and Nasdaq Composite 10,690.60 was also up 75.75 points or 0.71 per cent. A Reuters report said that today’s strength was on the back of a report which said the Federal Reserve will likely debate on signaling plans for a smaller interest rate hike in December, reversing declines set off by social media firms after Snap Inc’s ad warning.
Source: Comex
Nasdaq Top Gainers and Losers
Source: Nasdaq
Earlier today, Indian stock markets ended the week on a winning note. It was the sixth straight gains for equity markets. The BSE Sensex ended at 59,307.15, up by 104.25 points or 0.18 per cent from the Thursday closing level. Meanwhile, the Nifty50 index closed at 17,590.00, higher by 26.05 points or 0.15 per cent. In the 30-share Sensex, 13 stocks gained while the remaining 17 ended on the losing side. In the 50-stock Nifty50, 21 stocks advanced while 29 declined.