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Think short term loans are for financially irresponsible people? Not quite. When circumstances outside of your control drain your savings and leave you wondering how you’ll cover all of your expenses when pay day is another week away, short term loans can be the only way you keep your household budget out of the red.

There are plenty of reasons why you might need a short term loan. A sudden medical expense, vehicle repair, or utility bill could come at a time when a leaking bathroom pipe needs immediate repair. Bills and repairs compound until you owe more than you can afford. The reasons why aren’t important when you’re the one on the hook for these expenses. The anxiety caused by bills can be devastating, but the stress can be alleviated with the help of a direct online lender.

Part of this stress is finding a loan that will fit your time line. When your bills are due immediately, you can’t afford to wait for a lender to take days (or even weeks) to approve your loan. A direct online lender can provide quick and convenient loans when you need it most. By virtue of being an online lender, they can approve and facilitate your loan through their secure website. Everything is done virtually, and you can receive an electronic transfer into your account in as little as one business day. Imagine having the luxury of getting the loan you need in that short time frame. You don’t have to rely on a financial advisor’s schedule to speak about your loan options and or wait weeks to see the money you need.

Beyond expediency, you’ll find that direct online lenders differ in the types of loans they offer. Go online and read up on the terms, rates, and conditions that each state-licensed direct lender can offer you. Your research will no doubt bring you to discover how MoneyKey can help when the going gets tough. They don’t believe in providing the same loan to every one of their clients, regardless of financial standing or needs. They can issue lines of credit, installment loans with flexible payment options, and single-pay loans depending on your unique financial situation. Each loan is has its own advantages, so you should explore which one better fits your needs. Having the luxury of flexibility means you can shop for a loan with rates that you can reasonably manage, never having to settle for something beyond your means.

When you find a loan and lender that meets your standards, you’ve gotten to the easy part. All you have to do is fill out a convenient application form and wait to see if you qualify. Once you do, you’ll have the money you need to face the unexpected expenses that put a strain on your budget.

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.

It was like a message from beyond the grave. One man’s actions left his family protected from the financial aftershocks of his sudden demise.

Most of Vinit Sharma’s* friends remember the printing press owner in Mumbai as a quiet, unassuming person who spoke only when necessary. Even in his close circle of friends, Vinit was always the quietest but he had the loudest laugh. The only time he became gregarious was when he would spend time with his two children, Asha* and Vinay*.

But despite his studied silences, he was always helping others whenever he could. If the building kids needed help hauling tubs of water downstairs for Holi, Vinit would be the first to help them. His wife would often see him writing cheques to the local orphanage – without saying a word even to her. If a neighbour needed to reach the airport at midnight, he would often volunteer to drive them.

But his family was unaware of one miracle Vinit had already worked out years before he passed away last year after succumbing to a heart attack. He was just 49 years old with no history of heart trouble. His devastated wife, Shyamala* says, “He suffered a heart attack at home just before leaving for work. By evening, the doctors told me that he could not be saved. The attack had been a severe one. I remember sitting alone in the corridor outside, wondering about my future and the future of my two children.”

A few days later, a long forgotten memory suddenly presented itself to her. “I remembered that some years ago, Vinit had told me to look in his safe in the wardrobe for his insurance papers. ‘In case anything happens to me…call the company and claim the insurance money’ he had told her at the time. “I had heard him out but dismissed it. Nobody in their wildest dreams expects their partner to leave them in their 40s. But I remembered what he had said and checked his safe. Sure enough, I found the insurance papers,” Shyamala recalls.

It turned out that Vinit had taken a health insurance plan that covered the entire family. “The plan was to mature in five more years. He had never missed a premium payment. When I saw the sum assured amount, I gasped in surprise,” she smiles. After contacting the insurance company, she set the health insurance plans claim process in motion. “All the paperwork was in order, and the process of claiming the money was very simple. I got the sum assured in under a month,” she says.

She remembers feeling like “a cloud had lifted” despite losing her beloved husband. “The money would help in my children’s education for a few years. There was enough left over for monthly expenses as well. It felt like it was his last gift to his family from beyond the grave,” she says with tears in her eyes. “We all miss him terribly, not a single day passes when I do not think of him. But even after his death, he looked after our needs. That one step he took –of taking a health insurance policy – ensured that my children and I would not need to depend on anyone else for our sustenance.”

Today, she runs her husband’s business which is doing quite well. Her daughter will enter college life soon, and his son says he plans to become a pilot. The family’s dreams are on course – just like Vinit wanted.

*Characters in the write-up are merely illustrative

Proper business analysis is definitely required in order to increase the overall performance of the business. Just because you have a small scale business doesn’t mean that you do not need to pay attention to identifying the specific metrics which need to be adjusted. After all, business analysis is crucial for improving the overall performance of a business, be it a small scale one or a large scale corporation. All businesses face issues on a regular basis; what you need to do is to assess these issues and arrive at a useful analysis so that you can plan for your business accordingly. This article would teach you how to analyze your small business like a pro.

Business cannot function without its life blood, i.e. money and money comes from the customers, therefore the very first thing that you should tackle when it comes to analyzing your small business is customer results. Basically you need to conduct an operational analysis with a focus on customer satisfaction. You should aim at providing all your customers with equal treatment, irrespective of the cost of the product or service. By analyzing the investment results and maintaining customer satisfaction you will be able to boost the profit growth of your business.

Sure, a small scale business generally requires minimum investment but sometimes it is necessary to pay attention to the strategic and business results of your company brought about by the investment you make. You need to ask yourself whether you are investing as much money as your competitors or not. Now it is not necessary to use up a huge chunk of money for this process because you can always try to increase the strategic efforts of your small scale business through cost effective solutions.

When you’re analyzing your small scale business, you need to pay attention to the financial performance as well. In other words, you need to review the rationality and cost efficiency of the steps your business is taking. You need to find out whether the amount of performance that you’re getting out of the cost is worthwhile or not. In this analysis, you need to tackle all pressing questions that are financial nature. The rule of thumb here is to strive to improve the performance while incurring a lower cost with specific limits in place.

Business analysis is not just about analyzing problems and issues, it is also about coming up with solutions for them. Thus, if you want to analyze your small scale business like a pro then you will need to innovate. The innovation area of business analysis is highly important as it provides qualitative results. A multi-functional solution is always preferable here as these help in resolving several issues at once.

Not taking care of your company data when making analysis is extremely detrimental to the end results. Therefore, to be a pro business analyzer you need to recognize the value of the company data first and then commit to a basic data strategy so that you can hatch a plan that engages outside assistance and develops internal resources in an optimum manner.

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.