When you embark on an exhilarating adventure to explore the vibrant and ever-changing world of stock investing, each step forward propels you into a realm of new insights and opportunities. As you journey along, the intricate tapestry of global markets begins to reveal itself. This is the essence of the top-down approach in stock investing — a journey that’s both an exploration and a revelation.

It begins with a panoramic view of the vast landscape of the global economy, where economic trends and geopolitical shifts paint a dynamic backdrop. As you delve deeper, this journey takes you through diverse and intriguing regional markets, each with its own unique characteristics and hidden treasures. You navigate through sectors buzzing with innovation and industries poised for breakthroughs, where understanding the pulse of progress is critical. Finally, this expedition culminates in discovering one promising stock, a gleaming jewel unearthed after sifting through layers of economic, regional, and sectoral analysis.

The top-down approach is more than a method — it’s an adventure in the financial universe, where each investor is both a navigator and a discoverer, charting a course through the complex but exhilarating world of stock investing.

Where do you begin?

The Business Cycle

Integral to this adventure is understanding the business cycle — the rhythmic ebb and flow of the economy. The business cycle comprises four stages: expansion, peak, contraction, and trough. Each stage presents unique characteristics and investment opportunities.

Recovery/expansion: This phase is marked by economic growth. Industries such as consumer discretionary (goods and services), and technology often flourish. Investors might focus on growth stocks in these sectors.

Peak/top: Here, the economy reaches its zenith. Caution is key as markets may be overvalued. Diversification and defensive stocks become more important.

Contraction/recession: Economic slowdown occurs. Defensive sectors like healthcare and utilities often outperform as they’re less sensitive to economic downturns.

Trough/bottom: The economy bottoms out, signaling the potential for a rebound. This phase might be an excellent time to identify undervalued stocks or sectors poised for recovery. Commodities can perform well heading into a recovery phase.

Understanding the business cycle allows investors to anticipate market trends and align their investment strategies accordingly. Knowing what phase of the cycle you’re in or heading into can offer greater insight and probability of success as you navigate the decision-making process.

Applying the Top-Down Approach 

Step 1: Immerse Yourself in the World of Global Economic News 

Picture yourself as a global economic detective, deciphering clues from around the world. Understanding the intricate dance of global economies is like unraveling a fascinating mystery. Follow the pulse of major economies through platforms like Bloomberg or The Economist. Keep an eye on game-changing indicators like GDP, unemployment, growth, interest rates, and inflation trends. It’s a dynamic and ever-evolving landscape full of surprises and insights!

Step 2: Set out on a Regional Treasure Hunt

Each region of the world is like a unique treasure chest filled with opportunities and risks. Navigating through these regional dynamics is akin to a treasure hunt, seeking out the most promising gems. Use tools like the World Bank’s analysis to compare regions. Are emerging markets the hidden gems, or do developed markets hold the key to stability? Take a deeper dive into specific indicators for each area. Your research could lead you to unexpected treasures!

Step 3: Engage in Industry Exploration

Delve into the world of industries as if exploring uncharted territories. Each sector, from technology to healthcare, has its own story to tell and its own path to potential success. Different sectors perform differently during the various stages of the business cycle. Keep your finger on the pulse of industry trends. Are renewable energies the next big wave, or is the AI sector the future? Use financial news and reports as your map to these exciting terrains.

Step 4: Undertake a Company Quest

The quest for the perfect company is the most thrilling part of your journey. It’s where financial acumen meets detective work, analyzing companies to uncover those with the most promise. Dive into a world of financial statements, earnings calls, and market analysis. Platforms like CNBC, Bloomberg, or Yahoo Finance become your guides, revealing which companies stand out in their competitive landscapes. Use technical analysis to uncover price action, hidden clues, and breakouts to take advantage of market swings and buying opportunities.

Step 5: Arrive at Stock Selection

Choosing a stock is the climax of your investment adventure. This is where all your research, analysis, and intuition converge to make that final, exciting decision. Evaluate stocks with a keen eye. Look beyond just numbers to understand the story behind each stock. Is it undervalued? Is its growth potential yet to be recognized? Getting into technical analysis will help you identify signals and patterns like the dead cat bounce in stock charts, so you can understand what’s happening in the market. This is where your journey culminates in the exhilarating act of selection.

Your Exhilarating Investment Adventure

This journey isn’t just about finding a stock; it’s about the excitement of uncovering the hidden stories behind numbers, the triumph of insight over uncertainty, and the fusion of strategy with intuition. As you embark on this top-down investment adventure, remember that the path you take is as exhilarating as the destination itself!

In collaboration with Vincent DeFilippo 

Dr. Vincent DeFilippo, DBA, MBA, is a professor in the School of Accounting and Business at Monroe College. Prior to that he was CEO of a private equity fund in Hong Kong, raising several billion dollars in venture capital for entrepreneurs and publicly traded companies throughout the Asia Pacific Region. His new book, Braking Point: How Escalation of Commitment Is Destroying the World (and How You Can Save Yourself), (ViennaRose Publishing, May 3, 2023), is a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Learn more at www.vincentdefilippo.com. 

Financial difficulties are a simple fact of doing business. Changes in markets, customers, competitors and the economy can all have an impact on your company.

If you find yourself struggling to stay afloat, there are several options available, one of which is liquidation. Liquidating a business is a final solution for managing debts and repaying creditors.

For creditors, liquidation is a way to recover some of the money they are owed, but it can be a confronting process for directors, employees and internal stakeholders.

In this article, we’ll cover the basics of liquidation, and how it’s used to manage the debts of insolvent companies.

What is Liquidation?

Liquidation is the formal procedure of dissolving a company that has become insolvent (e.g. if it’s unable to pay its bill on time). During liquidation, the insolvent company is controlled by a specialist that can investigate its financial situation and satisfy as many company debts as possible.

There are two main types of liquidation in Australia:

• Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidation (CVL) – The directors of a company are required to stay abreast of the company’s position. If the directors notice that the company is insolvent, they can voluntarily enter into liquidation and wind the business up.
• Court Liquidation – Anyone who lends money to a business is entitled to have their debt repaid. If a company fails to repay a debt on time, creditors can apply to the court to have the company placed in liquidation. A liquidator is appointed immediately if the court approves the liquidation order.

Creditors can initiate a court liquidation if they’re owed $2,000 or more. While this is a viable option for recovering money, creditors are discouraged from using liquidation as a simple debt recovery tool.

If a company owes you money, you should try alternative debt collection methods before resorting to a liquidation order.

What Happens During Liquidation?

Liquidation begins as soon as the liquidator is appointed. This can either be done by the directors or by court order. Once the liquidator takes control of the business, they become responsible for the business’ assets, liabilities and day-to-day concerns.

The liquidator will begin by investigating the company’s financial affairs. The goal is to locate and secure assets, as well as to collect claims from creditors. At this stage the liquidator will also investigate company officers to make sure there has been no misconduct.

As the liquidator collects company assets, these assets will be auctioned off to raise money that can be used to pay company debts. Assets sold during liquidation are sold on short notice. This means they are often disposed of for a fraction of their value.

Once all assets have been sold and the liquidator’s investigations are complete, they will distribute money to creditors in the order outlined below.

Finally, the liquidator will apply to ASIC to have the company deregistered, at which point it ceases to exist.

The Order of Distributions in Liquidation

Any money collected by the liquidator during the process is distributed to secured and unsecured creditors of the insolvent company. This distribution is made in a predetermined order that’s set out by ASIC. The order is as follows:

• The liquidators fees and any costs they incurred during the process
• Secured creditors
• Outstanding employee wages
• Outstanding employee superannuation
• Outstanding employee entitlements (such as annual leave)
• Employee redundancy pay
• Unsecured creditors
• Shareholders

As you can see, secured creditors and priority creditors (e.g. employees) receive the lion’s share of distributions in liquidation.

Each category must be paid in full before the next category receives a pay out. If there isn’t enough money to pay a category in full, each creditor receives a pro rata amount and then the following categories receive nothing.

The liquidator is first to be paid during liquidation. This is done to ensure that there are always financial professionals that are willing to take on this type of work. The cost of the liquidation depends on the size and complexity of the company.

Shareholders are the last to receive a pay out during liquidation. It is very uncommon for shareholders to receive a dividend.

Alternatives to Liquidation

Liquidating a business is a final solution. At the end of the process, the business is deregistered and ceases to exist, with most remaining debts being extinguished.

This creates a problem for companies that are experiencing moderate financial difficulties. In many cases, it’s possible to save these companies from liquidation through alternative processes such as Administration.

During Administration, a company appoints a financial professional to assess its position and develop a plan for moving forward. This plan typically involves negotiating partial repayments with creditors. While creditors receive less money than they’re entitled to, Administration provides better returns than creditors would receive through liquidation.

As with liquidation, it’s important to commence Administration as soon as possible. The sooner the directors of a company act, the more likely they are to save the business from liquidation and deregistration.

Trying to rank your website at the top of the search results by using SEO is a bit of an art. It takes a lot of patience, testing, and many hours at the keyboard. When you get SEO right, it can lead to a lot of targeted traffic that will bring in a lot of money. Hiring a reputable SEO agency can significantly enhance your website’s visibility and drive long-term organic growth. However, there are a lot of common mistakes that SEOs make.

Partnering with a SaaS SEO agency can help businesses avoid these pitfalls by implementing data-driven strategies, optimizing technical SEO, and ensuring long-term organic growth in a competitive market.

Avoiding SEO mistakes can be like walking a tightrope. One wrong move and your website falls in the rankings. When you know what the common mistakes are, it helps to avoid them and keep your website rankings intact. In this article, we will go over several common pitfalls you should avoid when doing SEO for your website.

1 – Not Outsourcing

Not too long ago, all it took to run a website was a lot of coffee. You could be a one-man band and get everything done yourself. There are plenty of SEO tools to help you with keyword research, technical SEO, and even taking care of the UX of your site.

Outsourcing is not optional as you can only do so much on your own. One of the most obvious areas to outsource is the SEO itself. Hiring a company like SEO Manchester is going to take a lot of work off of your plate so you can focus on running your business.

Content creation is another area where outsourcing can free up your time. Creating engaging, SEO-friendly content requires not just writing skills but also knowing how to optimize content for both search engines and readers.

Link building is essential when it comes to sending signals to Google to rank your site. The process of getting backlinks is long and tedious. This is an obvious area to outsource.

2 – Ignoring the User Experience

All too often, SEOs are focused on pleasing Google and ignoring the fact that people are the ones who will visit the site. This means that the User Experience (UX) is extremely important to make sure that your website ranks.

A good user experience means that visitors can find what they need easily and quickly, and they don’t end up clicking away from your site and back to the search results. Users who bounce off of your site quickly send a signal to Google that your site has a poor UX.

3 – Not Diversifying Traffic Sources

SEO is usually focused on just ranking on Google but these days it should also include being an overall marketer. This means getting traffic from other sources besides just organic search.

One effective way to diversify is through social media marketing. You can get a lot of traffic from a good social media marketing campaign. As a bonus, you can also build a brand this way which Google likes.

Another important channel is email marketing. They always say the money is in the list and that hasn’t changed in decades. It’s even more true these days than ever before.

When we purchase over the Internet, we specify our payment card number, its expiration date and CVV-code during the payment. On the one hand, paying for purchases this way is very convenient and fast. Still, on the other hand, confidential information about your card becomes known to the intermediary who makes the payment. The Wallester platform allows you to tokenize any card and make its use on the Internet as secure as possible. What is the essence of tokenization and what are the strengths of this technology, we will consider in this article.

Tokenization: What is the Essence of the Technology?

Tokenization is a process in which a token replaces the unique details of a payment card. A token is a unique number generated and further used to identify the means of payment during payment. When you pay for a purchase over the Internet, you do not pass unique bank details to the merchant, only the generated numbers. It is used by the seller solely for payment authorization, but it will not give him access to the buyer’s confidential data. Even if some attacker steals the merchant’s database where customer tokens are stored, he will have access to meaningless numbers, and confidential information about the details will not be available.

This technology was first discussed in the early 2000s when TrustCommerce used the Citadel service to convert real customer payment details into tokens. After adopting the new banking standard PCI DSS in 2004, which imposed strict requirements for protecting confidential information, all companies that had established branded card issuing began to use tokenization en masse.

Now, tokenization is very popular in the payment industry, so companies from different spheres use it:

•       online commerce;
•       mobile payments;
•       electronic payment services;
•       fintech;
•       BIN sponsorship, etc.

The use of tokenization in these areas aims to ensure security and prevent third parties from accessing financial information.

Benefits of Tokenization for Business

Private entrepreneurs and large businesses get a lot of advantages from the use of tokenization technology:

•       High level of transaction security. The store receives at its disposal not confidential information about the card but a generated code. Its loss or theft will not be of any use to an attacker and will not compromise your business;
•       Simplified compliance with regulatory requirements and security standards. Protecting tokens is much easier than ensuring the safety and confidentiality of payment card details belonging to customers. Using tokens allows you to reduce risks and avoid difficulties associated with online payments;
•       Ease of integration with any platform. Any merchant platforms and payment services accept tokens. It helps businesses to be more flexible and quickly adjust to market changes;
•       Comfortable use. The process of paying for purchases becomes as simple and convenient as possible. The customer does not need to enter payment card information every time while making online purchases. It helps increase the number of online purchases and hence helps increase the company’s profits.

For companies dealing with sensitive customer payment information, tokenization helps keep it secure.

Benefits of Tokenization for Customers

Tokenization is a technology that has a lot of benefits not only for businesses but also for their customers. Let’s list 4 of its main advantages for customers making online transactions:

•       Fast payment for purchases. Making repeat purchases with a token is much easier than entering payment details every time. After the first purchase, the payment service or provider tokenizes the used card, and the buyer no longer enters the card details when making subsequent purchases. Any card can be tokenized. It can be a White Label card, a non-personalized card, a name card, a debit card, a credit card or any other payment card;
•       Low probability of fraud. The token has no specific information about the actual bank card details. Even if an attacker gets hold of it, he will not be able to unravel the numbers, and the cardholder can cancel the compromised token and replace it with a new one at any time. The main payment account and its details will not change;
•       High degree of privacy. The token has an expiration date, and some parameters can limit its use. It allows you to save privacy and control access to confidential information.

Today, tokenization is the only technology that can provide maximum security for payments in e-commerce.

VARA, Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority in Dubai, has granted its initial approval to B2B Prime Digital MENA to offer financial services in the Emirate of Dubai while the complete licence is due to further compliance and conditions.

B2Prime is a liquidity provider company that actively works with brokers, exchanges, hedge funds, and more, offering technology solutions and market accessibility to a wide array of financial instruments, including cryptocurrencies.

As the company seeks to expand its network, it has received preliminary approval to offer its service in Dubai, UAE. What does the “initial approval” entail, and what does it mean for the market? Let’s find out.

The Meanings Behind The Initial Approval

In its bid to earn a complete operational licence in Dubai, B2B Prime Digital MENA has received an “initial approval” from VARA, the regulatory body in Dubai. This means that the company can pursue legal steps in its financial offerings in the region, such as virtual asset broker-dealer services and virtual asset exchange, transfer and settlement solutions.

The founder of B2Prime, Eugenia Mykuliak, connected on this milestone, “We are excited to contribute to the growth of Dubai’s ever-growing Virtual assets ecosystem”.

Additionally, the co-founder of B2B Prime Digital MENA, Arthur Azizov, talked about the importance of this step, “We are extremely proud and grateful to have received initial approval from VARA, which is a testament to our determination to maintain the highest standards in regulatory compliance”.

The company is set to move ahead with the predetermined conditions to qualify for the full licence, allowing B2B Prime Digital MENA to expand its offerings and onboard more investors and institutional traders in Dubai.

“We’ve built a powerful ecosystem that not only meets but exceeds the industry’s standards, guaranteeing a safe and efficient gateway to virtual assets for users. We are ready to move forward in the licensing process in our bid to offer secure and streamlined access to virtual assets, strictly adhering to VARA’s guidelines.”, said Mr Azizov.

Understanding VARA

VARA stands for the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, created in 2022 by Law No.4, which is tasked with supervising and regulating the scene of virtual assets financial activities in Dubai. Its activities include setting the legal framework and maintaining market integrity.

VARA’s activities cover special development zones and free zones in Dubai, excluding the Dubai International Financial Centre. This entity seeks to develop the trading landscape in Dubai and create regulations that further develop the industry.

Understanding B2Prime

B2Prime Group is the world’s leading provider of liquidity and technological solutions that assist individuals and businesses to thrive in the trading and brokerage industries. The company offers a user-friendly aggregation platform with multi-asset hosting and liquidity provision that covers +200 assets.

After successfully getting operational licences in Mauritius and Cyprus, B2Prime is expanding its presence in Dubai through its MENA entity “B2B Prime Digital MENA”.

The company meets and exceeds its client’s expectations by offering advanced trading software development, 24/7 technical support, and a team of relationship managers.

What Now?

B2B Prime Digital MENA is working towards meeting the set criteria to qualify for the VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider) licence and offer its comprehensive financial services under a completely operational framework and approval.

“The receipt of the Initial Approval for all three licenses, particularly the Transfer and Settlement License, was eagerly awaited and has brought immense joy to our entire team. This achievement has undoubtedly inspired us to pour our absolute best towards securing the Virtual Asset Service Provider license”, said the CEO of B2B Prime Digital MENA, Adriana Paredes Herrera.

This amplifies the significance of the region as a global FinTech hub, attracting a huge number of developers, financial institutions and investors. This milestone comes timely with the growing virtual asset market, especially cryptocurrencies.