Margin trading at stock exchanges

Margin Trading (MT) is an arrangement whereby an investor purchases securities by borrowing a portion of the purchase value from the authorised broker by using securities in his portfolio as collateral. Since April 1, 2004, SEBI has allowed member brokers to provide margin trading facility to their client in the cash market. Only corporate brokers with net worth of at least Rs. 3 crores would be eligible to participate in Mragin Trading. The brokers interested to provide margin trading facility to their clients have to seek approval from the stock exchange. The broker may use his own funds or borrow from scheduled commercial banks/NBFC regulated by the RBI. The total exposure of a broker shall be within self imposed prudential limits and not exceeding 50% of networth. The margin arrangement has to be agreed upon between the broker and the client, subject to SEBI Guidelines, 2004. Initial and maintenance margin Continue reading

Investment Diversification

Diversification is the strategy of combining distinct asset classes in an investment portfolio in order to reduce overall portfolio risk. In other words, investment  diversification is the process of selecting the asset mix so as to reduce the uncertainty in the return of an investment portfolio. Diversification helps to reduce investment risks because different investments may rise and fall independent of each other. The combinations of these assets will nullify the impact of fluctuation, thereby, reducing risk. Most financial assets are not held in isolation, rather they are held as parts of portfolios. Banks, pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, and other financial institutions are required to hold diversified portfolios. Even individual investors – at least those whose security holdings constitute a significant part of their total wealth – generally hold stock portfolios, not the stock of a single firm. Why is it so? An important reason is the lowering Continue reading

Corporate Parenting Strategy – Meaning, Styles, and Propositions

The complexity of transitional business conditions creates a need for creating value through aggregation of different businesses in complex corporate enterprise, which gives it the character of a multi-business firm. Businesses could be defined as being whatever the enterprise chooses to operate as organizationally separate profit-responsible units. Such business entities are often referred to as Strategic Business Units (SBUs) and they are organized as largely separable businesses with control over the main strategic levers that affect their performance. Besides this organizational definition, the businesses could be defined in economic sense relating to Strategic Business Opportunities (SBOs), which are clusters of product-market transactions able to sustain a successful focused business, with financial independence. Processes of merger, acquisition, divestment, and the other processes of transformation continually create new challenges to corporate management towards providing better performance of aggregated businesses than they would achieve if they were independent, stand-alone entities. It is corporate Continue reading

Correction of Balance of Payments (BoP) Deficit

Balance of Payments Adjustments The short-term and small deficits in balance of payments are quite likely to emerge in wide range of international transactions. These deficits do not call for immediate corrective actions. More importantly, irregular short-term changes in the domestic economic policies with a view to remove the short-term deficits in balance of payments may do  more  harms than good to the economy. Since these changes cause dislocations in the process of reallocation of  resources  and short-term fluctuations in the economy. Therefore, short-term deficits of smaller magnitude are not a serious concern to the policy makers. A constant deficit indicates that the country’s imports dominates exports  or depreciation of its foreign exchange and gold reserves. These countries lose their international liquidity and credibility. This situation often leads to compromise with economic and political independence of these countries. India faced a similar situation in July 1990. Therefore, a country facing Continue reading

Job Enlargement – Definition, Benefits and Differences with Job Enrichment

Job enlargement is a job design technique wherein there is an increase in the number of tasks associated with a certain job. In other words, it means increasing the scope of one’s duties and responsibilities. The increase in scope is quantitative in nature and not qualitative and at the same level. Job enlargement is a horizontal restructuring method that aims at increase in the workforce flexibility and at the same time reducing monotony that may creep up over a period of time. It is also known as horizontal loading in that the responsibilities increase at the same level and not vertically. Many believe that since the enlargement is horizontal in nature there is not a great need for training! Contrary to this, job enlargement requires appropriate training especially on time and people management. Task related training is not required much since the person is already aware of the same or Continue reading

Important Soft Skills for Workplace Success

Soft skills are essentially people skills – the non-technical, intangible, personality-specific skills that determine one’s strengths as a leader, speaker, listener, negotiator, and conflict mediator. It means skills related to human attitude, team work, leadership qualities, over all human nature enhancements. Soft skills thus is a sociological term relating to a person’s “EQ” (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other people. They are, in many instances, complementary, and serve to unlock the potential for highly effective performance in people qualified with the requisite hard skills. In broader terms soft skills is a range of abilities including work ethics, courtesy, teamwork, self-discipline and self-confidence, professional presence, language proficiency, cultural sensitivity, communication skills, ability to accept and learn from criticism, ability to handle client relationships, networking, creativity, ability to motivate yourself and lead others, time management, leadership Continue reading