Time Management and Transition

Independent decisions and is financially independent. The Journey from adolescence to adulthood can be an exciting adventure but it may also be extremely stressful. Planning strategies to deal with potential obstacles will help with the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Planning for your transition from school to career, family home to own home, family to community, or others care to self care will ensure that you will have a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood.The transition from school to career can be extremely stressful for students, particularly if the student still hasn't chosen a career in which they want to pursue. It is imperative that you make wise decisions in your adolescence, as their outcome can have a major impact on your life when you become an adult. Life skills such as time management and organization are key elements in preparing for a successful and non-stressful transition from adolescence to adulthood.Students with impeccable time managem ent skills will ensure that they are never late for school and for their Job and will always avoid procrastination at all costs. Ways in which students can improve their time management skills are to stop procrastinating, prepare lists such as â€Å"To- Do Lists†, and delegate responsibilities. The transition from family home to own home is dependent after the successful transition from school to career has occurred.This is an exciting moment in your life where you finally get to live away from home. For some people, this transition may be stressful as they're not used to being away from home, whereas others find that this transition to be quite enjoyable as theyre no longer living at home in their parents' house. This transition provides a feeling of great independence and interdependence. Imperative life skills that must be learned for this transition to be successful and non-stressful are good..

Powerful people can make others powerless

Have you ever felt useless, unwanted or completely powerless? In many schools this is a frequent occurrence. Many powerful or popular people have the ability to create the Illusion that you are worthless. How would you enjoy the experience of being one of the powerless students. Having to enter the school grounds every day in utter fear. Scurrying your way through the locker bays with the expressed desire of avoiding the possibility of being tormented by the powerful. They can can determine how we feel, owe we think and ultimately who we are.This must be altered. Primarily, day after retched day students either experience or are exposed to some form of bullying. An astonishing number of students are victims of bullying and this is the leading cause of depression in teenagers. According to documenting. Org over 3. 2 million students encounter bullying every year. If bullying was to prevail the victims might begin to perceive the world as a horrible and unforgiving place. Then the only reliable way to escape what seems like torture is to commit a sorrowful act.An act which would tear a family heart apart, seclude. There has been several bullying related suicides In the past year. Furthermore, bullying has spiraled in the 21st century and the many different forms of bullying have escalated. Now there is cyber bullying, the most common and the most cowardly. This is where one can simply hide behind the screen of an electronic device and pepper someone with insults. There is also verbal bullying, physical bullying, estranging and humiliation. Imagine the feeling of being completely humiliated In front of the entire school.Everyone pointing and gingering at you, sharing their crude comments about you to one another. In the olden days you had the privacy of your home and you were safe there. Now in this modern day and age there is no escape, even when you are situated at home, as the internet provides a gateway to your private life to the world. Now picture a world In complete harmony. Where If you were honored with the title of a powerful one, you would harness the ability In a way that would benefit everyone. This would create a much more inviting and nurturing learning environment for fellow peers.No student will have to learn in fear and they will view the world for what it should be. A place filled with enjoyment, love and respect for everyone which would allow students to strive to their full potential no matter who they are. A 12 year old girl once said â€Å"l known I'm only a child, yet I know we're all In the this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal† – Severe Caulis Suzuki Everyone student should enjoy learning. They should enter the school grounds full of excitement and should be eager to learn and also obtain a positive outlook on life.If we were to harness the power In a positive way and combine as one, we could potentially surpass any expectations of where this world could be. As I stat ed In my in that phrase was illusion. An illusion is something that deceives the mind by producing a false or misleading impression of reality. Some people gain power from subjugating others, they should use the power to inspire and influence others. For we were produced for a reason. We were made to change this world. We all contain the power. The power to change the world.

Chosen business: Tesco Essay

There are different types of information that Tesco use these are: – Verbal information: This is spoken information it could come from the customer, it could also come from Tesco if they let any promotions over the tannoy. – Written information: This is information that is written in a document, Tesco uses this type of information in its leaflets, receipts and collects this information from customers through comment cards etc. – Onscreen information: Tesco will use this type of information in their TV adverts so that they can get a lot of promotions across to their potential customers, they can also use this to show customers how good they are compared to their competitors and that their products are cheaper. – Multi-media: This type of information is a lot of different sources mixed in, it includes pictures, presentations, videos and can include on screen information, Tesco does not normally use this type of information because they tend to use types of i nformation that they can easily communicate with their customers such as verbal or written in the form of a leaflet or poster. – Web based: This type of information is given out or collected through the internet, Tesco have a website that they use to communicate information on the business to their customers. Customers can also give information through this by buying products online and giving reviews on Tesco. Tesco use these types of information for many different purposes, these are: – Updating knowledge: They use information to update their knowledge on things like what products are selling the most and which ones have high demand, they can then make sure that they supply all of these products for the customers, they can find this out by questionnaires etc. and also written sales figures and this will update their knowledge on what products are their best sellers so they can promote these. -Informing future developments: They use information to inform their future developments because if they can get lots of information from their customers then they can use this to make plans for their fut ure developments in order to make their organisation better, they can use customer feedback via written information. -Strategic direction: They use different types of information in order to decide which strategic direction they are going to take, they can use sales figures and department feedback to see what is making Tesco do so well. If they come across a problem, like they do not have enough sales then they can use this information to change their strategic direction. -SWOT analysis: They use both internal and external forms of information in order to see what their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are. Tesco will use sales, customer, department, competitor and growth information in order to conduct a swot analysis they will then find that their strengths are having specialist marketing expertise because they are such a huge organisation they know what they are doing. They also have weaknesses such as a large amount of competitors that could overtake them such as Asda and Morrison’s. An opportunity could be the development of technology such as self-scan machines that they can use to promote their business. A threat could be how Asda is currently top of the market and this means that they need to come up with more ideas to get above Asda. -Offering competitive insight: They will use information such as market share and published sales figures from other their competitors to see how good other competitors like Asda are doing they can they use these to see what they can do better. They will also use the on-screen information such as the TV adverts to get a competitive insight because they will see what offers their competitors are doing and try to match or outdo these. -Communicating sales promotions: They use both written, on screen and verbal information in order to communicate their sales promotions, they will do this because by using more than one method of information they can get more information and better information out to their customers and it will mean that more of the customers are likely to see the promotions and buy the products. -Inviting support for activities: They can use onscreen and written information to do this because if Tesco are holding a fundraiser then it is important that they can get this message out to their customers and staff so they will hand out leaflets on the activities they are holding and advertise it on the television for people who are not coming into store this will invite support. They can also use written information such as messages on bulletin boards in the staff room to invite support for new technology in the business such as new ICT and then staff will be able to voice their support or non-support for this new software etc. There is lots of places that Tesco get this information from, these can be both internal and external: Internal -Financial: This is a place where Tesco can get their information from because if Tesco is doing well and generating a profit then they know that they are doing something well and may not need to change their strategic direction if they are constantly growing and generating more money. -Human resources: This is a place where Tesco get their information from because they can tell them if the staff are good enough to do their job for example, do they have the right skills to do their job. Human resources can also give them a lot of information such as training that they are giving then Tesco can use the staff for different things because they will be trained to do this. -Marketing: This is a place where Tesco can get information on how departments are doing but they will also use this to give information out to their customers for example Marketing can advertise the promotions and create the adverts, they can also market new products that come into the business so that customers know what products exist so that they can buy them. -Purchasing: This is a place where Tesco can get their information because they will get information such as if they are getting a good deal on all the products that they are buying for their stores, they will also get information such as are they having good suppliers where deliveries arrive on time. -Sales: Tesco gets information from their sales because they can look at their sales figures to see what products are selling the best and what kind of products have high demand, they can then make sure that they make the most of these products and promote them more so that customers buy more e.g. Warburton’s because customers buy bread very often so it is often on promotion in Tesco. -Manufacturing: Tesco make their own brand products, they get information from this because they know how much it is costing them to manufacture these products, they can then put a reasonable price on the products so that they are giving their customers the best deal and they will be able to make profits if they know how much the product is going to cost them to manufacture. External -Government: Tesco get information from the government on things like how much they can legally pay their staff e.g. minimum wage, this is important information because they can use this to not spend too much on wages if they don’t need to but also to protect their staff. -Trade groupings: Tesco can use the information they get from trade groupings for things like their competitors because they will be meeting with these people and can then gain more of an insight into their business and Tesco can improve to be better. – Databases: Tesco can use the information they get from external databases in order to help their organisation, they can find out independently published databases on the sales of individual products that they sell. They can also get databases on how other competitors are doing so this information can help them to change their strategic direction if they need to. -Research: Tesco can do their own primary research into products and their customer service to see how they are doing but they can also use external secondary research, this can be done on forum sites where customers have reviewed Tesco and they can also do secondary research from people who have already published research and they can use this. -Reliability of data sources: If Tesco does a lot of secondary information then it is important that they find out how reliable to sources of the data are, if the person who took out the research is a reliable source e.g. a government source then they can use this well because they know that the information is reliable and will not mislead them but if it is from an anonymous source then it is not likely to be reliable and may be biased so it might not be the best idea to use this as it may lead to Tesco making wrong decisions. Task 2 (M1) Verbal information is an appropriate way of communicating and gathering information in Tesco because it allows for Tesco to get their information to their information to the customers quickly and would allow for Tesco to get all of their promotions out quickly and often verbal communication is a more persuading way of giving information and by giving the promotions verbally Tesco may be able to persuade their customers to buy more, so this would be an appropriate way for Tesco to get the information it needs across to its customers. The source of verbal information can come from sales, I think that this is an appropriate source for verbal information and for information in general because it comes from the customer themselves, it is normally a one on one encounter with the staff and the customer so this means that information is less likely to be manipulated because there is less people for it to go through before it can get used, so this source is reliable and valid because the info rmation is coming direct from the customer or the information is coming directly from the seller for promotions etc. Another type of information is written information, when Tesco uses this it is normally in the form of leaflets so that they can show their customers what is on offer at Tesco, it is an important and effective way of getting information across to the customer because it means that they can read it anytime they want, even when they are not in the store they can pick up the leaflet and see what is available at Tesco. Written information allows for the customer to view the information any time they want and it allows for Tesco to get the information out to many people at once, verbal information may not be appropriate when trying to get a lot of information out to a lot of people because it is often not possible to talk to many people at once other than a tannoy and also verbal information will only allow for information to be passed to people who are in the store at the time whereas written information can be given to people who are not in store. The source of written information could be marketing within Tesco, this is an appropriate source of written information because marketing has the right skills in order to make an effective leaflet that gets all of the information needed to the customer, they know from other departments what information needs to go into the leaflet e.g. what promotions are on or what jobs are available via human resources so they can then market and advertise this in a way that will attract customers to take and read the information. The final type of information that Tesco use is on-screen information, this is in the form of TV adverts and sometimes on screen adverts in store, this is a good way of getting information across to the customer about things that might be going on at Tesco e.g. new products or events that are being held. On-screen information is a good way of giving out information because customers will still remember what they have seen even after the advert has finished and this means they will remember what is happening or what products there is and if people see something they are interested in then they are likely to go and buy it as a result of the on-screen information, it also allows for Tesco to run adverts even when the stores are not open, it also allows for them to advertise directly to the customer in an environment that they are comfortable with because most people watch the television at home and will be relaxed and more likely to take in information. It is reliable because it has come directly from Tesco which means all of the information is what they want to share and all the information is correct. A source of on-screen information at Tesco is the marketing department, they are responsible for advertising and marketing all new products and generally advertising the organisation. They will be able to make the information clear and attractive using multimedia and on-screen and if customers are attracted to an advert they are likely to listen and be interested, allowing for the information to be shared to the customer. Marketing is a good source of information for on-screen because they know what they are doing and have the right skills to make an effective advert that is fit for purpose.

The Rise of Science and the Aesthetic Reaction to It Essay

The Rise of Science and the Aesthetic Reaction to It - Essay Example The reaction to Darwin and Freud (whose psychological theory did not as much as put forward the rationality of man, rather that he is driven by irrational forces) was seemingly two-fold in fin de siecle literature. First, was the depiction of the separation of inner and outward character (a painting that serves as the mirror of the soul of a debauched, perfect-looking man in Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray or a Mr. Hyde, the monster to the respectable Dr. Jekyll in the famous novel by Robert Louis Stevenson) whose reconciliation would not happen in actual life but would be brought about only by death. Second, was the cold-blooded, detached view of life as a field where one can experiment and perform whose boundaries need not be set by society, but by only the individual. In both cases, the case of appreciation for what constitutes beauty or in general, what constitutes art, is laid at the mercy of a conscious or unconscious imitation of the scientific method. But does science lends itself to the cause of art or the appreciation of what is true or beautiful Walter Pater who influenced Oscar Wilde as a student, wrote in his essay, Style that literature's enterprise "may well lie in the naturalization of the vocabulary of science, so only it be under the eye of a sensitive scholarship--in a liberal naturalisation of the ideas of science too, for after all the chief stimulus of good style is to possess a full, rich, complex matter to grapple with" (Pater p. 16). In the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the "full, rich, complex matter to grapple with" has been introduced to Dorian Gray by Lord Henry Wotton whose fascination with the methods of science was applied to the investigation of human life (Wilde chapter 3). That the main character in the novel would indeed take literally Lord Wotton's advice that "the only way to the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it" (Wilde chapter 2), is shown how seemingly the material of life is under the control of the in dividual - much like a scientist is in control of laboratory. The difference lies of course is that a scientist what experiments from are inanimate - not creatures of feelings, sensibilities or complex passions. What Dr. Jekyll at the start enjoyed over the safety of limiting his evil side to Mr. Hyde, would unravel when the evil side eventually took over his own body - the case of the material devouring the creator or the artist. The aesthete character as depicted in fin de siecle literature also shows how detachment and obsession are the contradictory attitudes towards beauty. It is not as much as morality or insistence on the weight of value has no part in it, as much as beauty seems to be confined in the recesses of the mind, its purity guarded and valued for its own sake - only to be wasted away when its feet touches the ground. In Dorian Gray, as much as the tiring paradoxes mouthed by Lord Wotton, beauty is only in the mind, and its attainment is through its defilement and destruction in real experience. To a certain extent, the character of Gilbert Osmond who fascinated the main character enough to fall into his trap in Henry James' A Portrait of Lady is a fine specimen of such an

How would you evaluate the performance of a bank using published Essay

How would you evaluate the performance of a bank using published accounting data. What other data would you use in this evaluation - Essay Example And according to many industry experts, a new era of global banking is emerging (Kubris-Labiak, 2005). It is important to have a method of analysing banks’ performance, in order that problems could be threshed out early on and government intervention could protect the public’s savings and preserve the public trust in the safety of the banking system in general (Mishkin & Eakins, 2003). The basic function of a bank is to source funds from savers, and to deploy the funds into productive undertakings by producers. (Madura, 1992). The degree to which banks are capable of discharging this function is the measure of its performance. (Fraser & Ormiston, 2001) The fundamental source of data for measuring bank performance is the income statement. This is the financial report that describes the source of income and expenses that affect the bank’s profitability (Saunders & Millon Cornett, 2008). This paper will walk through a hypothetical bank’s financial statement, which is given here as ABC Bank, a typical commercial bank. A cursory inspection of the income statement above shows several important items. Operating income is the income that comes from a bank’s ongoing operations. It is comprised of the interest income and non-interest income. Most of a bank’s income is interest income, because the banking function is basically that of converting deposits to loans that earn income. In the above table, interest income is shown to account for 73.5% of ABC Bank’s operating income. Interest income fluctuates with the level of interest rates. Non-interest income, on the other hand, makes up about 26.5% of total income in the above example, and is generated partly by service charges on deposit accounts. Typically, however, the bulk of non-interest income comes from off-balance sheet activities, such as trading in financial instruments and generating income from fees and loan sales. The importance of these activities

The State of Mexico's International Trade Essay

The State of Mexico's International Trade - Essay Example Some of these prominent FTA's are the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with the United States and Canada (1994), Colombia and Venezuela (G-3, 1995), the European Union (2000), Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland (EFTA, 2001) and Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador (North Triangle, 2001). FTA's have helped Mexico increase its international trade with countries around the world. They have also aided in reducing the effects of the untimely and unpredictable economic crisis such as crashing prices of oil, recession in the global economies and so on. Today Mexico stands at the seventh position in the list of leading trading nations in the world owing to its free trade policies. Mexico contributes to 46 percent of the Latin America's exports and 47 percent of its imports. NAFTA proved to be a major step in attracting foreign direct investments in the country. Foreign capital has increased the employment rates and the output in the country. Earlier Mexico relied on oil for its exports while at present times the manufactured goods compose the major section of export. All these steps have lead to the significant overall economic development of all the parts of the country (Derbez ""Beyond NAFTA -- Mexico and the Free Trade Area of the Americas," by Luis Ernesto Derbez, Secretary of the Economy, Mexico -- "The Free Trade Area of the Americas" -- U.S. Department of State, October 2002"). The biggest trading partners of Mexico are USA and Canada. Table 1 (Davy and Meyers, "United States-Canada-Mexico Fact Sheet on Trade and Migration"). Table 1 shows the export and import statistics of different NAFTA partners in 2003. The major trade partners of Mexico are US and Canada. USA holds a major share in Mexican export sector. Mexico sends 88% of its exports to US. Chart 1 demonstrates the trade among the three countries: US, Mexico and Canada. Mexico-US trade accounted for $286 billion in 2004. Canada and US are the most important contributors to the Foreign Direct investment in Mexico. 40% of the total FDI to Mexico comes from USA. In 2004 this amount was around $7.3 billion from USA. Canada comes at fourth place in the major FDI contributors to Mexico listing. Canada accounted for $379.2 million FDI in 2004 (Davy and Meyers, "United States-Canada-Mexico Fact Sheet on Trade and Migration"). On the other hand Mexico serves as third largest source of oil imports to US as shown in Fig.1 ("Mexico Energy Data, Statistics and Analysis - Oil, Gas, Electricity, Coal"). Chart 1 (Davy and Meyers, "United States-Canada-Mexico Fact Sheet on Trade and Migration"). Fig.1 ("Mexico Energy Data, Statistics and Analysis - Oil, Gas, Electricity, Coal"). Mexico has a strong existence in the international agro-food market owing to its different products like agriculture, forestry, livestock, hunting, fishing, foods, beverages and tobacco. Mexico exported worth $11.8 billion in 2005 and imported worth $14.3 billion in the same year. 65% of Mexico's imports come from USA ("RS/USDA Briefing Room - Mexico: Trade"). Chart 2 ("RS/USDA Briefing Room - Mexico: Trade"). Mexico recorded an annual GDP growth rate of 4.8% in 2006. It increased from 0.8% to 2.8% in three years from 2002 from 2005. The total trade of Mexico showed a significant increase to 60.3 per cent of GDP from earlier

Inner City Violence Video Lecture Critique Coursework

Inner City Violence Video Lecture Critique - Coursework Example The speaker’s main point appears credible given that the evidence is in the miraculous outcomes that he gives. The theme is credible as it tries to combine social science, street reality, and moral urgency. However, the presentation seems exaggerated as the speaker either appeared too unreserved or got too far along the speech dismissing the beliefs of minorities that policing or drug policy is an economic scheme to reinstate slavery, prior to admitting that it is essentially justified (Kennedy, 2011). I agree with the speaker that there is a socially built illusion. This is justified by the way he mobilizes the traditions of the imposing escapade tale to illustrate what people should have already known. It is true that everyone who engaged in the city crime crisis shares a lot of character traits with each other than any other person involved shares with anyone else. I also agree that people in a community, such as cops, crime victims, shooters, and the families; all begin from one point in life. In fact, they are the same people caught up in extreme circumstances, rather than a permanently and radically different kind o individual as some might think. Despite the fact that I agree with the above issues as presented, I disagree with the speaker’s point that the urban communities with high rates of criminal cases have a breakdown within the three parts namely; the victims, the police, and the residents. According to him, the three have fake perceptions about each other, making them unable to deal with crime appropriately. This is not actually the case because every individual has a role to play as an element of society, and the failure to keep peace ought not to be a one-group’s role. Further, I disagree with his motive to show the reason as to why crime decreased during the 1990s because it fails to address some earlier theories that relate to his story (Harding, 2010). The presentation, and the book in general is a must

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE OF THE WRITINGS OF JOHN PIPER AND N.T Thesis Proposal

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE OF THE WRITINGS OF JOHN PIPER AND N.T. WRIGHT ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH - Thesis Proposal Example The study of the doctrine of justification5 is considered the cornerstone of Christianity6 by many Christian scholars. It is, according to Luther, the article by which the church stands or falls,7 The challenge between Piper and Wright concerns the implication of their views on imputed or incorporated righteousness on justification8 to Christian faith, especially concerning Soteriology.9 On the one hand, Piper’s perspective is that imputed righteousness on justification does not consist merely of belief in Christ alone for salvation, but also submission of every area of one’s life to Christ’s Lordship.10 Thus, Piper unwittingly affirms both â€Å"faith alone† and â€Å"faith not alone† referring to justification, which according to Lybrand constitutes the intrinsic incongruence of these assertions in his (i.e., Piper’s) practical interpretations and teachings.11 This inconsistency could be explained in the way Piper distinguishes justification from sanctification,12 wherein he proposes that to man is given the right to stand with God on account of faith alone.13 Again, Piper maintains, this is something given. Nevertheless, Piper insists that man must live a life that he considers a deadly battle against sin.14 The manner by which he fights such a battle––according God’s will––constitutes s anctification.15 Also important on Piper’s position is the argument that sin has been fought, and won over with the death of Jesus.16 One might contend that if sin has been won over based on Christ’s sacrifice, Piper would not be able to justify his â€Å"faith not alone† portion of his argument. However, he maintains that the right to stand with God is only achieved by eliminating the sin––the one that was already won over on the cross––by way of dying â€Å"in Christ.†17 This is central to his righteousness imputation theory,18 and distinguishes his position from that of Wright’s who proposes, â€Å"incorporated righteousness† as a more

Business Management Techniques (Manage work activities) Essay

Business Management Techniques (Manage work activities) - Essay Example ining an organizations objectives, establishing an overall strategy for achieving those objectives, and developing a comprehensive chain of command of plans to integrate and coordinate activities. The plan of action is, at one and the same time, the result predicted, the line of action to be followed, the stages to go through and the methods to be used. Organizing is the translation of goals and objectives into a structure of responsibilities and authority. To organize a business is to provide it with everything useful to its functioning- raw material, tools, capital, personnel’ (Fayol, 53). In other words it includes the determination of what tasks are to be done, which has to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made. The engineering organization, having been formed, must be set going and this is the mission of command. This insures a successful process of the organization. A manager in command - knows his people, understands all agreements binding the firm, sets a good example, uses a meeting to focus efforts in a single direction, does not become occupied in minute details, and instills unity, energy, initiative and loyalty in the employees. Harmonizing is to integrate the actions of all aspects of the firm in order to increase the efficiency of the organization. To harmonize is to co-ordinate all the activities of concern so as to facilitate its working, and its success. Control consists in confirming everything takes place in conformity with the plan implemented, the directions issued and principles established. It also points out weakness and errors in order to rectify then and prevent recurrence. Typical operations that could be subjected to control, measured in order to monitor progress, included: Business Engineering Organization usually use flat organizational structure where their is hierarchy of authority and becomes easy for supervision, their is segregation of duties and every

Critically review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 2

Critically review - Essay Example The fashion shows run by Hussein Chalayan in exhibiting his designs carries an exceptional sense of style and character. For instance, most of his fashion shows have a characteristic sets that are minimal, as well as, exhibit a certain sense of suspense in the mood. Hussein does not stop at anything to dazzle the world with his wonderful designs, especially considering the elements of geometric structures, urban architecture, as well as, contemporary interiors incorporated in them. His shows explore a certain sense of theoretical and conceptual designs that play out behind his garments across the body of the models used for the fashion design. This, in fact, is one of the winning strategies that Hussein uses to beat his competitors to the prize especially in most of the fashion show competitions he participates. The aura and glamour of his designs always put him ahead of other designers, making him one of the hottest designers in the fashion industry. One of the most reveling fashion design exhibitions played out by Hussein was in January 22, 2009. In fact, the media, such as the Daily Telegraph, terms this fashion exhibition as â€Å"a Beautifully Orchestrated Show†. This fashion design was at the London Museum of Modern Art and attracted partners and stakeholders from the vast fashion industry. As the expert he was, Hussein did not disappoint his audience, and as such, left the media partners both dazed and confused from his meticulous pieces of designs, covering different cultural aspects, themes, innovation and creativity, as well as, an avid mind of incorporating technology and design in his creations. The fashion show development incorporated the most contemporary fashion designs with his pieces leading the forefront. He was meticulous as always, with his incorporation of the most progressive attitudes towards the

The poems of Seamus Heaney and D.H.Lawrence Essay Example for Free

The poems of Seamus Heaney and D.H.Lawrence Essay The poets Seamus Heaney and D. H. Lawrence frequently describe their own childhood memories in their poems. Mid-Term Break and The Early Purges by Heaney, both show great examples of the way Heaney felt about many things, like death and relationships, as do the poems Piano and Discord in Childhood by D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence was born in 1885, the fourth child of five. His father was an irresponsible alcoholic, and Lawrence was born hating his father and shivered at his touch. Heaney, however, loved and hugely respected his family and especially his father. Heaney was born in 1939 at the start of WW2. He, unlike Lawrence, was the eldest of nine children, and was brought up and worked on his fathers farm, before being sent to a boarding school when he was twelve. Lawrences parents had a violent relationship one big bloody fight, because of his fathers temper. Lawrence was much closer to his mother because she was highly educated and they understood each other. Heaneys poem Mid-Term Break is all about the death of one of Heaneys younger brother. Heaney conveys many feelings in this poem, like growing up, childhood, memories, and death. He uses many modern techniques in this poem: caesura for emphasis on certain things, enjambment to create a sense of continuity running through the poem, alliteration, imagery and many more. Heaney also portrays a lot of memories in this poem. First the title: Mid, implies an interruption in his life and childhood, and an early introduction to adulthood, but also Break, is a harsh, tough word, that could mean the break in his brothers life and childhood. In the first stanza he mentions sitting all morning in the college sick bay. This was when he was awaiting to be driven home to his brothers funeral from his boarding school, and was feeling isolated and loneliness from the rest of the world. Heaney sees his father crying in the second verse. In the porch I met my father crying, this is also the first implication that the funeral is that of a member of the Heaney family. He also mentioned Big Jim Evans another big, strong role model, affected by the death. The next verse says: The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram, which is incongruous and doesnt fit in with everything else. Later, Heaneys hand was shaken by old men, and Heaney was embarrassed, because he should have been showing them respect. He was told: they were sorry for my trouble, which is clichi , and he felt a huge amount of responsibility when whispers informed strangers I was the eldest. Heaneys mother coughed out angry tearless sighs because she was either angry with herself for not looking after her son, or angry with the driver of the car that knocked him clear. In the poem, Heaney felt many things: embarrassment, sadness, and awkwardness. The last verse of the poem reveals the age of his dead brother. The alliteration and sharpness of the last line, really makes you realize how young he was, and how hard it must have been for the Heaney family. The last verse is also set apart from the rest of the poem, because it has only one line. This makes it even more important, because the reader will notice it more, and also pay more attention to it, and what it means. Heaneys other poem The Early Purges focuses on Heaney growing up through his childhood, and his journey to becoming an adult, and obtaining a different perspective on certain things. The Early Purges, is very significant. Early implies something that happened to Heaney when he was young early on in his life, and Purge means to rid yourself of impurities and sin. It also makes the poem sound as if it wont be endurable. This poem is about bad things that have happened to Heaney. It is all about death. As a young boy, Seamus Heaney helped to work on his fathers farm, and during that time he saw farm workers killing lots of defenceless, innocent animals. This is also bluntly written. Heaney was only six when he first saw kittens drown. He makes this very bold at the beginning of the poem. It is hard-hitting and appeals to the hearts of the readers, because kittens are, young, cute and vulnerable animals. Dan Taggart pitched them, the scraggy wee shits. The worker, Dan Taggart is the one doing the killing. He calls the kittens scraggy wee shits, which shows how little he cares about them. The kittens are described as making a frail metal sound, which again shows how young and weak these animals are. The sound also appeals to the aural senses, because the reader can easily imagine the sound and how horrible it must have been.

A Christmast Surprise for Gramma Essay Example for Free

A Christmast Surprise for Gramma Essay A Christmas Surprise for Grandma by Gloria J. Shuttleworth Grandma lived on Sugar Creek Mountain all alone. It was a beautiful mountain, with tall cedar trees all over the mountain top. In the middle of the mountain was a crystal clear lake. The water in the lake was the prettiest blue youve ever seen. When the water was calm, you could see the fish swimming around in the lake. I loved sitting by the lake when I was a little girl. Grandma would pack us a lunch, and we would sit at the lake for hours on end. Hour after hour, grandma would tell me stories about her life on the mountain. I remember the day that grandpa drowned in the lake. My parents had tried to talk grandma into moving into town, but she wouldnt hear of it. My parents knew not to argue with her, because they knew that grandma was set in her ways. Ive been on this mountain for so long that Ive forgotten which is the oldest, me or the mountain, grandma had said, with a twinkle in her eyes. I knew my parents worried about her being alone, because grandma was the only person who lived on Sugar Cliff Mountain. Today I was going to visit grandma, and the excitement grew inside me at the thought of spending time on the mountain once more. After all, it had been ten years since I had seen grandma. Its hard to believe that my career had kept me away for so long. As I approached the top of the mountain, I could see grandma staring out the window of her little log cabin home. Grandma greeted me at the door with a big hug. I am so happy that you could come to visit with me, said grandma. This Christmas is going to be so wonderful! I have a special surprise for you dear. Little did grandma know that I had a very special surprise for her as well. Well, we cant stand around here all day, said grandma. Theres a lot of work to get done. I have invited the people from the village to come to my Christmas party on Saturday evening. After I had freshened up a bit, we spent the day baking all sorts of cookies and candies. Grandma had a story to tell as we baked the goodies for the party. She told me about how she used to bake apple pies for grandpa. He loved apple pies, said grandma. Those were his favorite. She said that after the pies would cool off, that grandpa would send her into the living room, under the pretense that he would clean up the kitchen. Grandma knew what he was really up to, but she never let on that she knew. Grandma would go into the living room and sit in her rocking chair. She would sing some of the songs that she knew grandpa loved. About an hour later, grandma would wander back into the kitchen. Why Henry! she said kitchen, grandma retired for the evening. I made myself a cup of tea and sat down in front of the fireplace. Sitting alone in the quiet house, I pondered my childhood memories of my grandparents. They had always been such a fun loving and happy couple. Shortly after they were married, grandpa built the log cabin home for his Little ole Emmy, as he called her. Just before Christmas, almost twelve years ago, grandpa was outside gathering firewood, when grandma heard a horrible scream and a terrible noise. She ran outside to find that an area of the ice on the lake had fallen through. She yelled for grandpa over and over but no reply ever came. They searched the lake for over a week, but no trace of grandpa could be found. Finally, they called off the search. One of the men who had helped in the search said theyd probably never find grandpa now. Just then, as my thoughts were still racing around in my head, my grandmother brought me back to reality. We have to be up very early in the morning dear, so off to bed now, she said. I slowly walked to my grandmothers room, and kissed her goodnight. Morning came early at grandmas house. As I entered the kitchen I could smell the homemade biscuits and gravy cooking on the stove. Whats on our list of things to do today? I asked. The men are coming from the village this morning to put the lights on the trees, and we have lots of presents to wrap for the children, she said. Just then, there was a knock at the door. It was the men from the village ready to start putting up the lights. Grandma was so excited as she stepped back to watch them. Lets wrap those presents now Laura, said grandma. As I watched grandma wrap the presents and tie the ribbons, I knew that so much more was being placed around them. With each piece of wrapping paper grandma was also wrapping them with love. After the last present was wrapped, we realized that wed been wrapping presents all day! It was now getting dark outside and grandma wanted to go outside to view the lights. As we stepped out onto the porch, we gasped. The sight that met our eyes was so beautiful to behold! The snow was glittering and the reflection of the lights on the snow was beyond words! It was breathtaking! That night I went to bed with a heart full of love for my grandmother. I knew that someday I wanted to be just like her, full of love for others. Saturday evening the village people started arriving just after dark. Grandma always waited until evening to have her Christmas party, because she loved the lights. All the guests gathered around in the front yard and began to sing Christmas carols. Oh, how grandma loved that! Ole Ben was a jolly fellow who worked at the village store, and he was chosen to help Santa hand out the presents. The children shouted with glee, as they unwrapped their gifts. Grandma said, Laura, come here dear, I have a surprise for you. As she handed me the present, I could see the love and pride in her eyes. I love it grandma, I said, as I bent down to kiss her cheek, I will cherish it forever. Grandma had made a quilt out of some of my dresses that I had worn as a little girl. Grandma, if you could have just one special gift for Christmas, what would it be? I asked her. Without even stopping to think, she replied, I would like t o see your grandfather just one more time, so I could feed him the apple pie that the horses quit snatching when he left us. Just then grandmas face lit up like the lights on the Christmas tree! Everyone turned to see what grandma was looking at. Walking slowly toward her, with an apple pie in his hand, was grandpa! There was two slices missing from the pie that he was holding. The village people were speechless, as they thought they were seeing a ghost. Grandpa chuckled, as he yelled out, Emmy, those darn horses snatched the pie and got away with two pieces. Difference to me, but slowly my memory started to return. I remember now going out to gather firewood. There was a nice piece of wood on the lake. I thought the lake was frozen over so I stepped out on the lake to get the piece of wood. I remember hearing the lake crackle and thats the last I remember about the accident. Laura, how can I ever thank you for bringing grandpa home to me? asked grandma. Laura replied, Seeing the happiness and the love you have for each other is all the thanks I need. As Laura retired to bed that night, she couldnt help but think about the surprise that she had given to grandma for Christmas. She knew in her heart that it was the best surprise present that grandma would ever get. What a warm and wonderful feeling came over Laura as she fell asleep, thinking of her grandparents.

Analysis Of Hedge Fund Performances

Analysis Of Hedge Fund Performances 1. INTRODUTION: Hedge funds are actively managed portfolios that hold positions in publicly traded securities. Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M. Kat (2000) stated on their report that A hedge fund is typically defined as a pooled investment vehicle that is privately organized, administrated by professional investment managers, and not widely available to the public? It charges both a performance fee and a management fee. It allows a flexible investment for a small number of large investors (usually the minimum investment is $1 million) can use high risk techniques. Nowadays it is very clear that in the matter of alternative investment mutual fund is not performing well. As a high absolute returns and typically have features such as hurdle rates and incentive fees with high watermark provision hedge fund gives a better align to the interests of managers and investors. Moreover mutual funds typically use a long-only buy-and-hold type strategy on standard asset classes, which help to capture risk premia asso ciate with equity risk, interest rate risk, default risk etc. However, they are not very helpful in capturing risk premia associate with dynamic trading strategies. That is why hedge fund comes into the picture. This is the year of 2009, which takes the greatest history of the world in the following century. In the year of 2008 the world saw the greatest fall down of the world economy. Lots of people missing their jobs, lots of company were stopped. The world economy faced the highest losses in the history. These all factors are showing only one way to makeover from that greatest downfall that is hedging. 3The last couple of decades have witnessed a rapidly growing in the hedge funds. Relative to traditional investment portfolios hedge funds exhibit some unique characteristics; they are flexible with respect to the types of securities they hold and the type of the position they take. 1 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2000). Multi-period performance persistence analysis of hedge fund s?. The journal of financial and quantitative analysis. Vol. 35, No,3. PP-327. 2 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2004). Risks and portfolio decisions involving hedge funds?. The review of financial studies, Vol. 17, No.1. PP-64. 3 Journal of banking and finance 32(2008) 741-753- Hedge Fund Pricing and Model Uncertainty? by Spyridan D. Vrontos, Ioannis D. Vrontos, Daniel Giomouridies. 4The number of FOHFs increase by 40% between 2001 and 2003, and now comprised almost two third of the $650 billion invested in the USAs hedge fund market. Due to its nature it is difficult to estimate the current size of hedge fund industry. 5Van Hedge Fund Advisors estimates that by the end of 1998 there were 5380 hedge fund managing $311 in capital, with between $800 billion and $1 trillion in total assets, which indicates the higher number of recent new entries. So far, hedge fund is based on American phenomena. About 90% hedge fund managers are based in the US, 9% in Europe and 1% in Asia and elsewhere. Now a days around 5883 hedge funds are trading around the world. (*Barclay Hedge database) 4 Financial times, 29th October, 2003. www.vanhedge.com http://www.barclayhedge.com/products/hedge-fund-directory.html 1.1 Categories of Hedge fund investment objectives: Event Driven: Distressed securities- manager focuses on securities of companies in reorganization and bankruptcy, ranging from senior secured debt to the common stock of the company. Risk arbitrage- manager simultaneously buys stock in a company being acquired and sells stock in its acquirers. Global: International- manager pays attention to economic change around the world (except the United States) but more bottom-up oriented in that managers tend to be stock-pickers in markets they like. Uses index derivatives to a much lesser extent than macro managers. Emerging- Manager invests in less mature financial markets of the world, e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, India. Because shorting is not permitted in many emerging markets, managers must go to cash or other markets when valuations make being long unattractive. Regional- Manager focuses on specific regions of the world, example- Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Global macro: Opportunistic trading manager that profits from changes in global economies typically based in major interest rate shifts. Uses leverage and derivatives. Market neutral: Long/short stocks- half long/half short. Manager attempts to lock-out or neutralize market risk. Convertible arbitrage- Manager goes long convertible securities and shorts the underlying equities. Stock index arbitrage- Manager buys a basket of stocks and sells short stock index futures, or the reverse. Fixed income arbitrage- Manager buys T-bonds and sells short index futures or the reverse. Short sales: Manager takes a position that stock prices will go down. Used as a hedge for long only portfolios and by those who feel market is approaching a bearish trend. U.S Opportunistic: Value â€Å" Manager focuses on assets, cash flow, book value, out-of-favor stocks. Growth â€Å" Manager invests in growth stocks, revenues, earnings, and growth potential are keys. Short term â€Å" Manager holds positions for a short time frame. Fund of fund: Capital is allocated among a number of hedge funds, providing investors with access to managers they might not be able to discover or evaluate in their own. Usually has a lower minimum than a hedge fund. Source: Carl Ackermann, Richard McEnally, and David Ravenscraft, The performance of hedge funds: Risk, Return and Incentives,? Journal of finance 54, no.3 (June 1999) figure 1, page-843. Reproduced from a hedge fund database firm named Managed Account Report (MAR) Inc, and distributed through LaPorte Asset Allocation System. 2. Literature review: Despite the increasing interest and recent development, few studies have been carried out on hedge funds comparing to other investment tools like mutual funds. An analysis of Hedge Fund performance 1984-2000? by Capocci Daniel using one of the greatest hedge fund database ever used on his working paper (2796 individual funds including 801 dissolved), to investigate hedge funds performance using various asset-pricing models, including an extension from of Carharts (1997) model combined with Fama and French (1998), Agarwal and Naik (2000) models that take into account the fact that some hedge funds invest in emerging market bond. At the end they found that their model does a better job describing hedge funds behaviour. That appears particularly good for the Event Driven, Global Macro, US Opportunistic, Equity non-Hedge and Sector funds. Since the early 1990s, when around 2000 hedge funds were managing assets totalling capital of $60 billion, the subsequent growth in the number and asset base of hedge funds has never really been refuted. The industry only suffered from a relative slowdown in 1998, but since then has enjoyed a renewed vitality with an estimated total of 10,000funds managing more than a trillion US dollars by the end of 2006. The growing trend of the sector remained remarkably sustained during the stock market collapse that started in March 2000, when the NASDAQ composite Index reached an all-time high of 5,132 and finished three years later with a floor level of 1,253. In the meantime, the global met asset value (NAV) of hedge funds continued to grow at a steady rate of 10.6% (Van Hedge Funds Advisors International, 2002), contrasting with a decrease of 2.7% in the worldwide mutual fund industry ( Investment Company Institute, 2003). In 2001, Capocci and Hubner(2004) estimated that there were 6,000 he dge fund managing around $400 billion. In 2007, Capocci, Duquenne and Hubner (2007) estimated that there were 10,000 hedge funds managing around $1 trillion. This is a growth of 11% in the number of funds and 26% in assets over six years (6PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci). Other studies from practitioners Hennessee (1994), and Oberuc (1994) also showed an evidence of superior performance in the case of hedge funds. Ackernann and Al. (1999) and Liang (1999) who compared the performance of hedge funds to mutual funds and several indices, found that hedge funds constantly obtained better performance than mutual funds. Their performance was not better than the performance of the market indices considered. They also indicated that the returns in hedge funds were more unstable than both the returns of mutual funds and those of market indices. According to Brown and Al. (1997) hedge funds showing good performance in the first part of the year reduce the volatility of their portfolio in the second half of the year (Capocci Daniel- An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984-2000). Taking all these results into account hedge funds seems a good investment tool. 6 PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci. Electronic copy available at: http//ssrn.com/abstract=1008319. 3. Research design and Methodology: In this section I would like to describe the empirical methodology to be used to measure the performance of hedge fund as well as the performance of FTSE 100 and SP 500. My aim is to identify which will give the better return for an investor. To investigate hedge funds performance and performance of FTSE 100 and SP 500 my study will follow some models like 4-factor model from of Carharts (1997) model, the 3-factor model from Fama and French (1993) models, the Sharpe ratio (1966) and Jensens alpha (1968) and CAPM. I divide my research into three sections. First section will analyse the performance of hedge funds, FTSE 100 and SP 500. This section sets out the models of performance measurement I will use. Second section will made correlation between Hedge fund vs. FTSE 100 and Hedge fund vs. SP 500 to find out the better portfolio. Third section will exposes a discussion as well as a description of my database and finally concludes the paper. 3.1. Performance measure models: The 4-factor model from Carhart (1997) Carharts (1997) 4-factor model is an extension of the Fama and French (1993) factor model. It not only takes into account the size of the firms, the book to market ratio, but there is an additional factor for the momentum effect. Grinblatt, Titman and Wermers (1995) define this effect as buying stocks that were past winners and selling past losers. This model is estimated with the following regressions: Rpt-Rft=ÃŽÂ ±p+ÃŽÂ ²pi (Rmt â€Å"Rft) + ÃŽÂ ²p2 SMBt +ÃŽÂ ²p3 HMLt + ÃŽÂ ²p4 PR1YRt + ept t= 1,2,,T Where SMBt= the factor mimicking portfolios for size; HMLt= the factor mimicking portfolio for book to market equity; PR1YRt= the factor mimicking portfolio for the momentum effect7 7 for a description of the construction of PR1YR see Carhart (1997). As stressed by Daniel et al. (1997), this model, which is effectively a four factor Jensen measure, assumes that betas with respect to the returns of four zero investment factor mimicking portfolios, are appropriate measures of multidimensional systematic risk. According to this model, in the absence of stock selection or timing abilities, the expected return for a fund is the sum of the risk free return and the products of the betas with the factor risk premium, which are simply the expected returns of each of these zero investment portfolios. The Carhart (1997) approach identifies a matching passive portfolio return for each fund return. This passive return, which is subtracted from the fund return to generate ÃŽÂ ±p, is a weighted average of the returns of the Carhart factor portfolios and the return of a one month T-bill (Capocci Daniel 2001, Journal- European Private Bankers, Nov, 2001). The 3-factor model from Fama and French (1993): Fama and French (1993) 3 factor model is estimated from an expected form of the CAPM regression. It takes the size and the book to market ratio of the firm into account. It uses the time series approach from Black, Jensen, and Scholles (1972) in the sense that the monthly returns on stocks are regressed on the returns to a market portfolio of stocks and mimicking portfolios for size and book to market. It is estimated from the following extension of the CAPM regression: Rpt-Rft=ÃŽÂ ±p+ÃŽÂ ²pi (Rmt â€Å"Rft) + ÃŽÂ ²p2 SMBt +ÃŽÂ ²p3 HMLt + ept t= 1,2,,T Where, SMBt= the factor mimicking portfolios for size, and HMLt= the factor mimicking portfolio for book to market equity. SMLt which comes from small minus big meant to mimic the risk factor in returns related to size, and HMLt which comes from high minus low meant to mimic the risk factor in returns related to book to market equity8. HML (respectively SMB) is neutral relative to the size effect (respectively to the book to market). This means that these factors do a good job isolating the firm-specific components of returns (Fama and French 1993, 1995, 1996 and 2000). 8 See Fama and French (1993) for a precise description of the construction of SMBt and HMLt. The Sharp Ratio (1966): The Sharp ratios (1966) calculate the ratio of the average excess return and the return standard deviation of the fund that is being evaluated. As such it measures the excess return per unit of risk. Assuming all asset returns to be normally distributed, the CAPM tells us that in equilibrium the highest attainable Sharpe ratio is that of the market index. In more general terms, the market indexs sharp ratio represents the set of return distributions that is obtained when statically combining the market index with cash. With the market index being highly diversified, these distributions offer the highest achievable expected return for every possible standard deviation (Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M.Kat (2002), Hedge fund performance 1990-2000). Jensens Alpha (1968): Jensens alpha was introduced in Jensen (1968) and equals the intercept of the regression: (Rh-Rf)= ÃŽÂ ± + ÃŽÂ ² (Ri- Rf) + eh, Where Rh is the fund return, Rf is the risk free rate and Ri is the total return on the market index. Like the Sharpe ratio, Jensens alpha is rooted in the CAPM. According to the CAPM, in equilibrium all (portfolios of) assets with the same beta will offer the same expected return, any positive deviation therefore indicates superior performance (Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M.Kat (2002), Hedge fund performance 1990-2000). Capital Asset Pricing Model: The first performance model that will be used is a capital asset pricing based single index model (CAPM). This model developed by Sharpe (1964) and Linter (1965) is the oldest performance evaluation model. Its formula is the following: Rpt â€Å" Rft = ÃŽÂ ±p + ÃŽÂ ²p (Rmt-Rft) + ept t= 1,2,, T Where, Rpt= return of fund p in month t, Rft= risk free return on month t, Rmt= return of the market portfolio on month t, ept= the error term, ÃŽÂ ±p and ÃŽÂ ²p= the intercept and the slope of the regression estimated. The intercept of this equation, ÃŽÂ ±p commonly called Jensens alpha (1968) is usually interpreted as a measure of out or under performance relative to the market proxy used. There are several extension of this model have been developed like- the Breeden (1979) intertemporal CAPM or the Ferson and Schadt (1996) CAPM that allows time variation in the expected returns and the risk (Capocci Daniel 2001, An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984- 2000). 4. Data Preparation: For data preparation my first step will be to collect the monthly data of the hedge fund index, FTSE 100 and SP 500. For my data collection I will use some sources like- Credit Suisse/ Tremont Hedge Fund Index (CSTHFI hereafter) which is an appropriate representative of the entire hedge fund industry, there are three biggest database of hedge fund in the world these are Managed Account Reports (MAR), Hedge Fund Research, Inc (HFR) and TASS Management (TASS). These databases were the most used in academic and commercial hedge fund studies. For the FTSE 100 and SP 500 I will use yahoo finance. 4.1. Bias in Hedge fund data: According to Ackermann et al. (1999) and to Fung and Hsieh (2000), two upward biases exist in the case of hedge funds. They do not exist in the case of mutual funds, and they both have an opposite impact to the survivorship bias. Survivorship bias is an important issue in mutual funds performance studies (see Carhart and al. 2000). This bias is present when a database contains only funds that have data for the whole period studies. In this case, there is a risk of overestimating the mean performance because the funds that would have ceased to exist because of their bad performance would not be taken into account. The two upward biases exist because, since hedge funds are not allowed to advertise, they consider inclusion in a database primarily as a marketing tool. The first phenomenon stressed by Ackermann and al. (1999) and called the self-selection bias is present because funds that realize good performance have less incentive to report their performance to data providers in order to attract new investors. The second point called instant history bias or backfilled bias (Fung and Hsieh 2000) occurs because after inclusion a funds performance history is backfilled. This may cause an upward bias because funds with less satisfactory performance history are less likely to apply for inclusion than funds with good performance history (Capocci Daniel 2001, An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984- 2000). To avoid these biases I will try to take all funds both living and dissolved into account. Once I have collected all the data that I need I will use SPSS to test the correlation between my two benchmarks FTSE 100 and SP 500. 5. Contingency Plan: To make my research effective I made a well constructed plan. I have drafted a project plan (Appendix A) with scheduled dates for when I intend to complete sections for submission. After completing my final exam I will jump in to this field. Advises from previous students who completed their dissertation, I made my project plan flexible to keep some things in mind like supervisors holiday and any unforeseen events such as my illness. I will try to keep a good communication with my supervisor for checking that I am in right track. I plan to make some formal meetings with my supervisor to discuss my progress and I will try to inform him about the state of my work. It is hard to spending too much time over one task and going off track, I hope I will manage this if there is no rush at the very last minute. Another worry is the collecting and analysing the data, that is why I plan to collect the data early June once I have finished my research design. If I face any kind of difficulties I will inform him and make a cut-off point where I should stop searching the board data and start my own primary data. As I do all SPSS classes and briefly touched about this, I think it will be easy to analyze the data but I need to increase a bit of use of control on it by practicing more. So I will set aside time for collecting data and practice more SPSS for regression analysis. I hope if all these go well, I will make my dissertation very effectively. Analysis Of Hedge Fund Performances Analysis Of Hedge Fund Performances 1. INTRODUTION: Hedge funds are actively managed portfolios that hold positions in publicly traded securities. Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M. Kat (2000) stated on their report that A hedge fund is typically defined as a pooled investment vehicle that is privately organized, administrated by professional investment managers, and not widely available to the public? It charges both a performance fee and a management fee. It allows a flexible investment for a small number of large investors (usually the minimum investment is $1 million) can use high risk techniques. Nowadays it is very clear that in the matter of alternative investment mutual fund is not performing well. As a high absolute returns and typically have features such as hurdle rates and incentive fees with high watermark provision hedge fund gives a better align to the interests of managers and investors. Moreover mutual funds typically use a long-only buy-and-hold type strategy on standard asset classes, which help to capture risk premia asso ciate with equity risk, interest rate risk, default risk etc. However, they are not very helpful in capturing risk premia associate with dynamic trading strategies. That is why hedge fund comes into the picture. This is the year of 2009, which takes the greatest history of the world in the following century. In the year of 2008 the world saw the greatest fall down of the world economy. Lots of people missing their jobs, lots of company were stopped. The world economy faced the highest losses in the history. These all factors are showing only one way to makeover from that greatest downfall that is hedging. 3The last couple of decades have witnessed a rapidly growing in the hedge funds. Relative to traditional investment portfolios hedge funds exhibit some unique characteristics; they are flexible with respect to the types of securities they hold and the type of the position they take. 1 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2000). Multi-period performance persistence analysis of hedge fund s?. The journal of financial and quantitative analysis. Vol. 35, No,3. PP-327. 2 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2004). Risks and portfolio decisions involving hedge funds?. The review of financial studies, Vol. 17, No.1. PP-64. 3 Journal of banking and finance 32(2008) 741-753- Hedge Fund Pricing and Model Uncertainty? by Spyridan D. Vrontos, Ioannis D. Vrontos, Daniel Giomouridies. 4The number of FOHFs increase by 40% between 2001 and 2003, and now comprised almost two third of the $650 billion invested in the USAs hedge fund market. Due to its nature it is difficult to estimate the current size of hedge fund industry. 5Van Hedge Fund Advisors estimates that by the end of 1998 there were 5380 hedge fund managing $311 in capital, with between $800 billion and $1 trillion in total assets, which indicates the higher number of recent new entries. So far, hedge fund is based on American phenomena. About 90% hedge fund managers are based in the US, 9% in Europe and 1% in Asia and elsewhere. Now a days around 5883 hedge funds are trading around the world. (*Barclay Hedge database) 4 Financial times, 29th October, 2003. www.vanhedge.com http://www.barclayhedge.com/products/hedge-fund-directory.html 1.1 Categories of Hedge fund investment objectives: Event Driven: Distressed securities- manager focuses on securities of companies in reorganization and bankruptcy, ranging from senior secured debt to the common stock of the company. Risk arbitrage- manager simultaneously buys stock in a company being acquired and sells stock in its acquirers. Global: International- manager pays attention to economic change around the world (except the United States) but more bottom-up oriented in that managers tend to be stock-pickers in markets they like. Uses index derivatives to a much lesser extent than macro managers. Emerging- Manager invests in less mature financial markets of the world, e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, India. Because shorting is not permitted in many emerging markets, managers must go to cash or other markets when valuations make being long unattractive. Regional- Manager focuses on specific regions of the world, example- Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Global macro: Opportunistic trading manager that profits from changes in global economies typically based in major interest rate shifts. Uses leverage and derivatives. Market neutral: Long/short stocks- half long/half short. Manager attempts to lock-out or neutralize market risk. Convertible arbitrage- Manager goes long convertible securities and shorts the underlying equities. Stock index arbitrage- Manager buys a basket of stocks and sells short stock index futures, or the reverse. Fixed income arbitrage- Manager buys T-bonds and sells short index futures or the reverse. Short sales: Manager takes a position that stock prices will go down. Used as a hedge for long only portfolios and by those who feel market is approaching a bearish trend. U.S Opportunistic: Value â€Å" Manager focuses on assets, cash flow, book value, out-of-favor stocks. Growth â€Å" Manager invests in growth stocks, revenues, earnings, and growth potential are keys. Short term â€Å" Manager holds positions for a short time frame. Fund of fund: Capital is allocated among a number of hedge funds, providing investors with access to managers they might not be able to discover or evaluate in their own. Usually has a lower minimum than a hedge fund. Source: Carl Ackermann, Richard McEnally, and David Ravenscraft, The performance of hedge funds: Risk, Return and Incentives,? Journal of finance 54, no.3 (June 1999) figure 1, page-843. Reproduced from a hedge fund database firm named Managed Account Report (MAR) Inc, and distributed through LaPorte Asset Allocation System. 2. Literature review: Despite the increasing interest and recent development, few studies have been carried out on hedge funds comparing to other investment tools like mutual funds. An analysis of Hedge Fund performance 1984-2000? by Capocci Daniel using one of the greatest hedge fund database ever used on his working paper (2796 individual funds including 801 dissolved), to investigate hedge funds performance using various asset-pricing models, including an extension from of Carharts (1997) model combined with Fama and French (1998), Agarwal and Naik (2000) models that take into account the fact that some hedge funds invest in emerging market bond. At the end they found that their model does a better job describing hedge funds behaviour. That appears particularly good for the Event Driven, Global Macro, US Opportunistic, Equity non-Hedge and Sector funds. Since the early 1990s, when around 2000 hedge funds were managing assets totalling capital of $60 billion, the subsequent growth in the number and asset base of hedge funds has never really been refuted. The industry only suffered from a relative slowdown in 1998, but since then has enjoyed a renewed vitality with an estimated total of 10,000funds managing more than a trillion US dollars by the end of 2006. The growing trend of the sector remained remarkably sustained during the stock market collapse that started in March 2000, when the NASDAQ composite Index reached an all-time high of 5,132 and finished three years later with a floor level of 1,253. In the meantime, the global met asset value (NAV) of hedge funds continued to grow at a steady rate of 10.6% (Van Hedge Funds Advisors International, 2002), contrasting with a decrease of 2.7% in the worldwide mutual fund industry ( Investment Company Institute, 2003). In 2001, Capocci and Hubner(2004) estimated that there were 6,000 he dge fund managing around $400 billion. In 2007, Capocci, Duquenne and Hubner (2007) estimated that there were 10,000 hedge funds managing around $1 trillion. This is a growth of 11% in the number of funds and 26% in assets over six years (6PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci). Other studies from practitioners Hennessee (1994), and Oberuc (1994) also showed an evidence of superior performance in the case of hedge funds. Ackernann and Al. (1999) and Liang (1999) who compared the performance of hedge funds to mutual funds and several indices, found that hedge funds constantly obtained better performance than mutual funds. Their performance was not better than the performance of the market indices considered. They also indicated that the returns in hedge funds were more unstable than both the returns of mutual funds and those of market indices. According to Brown and Al. (1997) hedge funds showing good performance in the first part of the year reduce the volatility of their portfolio in the second half of the year (Capocci Daniel- An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984-2000). Taking all these results into account hedge funds seems a good investment tool. 6 PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci. Electronic copy available at: http//ssrn.com/abstract=1008319. 3. Research design and Methodology: In this section I would like to describe the empirical methodology to be used to measure the performance of hedge fund as well as the performance of FTSE 100 and SP 500. My aim is to identify which will give the better return for an investor. To investigate hedge funds performance and performance of FTSE 100 and SP 500 my study will follow some models like 4-factor model from of Carharts (1997) model, the 3-factor model from Fama and French (1993) models, the Sharpe ratio (1966) and Jensens alpha (1968) and CAPM. I divide my research into three sections. First section will analyse the performance of hedge funds, FTSE 100 and SP 500. This section sets out the models of performance measurement I will use. Second section will made correlation between Hedge fund vs. FTSE 100 and Hedge fund vs. SP 500 to find out the better portfolio. Third section will exposes a discussion as well as a description of my database and finally concludes the paper. 3.1. Performance measure models: The 4-factor model from Carhart (1997) Carharts (1997) 4-factor model is an extension of the Fama and French (1993) factor model. It not only takes into account the size of the firms, the book to market ratio, but there is an additional factor for the momentum effect. Grinblatt, Titman and Wermers (1995) define this effect as buying stocks that were past winners and selling past losers. This model is estimated with the following regressions: Rpt-Rft=ÃŽÂ ±p+ÃŽÂ ²pi (Rmt â€Å"Rft) + ÃŽÂ ²p2 SMBt +ÃŽÂ ²p3 HMLt + ÃŽÂ ²p4 PR1YRt + ept t= 1,2,,T Where SMBt= the factor mimicking portfolios for size; HMLt= the factor mimicking portfolio for book to market equity; PR1YRt= the factor mimicking portfolio for the momentum effect7 7 for a description of the construction of PR1YR see Carhart (1997). As stressed by Daniel et al. (1997), this model, which is effectively a four factor Jensen measure, assumes that betas with respect to the returns of four zero investment factor mimicking portfolios, are appropriate measures of multidimensional systematic risk. According to this model, in the absence of stock selection or timing abilities, the expected return for a fund is the sum of the risk free return and the products of the betas with the factor risk premium, which are simply the expected returns of each of these zero investment portfolios. The Carhart (1997) approach identifies a matching passive portfolio return for each fund return. This passive return, which is subtracted from the fund return to generate ÃŽÂ ±p, is a weighted average of the returns of the Carhart factor portfolios and the return of a one month T-bill (Capocci Daniel 2001, Journal- European Private Bankers, Nov, 2001). The 3-factor model from Fama and French (1993): Fama and French (1993) 3 factor model is estimated from an expected form of the CAPM regression. It takes the size and the book to market ratio of the firm into account. It uses the time series approach from Black, Jensen, and Scholles (1972) in the sense that the monthly returns on stocks are regressed on the returns to a market portfolio of stocks and mimicking portfolios for size and book to market. It is estimated from the following extension of the CAPM regression: Rpt-Rft=ÃŽÂ ±p+ÃŽÂ ²pi (Rmt â€Å"Rft) + ÃŽÂ ²p2 SMBt +ÃŽÂ ²p3 HMLt + ept t= 1,2,,T Where, SMBt= the factor mimicking portfolios for size, and HMLt= the factor mimicking portfolio for book to market equity. SMLt which comes from small minus big meant to mimic the risk factor in returns related to size, and HMLt which comes from high minus low meant to mimic the risk factor in returns related to book to market equity8. HML (respectively SMB) is neutral relative to the size effect (respectively to the book to market). This means that these factors do a good job isolating the firm-specific components of returns (Fama and French 1993, 1995, 1996 and 2000). 8 See Fama and French (1993) for a precise description of the construction of SMBt and HMLt. The Sharp Ratio (1966): The Sharp ratios (1966) calculate the ratio of the average excess return and the return standard deviation of the fund that is being evaluated. As such it measures the excess return per unit of risk. Assuming all asset returns to be normally distributed, the CAPM tells us that in equilibrium the highest attainable Sharpe ratio is that of the market index. In more general terms, the market indexs sharp ratio represents the set of return distributions that is obtained when statically combining the market index with cash. With the market index being highly diversified, these distributions offer the highest achievable expected return for every possible standard deviation (Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M.Kat (2002), Hedge fund performance 1990-2000). Jensens Alpha (1968): Jensens alpha was introduced in Jensen (1968) and equals the intercept of the regression: (Rh-Rf)= ÃŽÂ ± + ÃŽÂ ² (Ri- Rf) + eh, Where Rh is the fund return, Rf is the risk free rate and Ri is the total return on the market index. Like the Sharpe ratio, Jensens alpha is rooted in the CAPM. According to the CAPM, in equilibrium all (portfolios of) assets with the same beta will offer the same expected return, any positive deviation therefore indicates superior performance (Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M.Kat (2002), Hedge fund performance 1990-2000). Capital Asset Pricing Model: The first performance model that will be used is a capital asset pricing based single index model (CAPM). This model developed by Sharpe (1964) and Linter (1965) is the oldest performance evaluation model. Its formula is the following: Rpt â€Å" Rft = ÃŽÂ ±p + ÃŽÂ ²p (Rmt-Rft) + ept t= 1,2,, T Where, Rpt= return of fund p in month t, Rft= risk free return on month t, Rmt= return of the market portfolio on month t, ept= the error term, ÃŽÂ ±p and ÃŽÂ ²p= the intercept and the slope of the regression estimated. The intercept of this equation, ÃŽÂ ±p commonly called Jensens alpha (1968) is usually interpreted as a measure of out or under performance relative to the market proxy used. There are several extension of this model have been developed like- the Breeden (1979) intertemporal CAPM or the Ferson and Schadt (1996) CAPM that allows time variation in the expected returns and the risk (Capocci Daniel 2001, An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984- 2000). 4. Data Preparation: For data preparation my first step will be to collect the monthly data of the hedge fund index, FTSE 100 and SP 500. For my data collection I will use some sources like- Credit Suisse/ Tremont Hedge Fund Index (CSTHFI hereafter) which is an appropriate representative of the entire hedge fund industry, there are three biggest database of hedge fund in the world these are Managed Account Reports (MAR), Hedge Fund Research, Inc (HFR) and TASS Management (TASS). These databases were the most used in academic and commercial hedge fund studies. For the FTSE 100 and SP 500 I will use yahoo finance. 4.1. Bias in Hedge fund data: According to Ackermann et al. (1999) and to Fung and Hsieh (2000), two upward biases exist in the case of hedge funds. They do not exist in the case of mutual funds, and they both have an opposite impact to the survivorship bias. Survivorship bias is an important issue in mutual funds performance studies (see Carhart and al. 2000). This bias is present when a database contains only funds that have data for the whole period studies. In this case, there is a risk of overestimating the mean performance because the funds that would have ceased to exist because of their bad performance would not be taken into account. The two upward biases exist because, since hedge funds are not allowed to advertise, they consider inclusion in a database primarily as a marketing tool. The first phenomenon stressed by Ackermann and al. (1999) and called the self-selection bias is present because funds that realize good performance have less incentive to report their performance to data providers in order to attract new investors. The second point called instant history bias or backfilled bias (Fung and Hsieh 2000) occurs because after inclusion a funds performance history is backfilled. This may cause an upward bias because funds with less satisfactory performance history are less likely to apply for inclusion than funds with good performance history (Capocci Daniel 2001, An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984- 2000). To avoid these biases I will try to take all funds both living and dissolved into account. Once I have collected all the data that I need I will use SPSS to test the correlation between my two benchmarks FTSE 100 and SP 500. 5. Contingency Plan: To make my research effective I made a well constructed plan. I have drafted a project plan (Appendix A) with scheduled dates for when I intend to complete sections for submission. After completing my final exam I will jump in to this field. Advises from previous students who completed their dissertation, I made my project plan flexible to keep some things in mind like supervisors holiday and any unforeseen events such as my illness. I will try to keep a good communication with my supervisor for checking that I am in right track. I plan to make some formal meetings with my supervisor to discuss my progress and I will try to inform him about the state of my work. It is hard to spending too much time over one task and going off track, I hope I will manage this if there is no rush at the very last minute. Another worry is the collecting and analysing the data, that is why I plan to collect the data early June once I have finished my research design. If I face any kind of difficulties I will inform him and make a cut-off point where I should stop searching the board data and start my own primary data. As I do all SPSS classes and briefly touched about this, I think it will be easy to analyze the data but I need to increase a bit of use of control on it by practicing more. So I will set aside time for collecting data and practice more SPSS for regression analysis. I hope if all these go well, I will make my dissertation very effectively.

Friendship: What Makes a Good Friend? :: Friendship Essays

When I think about what makes someone a good friend, I think about all the characteristics of my own friends. My personal definition of a friend, is someone who is always looking out for me, and will help me if I’m in trouble. A friend has to be someone I trust and who trusts me in return. Another important characteristic in a friend is someone who I can talk to, and makes me laugh. One of the most important traits of a friend, is someone who will help you if you need it. One personal experience I had with this was when my friends, Mark, Steve, and I we all out driving around late at night. We were on our way home from going up to my camp at the lake, it was four in the morning, and we were all tired. I was driving my car and we had just gotten off the Northway when I ran over a glass bottle and my tire popped. I didn’t know what to do. We had no money, and were stranded. Millions of thoughts were racing through my mind: what would I tell my mom, how could we get it fixed, and most importantly how could I stay out of trouble. My friend Mark called up his brother to come and tow the car. His actions that night made me realized that a true friend would takes risks for each other. A strong friendship also depends upon mutual trust. If you can’t trust each other then it is impossible to establish a strong relationship. In the past, I have been able to tell my friends personal feelings, and know that they would keep secrets to themselves. One time my friend and I were riding on my friend James’ lawnmower and we hit the side of the garage. We promised each other that we would take it to the grave. Even though we should have eventually told someone, we kept it to ourselves. Another quality I like to have in a friend, is someone who can make me laugh. A perfect example of this is my friend Bob. Some of the comments he would say would be so outrageous; I couldn’t help but laugh. One time I traveled to Montreal with my friends, and the entire four-hour drive I spent laughing. Bob and I sat in the back seat cracking jokes the whole time. This is important because it is good to know that regardless of the mood, or situation I’m in, a good friend can make me laugh. When I asked other students their thought on friendship, I Friendship: What Makes a Good Friend? :: Friendship Essays When I think about what makes someone a good friend, I think about all the characteristics of my own friends. My personal definition of a friend, is someone who is always looking out for me, and will help me if I’m in trouble. A friend has to be someone I trust and who trusts me in return. Another important characteristic in a friend is someone who I can talk to, and makes me laugh. One of the most important traits of a friend, is someone who will help you if you need it. One personal experience I had with this was when my friends, Mark, Steve, and I we all out driving around late at night. We were on our way home from going up to my camp at the lake, it was four in the morning, and we were all tired. I was driving my car and we had just gotten off the Northway when I ran over a glass bottle and my tire popped. I didn’t know what to do. We had no money, and were stranded. Millions of thoughts were racing through my mind: what would I tell my mom, how could we get it fixed, and most importantly how could I stay out of trouble. My friend Mark called up his brother to come and tow the car. His actions that night made me realized that a true friend would takes risks for each other. A strong friendship also depends upon mutual trust. If you can’t trust each other then it is impossible to establish a strong relationship. In the past, I have been able to tell my friends personal feelings, and know that they would keep secrets to themselves. One time my friend and I were riding on my friend James’ lawnmower and we hit the side of the garage. We promised each other that we would take it to the grave. Even though we should have eventually told someone, we kept it to ourselves. Another quality I like to have in a friend, is someone who can make me laugh. A perfect example of this is my friend Bob. Some of the comments he would say would be so outrageous; I couldn’t help but laugh. One time I traveled to Montreal with my friends, and the entire four-hour drive I spent laughing. Bob and I sat in the back seat cracking jokes the whole time. This is important because it is good to know that regardless of the mood, or situation I’m in, a good friend can make me laugh. When I asked other students their thought on friendship, I

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee :: essays research papers

To Kill a Mockingbird was written by Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in Maycomb Alabama, in the late 1930's early 1940's. In this story a lot of characters were introduced to the reader. Jem Finch played a big role in this book.any worms he found to one side. He were many other vital characters in this book, they were; Calpurnia was the Finch's maid, she was a great help raising Jem and Scout. Aunt Alexandra was Atticus' sister, she came to help raise Jem and Scout, but the Jem and Scout didn't really like her because she was very strict. Miss Maudie was Scout's favourite person to talk to, she always made cakes for Jem and Scout. Arthur (Boo) Radley was a man who lived in a big old house down the street from the Finch's, Jem, Scout and Dill always wondered who Boo Radley was because he never came out of his house. Dill was a close friend of Jem's and Scout's, he always spent the summer with his Aunt across the street. Tom Robinson was a black man convicted of raping Mayella Ewell. Mayella Ewell lived out in the country, didn't go to school, and just worked for her family. Miss Stephanie Crawford lived across the street and always gave advice to Jem and Scout. Reverend Sykes was the priest at the black church outside of town. Judge Taylor was the judge during the trial of Tom Robinson. Bob Ewell was Mayella's father, he was an enemy of the Finch's. Mrs. Dubose was a mean old lady who always put down Jem, Scout, and Atticus. Miss Rachel lived across the street and always told Jem and Scout anything they needed to know. Mr. Heck Tate was the sheriff in town. In the story To Kill a Mockingbird there was lots of struggles and hardships that the Finch's and the town of Maycomb had to go through. Atticus was a lawyer and he was defending Tom Robinson, who was convicted of raping Mayella Ewell. There was a big court battle after many witnesses and questions Tom Robinson was found guilty on very little evidence. Tom Robinson was then shot later trying to escape from jail. Jem, Scout and Dill always wanted to know what Boo Radley looks like. They always tried to lure him out of his own house. They tried to send messages to him by a fishing pole, but they could never figure out why he doesn't come out. Mrs. Dubose lived down the street from the Finch's and when ever

Its Time to Crack Down on Plagiarists and Eliminate Plagiarism :: Free Essays Online

It's Time to Crack Down on Plagiarists and Eliminate Plagiarism Plagiarize v. 1. To appropriate and pass off as one’s own (the writings, ideas, etc., of another). 2. To appropriate and use passages, ideas, etc. from. 3. To commit plagiarism. [1] Plagiarism is an age-old habit of many people, with a large portion of these people being students who write essays or passages to earn a grade in a class. However, these students are unaware of the act they are doing which meets the criteria of the definition explained above. The consequences are very clear: Using another person’s thoughts or ideas without being authorized or noting that it was from another source constitutes plagiarism and will be grounds for failure or to the extreme, dismissal from a program or from a university entirely. The fight is now against those who desire to crack down on plagiarists and the sources of the material being plagiarized. There are many ways to inhibit copywritten material being used again. The obtainment of works cited, bibliography, footnotes and notation of quotes are just the beginning. However, with the widespread use of the Internet as a cesspool of information, how is a person to discover whether the person is cheating or no t? The ball is now in the professor’s court to now use the Internet to their own advantage to catch the thieves in their tracks. When a student decides to write a paper, the first thing in the mindset of that student, as well as many other students is relatively a common thing: the Internet. Although there is so much information to be found, this information is also at the disposal of the professor who administers the assignment. In many cases, the student is simply lazy and becomes sloppy in copying. This leaves noticeable mistakes because of the failure to proofread, ultimately leading to their fate resting in the hands of the professor. The person grading the paper must know what to look for and most of the time it is detected very quickly and precisely. In one case, a professor found the probable source of a particular piece of a student within five minutes and an additional ten minutes to confirm that indeed the paper was a case of word-for-word plagiarism.

Suleiman the Magnificent

The Ottoman Empire was an empire lasting from 1299 to 1923. Osman was leading the small Ottoman Empire in 1299 in western Anatolia and he was slowly extending his settlements away from his Muslim neighbors. It was not allowed for Muslims to kill other Muslims. He had a number of soldiers called the Ghazis who were brave, loyal and fearless. These solders helped Osman tread into unknown land and spread his rule. Osman’s name was becoming more known and after his death, people called him courageous strong and great. This is where the centuries old Turkish saying comes from: â€Å"May he be as good as Osman. † After a few centuries the Ottoman Empire was flourishing, it spanned 3 continents and contained 29 provinces. Suleiman the Magnificent was responsible for the prospering Empire that he ruled from 1520 to his death in 1566. Suleiman uses three main factors to run his empire successfully and cohesively. Suleiman the Magnificent used economic, social and military systems or techniques to develop a cohesive empire across a massive and culturally diverse land. Suleiman the Magnificent had a very culturally accepted land; this benefited the empire a lot since people with different religious backgrounds could live together. The Millet system was made by Sultan Mehmet the Second after he conquered Constantinople in 1453. Mehmet started by instituting the Christian Millets so that Europeans could join the Empire. Millets is what Suleiman used to make sure civilians could live peacefully. The sectors were not defined by ethnical background, rather by religious beliefs. This way a person from any decent could live in a sector without getting discriminated. There were five of these sectors: Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Armenians, Syriac Orthodox and Judaism. Each sector was usually run by a religious hierarch, like a priest. Millets were so effective because they prevented internal fights in the Empire and travelers felt safe. Another strategy that Suleiman used was that he distributed his laws publicly; this is where his nick name comes from â€Å"Suleiman the Lawgiver. † Making sure that there weren’t any civil wars was a big part of being a leader. If an enemy doesn’t strike from outside, an enemy may strike from inside. A civil war can cause many deaths and disrupt the focus of any leader. Suleiman would have to put all of his attention to people fighting inside his nation instead of focusing on incoming attacks from the outside. A lot of empires have fallen due to internal attacks. Interaction with other sectors was not too often which helps people be in an environment where everyone follows the same religion. There is also almost no interference from the government on how the leader chooses to run the Millets. Things like taxes and sometimes even laws aren’t checked by the government because there aren’t any rules against having different styles of living. Travelers from different religious backgrounds can now enter a land where they don’t have to be feared of not being able to walk in and get hurt because of their differences. This encourages travelers, who are usually traders to come to this culturally diverse and peaceful land to trade their goods, instead of going to Europe where only one religion was accepted: Christianity. Suleiman put out the laws on streets so that all could read and understand what is allowed and what is not. This was important because now everyone knew the difference between right and wrong. This also prevented officials from making fake or arbitrary laws. The Millet system and publicly distributing laws helped Suleiman the Magnificent lead a cohesive Empire because it prevented civil wars and officials planning schemes for the worst of the Ottoman empire. Suleiman’s Empire was also very economically strong; he managed to lead the richest Empire in the world at the time and own the gateway between the Black, Marmora, Aegean and Mediterranean Sea. Constantinople was part of the Roman Empire before Mehmed the Second conquered it in 1453. Mehmed primarily used gunpowder and ships to take over the centre of trade. At one point in the battle Constantinople made a golden chain in the sea so that Mehmed’s ships could not pass through. To solve the problem Mehmed used planks covered with grease to transport the ships over land, possibly to show his power and intimidate the enemy. Today Constantinople is known as Istanbul. Suleiman the Magnificent used Istanbul and the caravan routes to increase the income of the Empire. Istanbul was very effective due to its geographical position; it had a thin river going through it which was the only way to enter Africa, the Middle East and Europe by sea. This little strip of water is called the Bosphorous and whoever owned Istanbul could get money off of all the taxation of the heavy traffic. Ships carried silk, tea, spices and porcelain. From the Black Sea and southern Russian came ships with different types of furs, grain and amber. From Europe came mirrors and drugs. Ships from Venice and Genoa carried goods to Europe. The Ottoman navy protected the Bosphorous from pirates and other kinds of thieves. There was a tax on almost every transaction, but profit was limited to 10%. The trade through the Bosphorous was strictly looked after by the government to make sure there wasn’t any cheating or theft. When an employee left a company the government was notified right away. All markets were assigned a judge who had the right to punish those who tried to cheat. The government also made sure there weren’t any exports containing anything valuable like building material, minerals and food. The caravan routes were an essential part of making the Ottoman Empire richer than any other. Caravans were made up of groups of people and animals. Up to 20,000 people and 300,000 animals could be a general caravan traveling to Mecca made up of pilgrims and merchants. Numerous goods were shipped across the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. There were hundreds of routes that were protected by Ottoman soldiers. Since these routes were protected, Suleiman taxed travelers, and with the enormous amounts of people, they could make huge amounts of money. The caravan routes and Istanbul were two ways which Suleiman used to perfect his economy. This income was spent on extending his Empire and building various religious buildings to keep his Millets happy. Happy people meant a more cohesive Empire because everyone will stay motivated to do their job and stay in the Empire. Military is a massive part to a successful Empire, fortunately Suleiman had everything under control and used a system that really worked well. The Devschirme system started with Murad the First in the late 1300’s. Murad felt a need to counter the Turkic Nobles and started making a Christian army, independent of the regular army. It started off with two types of soldiers: infantry and cavalry. The cavalry was known as Kapikulu suvari (The Cavalry of the Servants of the Porte) and the infantry was called Yeni Ceri (Janissary. ) Firstly Christian slaves were trained for the elite force, but then the Devschirme system started to develop and Christian children were being adopted by the government to be brought up as Muslims. Then they would train in one of the four imperial institutions: the Palace, the Scribes, the Religious or the Military. Janissaries, army recruitment and technology are why the Military of Suleiman the Magnificent helped make a cohesive Empire. Janissary soldiers helped fight every major battle. They fought in wars against Austria and Hungary, defeated the Egyptian Mamluks and conquered Constantinople. Without the Janissaries there was a possibility that regular soldiers would not be able to withstand forces from Austria or Hungary and the Ottoman Empire could have been long captured. There were hundreds of trade routes to patrol and a huge border to protect. For this, the Empire needed an enormous army, but luckily with Suleiman Sultan the Military was always in best shape possible. Everyone who was captured would have to enroll in the army and serve the Empire. This way the Ottomans were never short on recruits, and don’t have to worry about any locations that they couldn’t control because of shortage on soldiers. The Ottomans were always ahead in technology when Suleiman was leading the Empire. They used gunpowder and ships to fight battles more efficiently, with cannons and gunpowder they could easily take down fort walls and with ships they could attack from sea. Janissaries, army recruitment and technology had the Ottoman Empire protected at all times. This way people did not need to worry about incoming attacks, but rather on their daily routines. Suleiman lead a very healthy empire by perfecting the economic, social and military aspects of the Empire to make it successful. The empire worked together not as individual people, making it very cohesive. When Suleiman’s reign finished the Empire headed downhill, but like Napoleon said â€Å"Turks can be defeated but never destroyed. †