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A paper instrument by which a company raises operating capital. In turn for receiving the capital the company relinquishes a portion of the ownership of the company. The value of the stock certificate lies in the ownership privileges. The price paid for the stock is not always directly proportionate to the value of the company. Trading stocks has many motivations the two primary are to speculate on the underlying company and to own some portion of the underlying company.

Sub-Forums: Small Cap, Large Cap, Penny Stocks

Are collections of stocks, or other similar instruments, Mutual Funds are bought or sold at a price typically reflecting the cumulative value of each instrument. Mutual Funds were created to help smaller investors enjoy the advantages of pooling their assets with several other investors to hire a professional management team to invest their funds and manage the portfolio to everyone's best interest. Investing in Mutual Funds helps manage portfolio volatility by owning several instruments rather than managing each stock, or similar instruments on an individual basis. The common perception is that owing a basket of investments, which are professionally managed, has a tendency to mitigate risk and should yield an average growth, or loss. Which would be more palatable to individual investors.

Sub-Forums: Aggressive, Conservative, Capital Appreciation

Bonds are paper assets representing a numerical value to the owner of the bond. Typically, bonds are issued to raise capital. The owner of the bond is promised some financial reward for swapping cash for the bond certificate. Bonds come in many configurations, but the essence of the overall bond community is that bonds largely are instruments, that pay interest to the bondholder in some manner during their tenure holding the bond paper.

Sub-Forums: Government Bonds (Treasuries), Corporate Bonds, Municipal Bonds, Private Bond Offerings

A contract to purchase something at a future date. Futures are, as the name implies, are instruments which are bought and sold based on the investor's perception of where a market might be for the timeframe they are interested in. The easiest way to explain is to imagine a farmer growing his crop, that farmer needs cash to plant the crop. The crop will take some time to mature and be ready for market, but a speculator comes along and wants to buy the harvested crop from the farmer before it is finished growing. The farmer knows how much his crop would bring providing it is a perfect crop, but he negotiates with the speculator for somewhat less that the harvested value, so the farmer can have the money in his pocket, regardless of what happens to the crop. That is what a future contract is. Of course the speculator is taking the risk that the crop will mature and yield in the range he expects, because the speculator most likely knows that his buyer will pay him more than he paid the farmer for the harvested crop. That is the world of futures, regardless of what each participant is called there must be these three players; the producer, speculator and processor each with their own motivation they create markets called futures.

Sub-Forums: Index Futures, Single Stock Futures, Commodity Futures

Sub-Forums: Stock, Index, Futures

The Foreign Exchange markets are commonly called FOREX. The FOREX is a system of currency value tracking and reporting. The FOREX system indicates the rate at which one currency can be exchanged for another at any given time. Essentially, when one country’s currency is exchanged for another’s in a transaction, the actual paper currency needs to be returned or repatriated to the originating country. This repatriation is done via a system of networked banks and financial institutions that facilitate the return of each participating country’s’ currency. The actual process is more complicated than this explanation, but from a trader's standpoint the concept is all one needs to know.

Sub-Forums: Residential, Commercial

Sub-Forums: Private Paper, Commercial Paper

Sub-Forums: Wills

Sub-Forums: Coins, Figurines, Art, Vehicles, Antiques, Guns

The Top Gun vendor forum offers traders the opportunity to experience professional level trading tools. New traders will get a jump start into trading using these tools. Experienced traders will be able to incorporate the tools into their existing trading strategies.