0_Wizard
I am a Finance major in college. I study investments and financial products.
Finance is a field that deals with the study of investments.
chosen_Finance_0
Finance
chosen_topic_0_Finance
Islamic banking and finance
Islamic banking or Islamic finance () or sharia-compliant finance is banking or financing activity that complies with sharia (Islamic law) and its practical application through the development of Islamic economics. Some of the modes of Islamic banking/finance include "Mudarabah" (Profit sharing and loss bearing), "Wadiah" (safekeeping), "Musharaka" (joint venture), "Murabahah" (cost plus), and "Ijar" (leasing). Sharia prohibits "riba", or usury, defined as interest paid on all loans of money (although some Muslims dispute whether there is a consensus that interest is equivalent to "riba"). Investment in businesses that provide goods or services considered contrary to Islamic principles (e.g.
Assessments, controversies, challenges in Islamic finance
Islamic banking and finance — the industry built around avoiding interest and other financial practices found in violation of sharia (Islamic law) — has been both praised and criticized by observers. The industry has been praised for turning a "theory" into an industry that has grown to about $2 trillion in size; for attracting new banking users who otherwise would not have used banking services (due to religious objections to conventional banking), drawing non-Muslim bankers into the field, and (according to other supporters) introducing a more stable, less risky form of finance. However, the industry has also been criticized as undermining its own "raison d'être" and having moved in the wrong direction over the decades — leading both outsiders and rank and file Muslims to question it.
Subprime mortgage crisis
The United States (U.S.) subprime mortgage crisis was a nationwide banking emergency, occurring between 2007-2010, which contributed to the U.S. recession of December 2007 – June 2009. It was triggered by a large decline in home prices after the collapse of a housing bubble, leading to mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures and the devaluation of housing-related securities. Declines in residential investment preceded the recession and were followed by reductions in household spending and then business investment. Spending reductions were more significant in areas with a combination of high household debt and larger housing price declines.
Causes of the Great Recession
Many factors directly and indirectly caused the Great Recession (which started in 2007 with the US subprime mortgage crisis), with experts and economists placing different weights on particular causes. Major causes of the initial subprime mortgage crisis and following recession include: International trade imbalances and lax lending standards contributing to high levels of developed country household debt and real-estate bubbles that have since burst; U.S. government housing policies; and limited regulation of non-depository financial institutions. Once the recession began, various responses were attempted with different degrees of success.
Subprime mortgage crisis solutions debate
The Subprime mortgage crisis solutions debate discusses various actions and proposals by economists, government officials, journalists, and business leaders to address the subprime mortgage crisis and broader financial crisis of 2007–08. The debate concerns both immediate responses to the ongoing subprime mortgage crisis, as well as long-term reforms to the global financial system. During 2008-2009, solutions focused on support for ailing financial institutions and economies. During 2010, debate continued regarding the nature of reform. Key points include: the split-up of large banks; whether depository banks and investment banks should be separated; whether banks should be able to make risky trades on their own accounts; how to wind-down large investment banks and other non-depository financial institutions without taxpayer impact; the extent of financial cushions that each institution should maintain (leverage restrictions); the creation of a consumer protection agency for financial products; and how to regulate derivatives.
Financial crisis of 2007–2008
The financial crisis of 2007–2008, also known as the global financial crisis and the 2008 financial crisis, is considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It began in 2007 with a crisis in the subprime mortgage market in the US, and developed into a full-blown international banking crisis with the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008. Excessive risk-taking by banks such as Lehman Brothers helped to magnify the financial impact globally. Massive bail-outs of financial institutions and other palliative monetary and fiscal policies were employed to prevent a possible collapse of the world financial system.
Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational finance company that engages in global investment banking, investment management, securities, and other financial services including asset management, mergers and acquisitions advice, prime brokerage, and securities underwriting services. It also sponsors private equity funds, is a market maker, and is a primary dealer in the United States Treasury security market. Goldman Sachs also owns GS Bank USA, a direct bank. Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869 and is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, with additional offices in other international financial centers.
1_Apprentice
That sounds very interesting. Is it a complicated thing to study?
0_Wizard
Not really. It includes assets and liabilities, as well as uncertainty and risk.
It includes the dynamics of assets and liabilities over time under conditions of different degrees of uncertainty and risk.
chosen_Finance_0
Finance
chosen_topic_0_Finance
Subprime mortgage crisis solutions debate
The Subprime mortgage crisis solutions debate discusses various actions and proposals by economists, government officials, journalists, and business leaders to address the subprime mortgage crisis and broader financial crisis of 2007–08. The debate concerns both immediate responses to the ongoing subprime mortgage crisis, as well as long-term reforms to the global financial system. During 2008-2009, solutions focused on support for ailing financial institutions and economies. During 2010, debate continued regarding the nature of reform. Key points include: the split-up of large banks; whether depository banks and investment banks should be separated; whether banks should be able to make risky trades on their own accounts; how to wind-down large investment banks and other non-depository financial institutions without taxpayer impact; the extent of financial cushions that each institution should maintain (leverage restrictions); the creation of a consumer protection agency for financial products; and how to regulate derivatives.
Subprime mortgage crisis
The United States (U.S.) subprime mortgage crisis was a nationwide banking emergency, occurring between 2007-2010, which contributed to the U.S. recession of December 2007 – June 2009. It was triggered by a large decline in home prices after the collapse of a housing bubble, leading to mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures and the devaluation of housing-related securities. Declines in residential investment preceded the recession and were followed by reductions in household spending and then business investment. Spending reductions were more significant in areas with a combination of high household debt and larger housing price declines.
Subprime crisis background information
This article provides background information regarding the subprime mortgage crisis. It discusses subprime lending, foreclosures, risk types, and mechanisms through which various entities involved were affected by the crisis. The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has defined subprime borrowers and lending: "The term subprime refers to the credit characteristics of individual borrowers. Subprime borrowers typically have weakened credit histories that include payment delinquencies, and possibly more severe problems such as charge-offs, judgments, and bankruptcies. They may also display reduced repayment capacity as measured by credit scores, debt-to-income ratios, or other criteria that may encompass borrowers with incomplete credit histories.
United Kingdom insolvency law
United Kingdom insolvency law regulates companies in the United Kingdom which are unable to repay their debts. While UK bankruptcy law concerns the rules for natural persons, the term insolvency is generally used for companies formed under the Companies Act 2006. "Insolvency" means being unable to pay debts. Since the Cork Report of 1982, the modern policy of UK insolvency law has been to attempt to rescue a company that is in difficulty, to minimise losses and fairly distribute the burdens between the community, employees, creditors and other stakeholders that result from enterprise failure. If a company cannot be saved it is "liquidated", so that the assets are sold off to repay creditors according to their priority.
Asset-backed commercial paper program
Asset-backed commercial paper program (ABCP program, ABCP Conduit or Conduit) is set up as a program that issues short-term liabilities, commercial papers called asset-backed commercial papers (ABCPs), to finance medium- to long-term assets. In terms of terminology, ABCP usually refers to asset-backed commercial paper, while ABCP conduit (or conduit) the program. The maturities of ABCP range up to 270 days but average about 30 days. Like banks, ABCP programs provide liquidity and maturity transformation services. Because of this structure, ABCP conduits are considered to be part of the Shadow banking system.
Icesave dispute
The Icesave dispute was a diplomatic dispute that began after the privately owned Icelandic bank Landsbanki was placed in receivership on 7 October 2008. As "Landsbanki" was one of three systemically important financial institutions in Iceland to go bankrupt within a few days, the Icelandic Depositors' and Investors' Guarantee Fund ("Tryggingarsjóður") had no remaining funds to make good on deposit guarantees to foreign "Landsbanki" depositors who held savings in the Icesave branch of the bank. When "Landsbanki" was placed into receivership by the Icelandic Financial Supervisory Authority (FME), 343,306 retail depositors in the UK and Netherlands that held accounts in the "Icesave" branch of "Landsbanki" lost a total of €6.7bn of savings.
South African insolvency law
Insolvency in South African law refers to a status of diminished legal capacity ("capitis diminutio") imposed by the courts on persons who are unable to pay their debts, or (which amounts to the same thing) whose liabilities exceed their assets. The insolvent's diminished legal capacity entails deprivation of certain of his important legal capacities and rights, in the interests of protecting other persons, primarily the general body of existing creditors, but also prospective creditors. Insolvency is also of benefit to the insolvent, in that it grants him relief in certain respects. In broad and everyday terms, a person is insolvent when he is unable to pay his debts.
1_Apprentice
Oh okay. I'm not one to take risks. I just can't gamble with my money
0_Wizard
Risk isn't necessary gambling. It is measuring the expected rate of return.
Finance aims to price assets based on their risk level and their expected rate of return.
chosen_Finance_0
Finance
chosen_topic_0_Finance
Credit card interest
Credit card interest is the principal way in which credit card issuers generate revenue. A card issuer is a bank or credit union that gives a consumer (the cardholder) a card or account number that can be used with various payees to make payments and borrow money from the bank simultaneously. The bank pays the payee and then charges the cardholder interest over the time the money remains borrowed. Banks suffer losses when cardholders do not pay back the borrowed money as agreed. As a result, optimal calculation of interest based on any information they have about the cardholder's credit risk is key to a card issuer's profitability.
Capital asset pricing model
In finance, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is a model used to determine a theoretically appropriate required rate of return of an asset, to make decisions about adding assets to a well-diversified portfolio. The model takes into account the asset's sensitivity to non-diversifiable risk (also known as systematic risk or market risk), often represented by the quantity beta (β) in the financial industry, as well as the expected return of the market and the expected return of a theoretical risk-free asset. CAPM assumes a particular form of utility functions (in which only first and second moments matter, that is risk is measured by variance, for example a quadratic utility) or alternatively asset returns whose probability distributions are completely described by the first two moments (for example, the normal distribution) and zero transaction costs (necessary for diversification to get rid of all idiosyncratic risk).
Kelly criterion
In probability theory and intertemporal portfolio choice, the Kelly criterion, Kelly strategy, Kelly formula, or Kelly bet is a formula used to determine the optimal size of a series of bets in order to maximise the logarithm of wealth. In most gambling scenarios, and some investing scenarios under some simplifying assumptions, the Kelly strategy will do better than any essentially different strategy in the long run (that is, over a span of time in which the observed fraction of bets that are successful equals the probability that any given bet will be successful). It was described by J. L. Kelly, Jr, a researcher at Bell Labs, in 1956.
Models of DNA evolution
A number of different Markov models of DNA sequence evolution have been proposed. These substitution models differ in terms of the parameters used to describe the rates at which one nucleotide replaces another during evolution. These models are frequently used in molecular phylogenetic analyses. In particular, they are used during the calculation of likelihood of a tree (in Bayesian and maximum likelihood approaches to tree estimation) and they are used to estimate the evolutionary distance between sequences from the observed differences between the sequences. These models are phenomenological descriptions of the evolution of DNA as a string of four discrete states.
Rebreather diving
Rebreather diving is underwater diving using rebreathers, which recirculate the breathing gas already used by the diver after replacing oxygen used by the diver and removing the carbon dioxide metabolic product. Rebreather diving is used by recreational, military and scientific divers in applications where it has advantages over open circuit scuba, and surface supply of breathing gas is impracticable. The main advantages of rebreather diving are extended gas endurance, and lack of bubbles. Rebreathers are generally used for scuba applications, but are also occasionally used for bailout systems for surface supplied diving.
Fisher equation
The Fisher equation in financial mathematics and economics estimates the relationship between nominal and real interest rates under inflation. It is named after Irving Fisher, who was famous for his works on the theory of interest. In finance, the Fisher equation is primarily used in YTM calculations of bonds or IRR calculations of investments. In economics, this equation is used to predict nominal and real interest rate behavior. Letting denote the real interest rate, denote the nominal interest rate, and let denote the inflation rate, the Fisher equation is:  This is a linear approximation, but as here, it is often written as an equality:  The Fisher equation can be used in either ex-ante (before) or ex-post (after) analysis.
Online gambling
Online gambling (or Internet gambling) includes poker, casinos and sports betting. The first online casino was in 1994. Many countries restrict or ban online gambling, but it is legal in some provinces in Canada, most countries of the European Union and several nations in the Caribbean. In 1994, Antigua and Barbuda passed the Free Trade & Processing Act, allowing licences to be granted to organisations applying to open online casinos. Before online casinos, the first fully functional gambling software was developed by Microgaming, an Isle of Man-based software company. This was secured with software developed by CryptoLogic, an online security software company.