A stop order, also known as a stop loss order, is a type of stock order where the trader can set a point to buy or sell a security once the price of that security reaches a trader specified fixed price. The trader fixes the price above the present market value in order to set up a buy stop order and below the current market value for a sell stop order. Stop orders can help to limit an investor's financial exposure within the market.

A sell stop order is essentially an instruction to a broker to get them to sell a security which is being held, at the best price currently available, should the market value drop below the pre-set stop price. These are traditionally used when investors “go long” in the hope of stock prices rising, and help to reduce any potential loss should the stock price fall beyond the fixed sell stop value.

A buy stop order is used typically to limit a potential loss on a short seller speculation, where an investor borrows and then sells a security in the hope of reducing the subsequent market price. Once the price falls, the investor can then buy the stock back at the lower price. This enables the trader to then return the stocks purchased to the lender, in order to profit from the difference between the original selling and repurchase prices. The buy stop order, which is always set above the initial market price, is automatically triggered when the stop price is reached, and is a call for the broker to cease purchasing stock; and so protect the investor against loss, should the price continue to rise.

While a standard stop order uses a fixed price to control when it becomes activated, a trailing stop order utilises a dynamic stop parameter. Investors using trailing stop orders specify a price difference or a percentage difference from a benchmark price position. This benchmark is the highest or lowest market price that the stock has reached since the stop order was placed. Trailing stops are used to protect profits as part of a risk management strategy, and will automatically adjust as the market moves in the investors favour. This type of order allows the trader to profit from any favourable movement within the market whilst at the same time having the protection of a stop order to prevent huge losses being accrued.

Leverage is the ability to use a little bit of money to potentially make a large amount of money. For the past six years leverage has been used in the real estate market as lenders introduced new lending products such as zero down loans and Adjustable Rate Mortgages(ARMs) as well as through the use of option contracts. Leverage is also used to great effect in the stock market options market for about 25 years and in the commodities market for hundreds of years. In fact, leverage is what makes these markets liquid. That is to say these markets would be much less efficient without the use of leverage to bring hedgers, speculators, and manufacturers together and allow them to trade quickly.

Options are only contracts that people form to use leverage in a very simple form. Options are used in real estate and the stock market primarily, but may be used for any commodity or futures contract. An option is a simple contract that must be purchased from the option writer, or the person who owns the underlying asset for a price called a premium. This allows the options buyer to purchase the asset at a predetermined price no matter what the value of the asset may be when the contract/option is actually exercised, if it is exercised at all. This premium may only be 3% to 20% of the total value of the asset. This is leverage. Controlling a large valuable asset for a small price, even if for only a limited time period.

Leverage also allows the stock option holder to buy the stock for the predetermined price once the strike price is reached. If this happens the option holder may exercise the contract to purchase the stock at the predetermined price, no matter what the market price actually is at the time. Leverage exists because the price of the premium is usually between 3% to 10% of the total value of the shares that are being controlled. Stock options are standardized to control 100 shares of stock for the time period agreed upon. So if a stock that is trading at $100 can be controlled for 5% of the total value to the shares there is a huge amount of leverage for the option holder. $100 X 100 shares = $10,000 of total value of the shares. Five percent of $10,000 = $500. So for a mere $500 an options holder can control $10,000 worth of shares for a limited time.

This is leverage that any legal adult can use in either real estate, commodities contracts or in the options market to use resources (the asset) owned by someone else, for a limited time, for a very small price based on the total value of the asset. By using leverage properly any investor has the opportunity to build a large amount of wealth for a very low cost. Because options in real estate, commodities contracts and the stock market are considered very risky to the risk adverse, everyone must determine for themselves just how much risk they are willing to assume before using leverage as a tool for wealth building through investments.

So You Want To Buy Or Trade Shares?

The first thing you need to do if you are online, is check out online brokers such as TD Waterhouse or E-Trade. Opening an account is normally free, and once it is opened you can deposit money into your account so that you can trade.

What Type Of Broker?

The cheapest is an execution only broker. What this basically means is that you aren't given any advice on when to buy or sell the shares/trade. Their job is to provide a quote and fill the order.

What Is An Order?

All participants in the market want to do one of three things. They either want to buy, sell or hold. You only need a broker when you want to buy or sell. Holding the shares takes care of itself ( and is the least expensive while your stocks are going up in price ).

Online Trading Platforms

By having an account online, it allows you to buy or sell shares automatically ( i.e. without human intervention in the most part ). Once you place an order to buy or sell, you normally have a limited amount of time to accept or turn down the price offered.

How Are Prices Made Up?

Prices consist of a bid and offer, with the Mid price being the actual price of the share. Most stocks have one or more marketmakers that set the price for the stock so they can make money on the spread in return for making a market in that stock. For instance, you may have a stock priced at 136p with a 134p bid and 138p offer. This means the marketmaker will buy the stock off you for 134p and sell it to you for 138p.

Okay I Want To Place The Trade.

So in the example above you agree to buy at 138p and the deal goes through. Congratulations you now own shares in Company 'X'. If you pay the full offer price, it is also known as the 'touch' price. One thing to check is the normal market size for the shares you wish to buy. If the amount you require is above NMS, then the marketmakers can choose a different price to the 'screen price'

In his book, ‘Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom’, the renowned American psychologist Dr Van Tharp discusses in several parts how important your psychology or mindset is to your trading success. He graphically depicts the significance of your psychology using a pie chart and explaining that it is the most essential ingredient to trading.

To many who have traded for an extended period of time, they would agree with the fact that traders can experience a wide range of emotions and often one straight after another. Traders can experience the exultation of a winning trade that went very well to the despair of the string of losses where ‘giving up trading’ is a prominent thought in one’s mind.

Books like ‘Market Wizards’ by Jack Schwager and other similar texts illustrate how successful traders have found a trading methodology that they are very comfortable with. None of them have found any magic solution to trading but they all clearly possess an inner confidence in their own ability to follow rules and their own trading plan.

Undoubtedly however, trading can be a taxing experience on your mental health. You are constantly faced with decisions that need to be made and can easily go through the swing of emotions described earlier. For some people, in all honesty you may also lack confidence in your own ability to trade well or lack courage of your own conviction and therefore experience another array of emotions when trading.

Sometimes trading can be quite stressful and other times it may appear as if you can do no wrong. These emotional swings and emotional stresses do impact on your mental state and can ultimately affect your trading decisions.

It may be prudent sometimes to schedule a break from trading. Therefore, close all positions before your break, or a few weeks out from the break commencing, open no new positions and allow your open positions to take their course in the time leading up to your break. The time you schedule your break may coincide with the school holidays or your Christmas break from work. This may end up being the best trading decision you make as you are able to separate yourself from some of the emotions you have experienced, and recharge the mental batteries. The requirement for a break will obviously significantly vary from trader to trader and will depend largely on your trading frequency.

One of the things stopping people thinking about taking a break is that they may miss out on some good trading opportunities. Rest assured that the market you trade is a vital part of the corporate world and will always be open for trading. This means that when you finish your two week break for example, the market will be open as if you didn’t even have your break.

Hey Guys,

Do any of you remember? When people were selling Nokia Corp. like crazy? This happened about 2 years ago. The stock was at 22 and within 4 months it was down to 12. You were hearing in the news that Nokia was losing market share in europe. Their style of hand phones was outdated. SELL!, SELL!, SELL! This all was the cause for the manic selling.

Go two years back and look at Nokia Corp. finances. Two years ago they had no debt, their free cashflow was huge, about 2,000,000,000 at all times. Their revenues were growing every year by billions and still is. Remember, when people said they were losing market share? Well, They were actually gaining market share, overall in the world. It was just in europe. Where they were losing a few percentage points of market share.

I am telling this story becuase there is a lesson to be learned here. Do Your Own Homework. The news, reports, and etc. were saying stay away from nokia. While at the time I was trying to convince my Aunt to Buy!, Buy!. She likes to invest a little. Also, she didn’t listen either, lol. Now, the stock is up about 100% in two years.

Typically when a company decides to buy another corporation, due to the prospect of growth and cutting cost and the possibility of a bidding war, the company that is desired buy another company will skyrocket in terms of price. Since the stock market is a rational expectations market, such information will be heeded immediately and positioned to bolster the price of a stock instantaneously. Now unless you happen to own that particular stock, typically when you do find about the prospective information, the potentially acquired stock price will already be inflated, discouraging buyers to get into the action. While such a process may be disappointing to investors looking for profits, as evidence shows, buying such a stock when a rumor or solidified information comes up may not be such a bad idea.

Now the question is will I make as much money as if I had already owned the stock. The truth is probably no but there is still opportunities to gain a large profit in this M&A frenzy. Probably the most common occurrence would be if a bidding war begins. Like in the 1980s when such applications were frequent and presented options for millions of profits to be made, such a possibility would assure a dramatic increase in the potentially acquired stock causing for large capital gains if such a stock is bought on the issuance of rumored or true material. If the bids are high enough and the companies involved have good credentials there is large potential of tremendous gains increasing your profit related to the original price by a large margin.

While such ideals are not as frequent as they were a few decades ago, a lot of the potential gains usually come in the period before the actual purchase, barring no competitors. Examples of such occurrences are found both domestically and internationally citing true examples of how one can make incredible amounts.

Domestically, looking at the past two to three years there are a few deals which has caught my interest in terms of potential gains. One of these deals is the one proposed in February of 2004 when Cingular Wireless bought AT&T in a widely acclaimed telecommunication agreement. During the two and a half year period AT&T’s stock escalated almost 37% from a price of near $21.00 to close to $30.00 in the early month of August 2006. Such a dramatic increase, especially from a large cap stock, is rare in such a short duration, and now when brokers and investors are becoming bullish on such sized stocks, there is even more potential for AT&T to grow. While more than likely, unless you owned the stock prior to the announcement, you would not have made such a large margin in terms of gains, an increase of 20-30% is still opportune for investors, citing one example of where an investor can bring in large gains from a potentially late purchase.

Another good example of how an investor can increase his or her capital gains can be attributed to the Kmart acquisition of Sears for 11.5 million during November of 2005. As the deal seemed strange to many investors as both companies have fallen relative to their glory days, the situation still did not mean it was not a good time to buy some stock of Sears. Since the merger, stocks of Sears rose almost 16% from near $119.00 to $138.00, a decent gain for another large cap stock. Again, like the situation with AT&T, while you probably would not have received the full 16% increase in capital gains, a 10-13% gain is still excellent for such a period of time and should continue to increase in the following months with the reportedly bullish mindset of investors on large cap stocks.

While such a situation may be ideal domestically, with the emergence of new global markets, there is a potential to acquire such capital gains abroad as well. A few examples would be in 2005, the company NTL bought English company Telewest Global which furthered the price from near 1254.00 to 1322.00: nearly a 5% increase for such a high priced equity. In Germany, EMC bought the foreign company, Captiva Software which raised the stock from 14.50 to near 18.60 close to 28% increase. Again, while it may be tough to gather all the potential capital gains from each M&A activity, if you are able to get into the action after such information is put out, there is still a wide potential for future earnings.

Berkshire Hathaway’s subsidiary National Indemnity Corp, owned by Warren Buffett acquired 6.9 million shares at $40/share of USG Corp as of 08/02/2006. This was part of the “Rights Offering” Agreement. Now, Berkshire Hathaway owns 15% of USG. There are limitations and other agreements involved with USG and Berkshire Hathaway.Which some limitations and agreements could last for the next 7 years.

At the end of 2005 USG claimed for chapter 11. Due to many asbestos lawsuits. Since, then USG Corps. stock has dropped approx. 50%. Now, they recently made agreements to pay differ amounts in the billions. There are several hundred more cases of asbesto still pending.

It will be interesting to see. What will Berkshire Hathaway do later on. Warren Buffett has been known to take advantage of companies during setbacks. The thing here is that USG was a pretty solid company. Actually, USG is continuing to grow there revenues, despite the set backs. So, I think USG Corp. is worth watching in the next several years.

Berkshire Hathaway owns more than 60 types of businesses worldwide. They own the insurance company called Geico. Also, has major investments in Coca-Cola, and Wells Fargo & Co., and American Express

While you may be saying to yourself after reading the title that CHDT.OB (China Direct Trading), is an over-the-counter equity, the truth is that a lot of reward can come to individuals who take such a risk.

A relatively new company, CHDT utilizes its Florida headquarters to help corporations by selling gifts and promotions along with generator supplies as a subsidiary bracket. Founded in 2002, the company has received modest earnings throughout its four years but recently, as released on their first quarter results, CHDT obtained a $43,000 net profit: the first time in over a year. Revenue has also increased this quarter promoting stability over the past few years.

As the fundamentals are solid, the real component of CHDT comes from its volatility. Currently selling at 0.08 (August 2006), this equity can be responsible for increasing portfolios over five percent on a daily basis. As volume is already quite high relative to a capitalization of 48 million, already investors have found an undercover stock which has such a high potential of rewards.

As CHDT has a resistance level of near 0.15 and a support level of around 0.08, there is a strong potential that an investor can continuously make over 100% in terms of return of investment in only weeks in some cases. While there is also the potential to lose that much as well, with such levels of support and resistance, if the investor is smart he or she will heed such information and use time to his or her advantage. For example if one such investor were to buy CHDT at near 0.087 on Monday August 1, 2006, by Wednesday the investor would have made nearly 30% profit if he or she sold during the day's high.

Thus, while there is potential for immense losses for such a risky stock, the rewards are plentiful especially for such a cheap price. Both growth and profits seem to be rising at a solid rate, and the price reflects such a remark giving investors a large chance to win big. With such noticeable support and resistance levels, any investor who uses timing to his or her advantage will find a nice portfolio growth in the future.

There are a few trading rules that have stood the test of time and enable traders to trade profitably, yet a lot of people fail to follow them. The rules are no secret to anyone as you will find them in many trading books and other materials. The rules like ‘cut your losses’ and ‘follow the trend’ have worked for hundreds of years yet most people ignore them!

Money is something that affects people’s emotions and your natural instincts with money will often encourage you to break some of the time tested risk management rules, for example ‘cutting your losses’ and ‘keeping your trades small’. Most traders focus on making money and realising a loss goes against the aim of making money. Similarly, when you have a position that is performing strongly, a small part of you wants to sell that position to realise the profit. This is perfectly natural. Letting your profits run and not selling too early is also an important time tested rule, however because of the focus on money, some people can be very quick to sell shares when in a profitable situation.

If you find it difficult to accept an initial small percentage loss in a trade, what makes you think it is going to be easier later on to sell the shares when the position has lost 30% or more? Yet, when you consider the influence of trends in the market and how important it is that you manage risk, the best time to sell the shares is when you are faced with only a small loss.

Thoughts often appear about holding on to shares that are falling in value because one day in the future, they will increase in value and return to the price that you purchased them at. This is unfortunately a myth that many people have about shares in the market. Some people believe that shares will always return to previous values, presenting them an opportunity to sell them at break even. There is a chance that the share price will never return to the price you bought them at.

Furthermore, whilst you may have absolute confidence that a share price will return to levels that you purchased them at, consider if it is worth holding on to them and waiting for that time to come, if it does. Would it not be better to sell those shares and move on by committing your trading capital into a company whose share price is clearly trending up at the present time? Often people will think about how they will feel if they sell shares and in 12 months time, the share price returns to where they purchased them. There is a feeling of, ‘I should have just held on to them’. Meanwhile however, over that 12 month period whilst you may have been waiting for the share price to return, your trading capital was elsewhere obtaining solid returns for you.

All of these emotions and others can paralyse you and force you into not making a decision. Remember the old adage that says that taking no action is an action. Successful trading is all about sound decision making and you need to ensure that some of these emotional impulses do not freeze you or cloud your judgement.

Traders, you have to stay positive!

If you are thinking of entering into the “day trading business”, make sure to check any negative attitude you may have at the door.

Day trading is tough enough even for the most optimistic people, but, I for the life of me, don’t know what some people are thinking of when they enter into trading (or any “trade” for that matter) with negative thinking.

I see it all the time. We offer a free two-week trial membership, and so many people come into the room with a predetermined mind set that is so negative that I don’t know how they can function in life itself, let alone in investing in or trading the stock markets. The ones with negative mind sets rarely last very long.

Trading is no different than anything else you do; you have to have the proper attitude and stay positive. There are thousands of books on the power of positive thinking, so I’ll not go there. But when it comes to trading specifically, there are a few things to think about.

The first thing to get ingrained in your mind is to forget about the indices! It really does not matter if the Dow Jones Averages or the NASDAQ index is up 200 or down 200. Oh sure, you have to pay some attention to the index just so you know what you may expect as far as what the overall “tone” of the market. But there is no such thing as an up day or a down day based on the Dow or the NASDAQ as far as a Day Trader is concerned. There is only profit and loss.

No matter whether the markets are going up, down or sideways, there are always stocks to trade both directions! That’s important to remember. A lot of stocks you will be trading are going to be driven by news specific to the individual stocks. That news is going to play a more important role in where the stock is going than the over all market itself.

The Dow can be off 200 points but if news breaks that XYZ stock just discovered a new and exciting treatment of cancer, that stock is more than likely going to move up regardless of what the Dow is doing, even if it is a Dow component.

Trading down markets can actually be quite lucrative. The obvious way to play down markets is to “go with the flow” as they say, and look for stocks to short. Shorting stocks, contrary to some beliefs, is not a negative or anti-American thing. Those that think so need to readjust their thinking. Shorters have been around since before the meeting under that Buttonwood tree that gave birth to the New York Stock Exchange. (See: “What Does A Buttonwood Tree Have To Do With the New York Stock Exchange” at this source).

On the other hand, most traders and investors do not short stocks. They are looking for stocks to trade to the upside. If and when good news hits an individual stock in a down market, it is likely to attract a lot more interest. Depending on what stock it is and how good the news is, it may even give a boost to the entire market.

Too many traders let bad news put them into negative frame of mind. I know it is difficult to do, but you have to be able to shake off the negative and focus on the positive.

Coming off its 52 week high and its recently reported earnings (August 7, 2006), Cytrogen Corporation may be one of the best buys you can find out there. The company recently posted excellent fundamentals with a 0.32 EPS when the market was expecting -0.30, and increased both its revenue and profit relative to one year ago.

For the most part, a lot of the extra income had come from Cytrogen's joint venture with PSMA Corporations, but such an activity does not mean that CYTO is not a perfect buying opportunity. While a few investors may argue that the stock was recently near two dollars which exceeded its previous 52 week low, CYTO is continuously growing and still presents itself as a chance for a profitable mid to long term investment.

As a biopharmaceutical company, such a sector usually does well during periods of slow economic growth. As interest rates are at near its maximum, economic growth will become a bit of concern but should ironically help CYTO's price. Typically, during slow growth inelastic goods and services produced by companies such as in healthcare tend to do well because the decrease in income help consumers allocate more of their assets into these inelastic companies. Such distribution aids in future earnings and revenue growth, and CYTO is no exception to such a trend.

With excellent fundamentals, and optimistic outlook, and price just coming out of its 52 week low, I would look for CYTO to be a real bargain around the 2.30-2.50 mark. Having a 52 week high of near 5.30, a 17.00 one year target, and positive, but relatively not to high P/E ratio this quarter, I would absolutely recommend Cytrogen as a strong buy.

With earnings reports on the horizon and a tremendous amount of uncertainties surrounding corporate officials, you must think that I am crazy to think that Brocade Communication Systems Inc. is a strong buy. However, if you look closely at both the fundamental and technical aspects, you will see there is a great opportunity for profit in this company.

As an equity competent in dealings with data storage and networking, you might also want to argue that as a technology stock there is not much potential for high growth in terms of price advance. While such a trend may hold some relevance, in the case for Brocade (BRCD), the company is already at a low price relative to what it should be at. Near the 52 week low relative to its high, BRCD stumbled a few days ago after purchasing McData Corporations for near $4.61 a share. As such a venture usually contributes to higher costs by such an action, the stock plummeted nearly 20% following the news. Already having some volatility because of stock option controversy, the stock has been hit quite a bit. However, debate aside it seems that BRCD has hit its support level.

Speaking on technical terms, with such news it was clear that BRCD was going to break its previous support level which stayed around 5.50 for nearly seven months. However, with the new acquisition, the stock fell to near 5.00 most of the day, and even with such a purchase did not seem to fall any further. As a smart investor, you would have noticed such a trend and take advantage of such signals, but if you did miss it there is still a chance to get into the action

Married Put and Stock is a tax strategy designed to avoid the unintended tax consequence of a put purchase derived from the general rules governing short sales.

We all know that tax laws are very complex and full of tax "traps" for the unwary but, I think you'll agree, the married put and stock tax trap is a beaut!

If you are a short-term trader, none of this will matter much to you. However, if you are an investor whose objective is long-term capital gain treatment: Pay strict attention!

Situation 1:

Suppose you are in the fortunate position of holding stock that qualifies for long-term capital gain treatment. You did your research well, you took the risk, you sweated out the holding period, and now you think that it may be a good time to cash in.

Let's further suppose that it's near year end. If you cash in now, you will owe tax for this year. Since it's near the end of the year, you could push the tax into next year by postponing the sale until after year end. Smart move, tax-wise.

The only problem is: What if the stock falls while you're waiting for the calendar to go by?

Suddenly it hits you! What if you bought a put option that doesn't expire until after this year is over??? Terrific!

That way, if the stock drops, you just locked in todays' price and, if the stock continues to climb, you get to make an even bigger gain next year!

Either way, the tax is pushed into next years' business all at the same time! Brilliant!

All this, mind you, with the blessing of those very nice people over at the IRS.

As it goes that trading in a bull market is much comfortable and lots of money making is much easier than trading in a bear market. Though making profits in bullish markets is easy going but to trade successfully or find profits in trading during bearish market is an art let me quickly give you some tips on that!

During the transition of the market from bullish to bearish, accept this fact gracefully and then make your future plans otherwise you will never be able to come out of that fright and would end up bearing losses. Shoulder the responsibility of your own trading action and do put the blame on your broker or your friend who has given you the "tips" that led to your losses.

Make sure that if you are confronted with losses from a sudden crumple in prices; admit that it is your liability to now set up action to get out of these circumstances with profits.

During bearish markets it is not advisable to buy stocks that are in initial outbreaks and just holding them and coming back again after a few days to reap profits, the way you normally do in bullish markets.

For making with profits trading with trend is the key in bullish markets, on the contrary, in bearish markets, the market freezes, and trends are "shorter" in duration or the market will go into a sideways direction, with prices fluctuate between ranges. So it is always that during bearish markets, range trading is better rather than trend trading. Adapt yourself to this quickly else you could be caught with short term trend changes and suffer whipsaws and lose money trend trading during bearish markets.

When the market is highly volatility, Buying deep in-the-money (ITM) options is favored over at-the-money (ATM) and out-of-the-money (OTM) options as when market begins to come back down to more 'normal volatility' levels the ATM and OTM are going to suffer.

Quick facts about Deep in-the-money (ITM) options

Deep ITM options have very modest time value and it is the time value or 'extrinsic' value of an option that is an outcome by increasing or declining implied volatility.

During volatile markets, if your timing is slightly off but right about direction then using deep in-the-money options can be more forgiving. For example if you have a stock with a strong essential uptrend that has experienced a healthy improvement and you enter a little too early by buying Calls before the stock starts trending up again.

ITM options have very small time premium, so they have the potential of ‘buffer’ should the stock move against you slightly or move sideways for a period before it starts trending again.

ATM and OTM both are critically determined by time value and therefore your timing in regards to the direction of the underlying needs to be precise and accurate. During high implied volatility, any phase of oblique movement, or a 'slowing' to how much a stock is rising or falling, can result in sizeable wearing down in the time value premium for both at-the-money (ATM) and out-of-the-money (OTM) option holders. This is because both fall in implied volatility and also time decay.

Counteracting the outcomes of volatility, buying a deep in-the-money (ITM) option can be very successful.

Years ago trading was usually an activity carried out by wealthy individuals from families that had likely been wealthy for generations. It wasn't uncommon for the corporations of old to be owned and controlled by the members of a single family. However, over time the markets began to accommodate institutions comprised of groups of investors. This type of trading also evolved to involve different types of investment possibilities that served the interests of a variety of companies and people particularly for long-term savings goals.

Pension Funds
A pension is any payment made to a retired person based on years of service. Most pension payments are made in the form of annuity payments that pay a set amount each year. A pension fund usually involves regular contributions by the employer to an investment account. The risks of investment are taken by the plan sponsor (the employer). The investment account requires constant management to ensure the success of the fund.

Insurance
It used to be that insurance companies were only associated with planning for the future as far as life insurance or health insurance to protect against emergencies. Life and health insurance are an absolute necessity when trying to ensure financial security. Disaster can strike at any time making it not only an emotionally difficult time for family, but also financially if not prepared. Insurance companies over the years due to increasing medical costs have begun delving into other areas of financial planning. Namely the offering of financial products like Mutual funds (to be discussed in a moment) and annuities that make saving for the future easier and more accessible no matter what the financial position or need is.