Bryan Hoo's Blog

February 27, 2022

What is Bitcoin

Okay! It is lesson time again which we will continue to talk about the topic "What is Bitcoin?". Enjoy~🧐

What Is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a digital currency created in January 2009. It follows the ideas set out in a whitepaper by the mysterious and pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. The identity of the person or persons who created the technology is still a mystery. Bitcoin offers the promise of lower transaction fees than traditional online payment mechanisms and, unlike government-issued currencies, it is operated by a decentralized authority.

About Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency. There is no physical bitcoin, only balances kept on a public ledger that everyone has transparent access to. All bitcoin transactions are verified by a massive amount of computing power. Bitcoin is not issued or backed by any banks or governments, nor is an individual bitcoin valuable as a commodity. Despite it not being legal tender in most parts of the world, bitcoin is very popular and has triggered the launch of hundreds of other cryptocurrencies, collectively referred to as altcoins. Bitcoin is commonly abbreviated as "BTC."

Understanding Bitcoin

The bitcoin system is a collection of computers (also referred to as "nodes" or "miners") that all run bitcoin's code and store its blockchain. Metaphorically, a blockchain can be thought of as a collection of blocks. In each block is a collection of transactions. Because all the computers running the blockchain have the same list of blocks and transactions, and can transparently see these new blocks being filled with new bitcoin transactions, no one can cheat the system.

Peer-to-Peer Technology

Bitcoin is one of the first digital currencies to use peer-to-peer technology to facilitate instant payments. The independent individuals and companies who own the governing computing power and participate in the bitcoin network—bitcoin "miners"—are in charge of processing the transactions on the blockchain and are motivated by rewards (the release of new bitcoin) and transaction fees paid in bitcoin.

Alright, that is all from today lesson. More and more interesting topics will be discussed in the future. Stay Tune~🧐

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#bitcoin #BTC #blockchain
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Published on February 27, 2022 06:15 Tags: bitcoin-btc-blockchain

January 1, 2022

Types of Financial Derivatives

This is the complete lesson notes on the topic "Types of Financial Derivatives".

Okay, it is lesson time again. We will talk about the topic about "Types of Financial Derivatives". Enjoy~😗

What Are Derivatives?
A derivative is a financial instrument that derives its value from something else. The value of a derivative is linked to the value of the underlying asset. In simpler terms, think of putting down a bet on a hand of blackjack as the underlying and then someone else making a bet on the success of your blackjack hand as a derivative of the underlying.

Types of Derivatives
There are generally considered to be 4 types of derivatives: forward, futures, swaps, and options.

Derivative#1: Options
An options contract gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell something at a specific price on or before a specific date. With a forward contract, the buyer and seller are obligated to make the transaction on the specified date, whereas with options, the buyer has the choice to execute their option and buy the asset at the specified price.

Derivative#2: Forward Contract
A forward contract is where a buyer agrees to purchase the underlying asset from the seller at a specific price on a specific date. Forward contracts are more customizable than futures contracts and can be tailored to a specific commodity, amount, and date.

Derivative#3: Swaps
A swap is an agreement to exchange future cash flows. Typically, one cash flow is variable while the other is fixed. Say for example a bank holds a mortgage on a house with a variable rate but no longer wants to be exposed to interest rate fluctuations, they could swap that mortgage with someone else’s fixed-rate mortgage so they lock in a certain rate.

CDS, or credit default swap, is a financial derivative that "swaps" (or trades) risk of default on debt. It is insurance on default of a credit instrument, like a bond. If you're a buyer of a CDS contract, you are "betting" that a credit instrument will default. If it does default, the buyer would be made whole.

Alright, that is all from today lesson. More and more interesting topics will be discussed in the near future. Stay Tune~🧐

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#finance #swaps #derivative #options
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Published on January 01, 2022 02:54 Tags: finance-swaps-derivative-options

Future of Finance

This is the complete lesson notes on the topic "Future of Finance".

Alright, it is lesson time again! We will continue to talk about the topic "Future of Finance" which we will discuss about the future form of Finance. Enjoy~😗

Understanding of key megatrends of future finance are as below:

1. The exponential growth in data. Structured and unstructured data can be now analyzed for insights and utilized to drive decision-making—a capability that will need to be maintained as data continues to proliferate.

2. Lower computing costs. With the growing acceptance of the cloud, companies can now access computing power often at a lower cost than previously.

Some of the Mega Trend in Future of Finance:
-Smarter algorithms. Algorithms have gained the capacity to drive innovation and communication, as well as changing how finance drives value across the organization.
-Faster processing speed. Millions of transactions can now be handled in real time, with data extracted and fed into the finance processes that drive decision-making.

Possible Form#1: The finance factory.
Once end-to-end automation—enabled by technologies ranging from cloud-based ERP to blockchain, and from robotic process automation to cognitive tools—manual processes and rework within finance will disappear. The result: a shift from finance as a “function” to that of a factory, conducting touchless and seamless transactions. As traditional processes disappear, so will the silos around them, eliminating the traditional hand-offs in transaction processing. The focus of finance will shift to design, configuration, and maintenance of systems. The use of algorithms and cognitive agents, embedded on desktops, will place a premium for attracting and retaining finance talent with technology skills. Digital technology will free up capacity, enabling finance to become more integrated with the business—and leading the business to increase its expectations of finance.

Possible Form#2: The role of finance.
With operations automated, finance’s focus will shift to supplying business insights and helping provide differentiated service to customers by acting as catalysts and strategists. Processes involved in budgeting, planning, and forecasting—which have historically required manually intensive end-of-month heroics—will become increasingly routine as a result of automation.

Finance also will be expected to provide more scenario planning and using advanced analytics to help solve problems and develop predictive capabilities. Instead of merely reporting historical numbers, finance will use data to help the enterprise become more intelligent.

Okay, that is all from today lesson. More and more interesting topcis will be discussed in the future. Stay Tune~😇

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#FutureofFinance #fintech #finance
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Published on January 01, 2022 02:45 Tags: futureoffinance-fintech-finance

December 24, 2021

Million Dollar Business Ideas of 2021

This is the complete lesson note on the topic "Million Dollar Business Ideas of 2021".

It is lesson time again! We will talk about the topic of "Million Dollar Business Ideas of 2021". Enjoy~📈

Idea#1: Online Education
If you have a skill that other people would like to learn, then capitalize on it by offering online educational resources that teach that skill. Especially with the current landscape, more people are turning to virtual education than ever before — both for practical purposes as well as to pursue a hobby or passion. Experts predict e-learning sales will grow to $325 billion by 2025, which means you should enter this scholastic gold rush before the market is oversaturated with competitors.

By selling e-guides, online courses, e-books or virtual tutoring sessions, you can start a million-dollar business for little upfront cost. Since online education doesn’t require physical materials, or even an office if you’re a team of one, your overhead will be low and your profit will stay high.

Idea#2: Food Delivery Services
Even before the coronavirus pandemic forced many restaurants to pivot to takeout or delivery options only, more and more people were opting for food delivery, whether pre-made dishes or meal prep kits. In fact, 27% of internet users purchased meal kits off the internet in 2016 and these kits are becoming increasingly common.

Idea#3: Drop-shipping
In order to become a million-dollar business, you may want to consider keeping your expenses low. One such way to do that, is by starting a dropshipping business. What that means is you can start an ecommerce business that outsources product development, material sourcing, inventory, shipping and manufacturing to an outside party. When you have a dropshipping business, you’ll sell products via an ecommerce website to customers, but a third-party manufacturer will handle the order fulfillment and shipping.

Idea#4: Subscription model business
Retaining customers is notoriously more affordable than gaining new ones. Which means if you can lock your customers into a weekly, monthly or annual subscription purchase, then you have a much higher chance of retaining your customers. In 2017, subscription model business websites were receiving around 37 million visitors, which shows that consumers are intrigued by this business model.

Alright, that is all from today lesson. More and more interesting topics will be discussed in the future. Stay Tune~😙

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#milliondollaridea #SubscriptionEconomy #saasbusiness #businessideas
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Published on December 24, 2021 06:04

Biggest Companies In The World

This is the complete lesson note on the topic "Biggest Companies In The World".

Alright, it is lesson time again. We will talk about the topic of "Biggest Companies In The World". Enjoy~😎

Company#1: Walmart Inc.
Founded in 1962, Walmart has since grown into one of the world's largest retailers. The company operates discount stores, supercenters, neighborhood markets, as well as a robust online platform. Walmart sells a wide variety of merchandise including clothing and apparel, home goods, books, jewelry, food and beverage, pharmaceutical supplies, and automotive equipment.

Company#2: Amazon
Amazon is the world's largest online retailer by market cap. The company began as an online bookseller and has since grown to encompass virtually every category of retail. Besides selling products through its ecommerce platform, Amazon owns subsidiaries including Whole Foods Market and home security company Ring. Amazon's fastest-growing areas of business are cloud computing services, subscription products like Amazon Prime, and streaming movies and other entertainment.

Company#3: Apple
Apple designs, manufactures, and markets a broad range of consumer technology products, including smartphones, personal computers, tablets, wearable devices, home entertainment devices, and more. Among the company's most popular products are its iPhone line of smartphones and Mac line of computers. Apple also is building a fast-growing services business, operating digital content stores, selling streaming video games, and providing streaming services such as Apple+, a platform for on-demand entertainment content.

Company#4: Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway is a diversified holding corporation that owns companies in broad range of sectors and industries. The include insurance, energy generation, freight rail transportation, retail, and manufacturing companies, among others. The company also holds a substantial portfolio of equity securities and derivatives.

Okay, that is all from today lesson. More and more interesting topics will be discussed in the future. Stay Tune~🤑

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Published on December 24, 2021 05:56

November 6, 2021

Best Books for Financial Experts

Hey! It is lesson time again! We will talk about the topic of "Best Books for Financial Experts". Enjoy~🤑

Book#1: The Intelligent Investor
“The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham has earned its place in the literary canon for financial titles, and with good reason. First published in 1949, it’s since been updated with a few modern takes, such as commentary and footnotes by financial journalist Jason Zweig. Still, the integrity of Graham’s wisdom remains, from the solidity of value investing to loss minimization to resisting emotional decision-making when navigating the financial markets. This classic read has sold more than a million copies worldwide and has earned ringing endorsements from Barron's.

Book#2: The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor
David J. Mullen Jr.’s “The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor” is a more personal approach to the industry, taking interviews with 15 top financial advisors and compiling it into 13 actionable lessons for financial professionals. These lessons focus on important tenets of the industry, such as building and maintaining client relationships. Mullen, a 30-year industry veteran, was a former managing director at Merrill Lynch.

Book#3: Common Sense on Mutual Funds
John C. Bogle’s “Common Sense on Mutual Funds” has been established as something akin to gospel in the world of mutual funds. A mutual fund is an investment vehicle through which investors pool their money to invest in securities, usually stocks or bonds. They’re important in the investment world because they’re an easy way to diversify your portfolio in a more cost-effective way. Originally published in 1999, this updated version shares insights on everything from the basics of mutual fund investing to regulatory changes to how to build an investment portfolio with staying power. Bogle was the founder of The Vanguard Group, one of the largest investment companies in the world, as well as the author of “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” and “Enough.”

Book#4: The 10X Financial Advisor
Ideal for financial advisors who want to grow their businesses but aren’t sure how, Scott Winters’ “The 10X Financial Advisor” encourages financial professionals to run their businesses like, well, a business. His findings are based on the Quantum Leap Success Model, a method that will help financial advisors to not only grow their business but to sustain that growth. As the title suggests, the book explores how that one financial advisor at every firm who is 10 times more successful achieved that growth—and kept it going. An industry veteran and top financial advisor, Winters built a wealth management business from scratch, into more than $2 billion in assets with more than 20,000 clients.

Okay, that is all from today lesson. More and more interesting topics will be discussed in the future. Stay Tune~😎

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#financialbook #books #10x #goodreads
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Published on November 06, 2021 07:44

Types of Financial Markets

Okay, it is lesson time again! We will talk about the topic "Types of Financial Markets". Enjoy~🥰

What are Financial Markets?

Financial markets, from the name itself, are a type of marketplace that provides an avenue for the sale and purchase of assets such as bonds, stocks, foreign exchange, and derivatives. Often, they are called by different names, including “Wall Street” and “capital market,” but all of them still mean one and the same thing. Simply put, businesses and investors can go to financial markets to raise money to grow their business and to make more money, respectively.

Market#1. Stock market
The stock market trades shares of ownership of public companies. Each share comes with a price, and investors make money with the stocks when they perform well in the market. It is easy to buy stocks. The real challenge is in choosing the right stocks that will earn money for the investor.

There are various indices that investors can use to monitor how the stock market is doing, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and the S&P 500. When stocks are bought at a cheaper price and are sold at a higher price, the investor earns from the sale.

Market#2: Bond market
The bond market offers opportunities for companies and the government to secure money to finance a project or investment. In a bond market, investors buy bonds from a company, and the company returns the amount of the bonds within an agreed period, plus interest.

Market#3. Commodities market
The commodities market is where traders and investors buy and sell natural resources or commodities such as corn, oil, meat, and gold. A specific market is created for such resources because their price is unpredictable. There is a commodities futures market wherein the price of items that are to be delivered at a given future time is already identified and sealed today.

Okay, that is all from today lesson. More and more interesting topics will be discussed in the future. Stay Tune~🧐

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#commodities #financialmarkets #economy
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Published on November 06, 2021 06:45

September 25, 2021

World's Most Famous Traders of All Time

Okay, it is lesson time again. We will talk about "World's Most Famous Traders of All Time". Enjoy~😊

Trader#1: Jesse Livermore

Jesse Lauriston Livermore (1877–1940) was an American trader famous for both colossal gains and losses in the market. He successfully shorted the 1929 market crash, building his fortune to $100 million. However, by 1934 he had lost his money and tragically took his own life in 1940.

Trader#2. William Delbert Gann

WD Gann (1878–1955) was a trader who used market forecasting methods based on geometry, astrology, and ancient mathematics. His mysterious technical tools include Gann angles and the Square of 9. As well as trading, Gann wrote a number of books and courses.

Trader#3. George Soros

Hungarian-born George Soros (born 1930) is the chair of Soros Fund Management, one of the most successful firms in the history of the hedge fund industry. He earned the moniker “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” in 1992 after his short sale of $10 billion worth of pounds, yielding a tidy $1 billion profit.

Trader#4. Jim Rogers

James Rogers, Jr. (born 1942) is the chair of Rogers Holdings. He co-founded the Quantum Fund along with George Soros in the early 1970s, which gained a staggering 4200% over 10 years. Rogers is renowned for his correct bullish call on commodities in the 1990s and also for his books detailing his adventurous world travels.

Okay, that is all from today lesson. More and more interesting topics will be discussed in the future. Stay Tune~📈

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Published on September 25, 2021 23:53 Tags: trading-trader

Best Growth Stocks You Can Invest

Alright, it is lesson time again. We will talk about the "Best Growth Stocks You Can Invest". Enjoy~🤪

Stock#1: Square (ticker: SQ)

Payments and point-of-sale solutions company Square has been an out-and-out growth stock for a number of years. Its revenue has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 49.6% over the last five years. Square's most recent earnings release on May 6 revealed 44% year-over-year net revenue growth, showing size hasn't slowed its prodigious growth much. A big chunk of Square's current growth comes from Cash App, its Venmo-like peer-to-peer mobile payments app. In the first quarter, Cash App's gross profits jumped 171% year over year, accounting for $495 million, or 51.3%, of Square's total $964 million gross profit.

Stock#2: Amazon

While indeed one of the biggest companies on earth, Amazon has proven its uncanny ability to post spectacular growth rates despite its size, making it a natural member of 2021's best growth stocks to buy. For many years, Amazon denied itself profitability, choosing instead to expand its market share through razor-thin margins while plowing every dollar back into long-term investments.

Stock#3: NetEase (NTES)

Chinese online gaming company NetEase may not be expanding as quickly as Square or Amazon, but its strong track record of growth, pipeline and valuation made it an attractive growth stock to buy heading into 2021. Sales growth over the last five years has clocked in at more than 27% annually and remains impressive with a 25.6% year-over-year growth rate just last quarter. In development are games based on already-popular franchises such as "Harry Potter," "The Lord of the Rings" and "Pokemon."😎

Stock#4: Alibaba Group (BABA)

Investors shouldn't be entirely focused on the U.S. in their portfolios. When looking abroad, the single-largest market and most attractive investment landscape has to be China, with a population of around 1.4 billion. Importantly, the Chinese middle class has been expanding rapidly, too – it's likely China's middle class already exceeds the entire population of the U.S. What this mean? More and more sales will go to Alibaba!

Okay, that is all from today lesson. More and more interesting topics will be discussed in the future. Stay Tune~😜

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Published on September 25, 2021 23:44

August 30, 2021

Top Emerging Market for Investors

Okay, it is kinda like a marathon of learning. We will talk about a new topic about "Top Emerging Market for Investors". Enjoy~☺️

Market#1: China

China has been the most significant emerging market story of the last two decades and remains an important market. There are several reasons that China has been a key economy for investors. In the last few years, China’s middle class has grown from a negligible number to hundreds of millions of people. This growth has resulted in the greatest increase in consumer spending in history.

The number of people with disposable income has occurred at the same time that profitable technology platforms Alibaba and WeChat have emerged – we covered this in detail in our article on China’s tech giants. One of the advantages for investors considering China is that many of the best companies are listed on US and European exchanges. Companies like Alibaba and Tencent are uniquely positioned to benefit from the growth of the middle class. But you may also want to consider some of the less exciting companies like China Mobile and China Life Insurance which trade on lower valuations.📈

Market#2: Indonesia

Indonesia, with the fourth largest population in the world, is often overlooked by investors. However, it has some of the best growth drivers with a population that is younger and faster growing than most Asian countries. Indonesia’s economy was hit very hard during the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s. But the country learnt from the experience and has managed its debt and current account quite well since then – while growth has ranged between 3 and 6 percent.

The Indonesian market has again come under pressure during 2020, with the result that prices are back to 2009 levels. Telkom Indonesia (which is listed on the NYSE) often comes up as top emerging market pick. Other stocks to consider are pharmaceutical giant, Kalbe Farma, and Unilever Indonesia. Two ETF, the iShares MSCI Indonesia ETF (EIDO) and VanEck Vectors Indonesia Index ETF (IDX) are also worth considering.🧐

Market#3: Malaysia

Malaysia has been one of the most reliable economies in Asia that is still considered an emerging market. Growth has ranged between 4 and 6% over the past decade, and the debt to GDP ratio is falling. Malaysia also has a relatively strong currency and a current account surplus. With a diverse economy, Malaysia is well suited to ETF investing. The iShares MSCI Malaysia ETF (EWM) holds the stocks of the 41 most valuable companies in 9 sectors.

Okay, that is all from today lesson. More and more interesting topics will be discussed in the future. Stay Tune~🤩

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#emergingmarket #malaysia #ETFINVESTING #ETF #stockstowatch
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Published on August 30, 2021 00:00 Tags: emergingmarkets