The Way to Invest

Starting a business often means making large capital investments, especially in the very beginning. In fact, many financial advisors recommend that you plan on losing some money as you get started. However, before you dismiss yourself as not having enough money to get going, keep in mind that not all ventures are so financially draining.

What so many aspiring businessmen and women do not know is that franchising dramatically reduces the financial risks associated with building a new company. Furthermore, some of the most lucrative opportunities are low cost business franchises. They require very little start-up capital, few or no employees and most all of them are home businesses.

This may sound too good to be true, but fortunately, there are real opportunities for people like you who are genuinely interested in starting a business. Best of all, there are several different businesses from which to choose. Here are ten of the most popular low cost franchises in the market today: (more…)

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Tax abatement can be defined as a short-term elimination of increased real property taxes, characteristically provided as incentive for new growth or as a motivation for redevelopment. Such economic development tax abatement basically helps business and property owners to increase their capital investment which in turn enlarges the tax base, generates and keeps good paying jobs, and expands the local economy. In the USA, the Department of Community Development’s Division of Neighborhood Development administers the tax abatement program. This department is accountable for the administration of tax abatement for housing, homeowners and residential developers. It needs to be known that tax abatement does not come with 100% tax incentives. Further, it is to be noted that the swell in the assessed value because of the project will steadily phase over in one to ten year duration. Different states view tax abatements differently. The City of Indianapolis, for instance, views the granting of tax abatement as a public sector investment in the company. (more…)

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There are literally hundreds of financial websites designed to assist investors in performing due diligence and investment research on potential stock picks. We’ve searched the most popular sites to come up with a list of unique tools that are free to the public and can help investors make more informed decisions. These resources provide investors with the tools to evaluate everything from which analysts have the most accurate earnings estimates to which companies are doing the best job of raising awareness within the investment community.

Unique Free Research Tools

Corporate Governance Ratings - Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) rates the corporate governance of thousands of public companies. These ratings help investors understand which companies have more shareholder-friendly approaches to issues such as board structure, equity compensation, and proxy access. The ISS ratings are available on Yahoo! Finance under the “Profile” page for a each stock symbol.

The Nasdaq Dozen - The Nasdaq website provides a 12-step process for analyzing the merits of a stock that takes into account factors such as technical, fundamental, and sector analysis.

Investor Awareness Ratings - Determining which companies are most effectively generating awareness among portfolio managers, research analysts and retail investors can provide an edge in identifying a successful investment opportunity. The Investor Awareness Index evaluates the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of the investor awareness initiatives of more than 3,000 companies and rates them on a 0-10 scale.

StockScouter - Stockscouter is a tool provided by MSN that is a quick and easy way to measure a stock’s potential. Stockscouter compares the fundamental and technical qualities of stocks to measures that have proven statistically predictive of stock performance in the past. StockScouter then assigns a rating on a scale of 1-10 that reflects the stock’s expected risk and return.

Valuation Methodologies - Motley Fool offers a series of articles designed to help investors better understand the stock valuation process. The articles discuss a wide variety of valuation methodologies including those based on earnings, revenue, cash flow, equity, and yield.

Analyst Accuracy - StarMine tracks the earnings estimates for each stock and compiles a list of the research analysts who demonstrate the most accuracy with their projections. This list can help determine which analysts you should pay the most attention to when evaluating a particular company. StarMine’s data can be found on Yahoo! Finance under the “Star Analysts” page for each stock symbol.

Short Interest - The level of short interest in a stock helps an investor understand how bearish the market is about a particular company, while also revealing which stocks might potentially benefit from a “short squeeze.” Short interest is reported every two weeks and Nasdaq provides a look at the trends in short interest going back a full year.Mutual Fund Ratings - Research tools for individual stocks are readily available, but resources to evaluate the performance of mutual funds are harder to come by. Morningstar rates thousands of mutual funds from one to five stars based on how well they’ve performed (after adjusting for risk and accounting for all sales charges) in comparison to similar funds. To read another topic on different site categories, please visit recursion, strojmat, maesc, cubaaction, dengarblog, soahubs, doktermuda, ririn’s, bazzanella, playyourpart, sielmob, spazphotos, and groesbecktennis.

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