Personal loan is a comprehensive term for any loan, which does not have a limited purpose. Personal loans are very popular among the people because of its unique advantages and flexibility in the loan structure. Personal loans are available from different sources such as banks, private lenders and credit card companies. Now, acquiring a personal loan is an easy task as the online loan application and loan approval has helped considerably to reduce the task involved in the loan processing. However, the processing time will differ slightly according to the type of personal loan.Personal loans are available in most categories of loans such as secured, unsecured, equity, refinancing, and payday. Even though the horizons of most of the loans will intersect with each other, the personal loans are generally categorized into secured loan and unsecured loan. The secured personal loans are based on the collateral security of any of your assets. Home equity loan can also be considered as a secured personal loan. The secured personal loan does not arise any risk for the lenders and they are more lenient about the terms and conditions. You can enjoy cheaper interest rates and an extended repayment schedule, using the secured personal loan.Many lenders readily offer unsecured personal loans also. The unsecured personal loans have the unique advantage of quick processing as it does not involve any property appraisal and needs only a less documentation. The unsecured personal loan does not arise any risk for the borrowers, as it does not require any collateral security, but the lenders are stringent about the conditions since they are risking their amount. The unsecured personal loans may be characteristic of quick turnaround time as the lender will be in the urge to get back the money. However the risk involved in the unsecured personal loans are compensated by levying high interest rates. The credit card loans and payday loans can be reviewed as types of unsecured personal loans.The eligibility criteria to apply for the personal loan include employment for at least the last three months, and the income proof. The credit is not a considerable criterion for personal loans and some lenders are ready to offer personal loans to bad credit people too. However the interest rates of bad credit personal loans are considerably high.The personal loan can serve you for any purpose irrespective whether it is a necessity or luxury. Generally personal loans are used to meet the expenses such as home improvements, wedding, purchase of a vehicle or any appliances, children’s education, cosmetic surgery, luxury holiday or funeral cost. The most appreciated use of personal loan is for debt consolidation, which may even help you to improve your credit score, if you successfully follow the repayment schedule.However, the selection of the personal loan has to be done carefully. The high interest rate will be certainly a matter of concern. Moreover the annual percentage rates will vary with lenders and some lenders may include hidden charges apart from the normal processing fee. However, intensive market search and comparison of multiple lenders will help for an intelligent personal loan decision. The good credit may also help you to get the personal loan with maximum profitable rates.Personal loan is a beneficial financial instrument to meet your money crisis in the emergencies. However, you must be capable to manage the loan repayment effectively.

Marketing is nowadays a vital aspect of every business. The price of an item increases on account of marketing, but reliance on it has attained an inevitable aspect of buying/selling behavior of consumers/producers due to multiple reasons such as competitive market structures (e.g., monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and niche markets), economical communication technology, information revolution, MNCs, globalization, battle for competitive edge, and Brand Identity phenomenon. Marketing is the managerial effort through which goods/services move from producer to the consumer. The Effective Marketing is “The right product/service with right way, in the right place, at the right time, at the right price and making a profit in the process”. The American Marketing Association offers the following formal definition: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” Encyclopedia Britannica defines, “Marketing is the sum of activities involved in directing the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers.” According to Kotler, the shortest definition of marketing is “meeting needs profitably”.Marketing is required for increasing sales and achieving a sustainable market segment for product or service. Customer gets satisfaction from the product or service, entrepreneur gets profit on sale, and business achieves reputation or goodwill. Effective Marketing materializes reputed business, profitable sale, and satisfied customer. The investigation of demand behavior is focal area of marketing. Consequently, marketing has two parents, economics and psychology. Economic considerations of demand behavior are pull or visible factors while psychological leanings are push/invisible factors behind any demand behavior. A marketing effort concentrates on customers’ propensities for psychological satisfaction and designs multiple incentives of economic benefits for customers. An effective marketing approach accommodates economic rules of selling/buying and psychological tendencies of sellers/buyers. There are seven major reasons of marketing:

To inform about new product/service or product awareness

To introduce a new business or business awareness

To motivate/persuade someone for buying or demand creation

To create stable customer account or achieving customer loyalty

To attain Sustainable Competitive Advantage

To achieve reputation or Goodwill,

To realize Brand Equity

Marketing vs. Selling: – The aforesaid concept of effective marketing covers the full experience of a business deal between seller and buyer; however, there are two distinct aspects of effective marketing, i.e., selling and marketing. Perceptually, Sellers and Marketers are two different groups in a marketing activity. They have distinct views towards the customers. Harvard’s Theodore Levitt drew a perceptive contrast between the selling and marketing concepts: “Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering, and finally consuming it.” The strategic alignment between marketing and selling is vital for better results. “A study from App Data Room and Marketo found that sales and marketing alignment can make an organization 67% better at closing deals, reduce friction by 108%, and generate 209% more value from marketing.”Marketing vs. Branding:-Branding is the marketing process by which a marketer or brand manager reduces a company’s reputation to a single word or phrase or design. The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors.” There is a well-known rule in marketing: “Sell what people are buying.” Similarly, the well-performing rule in branding: “Brand the attributes that people love.” An established brand creates consumer trust and emotional attachments; as a result, brands foster relationships among consumers, products and business that lead to the valuable benefits to a producer such as premium pricing, low promotion cost, loyal customer and constantly growing market share. In a nutshell, a branding effort enhances Brand Equity for sellers. Brand Equity is the brand’s power derived from the goodwill and name recognition that it has earned over time, which translates into higher sales volume and better profit margins against competing brands in the market. The vital strategic aspect of Brand Equity creation is internal branding. “Internal branding consists of managerial activities and processes that help, inform and inspire employees about brands.” In a branding effort, a marketer or an entrepreneur adopts four perspectives for an effective branding – Consumer Perspective (to ascertain desirability of product/service by multiple consumers), Company Perspective (to improve, technically and aesthetically, presentation and delivery process of product/service), Competitive Perspective (to understand and exploit differentiability/parity content of products/services with respect to competitors), and Brand Perspective (to work on creation of possible brand equity). It is noteworthy that, in branding, you create a perception of product/business while, during marketing, you motivate or persuade someone for actual buying. Branding is who you are while marketing is how you affect consumers’ decision process. More specifically, “Branding or Brand Management is a communication function in marketing that includes analysis and planning on how that brand is positioned in the market, which target public the brand is targeted at, and maintaining a desired reputation of the brand.”Marketing vs. Advertising: – Marketing deals with multiple business efforts to realize ‘Profitable Sale’ such as market research, pricing & distribution of product/service, branding, selling and public relations. Advertising is just one component of marketing. In advertising, an entrepreneur or business communicates to the potential buyers about his/her products or services. Advertising is defined as:”Any form of communication in the paid media”. The prominent advertising mediums are, print media, electronic media and social media. Conceptually, marketing is the way or strategy to convince potential buyers that you have the right product/service for them, while, advertising is conversion of marketing strategy into specific communication media. In advertising, you tell the potential customers about the existence and availability of right product/service for them. The greatest issue of present-day advertising is Cluttering. “An Advertising Clutter refers to the excessive amount of ad messages consumers are exposed to on a daily basis.” It is vital responsibility of a marketer to manage the clutter. The clutter management means to find the right time and place to connect with target customers and to send impeccable messages to them about your business or offerings.Marketing vs. Networking: – Networking is a systematic human interaction with fellow human beings to exchange information and opportunities. Business Networking is dynamically linked with effective marketing. Business networking is an outcome of socio-economic interactions of an entrepreneur. The networking efforts shape a business circle. It is noteworthy; a business circle is a sub-circle of a big socio-economic circle of an entrepreneur. A business cannot survive or flourish, at least with full potential, without proper interaction among all economic agents/stakeholders. Executives’ presence in a big socio-economic circle and related associations is vital to develop an effective business networking. The business networking, BtoB and BtoC, is the crucial aspect of effective marketing.Concisely speaking, the effective marketing is combination of networking, branding, marketing, advertising and selling. The networking earmarks areas of targeted customers, branding prepares ground through shaping/reshaping of perceptions/emotions of prospective customers, advertising informs them about product/service through multiple media, marketing motivates them for buying, and selling materializes the actual profitable sale.

Owner financing is a very common real estate purchase structure which has really come into the forefront of buying and selling in a buyers market. So I decided I would put together a quick overview of what owner financing is, since most buyers, sellers and even real estate professionals are usually unfamiliar with the term and the types of contracts involved. Remember structuring owners financing deals works for all types of real estate transactions big and small; home or commercial buildings.Owner Financing Overview:Owner financing is when all or part of the agreed upon purchase amount is held by the seller. I always tell people to look at it in the terms of a bank, the seller is holding the financing in the same way a bank would. The seller receives the monthly payments based on an agreed upon rate and term with a future balloon date for full pay off. This type of real estate transactions is very common in a buyer’s market like we are seeing now, and even more common now that lenders have tighten their underwriting guidelines and or have completely stopped lending. These sets of circumstances have created a smaller buyers pool, however the amount of property owners that still want and need to sell is still there. Seller financing can be a great way to bridge the gap between buyers and sellers.Owner Financing Term Length:The length of an owner financed property can differ between the time lines of both the buyer and seller. Almost all owners financed monthly payments, no matter if they are commercial purchasers or home purchases are amortized over 30 years. A typical contract balloon term is a minimum of two – three years, since 24 months is a key number for most lenders to see that you have been making on time payments on this property before lending on the buyers purchase/refinance of the owner financed contract. In addition it allows the buyer to clean up any credit or financial issues that are dragging them down from buying, if that is the buyer’s personal situations. But what is even more important in this market is that allowing the financial lending markets to stabilize and open back up. This has been the major factor for owner financing.We have been structuring the length of our owner financing contracts out a minimum of three years with three, one year extension options. This brings the full possible balloon payment out to 6 years, if needed. This is simply because we need to make sure we give enough time for those financial lending markets enough time to rebound and starting lending again. In addition we have had owners request longer terms because of the huge tax benefits that a longer term brings, we will get talk about that subject on another article.Down Payment or No Down Payment:The subject on providing a down payment on the owner financing contract is always a sticky one. From the sellers stand point they usually want as much down payment as possible, why? Because, if the buyer has some “skin in the game” they are less likely to walk away from the property and contract. From the buyers stand point they always want to come in with as little a down payment as possible, thus limiting their risk.Personally from my experience and many others I feel that most sellers should accept a smaller down payment if one at all. I know… I know what you are thinking… WTF, why would I take the risk? My point of view comes from the simple fact that if a buyer has circumstances come up that they can no longer make payments on the property, they are still going to walk away if needed, regardless of having a down payment or not. Yes…yes… I know having a down payment would at least be some kind of compensation to the seller. However from my stand point I would rather receive a few thousand dollars from the buyer and allow him/her to keep any additional monies for reserves and repairs on the property, because they do and will come up. You see from my experience if someone runs into a tough financial spot, I would rather them have reserves that can float the payment until they get back on their feet vs. being tapped out of funds day one after buying a property.This goes for both residential and commercial real estate. Maybe even more so for commercial real estate since there is a high volume of repairs, maintenance and normal unit turns which having a reserve account is a must have to be successful. And the best thing is that you can always have compensating factors for low to no down payments such as higher interest rate and or higher balloon payoff.Interest Rate:This is one of the reasons I love owner financing. It allows sellers to charge a higher interest rates thus possibly receiving monthly cash flow from the property. If there is a mortgage on the property it is very normal depending on the type of real estate to charge an interest rate to the buyer that is higher then what is currently being charged by the bank. We have seen rates all over the board including interest only payments, staggered payments and payments that are equal to the current underlying mortgage payment from the bank. The key is to at least cover the current mortgage payment on the property if there is one.Expenses:Make sure that it is written into the contract specifically stating who covers what expenses and repairs. Normally since the buyer is purchasing the building that they cover all expenses related to the property just like an owner would. I have however, seen contracts where the seller has to cover major repairs and OK any remodeling of the property. This is because the seller still has ownership interest of the property and cannot let it go into disrepair or remodeled to a point that does not do the property any good. I always prefer to have the buyer pay everything and just notify me when upgrades or remodeling is going to be done.Variations of Owner Financing Contracts:Contracts will and do vary depending on the state you live in, end goal and if there is a mortgage on the property. Most lenders have what is commonly called a “due on sales” clause that is in the mortgage documents the owner signed when originally purchasing the property. What this means is that the lender has the option to, if they choose call the mortgage note due if the property is sold. Now a lot of sellers get hung up on the fear that if the original lender finds out they sold the property using owner financing that they will request full payment of the mortgage. After doing some research and have found several cases which the lender has found out and tried to call the note due, but with little success. Why? Because the mortgage and property is still attached to the sellers name and with payments being made. If you look at it from a common sense stand point, why would a lender call due a mortgage that is being paid on time as agreed upon? They do not; they are in the business of making money not going after folks that are technically within the original guidelines of the mortgage. In addition very few lenders ever find out, because there is no need to inform them. However if you as a seller are uncomfortable with it there are ways to structure a contract that does not trigger the option to call the mortgage due, which I will go into.Types of owner financing contracts:o Land Contracts/Contract For Deed:Depending on the state you live in it is one or the other. Land contracts/contract for deed gives the buyer equitable title. This is usually used if there is no existing mortgage on the property. It allows the buyer to have some ownership in the property which when the balloon term nears, that the buyer can usually get a refinance loan rather than a purchase loan. Why is that? Because the lender sees that you have equitable title on the property and have successfully made the payments during that term. The refinance process is usually always easier since the buyer has a successful history with the property.o Promissory Notes:Promissory note are when a seller can carry the mortgage 1st or 2nd for the full purchase price balance which is called an “all-inclusive mortgage” or “all-inclusive trust deed” If there is a mortgage the seller receives an override of interest on the underlying mortgage.o Subject Too:This is where the buyer takes over the current mortgage subject to the existing monthly payments and paying no override of interest to the seller. This is a great way to sell if you are in financial straits and need to get out fast.
o Lease Options/Lease to Purchase/Master Lease Options.The name really says it all. The buyer and seller sign a purchase agreement, option to purchase agreement and often a rental agreement. The buyer is leasing the property with an option to purchase it in the future. Using lease options are normally used to get around the above stated “due on sales” clause, since the buyer is simply leasing the property it does not trigger the clause.End of Contract:When nearing the end of the stated contract the buyer should either use one of the one year extension options if needed or go forward with the refinance/purchase of the property. This is where the seller is fully released from the property and usually sees a chunk of profit. At the end of the day the property seller should have received monthly income along with an end balloon pay off.Remember the whole goal is to bridge the gap between sellers and buyers during a very difficult economy. Using owner financed contracts to buy and sell allows the market to continue moving forward and is truly a creative solution to market problems. In further articles I will go into the benefits of owner financing from both sides of the transactions.Thanks for reading,Daniel David Dawson

Technology will be a hindrance to creativity until its potential is harnessed. The more we use the ability of technology, the more creative we become. When we see a screen, mobile, tablet or computer, we need to see it as a medium for creative expression.Research has shown that everyone is born with creative powers, some are creatively active and others keep creativity dormant. The creative potential in our lives is immense and we need to bring it to the fore. A question that crosses the mind more often than not is, how to do it? In this age of technology, it’s much easier to keep creativity intact and free-flowing.Education system
The constrained education system prevents students from thinking creatively leading to assembly line workers rather than intellectually creative individuals. To address this situation, the need of the hour is to take creativity back to classrooms and use technology to enhance it.With the capability of technology to transcend time and space, students have more opportunities to produce creative assignments and projects in a jiffy. As institutions of higher learning are encouraging the use of technology in classrooms, many educators are supporting the students creative minds. Number of Universities are turning to ICT (Information Communication Technology) to blend in technology and creativity for their students.Creativity, Technology and Students
Technology has given engineering students an opportunity to be creative and innovative. Streams like robotic have given students to play around with and create something more humane. For these students using technology and creativity is being career ready.For media students, professors are giving more opportunities and freedom to create and design assignments. The animation and gaming industry is technology and creativity driven. Students in this industry are relying on technology and programming to create new games and innovative solutions in everyday life. In the media industry, technology is creatively used to bring news, views, and events on to different platforms. Creativity and technology are inseparable where films, animation, and media industry are concerned.The newage social media is also encouraging creativity among the gen x students. On platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Tumblr students are creating resources and information which can be accessed globally with the help of technology and creativity. Students are able to collaborate with like-minded people across the globe and engage in online discussion on various topics and come out with creative output.As we are turning into the new millennium, students are using technology to expand creativity within and outside classrooms. It’s like using both the sides of our brains to advance technology to enhance our creativity.

This article will show how to use a community journalism (also called participatory journalism) platform to build and maintain a community by using the internet as a mean of communication between its members.Why is community building important?We are all part of communities whether we realize it or not. We have our local community, national community. Some are members of clubs or groups. Some are fans of a band or play hockey. Schools, Colleges, universities and workplaces are also communities.Having a closer and more committed communities could benefit us all. Think about big corporations. In such workplaces people hardly know one another while they have so much in common. A tighter community in the workplace will make people feel more attached. Bring better communication and more productive relations between different departments, branches or even people at the same room.Stronger communities also provide reliance when times gets rough or when crisis hits. The stronger the community is, the better the chance it will work together to solve problems and learn from past mistakes.The internet is the ultimate community building toolA good community needs a central place where community members can meet, communicate with each other, display ideas, share experiences and sound their voices.
A community magazine is the perfect mean of communication and has numerous advantages as a community meeting place.Here are some of these advantages:1) Accessible to anyone from anywhere at any timeA community website is accessible from almost anywhere, community journalists and other members can participate at their own free time without constraints of time and place.2) Democratic and empowers the individualAnyone can express their opinion and submit their own content. It’s the glue that keeps the community together. The fact that everyone has a voice is key.3) Free of chargeWebsites like http://www.comagz.com provide some communities with their own community magazine which is free and does not incur operation costs.4) Requires minimal moderation or attentionPlatforms like comagz.com provide the entire community members with the ability to post content and decide which content should be promoted and shown on the front page for example while throwing out inadequate content.
All this is done by a voting system and algorithm which manages the content according to the reader’s votes.What are the ingridients of a good community magazine platform?o An online magazine look and feel with nice layout.o Sections for news, articles, recommended links and personal columnso Flexible Categories for easy browsingo Easy submission of items by all memberso Automatic management of content items according to users voteso Forums for discussions and search for finding old posts.o Exposure of the content to all major search engines and blog aggregatorsConclusionsBuilding or enforcing a community and tightening the relations between its members can be both fun and beneficial. The web is a great enabler for community building. Community members can serve voluntarily as citizen journalists and write for the community blog or magazine. Setting up a community magazine is easy and cost free. So what are you waiting for?Check http://www.comagz.com/webmagazine/ for an example of a CoMagzine.

Investing Wisdom from Howard Marks of Oaktree CapitalMy regular listeners probably heard one of my earlier segments where I spoke about Howard Marks, the 67-year old billionaire who co-founded investment management firm Oaktree Capital which now manages about $84 billion in assets and is a publicly-traded company with ticker symbol OAK.Oaktree focuses its investments on high-yield bonds, distressed debt and private equity, and has delivered a whopping 23% average annual return over the past 25 years… so Marks has rightly earned his fame and fortune. To give you an idea of just how much a 23% rate of return is: If you invested $10,000 25 years ago, it would be worth $1,769,000 today.And, like Buffett, Marks too sends out folksy memos to Oaktree clients where he outlines his views on investing, the markets and the economy that are insightful, direct and sharply written. And today, I’m going to share a few insights from Marks’ latest memo – morphing his thoughts so they apply to individual financial planning. I’ve decided to break this up into a two-part series – with the first half of Marks’ memo today, and the rest to follow next week.Key Questions to Ask FirstSo in this latest memo, Marks first addresses philosophical questions on what to consider in setting up your investment portfolio. Once you have a clear idea on what your investment goals are, based on your retirement needs, Marks says you should discuss the following questions with your advisor:- Is it possible to build a retirement portfolio that can beat the market? If yes, then how, and to what extent can we beat the market?- What’s the best way to manage risk?- How do we define success, and what risks are we willing to take to achieve investment success?Then, as you build your portfolio, you’d want to balance it out between index investments (where you should not expect market-beating returns), individual stocks such as dividend payers, and perhaps some alternative investments to a smaller extent. If you’re closer to retirement, you might also want the safety of inflation-protected bonds. And for the safety of bonds, index investments and dividend stocks, you should be willing to accept “average” performance. But for the alternative investment portion of your portfolio, you should expect above-average or superior returns, as Marks calls it.Pick Funds that Dare to be DifferentFor your alternative investments where you’re seeking superior returns, look for funds that are backed by a strong track record, and where fund managers dare to be different. You see, if you pick a mutual fund that’s run by a manager who is essentially following or mimicking what others are doing, you’ll just end up paying high fees without getting any real bang for your buck.So for this alternative portion of your portfolio, look for managers that are courageous enough to be different and open to being wrong… managers who assemble a portfolio that is different from those held by most other funds. As Marks puts it, to be a top performer, the fund manager has to “escape the crowd” by being active in unusual market niches, buying things others haven’t found, don’t like or consider too risky to touch. A good alternative fund manager avoids what the market considers to be a darling, or all the rage, and engages in contrarian cycle timing, and concentrates heavily in a small number of things that he thinks will deliver exceptional performance… everything that personifies great investors such as Howard Marks and Warren Buffett.As Marks puts it “the cautious seldom err or write great poetry” in referring to fund managers that follow the herd.So look for fund managers who dare to be different, have a consistent history of market-beating performance and are transparent with their investors. That said, you also need to recalibrate your expectations with such alternative funds because their investments often could take longer to bear fruit… so only invest a small portion of your funds that you’re not planning on touching till you reach retirement… because if you picked the right alternative investment fund, those superior returns could compound very nicely over time.Now I know that it’s near impossible for most individual investors to really evaluate alternative investment funds, so this is where a good, qualified advisor can offer advice and help kick some of your returns into high gear.And as I mentioned above, Marks’ company – Oaktree Capital – is publicly traded with ticker symbol OAK, so you can buy shares to participate in Oaktree’s success; When you invest shares in OAK, you are not buying into Marks’ portfolio, but rather participating the company’s profit from its portion of the investment it takes for itself and the fees that are generated from his clients. Oaktree shares also offer a pretty compelling 7.7% dividend yield at current levels… but this is not a recommendation so please do your own research should you consider buying Oaktree.Most great investments begin in discomfort.Most people feel good about making investments where the underlying premise is widely accepted, where recent performance has been positive and where the outlook is rosy – but such investments are high in demand and are unlikely to be available at bargain prices.Bargains are usually found among things that are controversial, that people are pessimistic about, and that have been performing badly of late – investments that generate discomfort for most people. And this is where good alternative funds excel. For example, Oaktree Capital focuses on distressed debt – bonds issued by companies that are on the ropes in some way or another, bonds that are priced at pennies-to-the-dollar… bonds that comfort-seeking investors would not even think about. This discomfort is what causes distressed debt to be priced cheaper than it is really worth, and it’s one sector that has helped fuel Oaktree’s outsize returns. This area of investing is practically impossible for the typical investor to get into and one has to have superior skills in order to avoid being burned badly if things don’t work out.Marks also says; Dare to Be WrongMarks also reminds us that with courageous, discomfort-generating investments, you must also be prepared for failure as an inescapable potential consequence of trying to do really well. In other words, be prepared to lose money on this alternative portion of your portfolio… it’s not something anyone wants, but get into alternative investments with the understanding that non-mainstream investments could be harder to liquidate and have greater risk, and while your fingers are crossed for the upside, be aware that you could also lose money. That said, a good alternative investment fund should protect you significantly on the downside too.So look for alternative funds that invest judiciously, have more successes than failures, and make more on their successes than lose on their failures.Alas… No Magic FormulaMarks also cautions us that there is no easy formula to produce superior risk-adjusted returns – because if there were, everyone with a positive IQ would be rich.Or, as good ol’ Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s Partner bluntly puts it, “Investing is not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid” and does not understand investing’s complex and competitive nature. Hardly the words of someone who wants to be politically correct, but he makes a good point. Why should successful investing be so easy that the uneducated and lazy investor achieves superior rate of return? It just doesn’t happen that way.Superior investment results can only come from a better-than-average ability to figure out when risk-taking will lead to gain and when it will end in loss. And this is not easy task. So it’s good to look for fund managers that ideally have a strong background in economics, financial math, accounting and investment analysis.Okay, I’ll wrap up here for today, and continue with more on Howard Marks’ thoughts on investing next week.