Market Volatility As Of Late..

The Markets Are All The Rage

Market volatility makes investors nervous, and rightfully so. A lot of hard earned money is on the line, and with nervous short-term decisions being made. This can have a tremendous impact on long term gains that may be missed.

Panic and an exuberance of negative views,  leads to panic selling driving down share prices. There is no logical reason for such rationale, unless stocks were bought in speculation and nothing is really known about the company whose shares you just purchased on a whim. A market will have its ups and downs, be turbulent in nature this is a guarantee.  

Once the volatility gives way if you have chosen good investments they will bounce back and carry on with their growth. Companies with great revenues, a well diversified range of products and that are pushing the boundaries of potential, are always good investments to have in your portfolio mix.

What's Causing The Volatility?

Volatility by it's very nature occurs to bring markets into balance. The reason for the volatility is due to the discrepancy in the intrinsic value. Fundamental analysis needs to occur to see if both qualitative and quantitative factors support the current stock price. Essentially this will provide a true outlook if a business is in favor or out of favor with the market. If out of favor than how much is the current valuation overvalued by? - Investopedia . The following reasons are some of the more pressing issues currently on a macroeconomic level:

1. Quantitative easing seen throughout Europe and Japan, high levels of debt have caused excessive liquidity being provided to those regions. All the while no definitive timeline in sight for repayment of debt.
2. Even though the US has shown some headway and positive results, the strong US dollar makes the exports unattractive for exporters.
3. Current stocks are priced moderately high attached with a lot of expectations factored in for further increased intrinsic value that just simply is not there. 

 "The intrinsic value reflects how much the business underlying the stock is actually worth if you would sell off the whole business and all of its assets." - Source

     4.  The looming dread of the interest rate hike is making the market wary as well. The                        idea has been thrown around for quite some time. Further causing uncertainty is the                    issue, at what point in time will the "Fed" make this adjustment happen. 

Don't Hit The Panic Button And Embrace The Dark Side

Hitting the panic button too soon, can cause you to miss the timing of the market. This equates to missed profits, impacting your portfolio value resulting in a very costly affair. 

The bottom line is that investors should train themselves to embrace volatility in the marketplace. Corrections are a necessity for the market to move on and administer growth in a nominal sense and not an over inflated value due to day to day speculative noise.

"Look At Market Fluctuations As Your Friend, Rather Than Your Enemy."  - Warren Buffet

If you have invested in the recent market rise now may be the time to take advantage of opportunities that the volatility has provided. Profits gained from the recent rise can be taken to reassess your overall portfolio strategy. Add to good quality positions while the prices are lower at the moment, buy low and sell higher in the future. Furthermore, seeking investments at discounted prices is an excellent alternative strategy to consider, that may very well prove to be lucrative once the market corrects itself.

Revving Up Your Credit Score

Organize and Optimize Your Credit Cards

Keeping your credit score optimized is essential in the ever evolving age of technology. Why? This is how cash flows... through the means of electronic transactions.

“Canadian enterprises sold more than $136 billion in goods and services over the Internet in 2013, up from $122 billion a year earlier. As in 2012, wholesale trade, manufacturing and retail trade accounted for the majority (61%) of the value of e-commerce sales." - The Daily, Wednesday June 11, 2014

Given that a vast majority of retail trade occurs through the World Wide Web, this gives a pretty clear indication of the amount of transactions that occur through credit.  

Credit Can Help You Become Rich

Picking supposedly great investments or distressed property is the big focus in the media to hype up ways to get rich, these routes of getting rich are often elusive to a large part of the population. 

I can't recall last time I had a large wad of cash just sitting in my pocket where I could drop it at a moment's notice to pick a great investment or a distressed property to bring it up to code and flip it for an even bigger chunk of change.

Something that is often ignored, but has the potential to make you rich in the long run is your credit score. Now I realize that this may be so simple and basic that you're probably sitting there thinking is this guy for real? That being said.. establishing good credit is the first step for building an infrastructure to getting rich.  

The essence of this matter is simple, if you think about it. How do we make our largest purchases.. CREDIT! If you have a really good credit score you can save tens of thousands of dollars on some of your major purchases. Therefore, this is the benefit of optimizing our credit when it comes to saving money and getting on our way to generating positive cash flows from these interest savings, that we can invest with.

The interest savings created through a good credit score give us a great advantage when it comes to building our nest egg, whether for retirement purposes or simply to "live on your own terms" if you will. 

The Unraveling of The World's Credit

In essence, what much of the world witnessed in 2008, was the unraveling of credit due to loose standards of practice. These personal spending habits that were based on second and third tier lenders handing out fictitious unsubstantiated credit and unequivocal home equity loans that could not be collected on was in large part the essence of the 2008 credit crunch.

Your Credit Score vs. Credit Report What Does It Mean? 

Your credit score is a snapshot of your financial health , at a specific point in time. It creates a picture of risk or liability if you will, to your lenders in comparison to other consumers. Credit reporting agencies use a scale from 300 to 900, the higher the score on this scale the better.

Additionally, it is up to the lender`s discretion as to how low of a credit score they are willing to accept. Nothing is set in stone as the lender is liable for the money they have lent to you, if you are not able to repay the balance owing. It should also be noted that your score will also determine the interest rate you will pay, once again the higher the score the lower the possible interest rate.

Your credit report is the summary of you credit history, this has occurred if you have ever taken out a loan, bought items through a credit card or been involved in one of those buy now - pay later type of deals. I do not personally recommend the buy now - pay later deals unless you`re a very conscientious and strong will powered individual. I would assume that many of you know what I am referring to, as many of us have been in this type of situation especially when being younger in age. Staring at a d-day of repayment, but being far too young and wanting to have fun in the moment.  This for many, is where the true unraveling of the personal credit crunch begins.

Capital Budgeting Role In Business

Capital budgeting process is defined as an estimation and risk assessment of cash flows, to arrive at a net present value of retained cash flows and .calculate your return on investment (ROI). What does this mean to you? Well when running a business it is important to understand the process of evaluating future projects / contracts that your company wishes to take on and assess if they might be profitable or not. Are they worth your time, money and attention?

             

Annual Capital Budgeting Process

The capital budgeting process is a significant undertaking and generally keeps a lot of business owners up at night. There is always a level of risk associated with under taking projects. The beta of the project will be higher in comparison to the marketplace beta depending on the level of systematic and business risk your company is willing to undertake.
There is much planning and process implementation, before a company can pull the trigger so to speak, about projects that span 2 to 3 years into the future if not longer. When committed to a new venture, it also takes up a lot of financial resources, such as immediate cash requirements which might be otherwise directed to a different project - this will impact your so called opportunity costs. Needless to say if you are a risk adverse organization who prefers returns from investments with low volatility then perhaps, bonds and money market funds are more your cup of tea. Of course, this would be a preferable course of action, if you would rather avoid the stress.

Preparation of Budgeted Proposals

Sources of the initial idea of a new business proposal for a lot of organizations can come from many sources. These sources include:

• Floor Employees
• Sales Personnel
• Marketing Personnel
• Division Managers
• Senior Level Managers

For an organization to get the best quality ideas rolling, idea generation should not be confined to a restricted set of people within the company. Employee participation no matter at what level within the company, should be very much encouraged and rewarded. This will make employees within the organization engaged, and creates job satisfaction. Generally keeping your staff engaged as part of your business also ensures lower turn-around staff numbers.
A large project will have an extensive scope involving many employees. This can be quite labor intensive and time consuming at all levels within the company and it is a guarantee that the company's resources will be stretched particularly employees' time. The following are steps that need to be addressed through analytical work to ensure that the new venture is an appropriate fit for your company:

1. Assess market share available based on supply & demand requirements
2. Forecast Sales to appropriate market share requirements
3. Align Procurement with supply chain requirements
4. Follow through with necessary labor overhead

Assess Possible Market Share Increase 

 If a project is to be taken on then a sales forecast needs to be developed, with sales orders and sale commitments for distribution of the new product being produced. As an example we'll take a firm that is looking to  have additional equipment upgrades to an assembly line to relieve manufacturing line bottlenecks from a possible market share increase. Producing a sales forecast to ensure that the ample supply of new product has increased revenue possibility - economies of scale theory - should be a MUST. If the project still seems to have profit earning and increased market share potential lets move on to the next step

Forecast The Supply Chain And Productivity

This will surely need a schedule of forecasted units of production, a procurement team assuring with suppliers that additional raw material would be available on time, and additional qualified and trained staff to assemble units to take product from raw material all the way to a finished good ready to be sold.

Evaluating Proposals

Projects that will survive the so called brainstorming stage and put on paper must now go through the evaluation process. The entire goal of evaluating the proposals that survive the brainstorming stage now need to be assessed for their cash flow estimation. The degree of risk with the possible positive net cash flows must be considered by using a discount rate that gives us a realistic amount of cash taking into consideration a cost of equity (Ke) and a Cost of Debt (Kd). There are different facets of this process, so one must consider the following:

• How is the project being funded through equity or debt?
• If funded through debt is the company leveraging the firm further specifically for the project?
• Have all tax saving opportunities based on interest payments on the debt been recognized?
• What is the tax shield on property, plant and equipment?
• Is there a salvage value on the equipment? - This will result in a reduction in your tax shield (later recovered by the sale of the salvaged equipment)
• Is there net working capital, additional inventory, and payable costs involved which will require more resources from the organization?

In the end all these factors have to be taken into consideration to bring us to a positive net present value (NPV). Therefore, if the amount calculated results in negative cash flows; than the project should not be accepted as it will result in a negative ROI.  Stay tuned as I will have a lot more to say on this topic as it is quite extensive and detailed.

Childcare Expenses

 Childcare Expenses General

The childcare expense deduction that a tax payer may claim for the 2014 year in respect to an eligible child, is defined by the  income tax act subsection 63  (3). These are expenses that must be included on the tax return of the lower earning family member. Eligible childcare costs include daycare, babysitting,  boarding schools and some camp expenses. Payments made to a related family member  for daycare or babysitting services who are under the age of 18,  are  not valid deductions to be made towards the total of child care expense for the taxable year.

Claiming childcare costs

If a child lives with both parents, the parent with the lower net income must claim the expense deduction, this also applies to a parent who has no income, they must still claim the deduction under their tax return. The only cases where a higher income spouse may claim the deduction would only be, if during the year the lower income spouse / common-law partner was mentally or physically infirm, confined to a bed or a wheel chair, or attending a designated educational institution or incarcerated in a correctional facility.

How much can be deducted?

The allowable amount is $7,000 per child for the 2014 year, for a child who is six or under at the end of the year, and up to $4,000 for each child ages seven to fifteen at any time in the year. It is important to note that this limit is increased to $10,000 annually for a child that is eligible for the disability tax credit.

What Are Your Key Drivers & Performance Indicators?

We all want a successful business don't we? The thing is though a lot of us sweat the small stuff and don't focus on the big picture; nevertheless wouldn't you like to understand what your key drivers and performance indicators are? And what they mean? 

Your key performance indicators are sets of quantifiable measures that you will use to gauge you company's performance against a benchmark for your industry or your industry's localized market. I am presenting the following acronyms that will be used quite often as they are tools that help bring focus and shed light to important factors that need to be tended to.

Note: The following acronyms are going to be used quite regularly

Key Performance Indicators - (KPI)

* Performance indicators are sets of quantifiable measures that you will use to gauge you company's performance against a benchmark

Time Value of Money (TVM)

* The idea that money available at the present time is worth more than the same amount in the future due to its potential earning capacity.

Discounted Cash Flows (DCF)

* A method of assessing earned cash flows taking into account the expected accumulation of interest.

Tax Shield Cash Flow Recovery (TSCFR) 

* A tax shield is the reduction in income taxes that results from taking an allowable phantom expense from taxable income.

p.s. Stay tuned as well because I will be offering free excel templates where you can plug  and play to see what different outcomes mean for your business!

The number one KPI that should be measured from the inception of your business, is how much current sales and future sales do you have coming down the pipe? Keeping your sales pipe line flowing is essential to your businesses' longevity. 

The life line of your business this is how you earn profits not to mention build equity in the long run! In future blog posts I will be discussing sales order management techniques, sales forecasts, and receivables turnover. I will show you how it all ties in with you expected return on equity. Forecasting your projects using the time value of money principles can give you a realistic picture to head towards. Until next time.. 

Cheers,

S.G.

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The Accounting & Finance Dilemma

"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved". All strategy comes with the diligence and knowledge of many years of experience. "The key to victory is to know your own capabilities and the enemy's - Sun Tzu".

The art of knowledge of the finance and business setting comes easy only to those study it, live and breathe it. I hope that you find the literature on this blog insightful, a great read and seldom humorous at times.

In my 10+ years of studying and practicing accounting and finance, I've gained a lot of knowledge in the fields of taxation, financial reporting, financial analysis and business practices. This is all blended in with IT systems which is virtually impossible not to integrate systems and analysis anymore,  given the large sets of data and different data formats used. I hope to be be able to share some of my knowledge and be of assistance along the way.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at go2acctg@gmail.com or hit me up on twitter.

Cheers,

S.G.

Twitter

Linkedin

Go2accounting.ca