The global finance crash, bankrupt banks and a general economic downturn characterized most of 2008 and will go down in history as the year of crisis; many players are perturbed about the impact it will have on investors and their decisions regarding investments in 2009.

In an era of advanced technological initiatives and well-researched financial reports, one can almost think there is little room for collapse in all aspects of economics. As in the Enron case, investors have again witnessed a growing trend lacking prudence practices that once characterized corporate environs of the developed world.

More than ever, we cannot rely too much on our experts and commentators to provide us with flawless information and advice on our investments. We have to take an extra step to educate ourselves about these matters to propel ourselves into action so that we actually experiment out our decisions in financial matters.

It is important that investors invest more in educating ourselves on financial matters, spread out investments in various portfolios.  As the saying goes, it is easier to spend savings than save spending!  The most informed decision even in tough times as this would be to identify stable portfolios and develop a more avid savings culture.

A number of products exist in the market inform of unit trusts with various portfolios to include high yield and balanced investment funds. Although risky, we are advised bring good returns. A combination of these with Money funds and securities will give an enthusiastic investor good returns on investment over the long term.

The idea is that investing over the long term is the better option as compared to the short term. Not that there are no good short-term investments but these can easily be misleading as they might be confused with the “get rich quick schemes” which are on the increase in this day and era.

Real estate is still a very tempting investment option, with anticipated returns of close to 150% this industry ranked among the most profitable in the world; Uganda not excluded. With a revamped economy, active informed middle class, spendthrift lifestyle driven individuals and an industry only discovered recently still has very few players.

This remains a very inviting and profitable industry for one to stuck unused funds.

For the first time in a long time, we witnessed the capitalistic western world practice communism they so very much despised. In total disregard of all the principles and practices, they have advanced for centuries totally ignoring the laws of supply and demand.

Western governments all over the globe injected large sums of monies in the economies to save the collapse of major industry contributors in both the financial and motor industry.

Among the culprits were AIG, Layman and Brothers and most recently General Motors in the US market. Several European economies (Iceland, Germany and the UK) received cash injections from the IMF and the treasury to promote their integrity and stability amidst this widely unstable global economy. There was gloom everywhere spelt by financial commentators and experts, as our prophets of doom.

Back home, the result, reduced spending amidst high pricing resulting from opportunistic market players in response to this doom gospel. With global oil prices at their lowest in many years, Ugandan vendors have again taken to exploiting the Ugandan consumer by creating scarcity and increasing the prices of fuel products.

The proponents of free market economy went out of their way to save their economies; our government on the other hand continued to give a deaf ear to the out cries of the consumers in the interest of capitalism.

The custodians of our economy have advised us that we are safe. The financial troubles of the western economies shall not affect us! All the stakeholders would like to agree with that proposition. Nevertheless, is this sustainable without the input and intervention of our custodians? With high fuel prices, experts predict high prices for all domestic commodities in the New Year.

The result will be lower disposable incomes and reduced spending. Some experts comment Uganda’s tax regime commands the highest tax rates (18% VAT compared to Kenya’s 16%) in the region and compare our tax rates to some of the highest European regimes like the UK (17.5% VAT) and the Scandinavian countries. I guess it is no wonder that all the major stakeholders in the economy expect high government involvement and intervention in both the health sector and road sectors that are widely lacking.

It makes economic sense for one to scale their community engagement according to the market conditions. However, in a highly volatile market it is advisable to consider both the financial health and the overall goals and objectives before deciding on whether to upscale or reduce on community engagements. Good luck and happy New Year 2009

“My years at Honeywell had taught me that all roads lead to numbers.”  Mannie Jackson, Bringing a Dying Brand Back to Life.

We have come to the end of the road! A few weeks into the festive season and eleven months away from the New Year’s fuss about New Year’s resolutions and goals. Already I sense a few frowned faces at the mention of the “subject”.  Yes, 2009 is in the offing!

Over the year I shared on how to set personal goals intentionally avoiding the aspect of numbers as this is a very elusive aspect of most people’s life’s. The finance professionals are the biggest culprits. Research done over the years has revealed that only less than 10% of our population is aware about their expenditures compared to slightly over 50% who are aware of their incomes. This represents those that are actually aware about their disposable incomes. How much they spend on domestic expenditures and other personal amenities versus total receipts in form of wages & salaries and other contributions.

This is worsened by our bad spending that is a characteristic of our impulse buying habits. The average Ugandan is by nature an impulse buyer. It’s not surprising to find one who purchases items that are not relevant for the moment if only to make a point. The growth in the banking sector is a clear testimony of the value that the middle class citizen places on status ignoring all reason.

All this exorbitant spending has to be financed somehow; this implies additional financing through increased borrowing from available lenders! The real question should be can we achieve sufficient incomes to support our expenditures? The Safaricom IPO was one of those times when we evidenced bad investment decisions. If you had any doubt you might want to think again. A lot many people borrowed money from banks to finance investments in the Safaricom IPO and we experienced huge losses in foreign exchange alone.

The bad savings culture increased the risks of losses. A research by the government of Uganda reveals a disturbing less than 10% of the population actually making savings. There must be a deliberate effort made to change the status quo or risk being compliant to the “millennium bug”. Poverty is not defined only inform of numbers or how big your bank balance is but also how much you know about your situations. It was written in the greatest book “my people perish because they lack knowledge”.

It’s one thing projecting numbers and the other actually living them. In both cases you do not lose anything but acquire great insight on both your incomes and expenditures. Refusing to do either is denying the obvious and moving blindly towards the unknown!

Choose to project today.

Best Wishes for 2009!

Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people. - Nido Qubein

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.-Edmund Hillary

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. - Michelangelo

The power of the mind is truly mind-boggling. Have you ever pondered the difference between two talented and capable individuals-one successful and one not? Often it’s the attitude each possesses that marks the difference in their achievements. What attitude do you live your life by? And with what mindset do you approach your career?

If you believe that you are on a path to great accomplishment and success, you are. It’s that simple. If you believe that your journey will be rife with struggle and failure, then you’re right as well. We are what we think.

Something for newcomers who are doing business from their homes, or who are planning to start earning by doing some business from home.

Having a home-based business can provide a rewarding and flexible lifestyle. In fact it sounds ideal - no daily commute, no annoying coworkers, no rat mazes of cubicles, and you can eat lunch for as long as you like. You can even take an afternoon nap!

Unfortuntely two opposing concepts are constantly working together to shatter this lovely idealistic outlook:

1) There’s always more work that can be done on the business today.

On the one hand you are in danger of working yourself too hard, putting in 14 hour days to get the business up and running. You put yourself in danger of burning out, your stress levels will go through the roof, and the quality of your output will suffer. I’ve been there before myself, working like crazy on CustomBar while also giving it all running a web hosting business. Eventually stress literally made me sick.

2) You have the freedom to put off work until it never gets done.

On the other hand with so much flexibility in time it’s very easy to become the ultimate procrastinator. Those lunch hours never get made up, sleeping in makes dinner time come all too quickly, and who can work after dinner with TV shows and going out? Sure things are still getting done, but can your business really survive when you’re putting in 4 hours of interrupted work into it?

Striking that balance between living and working at home is something that will take time to learn. My own experience working from home has taught me a lot about how to make this challenging environment productive and and perhaps this experience can help you get started too. The following is a set of principles I’ve found are needed to get things done effectively, and some insight into achieving them.

Principle #1 - Work When Others Aren’t Playing

Unless you live alone you are affected by those that live with you. You’ll chat with them, eat with them, or head out somewhere. A little bit of socializing quickly kills hours of work, and every interruption means 15 minutes to refocus on work and get back into a state of productivity. Other aspects of life will interrupt too such as appointments, shopping, meeting with clients, going to the bank, etc. Errands are notorious time killers.

After much experimentation and refusal to accept the idea of early birds being anything but completely insane, I have finally realized that waking up at 5 in the morning really does work. After a quick shower and brewing up a pot of coffee I am up and at it. The first 10 minutes of waking-up are tough, so having a shower helps me avoid work just long enough to let my mind truly get up with the rest of me. I get 3 hours of work done every morning and a wonderful breakfast before the corporate world has even checked its e-mail. If I’m working on a venture full-time then I can be done my working day by 3 or 4 in the afternoon, just in time for a great dinner and an evening of not worrying about work.

Sidenote: At one point in time I was a night owl going to bed at 4 in the morning and waking up at noon. This was completely desynchronized from society and meant that if I needed to go anywhere I had to do this before I ever got started on my work. Hours would tick by quickly, and still wanting to enjoy a social life and be involved in the world I would often leave crucial work to be done in the late hours of the night when the world finally slept. By then I would be tired too, and burnt out from partial attempts to work all day.

Principle #2 - Create a Separate and Practical Work Environment

It may be tough to accept this fact, but your work environment has a tremendous impact on how effective you are in your work. You need a space free from distractions which is yours to work in whenever you desire. This is often challenging as very few people actually have a spare room for an office. Don’t let this stop you. Over time I’ve had great success using my bedroom as my office, and I’ve found that simply devoting my desk to this purpose was sufficient. My desk is now clearly a work environment with the appropriate office supplies, a high quality LCD monitor, and two filing cabinets right behind me for easy filing.

The atmosphere of your environment is very important too. Having an office-oriented environment doesn’t mean having to adopt the grey corporate feel. I’ve found IKEA furniture to be great for building a workspace that has warmth to it and doesn’t cost a fortune. You’ll probably want easily accessible music too, and of course as much freedom from outside noise as possible (a combination of tuning your environment and your schedule).

Steve Pavlina has a great article that further elaborates on putting together a constructive workspace.

Principle #3 - Incorporate Effective Time Management Techniques

Ultimately you need to be able to put the time you have gained to good use. This means tackling some major productivity issues that haunt us all, such as procrastination, poor prioritization of tasks, and ineffective work technique. This is a life-long learning process, but you can make major leaps immediately just by introducing yourself to basic concepts in the field.

Make sure that you don’t waste your prime blocks of time with short-term simple tasks like answering e-mail, which can just as easily be done when you are at the end of your day or when you have 15 minutes free here and there. Your best time and your best energy should be devoted to the tasks that will give you the highest long-term results. This is another argument for waking up at 5 in the morning - you are fresh and hopefully have no other obligations that early in the day. You are thus putting your absolute best self into your absolute best work. It’s shocking how most people, particularly in the corporate world, completely waste their most productive energies.

I’ve already mentioned that it takes 15 minutes to get back into a focused state, so you can save yourself hours a day just by turning off instant messaging, Outlook, and not checking threads on forums. If you don’t need the internet you can literally unplug that too, and definitely ignore non-business calls (caller-id or separate phone line are instrumental here). Staying focused is a mission-critical task.

Best of Luck,

You need to have one secret element, and when you have that secret element, nothing will get in your way. That element is an intense desire! You must desire something with all of your heart to manifest it. Often the difference between those who manifest something and those who do not, is the element of desire. When you have a burning desire for something you ignite a fire within you that attracts with an incredible force. The law of attraction is magnetically drawn to that intense fire element in you, and it responds by gathering all universal forces to make your dream come true.   

Very often we ask for things because we think our life will be better with those things, but inside of us we do not have an immense desire for those things. When you don’t feel that immense desire within you, you are receiving guidance telling you that this is not something you really want. That is why it is so important to get clear on what it is that you really want with all of your heart, because what you really want with all of your heart is the very desire that you can manifest quickly. 

When your heart is on fire with desire you will attract the right things to do, you will find visualizing so easy, and you will find it is effortless to think positive thoughts of your desire. You will attract all the qualities you need, such as strength, courage, belief, persistence, faith, and a powerful will. An intense desire lights up your being, producing a magnetic force that enables the law of attraction to cut through every physical obstacle for you and make your dream come true.   

Go for your dreams! Don’t cheat yourself in your life with petty desires because you don’t think you can live your dream. THE DREAM inside you is the one thing that you have the greatest power to create, because you have an immense desire for it. Find the dream inside you - and make it come true!   

Here is the story of an 18-year-old girl - her dream - and her intense desire to make her dream come true. 

From Rachael in Indiana

When I was in third grade I told my mother that I wanted to go to the University of Notre Dame. I remember going to meetings at age 13 about what it took to get in - that’s how bad I wanted it. I knew everything it took and used this knowledge to my advantage. Notre Dame will not accept someone merely because they get a good score on the SAT, it takes so much more.

I told everyone I talked to, new friends and old friends, that I would be attending the University of Notre Dame. The response was almost ALWAYS THE SAME: “Wow, isn’t that school hard to get into? Don’t you have to be really smart?” They would wish me good luck in a “you really need it” tone. I never let this sway me.

Before every football game, Notre Dame would play a commercial showing a girl taking “the letter” out of her mailbox. I CRIED EVERY TIME (because I could FEEL - with so much intensity - how I would feel when I came to that day).

When it came time to apply I was more stressed out than I had ever been in my life, but I still continued to tell people that I would be going there. Sometimes a thought would creep into my head saying, “What if I’ve been telling everyone that I’m going there and then I don’t get in?” Every time I’d stop and say, “NO, I will not let myself think these thoughts.” And I would continue to imagine and to feel the feelings of coming home and seeing the letter sitting on the table.

On March 28, 2008, I got a call from my step-father telling me that I had to come home, “RIGHT NOW”. When I got home I saw the letter and felt every feeling that I had felt previously in my mind - only magnified. The letter said, “Welcome Home”.

I have never wanted anything more in my entire life. I have never KNOWN something more intensely. I KNEW that Notre Dame was the place for me, was my home (I guess God, The Universe, knew too).

  
May the joy be with you,

Rhonda Byrne
The Secret… bringing joy to billions

The negotiation itself is a careful exploration of the negotiators position and the other person’s position, with the goal of finding a mutually acceptable compromise that gives the negotiator and the other person both as much of what is wanted as possible. People’s positions are rarely as fundamentally opposed as they may initially appear - and the other person may have very different goals from the ones the negotiator expect!

In an ideal situation, the negotiator will find that the other person wants what the management is prepared to trade, and that the managers are prepared to give what the other person wants. If this is not the case and one person must give way, then it is fair for this person to try to negotiate some form of compensation for doing so – the scale of this compensation will often depend on the many of the factors discussed above.

Ultimately, both sides should feel comfortable with the final solution if the agreement is to be considered win-win. Only consider win-lose negotiation if the manager does not need to have an ongoing relationship with the other party as, having lost, they are unlikely to want to work with the manager again.

Equally, the negotiator should expect that if they need to fulfill some part of a deal in which the negotiator has won, they may be uncooperative and legalistic about the way they do this. Conflict is not necessarily a bad thing, though.

Healthy and constructive conflict is a component of high functioning teams. Conflict arises from differences between people; the same differences that often make diverse teams more effective than those made up of people with similar experience. When people with varying viewpoints, experiences, skills, and opinions are tasked with a project or challenge, the combined effort can far surpass what any group of similar individual could achieve.

Team members must be open to these differences and not let them rise into full-blown disputes. Understanding and appreciating the various viewpoints involved in conflict are key factors in its resolution.

These are key skills for all team members to develop. The important thing is to maintain a healthy balance of constructive difference of opinion, and avoid negative conflict that is destructive and disruptive. Getting to, and maintaining, that balance requires well-developed team skills, particularly the ability to resolve conflict when it does happens, and the ability to keep it healthy and avoid conflict in the day-to-day course of team working.

Happy second half of the year! We are getting closer to the year end 2008 and it’s about time we take stock of our activities until now. This year one of our goals was to improve and grow the quality of our relationships in line with our holistic approach to goal setting. Away from numbers this approach like all other approaches is both challenging and an enlightening experience.

A lot of effort goes into developing certain habits like occasional phone calls, personal visits, sending emails and most of all honouring invitations geared towards enabling individuals reach out and interact with friends both new and old. 1 out of every 10 Ugandan professionals today is pursuing further studies and this is the biggest single hindrance to good relationships in families and among friends.

If I may divert a little, other drawbacks arise from our attitudes towards work and other aspects like integrity, trustworthiness, faithfulness, perseverance, patience and honesty that have since eluded us. We have since ignored the qualities that once defined our societies. I am not talking about personal specifications for a job. Why are there an increasing number of individuals who are hesitant to recommend friends and family for particular job openings? We have substituted these qualities for technical and educational capabilities. As it is, most people possess the technical aspects but fall short on motivation to deliver on defined tasks and goals.

Isn’t it also true that today, an increasing number of professionals at entry level are opting for high remunerations and advanced studies as opposed to acquiring the requisite experience. We are not short of qualified persons but seriously we are handicap in the area of ethics and integrity which since time immemorial have defined our persona.

Very few things in life come free. We have to invest both our time and resources to achieve this far. It’s upon individuals today to review their personal and family goals this second half of the year. Do not leave anything to chance. Even God has plans, or wasn’t it written that He has plans to prosper us and not fail us. We need to make a deliberate effort to change our current settings for the better. And it does not come cheap. A friend of mine once told me that you can’t judge a successful man from his possessions but from the quality of relationships he commands.

I hope I have demonstrated and achieved in my relationships this year. And I sure hope that this can stir and motivate our every department to achieve our goals for 2008.

• Whether or not the option holder can buy (call option) or sell (put option)
  
• The amount of whatever is being considered (
  
• The price agreed upon (known as the strike price)
  
• An expiration date for the option
  
• Settlement terms
  
• How the option is quoted in the market
  

After this there are a few different options to choose from:

• Exchange traded options: standardized options that go through a clearing house, pricing models available, and includes stock options, commodity options, bond and interest rate options, index options, and options on future contracts
  
• Over-the-counter (OTC) options: not listed on exchange and takes place between two private parties, can be individualized to meet specific needs, one party usually a well capitalized establishment, includes interest rate, currency cross rate, and swap options
  

These are the basics of options however this is only the surface. There are more options within the options and the best way to decide if and what options are best for you is to talk to your investment advisor. Now you know the fundamentals, you should be able to go in with some degree of knowledge and competency.
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