SPI
The Share Price Index Futures (SPI), which tracks the S&P/ASX 200 Index, is the most popular futures contract. To buy the SPI, a trader would outlay a deposit per SPI contract, which is a small percentage of the value of the contract. The value of the SPI 200 futures contract is $25 times the level…
Dividend Reinvestment
Many companies offer their shareholders an alternative to receiving dividends in cash, allowing the shareholders at their option to enrol in a dividend reinvestment plan (DRP) and to take up newly created shares instead (or to take a mixture of cash and shares). When these plans first became popular such shares were generally offered at…
Platform (master trust and wrap account)
If you see a financial adviser these days they will more or less demand that you invest via a master trust or wrap account, otherwise known as an administrative platform. Your adviser might even offer you a choice of platforms, with a different selection of managed funds or shares on each. Platforms can be confusing…
Dividend imputation
Before 1 July 1987 corporate profits were subject to two lots of tax. Firstly, companies paid company tax on their earnings. Only the “after tax” earnings were then available for dividend declarations. Secondly, individual shareholders paid personal income tax on any dividends received by them, despite the fact that the companies paying them had already…
The Scoreboard – Winning and Losing Stocks for 2008
The biggest dog in 2008 went to none other than beleaguered investment bank Babcock & Brown – its shares tanking by 99.4% to the year ending 17 December 2008. Anyone with $10,000 parked with the investment house in December last year, has less than the cost of a tank of petrol to show for it…
Winners of our Gold Giveaway
More than 22,000 investors and traders went into the draw to win the CompareShares gold giveaway – signing up to the CompareShares newsletter, the FatCat newsletter, or to the new social networking site MoneyConfessions. While investors can gain gold exposure via listed funds (one is aptly named GOLD and lists on the Australian Stock Exchange);…
Starting a share portfolio from scratch
Many newcomers to share investing spend a couple of agonising months tossing up which stocks to buy, and after taking the plunge into their first share purchase begin snatching up stocks at an increasing rate. Stock picking is where the action is, and the consumer in us is compelled to buy up big and fast….
$65,000 in a week trading CFDs
Will Kraa recently enjoyed a stellar run trading CFDs – pulling in $65,000 in just one week. Kraa, a former teacher and avid trader for the past six years, isn’t new to the sensation of multiplying his money trading CFDs. Back in 2003 when Kraa first tried his hand at the highly leveraged derivative, he…
Guide to analysing stocks – part 1
Academics and researchers have spent considerable time searching for the secret to making it rich on the sharemarket. The trouble for investors is that – when every supposed ‘expert’ yells from the rooftops proclaiming the secret to successful stock investing – it’s almost impossible to separate the researched theory from the pure sales pitch. For…
Measuring the strength of the Australian sharemarket
Most agree that the major ingredients required to herald a sharemarket crash are investor euphoria combined with an overvalued sharemarket; like a pressure cooker, as prices for stocks soar upwards, a market becomes overheated and the likelihood of a market crash is ever more present. Last week we looked at the fundamental reasons for why…
