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What Is the DXY Dollar Index?

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The DXY is an indicator that many market watchers and commentators reference and quote. So what is the DXY or US Dollar index?

The DXY is a geometrically weighted index of some of the major trading partners of the United States. The composition if the DXY Index is heavily weighted towards the Euro and European countries that have not joined the European common market. The components of the DXY Index are (by weighting): Euro (57.6%), Japanese Yen (13.6%), Great Britain- Pounds Sterling (11.9%), Canadian Dollar (9.1%), Swedish Krona (4.2%), and Swiss Franc (3.6%). Because of the composition of the DXY, it is sometimes referred to as the Anti-Euro Index.

The DXY is a convenient index to use as a simple method for referencing strength and weakness of the US Dollar (USD). But its ubiquity disguises the fact that it does not reflect the value of the dollar against a broad enough basket of currencies. The DXY was created by JP Morgan in 1973, and it has only been updated once, for the introduction of the Euro currency.

The DXY is heavily weighted towards European currencies, it underweight’s the Canadian Dollar, as a proportion of US trade, and it largely ignores important Asian and Pacific trading partners, including Korea, Australia, Taiwan and necessarily China. Even if one were interested in including the Chinese Renminbi (Yuan) it would be both difficult and of questionable informational value to include the Renminbi because China keeps their currency pegged to a range that is based on the dollar.

A more accurate basket of currencies to track the relative value of the USD would be to value the dollar against the top US trading partners. The top 6 US trading partners, from high to low are: Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, Germany and the UK. It’s hard to say why JP Morgan created this index and how it came into such prominence. One odd thing about this index is you cannot trade it. There is no market that you can go to and buy the DXY. The closest you can get are futures and options contracts traded on the InterContinental Exchange (ICE).

If it’s so inaccurate, then why is it so widely quoted? While there are more accurate ways to benchmark the USD, absolute precision is not always important for an indicator. Many traders and institutions likely have their own indices that they use to track the USD, but for the sake of comparison, it is very convenient to have a common index. The DXY is also highly correlated to a trade-weighted index most of the time. Relative strength or weakness moves by the USD represents huge flows of money. As I’ve written previously, the recent +10% move by the DXY represents more than $1 trillion of nominal wealth destruction. Moves of this magnitude do not happen in a vacuum and the relative weakness of the DXY is mirrored by corresponding weakness in the trade-weighted index.

While there are shortcomings, the DXY does serve as a reliable indicator of USD strength and weakness and can be used as such, as long as one keeps in mind that it will occasionally be skewed if there are large currency moves that occur in the Euro.

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Source by Christian Koch

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January 30, 2020
Implementing the Character’s Emotion

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Now that you’ve made your choices, how do you generate these emotions and make them readable to the audience? And in doing so, does the actor actually feel the emotions or simulate them? These are the questions often asked about portraying the emotion.

It stands to reason if you want to affect the audience and move them, you, playing a credible character, must feel these emotions. But you must feel them in such a way that they are conveyed to the audience. The degree to which you feel each emotion will depend upon the method used to carry out this feat and your ability to master it.

Actors involved in what is termed “Method Acting” use the affective memory to generate emotions. Here the actor recalls a specific event in his own life that has produced the required feeling. For example, remembering a fight you had with another student in high school could arouse the emotion of anger. Recalling the death of a close relative might generate the emotion of grief. The actor has to go back, replay the experience leading to the desired emotion, and relive those moments in his mind. Through this method, the required emotion is revived.

There are some benefits and also some dangers in this type of emotional generation. Usually, emotions derived this way seem real and deeply moving, more so to the actor than the audience. That’s because there is a tendency to internalize these emotions so much that they are not fully evident to the viewer. The method does make producing emotions seemingly easy, but at a price.

You will find that emotions take time to evolve naturally and resist abrupt changes when deeply seated in ones memories. This is one reason few method actors make it big in comedy. The changes come too quickly and the method actor usually lacks the required emotional agility. Likewise, the method process takes up valuable rehearsal and production time as the crew and cast wait for the actor to call up the right emotion.

Actors using the method are likely to develop a self-indulgent feel “good” attitude which gravitates towards feelings closest to them and more comfortable for them to generate. The performance then becomes one that portrays the actor’s reality and not that of the character’s. You can see how this may stifle the actor’s imagination and limit the search for emotional truth. The method can likewise put a strain on the actor’s psyche. Using past events, some best left forgotten, can lead to situations where it affects the actor’s mental stability.

Another danger is that of becoming bored with affected memory when repeated retakes or performances are required. There is also the possibility of being so caught up in past events one does not relate as the character.

Another way to generate emotions is to rely on our emotional conditioning, the response to the word for each feeling, and the ability of the body to remember the resulting psychical (of the mind) and physical manifestations. This is the most simple way to produce a whole galaxy of emotions with little effort on our part. Through our childhood development, we are conditioned by the meaning of words, especially with regard to feelings. We respond to them without any conscious thought.

Consider what happens when you are reading a good book or script. You become involved in the story and the characters. You see and feel their imaginary lives. And when you read the action description:

She looks at his mangled body, then turns away in horror.

The word itself is the key to what she felt. We don’t have to stop, reflect back on our own life and re-experience some past event. The response is there before we have time to think. The word itself is the signal to release all the information we have on that emotion and to invoke an immediate physical response.

This response, while different for each person, still has common traits and a behavior that tells others which emotion is being felt. It’s almost a language in itself and a part of our non-verbal communications.

The answer lies in the fact that in physiological terms, all emotions have similar traits. That is to say, if we were to test the breathing, heart rate, skin temperature, etc., of two people, one feeling rage and the other joy, the “physiological” signs would be similar. Only the face, gestures, and movements would signal which emotion they were actually feeling. But the flush face, the pulse and breathing rate, etc., all signifying the energy behind the emotion, would determine the size of the emotion.

Through this process we have learned how to reach and find the emotion. But now, we must learn to nurture these feelings, making them big enough for the performance and adapting them to build credible characters.

As we said before, emotions are feelings large enough to change your life or destroy it. They need to be powerful feelings, but all that you start with is the small sensation that the name of the emotion evokes. How can we make it bigger?

As the word for the emotion is read, the actor feels a response centered somewhere in his body. For instance, the emotion “fear” might be felt in the stomach. For another actor, it might be in the shoulders and neck. “Suspicion” causes a response around the eyes. “Lust” in the hips or groin. “Desire” could be centered in the lips or eyes.

For each actor, the physical response will vary. But the important thing is that the actor feels these responses and gains awareness of the physical symptoms in various parts of his body.

How do we increase this energy level? There is a technique taught by Don Richardson, a well know TV director. It entails having the actor do some physical exercise, such as push-ups, until he’s completely out of breath. Then after a few moments, have him go directly into the scene with his intention and emotion located and his energy level at a peak. The result is astounding for the actor has no choice but to emote fully.

The next step is to start from a totally relaxed state, retaining the selected intention and emotion, and then adding what one felt at the peak when doing the push-ups. The small emotion is now fired up by a burst of adrenaline flowing through the system as the body recalls the effect of the push-ups. The emotion is thus achieved on a large-scale as the body remembers the intense physiological state attained earlier.

Now the emotion has to be adapted to create your specific character and make him credible. Credible emotions evolve out of the character’s perception of reality, their past experiences (emotional conditioning), and their struggles as they strive toward their goals. Character traits also play an important role in how emotions are adapted. For instance, is the person you are portraying mainly rational, mainly emotional, or a balance of the two, and as a result, would the feelings be out flowing, repressed, or even denied? Is there a great deal of inner conflict where the emotions hinder the character from attaining his objectives? What is the dynamic range of feelings, deep, shallow, explosive, etc? All these questions entail a good deal of research into creating the emotional side of a credible character.

To assist you in this regard, I’ve compiled discussions on the various root emotions. These will aid you in adapting emotions to your specific character needs as well as improving your emotional range and awareness.

The third way is indicating the emotions through mechanical acting. In this approach, the actor imitates the physical responses, mimicking the feelings as displayed by others.

People often look down on mechanical acting. Yet sometimes, it becomes a necessity, either as a training or rehearsal tool exploring possible expressions and gestures, or when the actor’s capabilities cannot fulfill the complex demands of the scene. Demands such as acting style, blocking, stage business, and/or quick precise attitude and emotional changes. In such situations, producing the proper emotional illusion through a mechanical response will, at least, get the actor through these difficult moments. In addition, the director may specify certain emotional responses to attain his vision of the story, responses that may later be embellished by editing, music, and sound effects.

In certain types of performances, particularly comedy sketches, parities, certain sit-coms, and stand up comedy, experience with mechanical acting is helpful. This is because the focus is centered on dialogue emphasis, precise timing, and clarity of attitudes. Likewise, exaggerated surface emotions have the potential to change unexpectedly while deeply felt realistic emotions lack this agility.

This is not to say that the actor can not feel these emotions. In fact, he may feel them strongly, but the expression begins as a duplication of some physical response. Life studies, the observing of real people, nurture such emotional beginnings.

ROOT EMOTIONS

Root emotions are active feelings that clearly convey what is felt by the characters. They do not include happiness, sadness, sorrow, loneliness, or nervousness as these are not an emotion, but state of being. The state of being is the result of an emotion. Root emotions, on the other hand, are the cause and have the potential to affect change.

Certain weak and complex emotions should likewise be avoided. Self-pity is weak in that it plays an effect and is often resented by the audience. Disinterest and boredom are likewise poor choices as there is no active force to motivate the character.

Love is also a poor choice in that it is a complex emotion made up of many other feelings. Playing the feeling of love immobilizes the character rather than inviting action. A better choice would be to play a definitive emotion such as desire, lust, joy, exhilaration, or exaltation. In an unstable relationship, other emotions such as jealousy, suspicion, bewilderment, guilt, or embarrassment, along with certain other emotions, could be used. By using one single root emotion at a time, subtle shadings within the realm of love can be clarified as well as changes in the intensity.

The emotions of the characters also plays into the psychological experience of the audience. It might be the voyeurism of spying on the character’s intimate moments. It could also be the vicarious experience of identifying with character’s situation or problems. It could also be the visceral feelings we experience as we watch the scene unfold, emotions moving us and giving us a sense of being entertained. Strong emotional choices and well-portrayed feelings, ones that connect with the viewer, can make for interesting and memorable scenes. They can help create anticipation, arouse curiosity, and hook us enough to be intrigue and involved.

I’ve divided the most frequently used root emotions into five different categories. Each category is further clarified as to the focus of the emotion as well as the general clarifications.

ROOT EMOTIONS

DARK EMOTIONS (Active – Directed at or against someone, something.)

Rage

Anger

Hatred

Contempt

Jealousy

Envy

SURVIVAL ORIENTED (Reactionary – Selfish – Focus usually on the expected or imagined.)

Terror

Horror

Fear

Dread

Despair

Grief

Suspicion

Apprehension

GOAL ORIENTED (To find, to obtain, to provide – Focus usually on wants.)

Revenge

Ambition

Greed

Hope

Desire

Lust

Determination

Compassion

Curiosity

EGO ORIENTED (Self evaluation & result – Focus usually on masking or repressing the emotion.)

Guilt

Shame

Indignation

Intimidation

Embarrassment

Resentment

BRIGHT EMOTIONS (Enjoyable – upbeat – Focus usually on the continued enjoyment.)

Exaltation

Joy

Pride

Exhilaration

Wonderment

Bewilderment

In review, root emotions motivate you to fight for something, to change your (the character’s) life or destroy him (the character’s dramatic soul). To be a strong sympathetic character, always play the fighter’s side of the emotion, thinking you can win rather than loose. The physical look of one particular emotion will vary depending on the story situation, the characters, and the natural casting chemistry within and between actors.

To further your knowledge on this subject, explore the physical sensations, sources, forms, and dynamics of the most common root emotions. Observe emotions in life as well as performances. What are the defining characteristics? Such research will also serve as a guide in stretching the clarity, strength, and polarity of your emotional repertoire.

This chapter has covered the basic skills used in building and implementing dramatic emotions. Use these skills as tools to nurture and release the character’s true feelings, and make them readable to the audience. Most important, create emotions that serve the story, its genre and purpose.

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Source by Erik Sean McGiven

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January 30, 2020
Effective Working Capital Management and Optimal Synchronization of Cash Flows

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How do firms choose their operating cycle? How do firms choose their cash conversion cycle? What is the impact of firm’s operating cycle on the size and periodicity of investments in receivables and inventories? How do seasonal and cyclical trends affect firm’s operating cycle, cash conversion cycle and investments in current assets? These strategic policy questions relate to optimal cash flows synchronization and effective working capital management designed to maximize the wealth producing capacity of the enterprise.

In this review, we will examine some pertinent and extant academic literature on effective working capital management and provide some operational guidance to small business enterprises. The shorter the cash conversion cycle, the smaller the size of the firm’s investment in inventories and receivables and consequently the less the firm’s financing needs. Although setting ending cash balances is, to a large extent, judgmental, some analytical rules can be applied to assist effective formulation of better judgments and optimize cash flow management.

As you know, a correlate to cash is net working capital. Net working capital is not cash but the difference between current assets (what a firm currently owns) and current liabilities (what a firm currently owes). Current assets and current liabilities are firm’s immediate sources and uses of cash, respectively. Clearly, a firm’s ability to meet its current financial obligations (bills due within a year) depends on its ability to manage its current assets and liabilities, efficiently and effectively.

Effective working capital management requires the formulation of optimal working capital policy and the periodic management of cash flows, inventories, account receivables, accruals and account payables. And because poor working capital management can severely damage a firm’s credit worthiness and limit its access to money and capital markets, every effort must be made to minimize business default risk.

The significance of liquidity cannot be overemphasized. In addition, anything that adversely impacts a firm’s financial flexibility degrades its ability to borrow and cope with unexpected financial hardship. A firm must preserve its ability to react to unexpected expenses and investment opportunities. Financial flexibility derives from a firm’s use of leverage as well as cash holdings.

In practice, optimal working capital management includes effective cash conversion cycle, effective operating cycle, the determination of appropriate level of accruals, inventories, and account payables and the attendant funding options. Working capital policy impacts a firm’s balance sheet, financial ratios (current and quick assets) and possibly credit rating. Critical to efficient firm’s working capital management is a good understanding of its cash conversion cycle, or how long it takes for a firm to convert cash invested in operations into cash received.

The cash conversion cycle captures the time passed from the beginning of the production process to collection of cash from the sale of the finished products. Typically, a firm purchases raw materials and creates products. These products go into inventory and then are sold on account. Once the products are sold often on credit then the firm waits to receive payment, at which point the process begins again. Understanding the cash conversion cycle and the age of account receivables is critical to successful working capital management.

As you know, the cash conversion cycle is divided into three parts: the average payment period, the average collection period and the average age of inventory. The firm’s operating cycle is length of time from the receipt of raw materials to the collection of payment for the products sold on account. The operating cycle is therefore the sum of the inventory conversion period (the average time between when raw materials are received into inventory and product is sold) and the receivables conversion period (the average time between a sale and collection of the receipt). Note that the operations of a merchandising enterprise involves purchasing (the purchase of merchandise), sales (the sales of products to customers, and collection (the receipt of cash from customers).

Some Operational Guidance:

There is gathering empirical evidence suggesting that effective working capital management begins with assessment of operating cycle and optimizing cash flows from firm’s operations. Management must know, understand and anticipate the impact of cash flows on firm’s operations and its ability to maximize the profit producing capacity of the enterprise. Effective cash management is critical to the success of a business enterprise. It is all about cash flows.

One of the best ways to increase cash availability is to accelerate the receipt of incoming payments by reducing the age of account receivables using appropriate mix of incentives and penalties. A firm must evaluate current payment processes and identify effective options to expedite collection of account receivables.

There is strong evidence suggesting improving payment processes and moving to electronic alternatives will maximize liquidity and better manage costs of receivables. Liquidity is critical to the success of every business enterprise and effective cash management is the core of liquidity. In practice, a careful analysis of cash flows and assessment of investment strategies and policies is required to ensure that a firm has appropriate tools needed to maximize firm’s liquidity, and optimize cash flow management.

A firm optimizes cash flow management in its operating cycle by rationalizing-streamlining and improving the ways it manages the inflow of cash receipts, makes outflow cash payments and minimizes the age of account receivables. A firm needs digital records, electronic banking, robust internal controls and agile accounting systems for quick reconciliation of bank statements through timely access to bank accounts, customer records; and synchronizing cash flows, accounts payables, and accounting systems for increased efficiency.

Best industry practices include analyzing cash flows monthly to determine ending cash balance (the difference between total cash inflows and total cash outflows). The goal is a rising or positive periodic ending cash balance; Monitoring customer balances to manage account receivables (money owed to the firm from customers); and appropriate pre-qualifying processes before extending credit to customers is essential to minimizing incidence of bad debts.

A tracking system that monitors outstanding receivables and sends automatic reminders, invoices and statements is a useful tool. Some firms use factors by selling their receivables to factoring companies to ensure steady cash flows; Slowing down cash disbursements: Prudent cash flow management dictates that a firm retains cash as long as possible. Optimize cash flow management by paying on time while utilizing all accommodations consistent with the calculus of financial advantage. Finally, borrow long and lend short and time large expenses by setting aside small amounts to fund large expected expenditures. Always remember that long term liabilities become current liabilities in the accounting period in which they mature.

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Source by James Gaius Ibe

Views: 0

January 29, 2020
Terminal Wealth Dispersion, Life Expectancy and Individual Retirement Accounts

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Terminal wealth dispersion is the technical term that describes the variability of the future value of investment portfolios. This inevitable variability means that no one knows what the value of their investment portfolio will be when they reach retirement age or at any time during their retirement. And the uncertainty of individual’s life expectancies compounds this problem.

Hedging against the risks associated with these two factors places an onerous burden on individuals. Although this hedging could result in a very comfortable retirement, if one can afford the hedge and their timing is right, the potential downside risk is so great that it may be deemed unacceptable by many individuals. So one has to ask “Do individuals really prefer to forgo a sure but modest retirement income and play the odds with their retirement savings in hopes of being very well off in retirement?”

With individual accounts, individuals lose the benefit of the pooling of risks. The two risks that force individuals to over-save are investment risk and the risk of living beyond the average life expectancy. In both cases the outcomes, terminal wealth and life span, are highly variable. When the risks are pooled for a large number of individuals over many overlapping life spans, the average outcomes are highly predictable, which is what makes traditional pension plans work so well.

Traditional pension plans exist, for all intents and purposes, in perpetuity. This being the case, they can build reserves during good times in the financial markets and weather the bad times, thus enabling them to make consistent payouts to retirees regardless of the timing of their retirement. Unfortunately, individuals do not get to choose their holding periods or the years of their retirement and must take whatever comes along, and what comes along might be good or it might be bad. Thus individuals must set savings goals that are sufficiently high to hedge against the risk of the average return of an investment portfolio over its holding period falling well short of that which would be expected very long term.

The relatively short duration of individual’s holding periods leave them very susceptible to the effects of market cycles, which are notoriously unpredictable in amplitude and frequency. Being broadly diversified mitigates this risk but does not eliminate it, as it’s entirely possible for a worldwide bear market to occur during one’s holding period. Then at the end of the holding period for wealth accumulation, a second holding period begins, which will be the term of retirement, and this second holding period carries the same risks as the first, but at a time in life when there is no source of income to make up for portfolio under-performance.

The other component of risk that individuals must hedge is the risk represented by the uncertainty of one’s life span, which means that individuals must aim even higher when setting their savings goals. The managers of large pension plans can depend on retirees living on average for only the average life expectancy of employees who reach retirement age. The average life expectancy for someone who reaches the age of 66 is currently 82 years, and 66 is currently the age when workers are eligible for full Social Security benefits, which makes it a reasonable baseline. Based on those assumptions, the average term of retirement would be 18 years and pension plans should only have to be funded to the extent necessary to cover the cost of this average term of retirement.

Individuals, however, don’t know how long they’re going to live, so they must over-save to ensure that they don’t run out of money before they run out of time. This need to over-save is independent of the first need, thus the need to over-save is compounded, i.e., an individual needs to save enough to cover the cost of living well beyond the average life expectancy and the targeted amount of savings at retirement age must be great enough to ensure with a reasonably high level of certainty that the actual amount on hand at retirement is at least the bare minimum necessary to get by on.

A popular estimate of the term of retirement for which individuals must plan is 30 years. Saving enough to cover the cost of a 30-year retirement is a much greater burden than saving for an 18-year retirement, but planning on a shorter retirement exposes individuals to tremendous risk. It also exposes taxpayers to tremendous risk, as individuals who outlive their savings will undoubtedly require some form of public assistance to make ends meet and are likely to become wards of the state when they become physically incapable of caring for themselves.

An individual who bases their retirement saving on living to the age of 96 but only lives to be 82 will have forgone a lot of pleasures in life, such as travel, fine dining and better vehicles, that they could otherwise have enjoyed. But many individuals just don’t have the level of income required to support the saving rate necessary to amass the wealth required to hedge against the downside of terminal wealth dispersion and the possibility of living well past the average life expectancy. For them it’s not a matter of forgone consumption, it’s a matter of going through life with the knowledge that they are likely to spend their golden years living in abject poverty and that that will be their reward for 40 or 50 years of hard work. And it gets worse!

Some economists now believe that within 15 years or so, given the current rate of health care inflation, 100% of Social Security benefits will be spent on medical expenses: Medicare Parts B and D premiums, copayments, uncovered expenses and medigap insurance premiums. If that becomes the case, anyone without substantial savings or a defined benefit pension will be looking for public assistance the day after they retire. Although this is probably a worse case scenario, there is a general consensus that individuals retiring today will need to set aside approximately $180,000 for medical expenses not covered by basic Medicare.

With the situation already at this state, adding private Social Security accounts to the mix would be like throwing gas on a fire, as individual Social Security accounts carry the same risks as other individual retirement accounts. Those who have tried to kill Social Security since its inception find private accounts very appealing. But, not so coincidentally, most of them seem to be in the enviable position of not needing Social Security to support their retirement. More recently, younger workers, too, have come to oppose Social Security, but not for the same reason as the traditional opponents. Young workers may be crushed by the growing burden of Social Security and may never receive any benefits from the system. Those who oppose Social Security simply because it’s a social program should be expending their efforts on reforming it rather than killing it.

If Social Security had been managed like a pension plan rather than the ilconceived system it is, with today’s workers paying for yesterday’s workers’ retirement, its current situation wouldn’t be so dire. Indeed, it might very well be a fully funded, functional system. CalPERS and other large public employee retirement plans have operated successfully for decades, with success being defined as being able to meet their obligations, not having an adverse effect on the financial markets, no scandalous events attributable to malfeasance by the plans’ sponsors and being free of influence from elected officials. There’s no reason that Social Security can’t also be managed in such a manner. It would literally take an act of Congress to do this, but the hardest part for Congress would be letting the system run without their interfering with its operation.

Passing off the burden of retirement to individuals was a great deal for corporations but it’s a very poor deal for most individuals, and extending individual accounts to include the Social Security system would only make a bad situation worse. It’s not a poor deal for all individuals because there will be some who can afford to save a substantial portion of their income and whose holding periods will coincide with bull markets, thus putting their wealth in the upper range of their terminal wealth dispersion, and who also live a long, healthy life. They will be the ones who benefit from over-saving and living beyond the average life expectancy, but they may end up forfeiting a portion of their wealth in the form of taxes to support the less fortunate. I don’t believe that is what the public expects from a well-conceived system.

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Source by Mike Kennedy

Views: 0

January 29, 2020
Make Dry Ice Blasting Your Small Business Opportunity

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What is dry ice blasting? Dry ice blasting is a form of abrasive blasting industrial cleaning that uses a solid form of carbon dioxide known as dry ice. Pellets or ice is shot through pressurized air stream of either one hose or two hose machines.

Which system is best? Most systems today are the single hose technology. Technology using the single hose was created by the Cold Jet company in 1986. One advantage of the single hose system is that it avoids the possible dangers of a pressurized hopper by the use of a quick cycle airlock. Another advantage of the single hose system is that it has more power and you can use a longer hose.

Making massive money! There are many ways to make money cleaning with dry ice. Many people prefer dry ice blasting for paint removal, because it is less harsh than sand blasting. Another great business opportunity is to clean food processing equipment. Because it can decontaminate surfaces that could contain salmonella and e. Coli. Dry ice can clean without residue so the environmental protection agency prefers it to many kinds of solvent based cleaners. The aerospace industry also uses dry ice blasting to sensitive equipment like clean semiconductors. Manufacturers are also a great business opportunity because cleaning with cold can be used for maintaining their equipment and can drastically reduce their down time.

The freeze jet is just one of several different types of dry ice blasting equipment. For around $3,000 you can usually purchase a dry ice blasting machine.

What about safety? How safe is this type of industrial cleaning? Cleaning with cold (normal pressure is -78 c(-108 f) can be toxic if the concentration is over 1%. Asphyxia can be caused because of oxygen removal so dry ice must be used in a well ventilated area.

Safety Equipment: Typical safety equipment will include a positive pressure blast hood or helmet. Air hoses are attached to a grade D pressurized air supply, which is mandated by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Also using ear plugs for hearing protection is part of the usual safety equipment. Body protection usually includes gloves and overalls as well as a leather coat and chaps.

What fees can I charge? How much money can I make in this industrial cleaning business? Total typical fees can range in the $300.00 per hour range, so it can be one of the more lucrative types of industrial cleaning.

The Benefits of Dry Ice Blasting: This type of industrial Cleaning meets EPA, USDA, and FDA guidelines. Has less clean up of the waste material. Extends the life of the equipment. Cleans more thoroughly. Reduces or eliminates equipment damage. Provides a safer cleaning environment. Is Non-polluting and environmental friendly. Can destroy and eliminate bacterial and fungal growth.

How can I get started? You can get started with your small business by beginning with a business plan. A business plan is a formal statement of business goals, reasons they are attainable, and plans for reaching them. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals. It should also contain a good marketing plan. Then apply for small business government grants or small business loans, so you can purchase equipment.

Having your own business can help you to end money worries. Having a business plan is essential to having a successful small business. Knowing how to market your small business for little or no money is an important key to your business success as well. Imagine how much more profit you can have when you don’t have to budget much on advertising.

Get colossal cash from government contracts. Companies interested in selling their products and services to the federal government (the United States General Services Administration) can prepare by fulfilling applicable requirements, and registering in the appropriate systems. Companies may also participate by seeking sub-contracting opportunities with current contract holders. The General Services Administration provides and contracts for Billions of dollars’ worth of products and services for federal agencies.

In summary dry ice blasting can be an extremely profitable business and helps with the environment as well.

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Source by Brian Mahoney

Views: 0

January 28, 2020
Automobile Business Plan – Four Steps to Success

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Like other business plans, the contents of an automobile dealership business plan cover four primary steps towards success. These steps are “opportunity”, “capacity”, “activities”, and “results”.

Opportunity

The industry, customer, and competitive analysis in your business plan proves the opportunity. This should identify that customers in your local market are in need of a dealer of the type you’ve chosen to be because competitors are not fully serving their needs, or because their demographics are changing (more population, richer, poorer, more families, etc.) The opportunity could also be that a certain combination of services by your dealership could improve on what competitors are currently doing. The overall industry situation should look ahead to how the car sales market will be doing six months, one year, or more in the future, when the dealership will actually be open.

Capacity

The experience of the management team, your license as a car dealer, and the financial resources the partners can bring to the table cover the capacity of the entrepreneur to jump on this opportunity. Funders reading the business plan expect that there will also be an element of cash missing from the entrepreneur’s capacity at the moment. Otherwise, they would not be reading the plan in the first place.

Activities

Marketing and operations plans cover the activities the company will engage in to bring in car buyers (and car sellers if you are a used car dealer as well), and run the business as efficiently as possible. As a small car dealer, consider how you can make up for this lack of scale, and the cost savings that come with it for dealer chains, through creativity and hard work.

Results

Finally, the projections of business success and financial section of the plan show the results that you and investors should expect. If results take into account the full costs of the methods you’ve described, and include adequate compensation for staff and key team players, readers will be less likely to question elements on the cost side. If your revenue projections are based on reasonable, researched assumptions about the car buying behavior of your local market, then readers will be more likely to accept this side of the projections as well.

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Source by P. R. Kennedy

Views: 0

January 28, 2020
Chicken Soup – Does It Heal?

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They say chicken soup is good for the soul, but what about the body?

Let’s take a look at chicken soup as a medicinal remedy for the common cold. Was Grandma right, if you eat chicken soup when you’re fighting the common cold, will it help?

The chicken soup folklore has been around as long as people have, handed down generation to generation, along with the favorite chicken soup family recipe. The medicinal claims have never been proven, but from the time of the ancient Greeks, it has been used religiously to lessen the affects of a cold or the flu.

The ingredients in chicken soup include chicken of course, carrots, celery, water or broth and spices, always including garlic. The soup is served steaming hot, which is where I believe one of the medicinal claims stems from. Let’s face it; whenever you’re feeling stuffy, drinking anything that is steaming hot helps to open up the sinuses, which immediately helps you to breathe better, thus you begin to feel better.

If we take a closer look at the ingredients of chicken soup, one in particular stands out for its antioxidant benefits. Garlic is considered by herbalists to be one of the most useful herbs for medicinal purposes. Many cultures have used garlic for centuries in medicines, as it is a known antioxidant, used to treat many respiratory ailments including hoarseness, coughs and the common cold. The main compound in garlic, allistatin has antibiotic qualities used in some cultures to treat whopping cough, flu and other viral and bacterial diseases.

Anyway you look at it, a steaming bowl of hot chicken soup when you’re feeling under the weather can’t hurt, and if you add garlic to your recipe, it may help.

The recipes below should be individualized, use the ingredients that you and your family like, don’t like carrots? Use turnips instead. If your family is partial to peas, add peas. Use rice instead of pasta, whatever suits your taste. Just be sure to add the garlic, as stated above, its medicinal attributes make it a great addition to any soup.

Basic Soup Recipe

Chicken broth

1 3 lb chicken, 3 quarts of water

3 large Carrots

3 stalks of Celery

Onion Salt and pepper to taste 1 bay leaf Fresh chopped basil.

Put all the ingredients in a large stock pot and simmer for 3 hours, skimming the surface often. Remove the chicken, remove meat from the bones, and put aside. Discard vegetables, and chill broth. After broth as chilled for a while, remove fat from the top. You are now ready to use broth in your soup.

chicken soup

2 cups chopped cooked chicken

8 cups chicken broth

Salt and pepper to taste

Carrots, chopped

Celery, coarsely chopped

Diced garlic to taste

Any small pasta

Simmer until carrots and celery are soft and pasta is cooked, about 10 minutes. Serve hot.

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Source by Julie E Lewis

Views: 0

January 27, 2020
Which Walking Liberty Half Dollar Collecting Strategy Is Best for You?

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Walking Liberty half dollars are one of the most beautiful of American coins. They age gracefully, and are a far less expensive to collect than the more popular Morgan silver dollar.

Their key date 1921-S, in MS-65 condition will sell for around $100,000. The 1893-S Morgan in MS-65 condition will bring nearly $700,000. In MS-60 they are about $20,000 compared to the 1893-S for $130,000.

The Walking Liberty isn’t quite the same bargain in AU however. The 1921-S goes for around $7,000 and the 1893-S Morgan goes for around $21,000. Instead of a 1 to 7 ratio in the MS categories, it’s only a 1 to 3 ratio in AU.

As you get into the late date Walkers the cost of mint state coins goes down considerably. Mint state examples are plentiful and cheap after 1935.

A complete date/mint set of MS-65 Walking Liberties would cost somewhere in the half million dollar range. So, the entire collection would cost less than one 1893-S Morgan in MS-65 condition.

I see four fundamental strategies for collecting Walking Liberties:

1. US half dollar type set

2. Walking Liberty year set

3. Walking Liberty complete date/mint set

4. Walking Liberty proof set

1. The US half dollar short, type set could include each of the following:

· Flowing Hair half

· Draped Bust half

· Capped bust

· Seated Liberty half

· Barber half

· Walking Liberty

· Franklin Kennedy

If you’re willing to accept lower mint state for the Flowing Hair and Draped Bust designs, this collection could be obtained for around $150,000.

2. The Walking Liberty year set would contain 25 coins for an example of one from each year this issue was minted. An example of this would be:

· 1916-P to 1921-P

· 1923-S

· 1927-S

· 1928-S

· 1929-D

· 1933-S

· 1934-P to 1947-P

This strategy allows you to assemble each year of issue in mint condition without breaking the bank. It would be acceptable to have the rare dates in MS-64 alongside the common dates in MS-65. You’re looking at something under $40,000 for a collection like this.

3. A complete date/mint set would require 65 coins. A set like this could also use MS-65 examples for the common later date coins and MS-64 for the more expensive dates. Depending how you organize a collection like this, it might cost around $350,000 to complete.

4. Here’s the surprise. If you go for a proof set, there are only 7 coins minted as proofs for this series. Proofs are surprisingly inexpensive and even more beautiful than the circulation issue. There is only one key date in the proof series, and that’s 1936. A set of PF-65 Walking Liberty coins will cost just under $10,000.

I price mint state coins here because the mint state coins have the most demand and collector value. They will retain their prices better and increase more than their circulated versions.

As discussed in my article on Pivotal Grading Points, the greatest profit potential is to buy the coin just under the pivotal grade. That is often, but not always MS-64.

If you were to accept MS-64 as your grade standard, you could complete these set examples for considerably less money than described here. As demonstrated above a complete set is considerably less expensive than a complete date/mint Morgan set.

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Source by Paul St. Julien

Views: 0

January 27, 2020
How To Make The Best Of Affiliate Marketing

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Affiliate marketing is a terrific way to start making money from the internet. You don’t need to develop your own products or services, keep any stock, deal with payment systems or organize deliveries. You promote products on behalf of another business and when you make a sale, you get paid a commission.

The problem is that a lot of people already know this. That means there’s a lot of affiliates out there who are most likely seeking to sell the same products as you.

Choose Your Niche Carefully

It’s important that you put some thought and homework into your niche before you start trying to sell affiliate products. To start with, do you have a real interest for your chosen niche or industry? If you’re trying to sell something that holds very little interest for you, you’re in a negative position before you even get started and it’s unlikely that you’ll keep with it for very long.

On the other hand, it’s also important to test that your chosen niche is profitable. Are people buying the type of product that you want to promote. Before you start to promote products and services as an affiliate, check out its conversion rates. This means how many potential consumers actually turn into buyers.

Use Reputable Affiliate Programs

As an affiliate marketer, you’re promoting another the products or services of another business. But, with regards to your prospective customers, they will think that they are buying from you. Therefore, make sure that you’re associating yourself with reputable affiliate companies that have integrity stand behind their products and support their affiliates.

Use The Right Kind Of Affiliate Links

Your objective is to get someone to click through on your affiliate link. This is the unique URL link that an affiliate program will use to keep track of your sales. There are all kinds of links you can use to get someone to visit a product’s sales page. These include embedded text, banners, search boxes and other less common methods.

If you want to actually sell products or find clients, you need to research all the choices and make the right decision for what you’re trying to do.

Have Your Own Website And Email List

You can start marketing affiliate without having your own website. You basically send prospects directly to a product owner’s sales page. Having said that, if that prospect doesn’t buy anything, you’ve lost them forever. On the other hand, if your prospects are associated to your website and have signed up with your email list, if they don’t buy a specific offer today, you can tempt them with something else in the future.

Creating your own affiliate marketing website isn’t as difficult as you might think, and there are several easy to use website platforms that can get you online quickly and efficiently.

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Source by Jon Allo

Views: 0

January 26, 2020
Eating Organic Foods Is Part of A Health Plan for Your Gluten Free Diet

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How to be healthy is a subject with a wide swath of opinions. There are opinions about a vast group of different special diets. The negative health symptoms from eating certain foods is a very big challenge today.

Gluten sensitivity is one of those symptomatic challenges that so many people are dealing.

As you explore and venture onto a gluten free diet you may or may not see that all your troubling symptoms are going away. Symptoms you had hoped eliminating gluten would solve. Perhaps some symptoms have stopped or have eased but others that you thought might relate to gluten are still causing you grief.

Lets also ask the question, are you still eating a diet consisting of manufactured processed commercial foods? Is the only change that now the foods you eat contain no gluten?

Many people who are gluten sensitive, have Celiac disease or are gluten intolerant and just trade the same potentially toxic commercially processed foods for toxic gluten free foods. All the preservatives, additives and toxic chemicals are still there and may be contributing to many of the symptoms you are hoping to stop and control.

What’s the solution? Go organic. This means start looking for the organic label on all the food you buy. Organic foods may in some circumstances and with certain items cost more, but what is your health and well being worth. If you would rather eliminate symptoms that may be connected to hidden gluten and additives with the use of pharmaceutical drugs or would you rather pay a bit more for your organic diet.

Organic means clean food, no preservatives, no chemical additives, no binders. flavor enhancers or ingredients with laboratory names you can’t pronounce and have no idea what they are. Organic foods are grown naturally in soil without synthetic compounds added.

One of the benefits of eating organic foods is that you can also test to see if any of the additives in the commercial processed foods you have been eating are contributing to any symptoms.

Organic is the healthiest for you and the Earths environment? Here is another benefit from eating organic, you become part of the solution for a healthier planet and sustainable future for us all. While you make substantial changes to your diet like becoming gluten free consider making other kinds of substantial changes like eating organic foods in a Paleo diet or whole foods diet. It’s a serious win win for you and your health and for helping to solve an important environmental problem facing us all.

What we choose to eat has an affect on the environmental health of the world. Eating gluten free organic foods makes a statement that you care about not only the chemicals going into your body but also all the chemicals being pumped into the Earth through non organic commercial agriculture.

Going gluten free is just one part of the equation for getting healthier and reaching for new levels of health and quality of life. Making your gluten free lifestyle an organic lifestyle will serve you well.

Organic Gluten Free Foods Are Bountiful

The gluten free foods industry includes organic foods. Beyond the foods that would be substitutes for foods that would commonly contain gluten there are also all the organic foods that naturally don’t include grains and gluten. Organic vegetables and fruits, nut, seeds, beans, mushrooms, garlic, onions and all the other wonderful healthy foods are that much healthier when they are organically grown.

Organic grains that are gluten free are the best kind of grains you can eat, like amaranth, quinoa, millet, rices, buckwheat and non corn are choices if you want to have gluten free grains in your diet. Organic foods help you avoid GM (genetically modified) ingredients as well.

Another organic foods diet that is really good for you in the Paleo diet. Eating the diet of the hunter gatherer should be organic, the caveman’s diet was organic.

Prior to the industrialization of farming and food production there was no need for the word organic to differentiate foods that are naturally grown and those that are commercially grown.

One way to look at how natural organic foods should be for anyone’s diet is to realize that foods were organic for centuries and have only been industrialized for a very short time. There is evidence that the industrialization of foods is part of the cause of the rise of the gluten sensitivity epidemic.

Making your gluten free diet an organic gluten free diet makes total sense and is very clearly the healthiest choice. In fact to take this a little further, an organic whole foods diet or Paleo diet is probably ultimately the healthiest diet for you.

Take the leap and go organic all the way.

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Source by Michael Chadd

Views: 0

January 25, 2020