How Automation is Helping Investors With Trading Strategies |  |
- How Automation is Helping Investors With Trading Strategies
- Study Suggests That Privately Owned Companies are Better Innovators
- 5 New Tax Laws That Can Cost Business Owners Dearly
- Report Indicates Twitter And Pinterest Are Driving Greater Sales Revenue
- Incorporated Versus Unincorporated Self Employment
| How Automation is Helping Investors With Trading Strategies Posted: 04 Nov 2013 04:00 PM PST
Ever since the financial crisis, people have become more risk averse. Nirvana Systems through its new product, OmniVest, is addressing the need of active traders to continue playing in the market with managed strategies delivered online. OmniVest is a fully automated user-driven investment system that uses the software-as-a-service (SAAS) model. It enables users to make informed decisions and implement multiple trading strategies, using historical performances. Users can opt for subscriptions to the company's acclaimed strategies, which are then combined to form a portfolio of strategies. Some of its highly acclaimed strategies include the RTM7, the T3 Strategy Suite and the NSP-41 strategy, which have consistently beaten the market every year since 2000. It is the combined power of a portfolio of such strategies that forms the basis of the automated trading system. This new product keeps the user or investor in the drivers seat, letting them configure the trading account for growing investments, while enforcing counter-risk strategies. Founded by Ed Downs in 1987, Ed is an engineer by training and had specialized in Design Automation. This interest in automation led him to experiment with the stock and options markets and ultimately start the company to develop automated trading technology solutions for individual investors and brokers. Its flagship products include OmniTrader and VisualTrader trading platforms as well as the MarketScans software. The underlying dominant theme for the company's products and development efforts has been to help traders make more money in less time with less effort. However, the 2008 market decline was a particularly traumatic experience for the company. The reduction in trading volumes led to a dramatic rise in cost of sales and increased competition. This pushed the company to reinvent itself and that is what has ultimately led to the OmniVest product. The product was released as a paid beta to its customer base in October 2012. Since then, the company has sold $1.2 million in subscriptions. The subscription includes an automation program called The Trade Processor which allows subscribers to connect the product to their live brokerage accounts. Their competitors include companies that provide 'Mirror Trading' in non-broker individual investor accounts, such as Currensee as well as companies that provide strategies for rent, like Collective2 and The Machine. Of these, The Machine is the only competitor that offers a portfolio of strategies. Ed maintains that their approach is quite different from that of The Machine and that its users find the returns from their product superior to those from The Machine. A recent survey conducted in May 2013 by the company showed that over 80% of the respondents were making money and the average annual rate of return was 56%. The company completed OmniVest as a "Minimum Viable Product" in March 2013 and is now enhancing it with more strategies. To accelerate revenue growth and complete its transition from a trading software company to a software-as-a-service company, they are looking to partner with brokers. OmniVest generates revenue for brokers by automatically trading the user's selected strategies, day after day, with no further input required. The need of the hour in the trading sector is to innovate and provide solutions that address important current issues. And OmniVest strives to deliver by leveraging brokers' existing customer bases to increase trade volumes and commission revenues, offering low-risk trading strategies. SAAS Photo via Shutterstock The post How Automation is Helping Investors With Trading Strategies appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Study Suggests That Privately Owned Companies are Better Innovators Posted: 04 Nov 2013 01:30 PM PST
It’s easy to believe that large publicly funded companies are more innovative than their privately owned counterparts, including small businesses. But one study from researchers at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and international business school INSEAD suggests this may not always be so. In the study (PDF), Entrepreneurial Exits and Innovation, researchers followed 460 biotechnology firms, all venture-capital funded and founded between 1980 and 2000. The study measured innovation based on the number of patents each company filed. The study found that privately run companies had the highest level of innovation. Meanwhile, companies that had been taken public had the lowest. And private companies taken over by public firms were somewhere in between. In a post on The Wharton School’s official blog, Wharton management professor and researcher David Hsu speculated too much public pressure plus the pressure to report to stock holders caused the problems. He added:
Meanwhile, in the same post Hsu’s co-researcher, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD Vikas A. Aggarwal observed:
Small businesses do not take venture capital and few have ever considered taking their businesses public, or even would if they could. Still, the results make sense when we think about the motivations small businesses have for sometimes rejecting outside money and the interference that can come with it. One problem with raising funds for your business is that it’s easy to let your focus drift. You may begin worrying more about existing or potential investors than about serving your customers. Focus on delivering products and services your customers will love. That’s often what leads to innovation…and to a thriving business too. Innovation Photo via Shutterstock The post Study Suggests That Privately Owned Companies are Better Innovators appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 5 New Tax Laws That Can Cost Business Owners Dearly Posted: 04 Nov 2013 11:00 AM PST
The 2013 tax year is coming to a close, but business owners, most of whom pay taxes on business profits on their personal returns, may be unaware of some new tax laws that can increase their tax bill for this year. Make sure you aren't caught off guard and have the new tax laws into account when figuring income tax withholding (if you and/or your spouse receive wages) and estimated taxes so you won't be penalized. Familiarize Yourself With The New Tax Laws1. Additional Medicare Tax on EarningsIf your earned income is high enough, you'll pay an additional 0.9% Medicare tax. This is on top of the Medicare tax paid as part of FICA or self-employment tax. The tax applies to earned income over a threshold amount (modified adjusted gross income of $250,000 for joint filers; $200,000 for singles). Thus, if you take a salary of $100,000 from your S corporation, you won't pay this tax. But if you have a sole proprietorship that shows a profit over your threshold amount, you'll pay 0.9% on the excess (e.g., if you're single and your profit is $225,000, you'll pay $225 [0.9% of $25,000]). There is no employer matching for this tax. Self-employed people pay a single 0.9% tax; it's not doubled as in the case of self-employment tax. 2. Additional Medicare Tax on Net Investment IncomeInvestment income minus investment-related expenses may be subject to a 3.8% additional Medicare tax, the first time that Medicare tax has been applied to anything other than earned income. This is called the net investment income (NII) tax and it applies to the lesser of net investment income or modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) over a threshold amount for your filing status. The same threshold amounts for the additional Medicare tax on earnings applies to the NII tax. When it comes to business income, if you materially participate in your company's activities, then distributions aren't treated as investment income. But if you're a mere investor, distributions may be subject to this tax. Whether the tax applies to gains on the sale of a business depend on how the business is organized and your participation in it. 3. Phase-Out of Personal ExemptionsThere is a personal exemption phase-out (called the PEP limitation) that can cause you to lose some or all of the exemptions for you and your dependents. Personal exemptions are phased-out by two percentage points for each $2,500 ($1,250 for married persons filing separately) that your adjusted gross income (AGI) exceeds a threshold amount. The threshold amount varies according to your filing status. Say in 2013, you and your spouse have two dependents. Ordinarily you'd deduct $15,600 ($3,900 x 4). But if your AGI is high enough, you lose this write-off entirely. 4. Reduction in Itemized DeductionsCalled the Pease limitation after the Congressman who initially created the rule years ago, it means you can lose up to 80% of your itemized deductions if your AGI is high income. The limitation means that your itemized deductions are reduced 3% of the amount by which your AGI exceeds the same threshold used for the PEP limitation. The only break: medical expenses, investment interest, casualty and theft losses, and wagering losses are not subject to this limitation. But your deductible taxes, other interest, miscellaneous deductions, and charitable contributions may be reduced. 5. Higher Tax RateFor more than a decade, the top tax rate on individuals has been fixed at 35%. What's more, you paid no more than 15% on long-term capital gains and qualifying dividends. For 2013 and beyond, that has changed. The top rate is 39.6% once your taxable income exceeds a threshold amount that varies with your filing status. Sure, the threshold is high, but a great business year can put you over it and trigger the high rate on ordinary income as well as on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends. What To Do About The New Tax LawsMeet with your tax advisor to review your tax picture and find out which of these new tax laws, if any, applies to you. Then explore strategies you can use to minimize or avoid the new tax laws and keep your tax bill as low as possible. Tax Photo via Shutterstock The post 5 New Tax Laws That Can Cost Business Owners Dearly appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Report Indicates Twitter And Pinterest Are Driving Greater Sales Revenue Posted: 04 Nov 2013 09:57 AM PST
The next time you attend a seminar where someone says social media doesn’t drive sales, just ignore it. Though some conventional wisdom says social media is for networking and boosting brand awareness only, a recent study suggests we should all take another look at this assumption. The Q3 Social Intelligence Report from Adobe indicates (PDF) social sites like Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook aren’t just driving revenue. They are driving larger and larger amounts of it year over year, whether you count the first click or the last click customers make before a sale. Of the three, Twitter saw the greatest increase in revenue per visitor over the last year while Facebook saw the least. Social Media Sees Revenue Per Visitor IncreaseSpecifically, the report concludes that:
Of course, this only amounts to about 93 cents per visitor for Facebook, 55 cents per visitor for Pinterest and 44 cents per visitor for Twitter as of September. But experts say with the low cost of social media marketing and the ever increasing revenue being generated through customer referrals, it’s a resource businesses cannot afford to ignore. Still, many businesses continue to undervalue social media marketing, particularly advertising, Venture Beat reports. That’s because social media referrals are often only the beginning of the sales process. But with sales revenue generated by these referrals continuing to increase, it is probably not a step your business wants to skip. Sales Photo via Shutterstock The post Report Indicates Twitter And Pinterest Are Driving Greater Sales Revenue appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Incorporated Versus Unincorporated Self Employment Posted: 04 Nov 2013 05:00 AM PST
The U.S. Census Bureau produces a wealth of data on self-employed Americans. This information is useful to a host of people, from policy makers, to researchers, to marketers, to people who simply want to be educated. However, understanding the data requires those using them to be aware that they discuss two different types of self employment:
The most important difference between incorporated and unincorporated self employment lies in their commonality. Many more Americans are unincorporated self employed (6.1 percent of the labor force) than incorporated self employed (3.5 percent of the labor force). This difference in frequency means that any discussion of all self employed workers requires properly weighting the two groups of self employed. They Differ on Two Important Economic DimensionsThe Incorporated Self Employed Earn Much more In 2011, the median earnings of the incorporated self employed were $46,872, while the median earnings of the unincorporated self employed were less than half that – $21,630. The Incorporated Self Employed are More Likely to Have Health Insurance In 2011, 83.6 percent of the incorporated self-employed, and 68.7 percent of the unincorporated self employed, had some type of health care coverage. They Have Very Different DemographicsIncorporated Self Employed are Much More Likely to be Male In 2012, 76 percent of people over 16 and self-employed “full-time” and “year-round” in incorporated businesses were male, while 24 percent were female. For unincorporated self employment, the numbers were 68.1 percent and 31.9 percent, respectively. Incorporated Self Employed are More Likely to be White and Asian In 2011, 79.4 percent of incorporated self employed workers and 72.3 percent of unincorporated self employed workers were White, while 6.6 percent of incorporated self employed workers and 4.6 percent of unincorporated ones were Asian. The Incorporated Self Employed are More Likely to be in the Middle of the Age Distribution In 2011, only 5 percent of the incorporated self-employed were under 30, as compared to 9.9 percent of unincorporated self employed. At the same time, 9.8 percent of the incorporated self employed were over 65, versus 10.4 percent of the unincorporated ones. The Incorporated Self Employed are More Likely to be American Citizens In 2011, 93.9 percent of the incorporated self employed and 88.6 percent of the unincorporated self employed were citizens. The Incorporated Self Employed are More Likely to be Married In 2011, 75.4 percent of the incorporated self employed and 62.6 percent of the unincorporated self employed had spouses. The Incorporated Self-Employed are More Likely to be Proficient in English In 2011, 7.7 percent of the incorporated self employed ”spoke English less than ‘very well,’" while 12.9 percent of the unincorporated self employed fell into this category. The Incorporated Self Employed are More Highly Educated In 2011, 44.5 percent of the incorporated self employed had a Bachelor's degree or higher, as compared to 29.9 percent of the unincorporated self employed. Unincorporated Self Employed Workers are Slightly More Likely to Work at Home In 2012, 17.6 percent of incorporated self employed, and 23.2 percent of the unincorporated self employed, worked from their dwellings. The Incorporated and Unincorporated Self Employed Tend to Work in Different Industries and Occupations The incorporated self employed were significantly more likely than the unincorporated self employed to report working in management (49.5 percent versus 33.9 percent) and sales (23.5 percent versus 15.8 percent) occupations in 2011. Incorporated Self Employed Were Likely to Work in:
They Were Less Likely to Work In:
Most of this information is available in one place or another on the Census Bureau's website. However, it isn't compiled in one place where readers can easily see the difference between the two groups of self employed people. Self Employed Photo via Shutterstock The post Incorporated Versus Unincorporated Self Employment appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
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