Finance Related Article Review Exampe

April 2015. Redefining financial institutions. Written by Jagdev Kenth.

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Jagdev Kenth, in an article written in April 2015 on how financial institutions are changing and becoming better evolved in their day to day activities, highlighted some major ways in which this evolution can be seen and the changes it has impacted on the society.

One of the ways was through digitalization and technological advances. Technology has changed previous interactions between the institutions and their clients from the traditional ways that forced you to avail yourself to the banks and other institutions when you needed to get something from them, to a point where the world has become a global village. This is the sense that you can transact anything you want at very low costs from anywhere in the world. Provided technology is available. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have ventured into the business and are bringing in new sources of capital and investments into the financial sector. I therefore goes without saying that the world of IT has been invested in well. Some of the ways that costs have been lowered include E-payments and onine trading. It is however noted that some banks are still lagging behind in respect of technology.

Another way in which the financial institutions are redefining themselves is through changing of the business operating model pressures. The regulatory commissions in the past demanded transparency from the institutions as they dealt with clients in the traditional operations. This forced the institutions to focus on the key clients which created the platform for service providers such as the online platforms. In response to this, the institutions decided to disintegrate and disengage the previous solid movements to smaller manageable ones that could be of service to everyone and hence cover all the requirements needed.

Jagdevs article is deep, conclusive and true since all institutions in the world are changing or edging towards the changes that will make them be better service providers to all of their clients.

According to Buttonwood, the writer of this article, it is of paramount importance that we ask ourselves whether our equities, cheap as they seem to be as compared to bonds are really cheap or they become expensive and a rather bad choice to someone in the long run, as they can fall drastically when the company is not doing well.The Credit Suisse Global Returns Investment yearbook suggests that when you get past the point of picking a good discount rate, the rest is easy to determine. However, another thing that should be considered is the point that the value of the equity when compared to the total sum of all the cash flows should be equal. Conventionally, if you pick a high interest rate, it implies that you as an investor should not jump into taking the equity brought forward as it is dangerous. An equity with a low rate however, should be considered as it shows that it may rise over time, optimistic equities, is the word that is appropriate in describing the low rate equities.

In my opinion, investors should not only use the discount rate in relation to future forecasts in order to come up with the conclusions of which equities equities to invest in. Reason being there are new accounting ways that have been used currently, which will be combined, in order to make a conclusive statement. Another reason is because the equities are usually valued low towards financial years end so that the companies could surpass their targets by the following years end. Other players in the game such as bulls could have changed the rates to a very attractive percentage while they kept the forecasts unchanged leading to unbiased information.

The findings of Buttonwood were relevant to the studies but lacked the proof that showed that the method was the best and that it was not penetrable.

Debt is money lent with a promise to pay back with a schedule. The borrowers hope that the project they invest in grows in size and be able to pay back the money lent. Lenders also have high hopes that they will get back their money when the economy is at boom gets here. However, a problem arises when the economy does not meet the expectations. This leads to the involvement of the government as the lenders cut back the involvement in the lending activities due to borrowers inability to pay them back their dues.

Debt can be dealt with in three ways. One of them is inflation. Inflation can be arrived at by increasing the nominal GDP to make the ratio of debt to GDP small. This practise has however been very hard to achieve due to the low rate of inflation in the world. This is mainly attributed to the fact that not many countries control their own inflation. Defaulting is another way. It is a good method only that defaulting always shifts the liability to a different person. The government always gets to be the last resort as this liability is placed on them while all the others have failed. This is a risky option because the burden always falls on the citizens as their taxes are always raised to cover the debts. In the article, the writer thinks that the second option, defaulting would be such a big issue that no one would willingly consider since the burden would be hard on everyone else who is the citizen. He thought that the answer to the problem is uniting under a central fiscal authority in order to share the burden. This would have an effect on the banks as they would have to keep the rates low in order to keep the system still going on.

This article was done with utmost care and the findings are up to date. They could be used in modern day to day running of the economy and also used in the rectification of debts.

The Economist: Buttons Notebook. Written by Buttonwood.Foreign exchange is the process by which two or more countries that are involved in world trade exchange their currencies at a price in order to make it easy for them to trade. Open trading in the forex market leads to the difference in which the prices of the currencies fluctuate from time to time.

The foreign exchange market has an impact on the economy of the countries and it is in light of this that the countries try to buy and sell the currencies of other countries in a bid to stabilize their own. Governments are therefore the biggest users of this market. They engage in this market through the use of central banks and other banking institutions that act as intermediaries. Banks get the satisfactions of getting a profit from the business. In the article, the writer pointed out that you can get the spot price and the futures contracts that you can use to engage in the market.

Also, there are two types of market players, hedgers and speculators. Speculators are the risk takers in the business as they go ahead and take the risk of engaging in the business with only speculations about making a profit when the rate of exchange goes up. The writer says that this is very risky since it very easy to make a loss. It is thus not the best choice to pursue if one is just starting out. Hedgers on the other hand, are very good at covering up the risk that come along in order to make away with the losses. At their worst, they just get the capital they put back.

I agree with the writer as he has clearly laid out the facts that confer with the business. No ambiguity has been seen. It is advisable to hedge when you are new in the business then as you learn the perks and how to focus, you can venture deeper into the speculation lane.

References

Wamsley, Julian. THE FOREIGN EXCHANGE AND MONEY MARKETS GUIDE: New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2015.

(2015). Retrieved 12 July 2015, from http://www.timesofindia.com/financialinstitutions

The Economist,. (2015). Buttonwood's notebook. Retrieved 12 July 2015, from http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood

The Economist,. (2015). Still not cheap. Retrieved 12 July 2015, from http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/equity-markets

Topics.nytimes.com,. (2015). The Debt Trap. An Interactive Feature. Retrieved 12 July 2015, from http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/series/the_debt_trap/index.html