Anne Scheiber was born in 1893. Her father died when she was very young.
Due to poverty, she began to work in her teen years, saved money and graduated from law school. She joined IRS. IRS is ‘Internal Revenue Service’. It is the income tax department of US government.
Being a Jew and a woman in the early part of last century, she faced a lot of discrimination. She excelled in her work. But during her 23-year career, she never got a promotion due to discrimination. She retired in 1944 with a retirement corpus of $5000.
Though she retired at the age of 50, she lived until the age of 101; passing away in 1995.
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The Indian market ended the truncated week on a sombre note, posting mild gains on both indices. Strong movements by Infosys and pharmaceutical stocks helped the Street, but selling in HDFC group stocks, FMCG stocks capped upside.
The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 28.05 points at 31,596.06 and the 50-share NSE Nifty gained 4.55 points at 9,857.05.
The market was closed on Friday on account of Ganesh Chaturthi.
The broader markets outperformed benchmark indices as the BSE Midcap index gained 0.8 percent and Smallcap was up 0.4 percent on positive breadth. About five shares advanced for every four shares falling on the BSE.
However, among these times, there were over 70 stocks which had a good day and clocked fresh 52-week high milestones. Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Holding, Chennai Petro, Deepak Fertilisers, Avenue Supermarts, Indiabulls Housing Finance, IndusInd Bank, JSW Steel, and Tata Steel, among others, were in that list of gainers.
Meanwhile, there were 28 stocks that also hit fresh all-time highs, thereby increasing investor wealth. Bajaj Finserv, Deepak Fertilisers, Avenue Supermarts, IndusInd Bank and Heritage Foods, among others were a part of this list.
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We’re all susceptible to confirmation bias – paying more attention to our own preferred data and largely ignoring contradictory evidence. For investors, this psychological blind-spot can be very costly.
In every-day life, we like to think that our decisions are logical, rational and objective but often they are anything but.
Balanced analysis frequently goes AWOL as our pre-conceived beliefs take over. Let’s take a General Election as an illustration of this point.
Voters often seek positive news that shows their favoured candidates in a glowing light while paying scant attention to information that casts the opposing candidate in a good light.
Objectivity
If their existing belief is that their party is always strongest on say, maintaining law and order, they may place greater emphasis on campaign speeches reinforcing this claim than independent figures showing cuts in police or army numbers.
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There is nothing more frustrating than getting stopped out of a trade only to watch the price go back to the initial direction you were trading in the first place.
It’s grating, I know.
Assets, like animals, have different types of characteristics. Some are fast, some are slow, some jump high, some jump low. Understanding the behaviours and patterns of your chosen assets will help you set your stops at reasonable levels.
With this post, I’ll share a simple method of placing your stops in a way that is realistic and decreases the chances of getting hit every single time.
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The Sensex settled at 31,524, down 270 points, while the broader Nifty50 quoted 9,837, down 66 points at close. The BSE Midcap index settled 0.1% lower, while BSE Smallcap index shed 0.5%.
The benchmark indices snapped a three-session long winning streak, as Infosys cracked after Vishal Sikka’s resignation as MD & CEO, although rivals such as Tata Consultancy Services gained.
According to a BSE filing, Sikka will be Executive Vice-Chairman while UB Pravin Rao is the Interim-MD and CEO.
Infosys saw its sharpest decline since April 12, 2013, down 9.6% to Rs 923. In intraday trade, the stock fell as much as 13% to Rs 884.
But the domestic markets still logged their sixth weekly gain in seven, though they remained below the record highs hit on August 2.
The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was strong. On the BSE, 1,534 shares declined and 1,002 shares rose. A total of 122 shares remained unchanged.
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This week’s question comes from John, who asks:
When should a trader move a stop loss order to breakeven?
This is one of the more common questions among Forex traders. It’s also one of the most challenging to answer because it depends on several variables.
And it makes sense that it’s a common dilemma. After all, who doesn’t want to be in a risk-free trade?
But believe it or not, moving a stop loss too soon can be more harmful than taking a full loss.
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The global investment landscape today looks quite unexciting. Consumers in developed countries have been maxed out for the better part of a decade. Notwithstanding the recent optimism in the US, it is highly unlikely that consumption growth will reaccelerate. The best scenario one can hope for is that consumption growth settles at a 1% to 2% rate and that fears of contraction subside.
Emerging markets face a completely different problem: China. China has been the engine of growth in emerging markets for the last two decades but the Chinese engine is now sputtering. China made a miraculous transformation of its economy by building infrastructure that is the envy of even the developed world. It fueled this growth with massive amounts of debt (most of it domestic, thankfully) and by borrowing growth from the future by conspicuous overbuilding. The problem with a capital or fixed hyper-investment model is that one cannot stop. If one stops then the entire economy stalls and crashes.
China has been adding capacity in roads, railways, ports, power, steel, aluminum etc. Each of these sectors depends on the other sector’s “growth” to keep itself going. If one sector stops adding to capacity, the feedback loop stalls capacity addition in all other sectors. China has reached the point where the discourse has shifted from growth of capacities to utilization and shut down of capacities. For example, Chinese steel capacity exceeds 1 billion tonnes or about 50% of global installed steel capacity. China produces 825 million tonnes of steel. Chinese aluminum capacity exceeds 45 million Continue Reading →
The markets settled at their five-week lows as PSU banks and metal stocks tanked, while escalating tensions between the United States and North Korea continued to drive investors away from risk assets.
The Nifty PSU Bank index dipped nearly 5% after Oriental Bank, Union Bank of India and State Bank of India fell 5% each post disappointing earnings for the June quarter. Meanwhile, volatility index India VIX hit its highest in six months, suggesting market participants expect major volatility on the Nifty over the next thirty days.
Benchmark indices ended the session and the week on a negative note, with indices seeing big cuts in the day’s trade.
The Sensex closed down 317.74 points at 31213.59, while the Nifty ended lower by 109.45 points at 9710.80. The market breadth was negative as 1,003 shares advanced against a decline of 1,525 shares, while 135 shares were unchanged.
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Loss Aversion – Cut Losses Short & Let Winners Run
If you’ve been trading for a while, you’ve probably heard the following ubiquitous mantra of trading: “Cut Your Losses Short & Let Your Winners Run”.
Why Should You?
Stocks can literally go to zero. It happened many times before and will happen in the future, regardless of how big the company is.
MANY oil and coal companies recently filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy and their stocks got delisted. You may also remember Lehman Brother and General Motors. What happens when your stock falls off a cliff and gets delisted? You simply lose all the money you invested in that stock.
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We recently came across Philip Fisher’s checklist for investing in stocks in Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings and thought it was worth reproducing here. Fisher was one of the most famous investors in his story. As his son, Kenneth (renowned as an investor in his right) wrote in his obituary: “Among the pioneer, formative thinkers in the growth stock school of investing, [Philip] may have been the last professional witnessing the 1929 crash to go on to become a big name. His career spanned 74 years, but was more diverse than growth stock picking. For decades, big names in investing claimed Dad as a mentor, role model and inspiration.”
15 Points to Look for in a Common Stock
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