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The business environment in most cases is extremely dynamic and fiercely competitive. It is not unusual for business to fold up even after making a great start. Many retail businesses need to keep on experimenting with location, and hence may be found to be closing down one store only to open up another one somewhere else. The reason for wanting to terminate commercial property leases can be varied; the business at that location could be bleeding money, or the demographics may have changed substantially, or the competition may have been too hot. Businesses need to enter into commercial leases for property all the time and may also need to foreclose them a lot many times too. Before walking out of the lease, you should carefully consider a number of things:

What Do You Really Want?

Closing a business at a particular location could often be the solution that is obvious but one that is not necessarily always right. Before even attempting to discuss the lease termination, be sure that you have considered every option available to you. If the reason for moving out is a need for more space, then your landlord could come to your rescue with offer for a fresh space and facilitate the lease termination. It is also important to evaluate if the necessity of terminating the lease is born out of personal circumstances rather than commercial ones. It is important for you to understand the real reasons for the change as this will give you a platform for effectively negotiating with the landlord.

Quantify Lease Termination Benefits

The option of terminating your lease can only be beneficial if the savings you get out of it is more than the compensation required to be paid to the landlord. The only way you can arrive at a rational decision is if you can quantify the value accruing to you so that you do not end up paying more than what you are benefiting by. One way of calculating the benefit is by finding the difference between the net profits expected to be delivered by the new location over the old one. If the reason for lease termination is to get time to attend to personal issues, then you would need to establish if the monetary loss on account of the termination is more than offset by what you are trying to achieve after you close down your business.

Identify the Landlord’s Financial Impact

To ensure that you are able to negotiate to good lease termination it is also necessary for you to establish the impact of the termination on the landlord. The most obvious is that he would lose out on the lease rentals till such time he can get a new tenant to occupy the space and start paying the rentals. If the business environment is down, then he may not get the same rental as what you had been paying, however the opposite could be equally true if the space is commercially attractive. Lease termination negotiation goes better of you can get an idea of the redeployment opportunities available to the landlord.

Compensate Your Landlord

Among the ways you can add value to the solving the landlord’s predicament is find creative solutions to what the landlord could do with the space becoming available. If you have been able to assess the location constraints that led to your business failing and how other business can thrive in the same property, you may be able to convince the landlord to change the usage of the space and get a better income stream. You could also tap the local real estate brokers for market information, including the duration that the landlord is likely to take to find a new tenant and the sort of rentals he can expect to derive out of his property. You could also try and identify a prospective tenant for him who can take over your lease. There are a number of internet resources that you can take the assistance of to locate a prospective lessee.

Nancy Mulligan is the senior business reporter at one of the top financial dailies. She periodically writes on trends in commercial real estate and financing. She also consults for leasequit.com.

If you’ve decided to make contract-for-difference trading your investment strategy of choice, picking out a good trading platform can be tricky. You need to make a well-rounded decision that accounts for more factors than just the commission fees imposed by a given broker. Take a look at the advice XFR Financial Limited gives below to educate yourself on what’s available out there in the CFD trading platforms market.

Regulatory Necessities

Before you pick out a trading platform, it’s important that you make sure you’re not engaging in trading behaviour that will have adverse legal consequences. Difference trading is not legal in all countries, and it’s regulated differently in the ones where it is allowed.(CFD trading is particularly heavily-regulated in the United States.) Do a little research to confirm that the CFD platform you’re looking at is fully compliant with the laws of your home country.

CFD Trading Platforms Required Features

As with a lot of products aimed at the small-scale “retail” investor, CFD trading platforms have exploded in popularity in recent years. This has led to a burgeoning market that presents you with a lot of different options. Before you commit to using a particular platform, make sure it offers you the bare necessities you need to make effective trades.

Stability and reliability — in terms of both hardware and software — are extremely important. This will be relatively difficult to judge based on a platform operator’s claims; obviously all of the brokerages offering CFD platforms want to emphasize the reliability of their products. Reading reviews from other traders will give you a better idea of how reliable a platform XFR Financial Limited has actuallyis.

Good platforms need to give you excellent execution control, especially if you plan to concentrate on short-term trading. Look for CFD platforms that feature automated execution, which allows you to complete orders even when trade volume is very high. You’ll also need a full suite of execution features (e.g. boundary setting) to ensure that you retain full control of your trading activity.

Attractive Bonuses At XFR Financial Limited

Even after narrowing your search down to regulatory-compliant brokerages which offer platforms with a decent set of basic features, you’ll still probably have a wide field to choose from. This is when you should look more closely at the extra functions included in various platforms.

Most platforms come with built-in analytic tools like automated charting, risk management functions, and predictive tools. Once again, the actual operators of a platform will tend to state the value of these extras as positively as they can. Look to reviews from past users to get a more realistic sense of how helpful these features can be.

It can take some time to properly evaluate the features of CFD trading platforms and decide whether or not it will make a good fit with your trading strategy. Don’t rush this decision! It can have a profound impact on your overall effectiveness in the difference-trading market. Demo account at XFR Financial Limited will give you a decent feel for how a single trading platform performs, but you need to shop around and consider multiple options before you commit to one and entrust it with your live trades.

Sugar is not a grain, or a meat commodity – it is regarded as a soft commodity in much the same way as lumber, cocoa, coffee, orange juice and cotton are. Sugar is primarily traded on the ICE exchange (Intercontinental Exchange) and it has the following ticker symbol: SB. However, sugar is also traded on other exchanges around the world, including the Zhengzou Commodity Exchange (CZCE), the National Commodity Exchange Limited (NCEL), the Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange (BF&M), the National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX), and the Kansai Commodities Exchange (KEX).

Each contract size for sugar is 50 long tonnes or 112,000 pounds. Sugar is delivered in raw sugar cane with 96° of polarization. Sugar contracts are traded in the following months: January, March, May, July and October from Monday through Friday 2:30 am through 3:15 pm Eastern Standard Time. The price of sugar is quoted at $0.0001 cents per pound, and the tick size is 0.01. Traders must meet specific margin requirements to trade sugar as this determines how much outlay is needed for each contract size.

For example a hypothetical sugar futures contract could take the following format: SB15F@13.12 means that the Sugar Contract for 2015 January is trading at $0.1312 per pound. This is precisely the type of format that a sugar trader would purchase a contract. When you are ready to trade sugar contracts on the ICE, the margin requirement is 12%. In the preceding example, the contract size of 112,000 pounds of sugar would cost a trader $14,672. With a 12% margin upfront, the amount needed to make the trade is $1,760.64.

Understanding How Profits are generated with Sugar

For every $0.0001 move in the price of sugar, the total price move for the contract is $11.20. Profits in sugar contracts are easily determined by the difference between the exit price and the contract price. The result is then simply multiplied by $11.20. Presently, the price of sugar is $11.57. The price of sugar is near its 5 year low figure, since it was trading close to $35 in 2011. The price of sugar has consistently declined over the past five years. Prior to the 2011 sugar price surge, trading sugar was well beneath $30, and in fact between late 2006 and 2008 was hovering around the $10 range.

Sugar is primarily available in the form of honey, Maple syrup, sugar beet and sugar cane. Its distinctive characteristic is that it is sweet and this carbohydrate is an instant pick me up by being able to generate rapid energy for the user. The refined form of sugar is white sugar and it comes from sugar beets and sugar cane. Some 78% of global production in sugar comes from sugar cane. This is why it is imperative to follow news updates regarding weather phenomena that impact upon sugarcane production. Shortages of sugar cane lead to price rises in sugar, depending of course on demand and sugar inventories.

The world’s major producers of sugar include Brazil and India, followed by the European Union. What is particularly interesting about this particular commodity is that the majority of sugar is consumed in the country of its production. This is in stark contrast to many other agricultural commodities such as wheat, corn, soy beans, red meat etc. Many countries export the vast majority of their agricultural produce and soft commodities.

Determinants of the Sugar Price

Depending on which country or region we were talking about, demand for sugar will vary considerably. Western societies are moving away from sugar-saturated diets, in favour of sugar substituted diets. This trend is likely to continue as concerns grow about the impact of consuming too much sugar on the general health and well-being of society.

Sugar substitutes are now widely used across the US and Canada, with Europe close in tow. Some of the most pressing concerns with regards to sugar consumption are obesity, diabetes, tooth decay and the like. Even with declining preferences for sugar, the US remains a major consumer of world sugar.

The price of sugar is not free of market manipulation. In the US and many other countries, there are measures in place to protect producers by maintaining artificially high prices. This has the effect of causing consumers to look at alternatives. For example, many food companies are now turning to corn syrup as a substitute sugar. There are growing calls from sugar beet producers and sugar cane producers for a free-market system vis-a-vis sugar prices.

Of course an important determinant of the price of sugar is the quantity of sugar beets and sugar cane. As mentioned, the more abundant these commodities are, the lower the sugar price will be, all things being equal. Adverse weather has a detrimental effect on the production of these crops. Things like frost damage, excessive rains and flooding, droughts and other negative weather phenomena reduce the crop supply and raise the price of sugar on the markets.

It is clear that tariffs and subsidies are widely used to prop up the sugar markets around the world. Nobody knows quite what the real price of sugar should be, since there is so much artificial maintenance of market prices. In truth, the price of sugar may well be substantially less than what it presently is, but the clearest indicators yet of the price of sugar are likely found in things like export numbers, domestic consumption and society’s changing attitudes towards processed sugar.

Take a seat

The stock market can be a confusing place for a newbie. While it’s true that you learn as you go along, you need to come into trading having some basic knowledge of how the market runs and how to play it. At the very least, you should be able to define some common terms so that your investment portfolio manager doesn’t have to speak in a certain way to you…if you get what I mean.

So this is a simple guide into first time investing with all the fancy terminology and great tips. You certainly won’t become a billionaire by sticking to this simple guide but you certainly won’t lose your hard-earned money, and that’s a pretty good deal, right?

Basic terminology

Stocks and funds are not the same thing. A stock is a share in a company that you can buy, hold and sell in the market or privately. A mutual fund consist individual investors buying into different companies together. It is managed by a team of professionals.

If you don’t want to manage your investment, then a mutual fund may be the way to go but then you could also hire a certified financial planner to manage your individual stocks, at a cost of course.

Trading and investing are also slightly different terms. Trading refers to the actual and frequent buying and selling of stocks or funds. Investing, on the other hand, has to do with a long-term approach so the movement of stocks or funds is not as frequent.

Have a plan

No one has money to waste in stocks so you need to have a clear plan going in. You need a CEO and a CFO for the planning and budgeting respectively. This doesn’t mean you should hire people. The point here is to emphasize the need for a vision and a plan as well as a budget and more importantly a reserve fund, in cash, to take care of any emergencies. The reserve fund will help you not have to sell the investment before time, or worse, get into more debt.

Get the capital

Part of plan is to know what you are going to invest i.e. where the cash is coming from. Saving may take too long to make the kind of investment you are thinking about so consider using your 401(K). Most employers have it and it’s pretty easy to have it as your investment capital. Some companies even have ‘classes’ over lunch explaining how it works and would even match your investment dollar for dollar. If you start early, you could have the retirement of your dreams!

Set up a brokerage account

You will need to get a brokerage account with a credible, licensed firm that will conduct your trading and manage your account for you. This is not for free of course, so you will be funding this account. The money will be in the cash portion of the account and used to settle orders. Stocks bought and commissions are debited from this cash, while stocks sold, interest and dividends are credit here as well (which you can withdraw).

Now you’re ready to start the business of buying and selling; and that’s a whole other class. Good luck!

Currency trading on the foreign exchange market (Forex), also known as speculative forex trading, is carried out with the intention of making money. The currency exchange rate is the rate at which a certain currency is able to be exchanged for another. It is always quoted in pairs, for example the USD/EU rate (US Dollar and Euro). Because exchange rates can fluctuate and change based on a variety of reasons for example economic factors such as industrial production, geopolitical events and inflation, there are always factors influencing whether or not a currency pair is bought or sold. If you are new to currency trading, we have complied a list of tips that you may find helpful.

Know the Language

When it comes to currency trading, technical language can often be used by traders and this can be a little bit intimidating if you’re just beginning to trade. If you see a word that you’re not sure of, it’s a good idea to refer to the commonly used Forex terms which will help you become more familiar with the language.

Technical Analysis

In order to develop a strategy, a wide variety of tools and techniques are used by traders. Some traders will perform technical analysis by studying the market using currency charts, which is a good strategy that assumes past movements in the market will help to predict market activity in the future. Technical analysis is a very popular technique due to how effective it is.

Fundamental Analysis

Other traders will use fundamental analysis in order to develop a trading strategy. These traders closely follow the effect of political, economic and social effects on the prices of currency. One way to do this effectively would be to read specialized Forex news in order to keep up to date on how events have an effect on currency exchange rates.

Practice

As you become more familiar with the market, you will gain more practice and experience which in turn will make you a better trader. You may also like to experiment with a variety of tools to see which ones work best for you, for example the portfolio management tool from IMS Broadridge which assists with all aspects of managing your portfolio from order management to risk management.

Know the Risks

There is a considerable level of risk involved with trading foreign exchange on margin, and many people often decide that this amount of risk is unsuitable for them personally. Before you decide to trade foreign exchange it is important that you take time to carefully consider all of your investment objectives, appetite for risk, and level of experience. Remember that there is always a possibility that you lose some or all of the money you initially invest, so you should never invest money that you cannot afford to lose. If you have any doubts or worries, you may find it helpful to consult a financial advisor.

How did you start out trading foreign exchange? Do you have any more tips or advice for those just starting out? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.