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Archives for March 2018

Can Betting On Horse Racing Be Profitable?

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Horse racing is a hugely unpredictable sport and gambling isn’t necessarily renowned for increasing bank balances. However, with sensible staking and a healthy working knowledge of the sport, it can be possible to make a small profit and have plenty of fun along the way.

Source: The Racing Post via Twitter

There are a number of different strategies and techniques used by professional gamblers but making a long-term profit is far from easy. There are always going to be ups and downs but it’s important to take your time, follow patterns and race results and not jump in feet first.

The first rule is to only bet money that you can afford to lose. Betting is great if you have budgeted for the month and still have a surplus £20 but if things are tight, it is advised to simply take a watching break. Just because you aren’t able to have a wager, it doesn’t mean you can’t check the result and make a note of things such as the winning trainer and jockey.

Sensible staking is absolutely imperative. It is generally advised that you should never place more than 5% of your starting bank on any one bet. For example, if you’re starting with £5o, your first bet should be in the region of £2.50. Naturally, if you make a profit, this will gradually increase. This will help ensure longevity and won’t have you scrambling around for further funds.

Source: OTI Racing via Twitter

One misconception amongst gamblers is that there is an obligation to bet on every single race. There are often upwards of thirty races per day in the UK and very few people have enough time on their hands to meticulously study every single card. If you don’t feel confident about a horse’s chances, it is generally advised to abstain and wait for the next race to come along. Races such as Novice Stakes on all-weather tracks are often incredibly difficult to call and should probably be avoided.

Races such as the Grand National are a terrific spectacle but they can also be hugely unpredictable. By following the sport throughout the season, you are more likely to pick up clues and it is often possible to find the early-value in the ante-post markets. Shantou Flyer was priced at 100/1 prior to the Cheltenham Festival but following a solid run in the Ultima Handicap, the Sue Smith-trained runner has been cut to 25/1 according to Oddschecker. It is possible to place a bet months in advance and can often ensure a bigger payout than those who only got involved on the day of the race.

Profiting from horse racing takes tremendous dedication and hours of hard-work It isn’t easy to leaf through pages-upon-pages of previous form, but this will pay dividends in the long-run. If you aren’t willing to put in the effort, you are likely to fall short. Those who stake sensibly, select their races carefully and aren’t afraid to take a watching brief are likely to find it a hugely enjoyable and potentially money-making experience.

Go Green – Make Your Office Greener

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These days, more and more people are being educated on protection of the environment and how to make sustainable development a reality. Do you also want to make your office greener? There are many benefits you can reap by making this decision. Below are some of the ways you can “go green” when it comes to business.

Less Paper Products

Too many papers in the office? Decide to implement a paperless working operation! Make use of Cloud systems to scan necessary documents, thus decreasing the amount of paper waste. Remember, paper is made from wood. Less paper use means less deforestation. Plus, save money in purchasing less waste items, like paper or ink for printers.

Opt for Post-Consumer Waste (PCW) recycled paper whose manufacturing uses 45% less energy than normal paper. Watch out for the label “100% PCW” to make sure you are using papers with the least impact. Otherwise, look for as much PCW content as possible and recycle all the paper scraps.

Water Dispensing Systems

Does your company provide bottled water for employees? However, not all plastic bottles are sent for recycling as some of them are non-recyclable. Instead, they are taken directly to the dump. Bottled water is also quite costly in the long run. Plus, 25% of bottled water comes from the municipal water supply. It is thus filtered tap water!

Instead of providing bottles of water to all employees, install a filtration and dispensing system for their daily use. This helps in reducing waste and saving money. In this way, you are protecting the environment and saving money for more important expenses. It also provides a cleaner water, free from the contaminants often found in normal tap water.

Alternative Energy

Imagine how much energy you can save by making your office greener! Do you know that you can purchase “green power” from your current utility provider? Green power is generated from renewable sources, like solar power or geothermal. It helps reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. With these renewable sources of energy, you can expect an inexhaustible and continuous supply.

Along with the environmental and health benefits of alternative energy resources, you can also differentiate your brand from others. While demonstrating civic leadership, you generate more customer or investor loyalty and employee pride. It enhances the public image of your company and creates more positive publicity. Alternative energy also helps in reducing your electricity costs.

Recycling

Recycling is the best way to make your office “greener”! You can recycle not only plastic bottles and paper, but simply everything that is recyclable. For instance, how about used or vintage office furniture instead of new ones? These can also be purchased online at a better price. Thus, contribute in reducing deforestation.

Many employees love to have coffee at different times of the day. Single-cup pod coffee makers are now trends in offices. But imagine how many empty coffee cups end up in the bin! Instead, provide a large tin of regular coffee that can make over a hundred cups, compared to the non-recyclable single-serving coffee pods. It is also a great idea to provide recycling bins.

Greener Public Transportation

Wondering how air pollution has increased so much? It is mainly due to the exhaust fumes from vehicles! How about leaving your car at home to go to work? If your office is not too far, you can even walk or bike to work. In this way, you also get some good exercise in the morning while breathing fresh air instead of the AC in your car. Are you a nature lover? Check out Animal and Nature themed slots at Regal Wins Casino, such as: Secret Garden Slot, Flowers Slot or Rainbow Magic Slot.

Encourage other employees in your office to leave their cars at home and walk or bike to work. Organise special events to promote it, such as car-free days. Also, reward all those who participate in the event. All this greatly helps to protect the environment from pollution and reduces the amount of mileage allowances to cater for the cost of fuel.

These are some of the ways to go green while developing your business. They help create a positive image of your company, which respects and protects the environment. Reducing costs also helps in a more sustainable development of your business.

What Should You Know About Choosing A Profitable Blog Niche?

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It’s 2018 and blogging is no longer an obscure idea. There are a lot of people who make their living from blogging and do quite well at it. At the same time, there are many more people who don’t do well at it. One of the biggest things that set successful bloggers apart from the ones who are unsuccessful is the niche they choose.

Choosing a niche is more important than ever before since competition is so high. If you don’t choose the right niche, one of two major things can happen.

First, you might choose something where there’s too much competition, and you stand no chance of differentiating yourself. Your topic might be so broad that you feel like you’re trying to target everyone, and in reality getting no one to come to your site.

The other problem is when you choose something so specific that no one is even looking for what you’re blogging on.

You have to get somewhere in the middle in most cases, and the following are some specific tips that can help you choose a profitable niche for your blog.

Start Doing Some General Searches

A lot of experts will tell you to base your blog on your passion, and that’s good advice because it’s much easier to dedicate time to something you love. At the same time, you have to make sure passion lines up with what other people are interested in as well. You also have to make sure that there is a demand for what you’re passionate about. If you’re passionate about finances and making money, you might want to do some searches and see what more specific questions people are asking about in these areas.

For example, you might see a lot of questions like “what are penny stocks” or “how should I invest $1,000.” These are great search questions that can really give you a strong direction to head in when you’re choosing a blogging niche.

Rethink Finding a Niche

When you think about finding a niche in the traditional sense, it can limit your blogging, and you may not end up coming up with a strong concept.

Sometimes, it can be better to reframe your entire niche search as looking for ways to solve a problem. Ultimately you’re identifying a problem that you think enough readers will have to help you build a successful blog.

Your blog solves their problem and fills a need. It can grow from that problem over time, but this gives you a good starting point. A lot of blogs start out being based on an extremely specific topic. Over time, they grow and evolve, and their audience expands, so they’re not stuck on just that topic, but it gave them a place to start.

Think About Creating Your Audience First

If you’re feeling stuck or like you have nowhere to start with your niche search, think about an audience first. Create a very specific audience you’d like to connect with and cater your content toward. Create a persona for that audience.

Who are they, what do they like to do, what are their interests, their jobs, their ages, and so on.

Consider Profitability

If you’re building a blog as a business, profitability has to be a top priority. If you choose a niche that you’re super passionate about, but it’s not likely to be profitable, you’re building a hobby and not a business.

Think about how easy it will be to attract advertisers, and do affiliate marketing through the niche you’re considering.

Look around and see if other people blogging in your niche are making money. Is the competition too high or too low? Those are good indicators of profitability as well. There should be some level of competition present. Otherwise, there’s probably a reason for that. However, if there’s too much saturation, you’re probably not going to be able to be profitable because it’ll feel like you’re lost in a sea of other people blogging on the same topic.

Finally, you’re going to have to think about how much content can be created based on the niche you’re going with. You need to be able to solve a problem in a way that’s unique to you, but it also needs to be able to serve as a foundation to drive tons of content. Without quality content, your blog is worthless.

If you’re choosing something so narrowly focused that there’s no way to build the content out beyond the specific concept, you may have to go back to the drawing board.

 

Three Critical Investing Tips For Millennials

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As it stands, the millennial demographic is larger than any other generation. Having said that, do they plan and save better for retirement than the other generations? Maybe, maybe not.

As millennials move into the critical earning years of their lives, it’s essential for them to save as much for retirement as possible. While it may be challenging to sock away a significant portion of your paycheck, investing wisely in the market could prove to be very beneficial in the long run.

But how?

Jason A. Sugarman suggests following the following three tips to investing in the right kinds of stocks.

Avoid Trends

Steering clear of fads will yield positive results. Just because you love snapchat, doesn’t mean you should throw all of your money into Snap Inc. We see way too often company’s stock diminishing after an IPO.

In order to avoid this pitfall, consider whether or not a company truly has potential for growth based on personnel and product advancement.

Let the Market Grow With Time

Sometimes, the best advice is to just “do nothing”. In this sense, investing in a mutual or index fund can yield some nice returns in the long-run. This may be a great option for millennials who really don’t have the time to monitor stocks and analyze the market.

It’s amazing how often an index fund will outperform a hand-picked hedge fund (not to mention the high fees that come with actively managed funds).

By removing the guesswork out of investing, indexing is a great way to go. You can also consider a target-dated fund, which rebalances your account automatically with age.

Early is Better than Later, More is Better than Less

As an investor, the biggest benefit that you can have on your side is time. When you’re young, you have leniency to take risks and suffer losses through the turbulence of the market. In regards to your retirement, risk really doesn’t matter that much due to the amount of time that you have on your side.

As history shows us, the stock market (over time) moves in a positive direction. We’re never going to have a 35 year recession. Unless we have some catastrophic event that ruins capitalism, you’re guaranteed to earn money in the long-run.

Investing in the stock market when you’re young is much akin to going shopping and buying something on sale. You’d purchase an item on sale even though you may not wear it until later, right? Millennials should look at stocks in the same light.

Recap 

Sure, investing can be very tricky. Having said that, if you follow these three tips, you’ll be sure to have some nice earnings later in life. Get started today!

Advice From Brennan & Clark Collection Agency – How to Avoid Falling Behind On Your Debt Repayments

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Debt is a affliction which many people are suffering under the weight of, not everyone of course, but there are many who are finding it difficult. Well managed debt is absolutely fine and will not cause any issues to you at all, poorly managed debt is a large problem however that affects many aspects of the life of those in financial difficulty. The key to staying on top of your debts, is to stay on top of your repayments, and we spoke to the Brennan & Clark collection agency, to give you some pointers on how to ensure that you are on top of your debt repayments.  

Review and Negotiate

The first step is to look at all of you debts, and the repayment amounts, and then cross reference that with your salary and the bills which you will have to pay each month. When reviewing your debts, you should also pay particular attention to the date on which the payment is required. After reviewing your repayment details, you can then speak with your creditors, to tweak the agreement somewhat. For example make sure that the date of repayment, is shortly after the date that you receive your wages, making the payments easier to make. If you have found that with all of you bills and repayments, you don’t have enough money to survive each month, speak with your creditors and try to make an agreement to pay less over a longer period of time.  

Prioritise

Debt repayments are something that you can’t forget about, or put off for another month, they are vital payments that must be made monthly. And so when you receive your salary, you ought to consider repayments in the same way that you would think about paying rent, or your gas bill. Make sure that you understand the importance of these repayments, and that you give them high priority to avoid falling behind.

Communicate

It is vital that any changes in your personal circumstances is known about by your creditors. It is up to you to notify your creditors of a change in salary, sudden unemployment, unexpected medical bills or any other situation which impacts your ability to repay your debts. Once you notify the creditors, in most cases you will find them more than happy to make alterations to your agreement with them, in order to keep your repayment plan up to date. The key is not to hide, but to notify your creditors of the changes.  

No More Borrowing

One thing which you must ensure that you avoid, is borrowing more money. Whilst in the short term, loaning money to cover your repayments and give you some cash on the hip may seem like a good idea, in the long run this will only compound your debt issues, and ensure that your repayments are made far more difficult in the future.

Jonah Engler Reviews Latest Wall Street Moves on Investors

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There have been a number of investigations and allegations made on how the millions of people in this country who have their money invested in insurance policies, mutual funds, and pension plans, are being fleeced. Brokers and investments must, by law, give their clients the most favorable terms, looking at 12 different exchanges and choosing the best one. Unfortunately, however, it seems that brokers are not sticking to these rules. This is something Jonah Engler has recently uncovered and is now trying to change.

The Business of Brokerage According to Jonah Engler

It is a known fact that brokers often take rebates for choosing certain exchanges over others. What this means is that investors do not get the best outcome possible, but brokers gain more. In a sense, the system is rigger. On the grand scheme of things, the harm done is minuscule on a trade by trade basis, but it is much greater on non-professional investors who have placed their financial future into these trades.

If a broker is to find the best financial option out there, then they should look at incentives to buy and sell with a queue that is as short as possible. The longer the queue, the worse the outcome. However, it seems brokers still choose the longer queues and that these queues are also the ones that offer the greatest rebates.

There are exchanges that don’t engage in these tactics. For instance, the IEX does not pay any rebates at all. They also have a type of speed bump in place, so that ordinary investors have a fighting chance against the high frequency trading. They opened on August 19, 2016 with a simple promise: to execute trades better.

Another option to consider is BATS, which was founded by a high frequency trader and is now a significant rival stock exchanges. Their website shows what the execution quality is of all the different exchanges. This website, which uses data from FINRA and other debt knowledge sources, has shown that Nasdaq, which has always led the spread rankings in the S&P500, is losing ground to IEX.

Yet, the overall market share that IEX currently enjoys is just 2% of the total market, despite having much more effective spreads. According to Jonah Engler, this is because IEX is a principled exchange that does not pay kickbacks – or rebates. Both the New York Exchange and BATS are following suit in this, reverting some of their exchanges back to a model that does not use kickbacks.

If more would follow suit, then the securities market in this country would have far greater quality and integrity. It makes the whole system fair and would increase people’s faith and trust in the industry as well. With kickbacks in place, it becomes impossible for a broker to truly follow their best execution duty, even if they are legally obliged to do so.

Jonah Engler belies that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should also be involved in this, as they are the ones who can enforce brokers working with the best options for their clients, not themselves.

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