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An in-depth guide to making gold a serious part of your portfolio Gold, the long forgotten store of value that was once the center of the global financial system, suddenly matters a great deal again. It has become a leading asset by virtue of its strong performance, and its booming demand has made it the only financial asset that remains in an uninterrupted bull market. And yet gold remains one of the least-owned financial assets in investment portfolios today. Hard Money helps investors move beyond the simple, yet widely accepted notion that gold makes sense in today's financial environment, and explores ways to magnify potential investment returns driven by precious metals. This reliable resource examines the investment vehicles (bullion, stocks, derivatives, and even rare coins) and strategies (aggressive, conservative, passive, and variations) aimed at beating the price of gold as it rises, and ways to protect a portfolio should the metal decline. Identifies five key drivers that should continue to push gold higher in the years ahead. Explores the ins and outs of investing in gold and making this precious metal a part of your portfolio. Examines the pros and cons of multiple ways to buy gold via coins, ETFs, mining and royalty stocks, and other investment vehicles. Author Shayne McGuire is a highly-regarded expert on gold. Written in a straightforward and accessible style, Hard Money offers key strategies to enhancing returns with new methods for investing in gold.

Purpose: The article aims to analyze relations between the direction of production of agricultural enterprises in the European Union and the level of investment in the years 2005-2018. As the research hypothesis assumed, the directions of agricultural enterprises' production in the European Union influence their level of investment. The additional aim is to draw attention to the most critical issues reflecting the significance of finances in investment decisions of agricultural enterprises. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study covers all the European Union member countries. The one-factor analysis of variance ANOVA was used to achieve the research objective. Findings: The studies prove that agricultural enterprises' directions in the European Union substantially diversify their values of the investment level. The most significant differences in the investment level were observed between the agricultural enterprises specializing in granivores and milk and the plant production agricultural enterprises. Practical Implications: The investment activities of agricultural enterprises result from their market activity and modernization of their assets. Decisions made by enterprises depend on their financial resources and have a significant impact on their development opportunities. The growth of owned fixed assets or the improvement of their quality may substantially contribute to the increase of the production potential of agricultural enterprises involved in plant production and animal production. Originality/Value: The existing literature does not present a detailed differentiation of the level of investment in individual types of farms, in line with the FADN methodology. ; peer-reviewed

The purpose of the paper was to conduct the author's own survey research on barriers reported by entrepreneurs in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It should be pointed out that in this article the notion of Central and Eastern Europe was "limited" and covers 10 countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, and Croatia. As a result of the selection from among 1000 enterprises, a group of 600 was selected, including the survey covered 129 enterprises. The method of indirect survey was adopted (surveys were sent to enterprises by e-mail). The surveyed sample was selected in such a way that the surveyed enterprises were arranged evenly across particular countries and were characterized by different range and profile of activities. Service enterprises were a dominant group (96 enterprises, i.e. 74.4% of surveyed enterprises), others were production enterprises (33 enterprises, i.e. 25.6% of the surveyed enterprises). Among the surveyed enterprises, 98% were small and medium-sized enterprises. During the survey, eight investment barriers in particular countries of the region, were most often indicated by the surveyed enterprises. The conducted survey research on investment barriers for enterprises in the region of Central and Eastern Europe indicates serious problems associated with complexity and instability of the tax system and with excessive bureaucracy, high labour costs, volatility and low quality of law, and high taxes.

I extend the Glick and Rogoff (1995) aggregate time-series, empirical, intertemporal model of country-investment (and the current account) to a sectoral-level, and estimate it for New Zealand. I fit the model to panel data of eleven industries from 1988-2009. The sectoral-level investment growth is a function of lagged investment level, sector-specific TFP shocks, country-specific TFP shocks, and global TFP shocks. The estimates seem robust to government spending shocks and Terms of Trade shocks.

Given that an expansive impact of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) aid on public investment is expected, two models have been estimated to determine, respectively, the size of this impact and the relationship between the own financing of regional public investment and the external financing received from ERDF in Spanish regions. Evidence has been obtained that the impact of transfers from the ERDF on public investment is almost nil. In addition, for each euro that the Spanish regions received from the ERDF, own funds for public investment allocated by regional governments have been reduced 23 cents, showing an important relation of substitution between the two sources of financing. Both models include data between 1994 and 2014 and their estimation has used traditional methods and methods based on the cointegration of variables with a panel structure, such as FMOLS and DOLS. The main results obtained with the two methodologies they are quite close, confirming the initial hypothesis: in the presence of weak donor restrictions, the political process in governments receiving ERDF transfers determine revealed preferences about public investment, neutralizing conditions established by the donor. This study also unequivocally demonstrates the presence of simultaneous causality between investment aid received from the ERDF and regional public investment and between said aid and the own resources that regional governments dedicate to financing public investment. These findings confirm the existence of a bias that seriously affects the effectiveness of the European Union's regional policy.

"CAIA Association has developed two examinations that are used to certify Chartered Alternative Investment Analysts. The Level I curriculum builds a foundation in both traditional and alternative investment markets--for example, the range of statistics that are used to define investment performance as well as the many types of hedge fund strategies. The readings for the Level II exam focus on the same strategies, but change the context to one of risk management and portfolio optimization. Level I CAIA exam takers have to work through an outline of terms, be able to identify and describe aspects of financial markets, develop reasoning skills, and in some cases make computations necessary to solve business problems"--