Finance and Business Blog

A futures contract (or simply futures) is an agreement to buy or sell a commodity (for example, a share or a bond) at a predetermined date and price, and can be used to hedge or to speculate on the price of the commodity.

With a futures contract, the holder is obliged to buy or sell the commodity. This is different to an ‘option’ where the buyer has the right, but is not obliged, to buy the commodity.

Futures contracts are exchange traded derivatives. The exchange’s clearinghouse acts as counterparty on all contracts, sets margin requirements, and crucially also provides a mechanism for settlement.

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I recently went to a lecture/presentation on how to make use of social networking sites in a business context. Although I found the presentation very interesting and informative, I’m still unsure as to how much benefit my business would get from going flat out ion the social networking arena.

What became apparent from the presentation was that you could easily spent a great deal of time keeping your social networking information up-to-date, although it is possible to write a post/entry in one place and then get it to update other places. For example, you could get your twitter entries to automaticallly update your blog.

We all know that networking is important when it comes to finding work, so I guess the same can be said about social networking. I know that singers quite often use sites like MySpace to promote their work and to build up a fan base. I’m dubious though as to how much work MySpace or FaceBook could generate for an IT consultant, for example. I have a LinkedIn account myself, which I suppose is where I should concentrate my efforts when it comes to finding project work.

I can see that social networking sites offer a great way to keep in touch with people, or to track down friends with whom you have lost touch …. although you should probably ask yourself why you lost touch in the first place !

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The Bank of England has reduced UK interest rates to 1% from 1.5%.

UK interest rates have so far been reduced five times from October’s 5% to February’s 1.0%, the lowest rate in the Bank’s 315-year history.

An accounting period is a period with reference to which United Kingdom corporation tax is charged. It helps dictate when tax is paid on income and gains. An accounting period begins whenever a company comes within the corporation tax charge, and whenever an accounting period ends without the company ceasing to be within the charge.

Often an accounting period coincides with a company’s period of account. This is the period for which it draws up accounts, except for a life assurance company, where it is the period for which it draws up its periodical return. However, periods of account and accounting periods do not necessarily coincide.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_period

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