Profits with Real Estate Loans & Online Auctions » business competition

Strategic behavious behing a payday loan

admin — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:06:33 +0000

There are three principal determinants of the bid–ask spread: fixed costs, adverse selection costs and inventory costs. Fixed costs are order processing costs, such as administrative costs and compensation for the market-maker’s time. Adverse selection costs stem from asymmetric information. Finally, dealers must sustain the inventory costs of holding undesired portfolios of risky assets. By nature, only risk-averse dealers will be concerned with inventory costs, so the models that include them assume that liquidity providers are risk-averse. This assumption, which complicates the algebra, can be dispensed with in models with adverse selection.

The next two articles are dedicated to models that focus on the adverse selection component of the bid–ask spread. It will also discuss inventory and fixed costs. The model presented in this chapter draws on the work of Kyle (1985), who posits a group of risk-neutral market-makers facing insiders and liquidity traders. In fact, Kyle models the strategic interaction between an insider who chooses to trade in order to maximize his profits and a group of market-makers who take the insider’s strategy into account in updating their beliefs on the future value of the asset and setting the equilibrium price. In this way, Kyle shows how information is incorporated into prices and how the latter reflect both the trading protocol where market-makers set prices and the strategic behaviour of the informed trader.

Preliminary credit search

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:10:54 +0000

If you have done your store and Internet market searches carefully and you have not found your invention, that is an excellent start! Chances are pretty good that your product is not currently being sold. However, you still have a couple of hurdles to get over before you can breathe easily that your idea really belongs to you. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), over 97% of the patents that are issued to independent inventors never make it to the marketplace! We will talk about this grim statistic in a later chapter and how you can avoid being a part of it. But, what this statistic means is that the patent database is full of patents that have never been seen on store shelves. You will need to make sure that your idea is not one of those that have been patented already.

The United States patent database is huge and complicated, and it would be foolhardy for novice inventors to believe that they could do thorough enough searches to base utility patent applications on them. But, with a little bit of instruction in how to get around on the USPTO website, anyone can do a pretty good preliminary search. What we mean by a preliminary search is this: if you go into the USPTO database and, with a limited amount of searching, you find your invention idea staring back at you; it is time to reassess your idea. Is the prior art (patent) that you just found your exact idea? If it is not, is your idea an improvement over that product? If you believe it to be your exact idea, it is probably best to set it aside and move on to your next idea before you spend any more time or any money on it. But, if you think your idea is significantly different or better, print that patent and take it to a patent agent or attorney for a legal opinion.

If you find a patent that appears to be your exact idea, be sure to read the claims section carefully to make sure that it truly is identical before you abandon your dream. Sometimes two products can be made for the exact same purpose and they can look very similar or even identical in patent drawings and still be very different in the embodiments of how they are actually made.

Where to look for credit help in the first place

admin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:46:58 +0000

Scattered across the country are more than 900 Small Business Development Centers. These offices are usually affiliated with community colleges. The sole purpose of the SBDC is to assist small business owners. They offer many free services and classes on a variety of subjects that will maximize the chances that your small business will succeed in the marketplace. Free counseling with business consultants who will help you to set goals and even to develop your personalized business plan is available for the asking. Some Small Business Development Centers even offer business incubation for a nominal cost. Business incubation will allow you to share an office, office equipment and even secretarial assistance with other start-up companies in office space provided by the SBDC. If you are building a business around your invention, taking advantage of the business incubation services offered by the SBDC will allow you to save substantial amounts of initial cash outlay when your income is likely to be at its lowest.

Small Business Development Centers can also provide information and guidance on how to apply for and obtain Small Business Administration loans through your local bank or credit union.

Cyclical behavior of credit spreads

admin — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:23:28 +0000

Intuitively, the described long-term pattern contrasts with the much more cyclical behavior of credit spreads. Yet it should be noted that a large part of this deviation has to be attributed to changes in the databases of the rating agencies and the average quality of recent new issuance. When the database contains more investment grade companies, default rates naturally tend to be lower, and vice versa. Furthermore, historical data on default rates does not only reflect the broad credit cycle, but also changes in companies’ preferences towards bank debt and corporate issuance. When banks’ lending standards are particularly restrictive, especially companies with a lower credit quality may prefer to finance their business by issuing corporate bonds. For the high-yield market there is empirical evidence that the average maturity of outstanding debt is correlated with the probability of default. In other words, default probability changes over the life of a bond. While at the date of issuance the company has sufficient capital, there is often considerable uncertainty about the viability of the business model and future economic success. Together with the 1990/91 recession the enormous volume of junk bonds issuance that took place in the late 1980s is responsible for the peak in default rates in 1991. Consequently, default rate data provided by the rating agencies is not a very pure indicator of credit conditions through time.