MEASURES FOR FINANCIAL HEALTH

These are not any points to be taken but ready to use measures that will hold good in 2010 and later.

Credit card bills payed within due date: The non paid bills after due date alone can raise the expenditure by 40% per annum which is very expensive as in the form of credit.

Unused bank accounts closed: There are too many bank accounts with new jobs as openings and some of these bank accounts are hardly checked

Have a months expense in the bank: Bank gives interests on the saving's account. Therefore some extra money can be earned through fixed deposits mutual funds of small terms

Have life insurance: Buy life insurance, not for yourself but for the ones you love.

Investing early: This is done because of the compounding phenomenon. A person investing early has to pay less than the person investing after him and you may know that both of them get the same price later but the cost of buying differs.

Regular invests: Investing systematically helps in long-term profits as it eliminates the risk of investment in equity markets.

Financial plan: Make your financial goals, have a good plan to reach for what you have planned keeping in mind the risks that can be taken

Stay with the financial plan: Be with your plan and try to cut down the risks from it as much as possible.Enter boldly into the market when others can hardly think of it.

LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST: KEEP ALL THE ABOVE COMMANDMENTS IN MIND

CRUDE OIL HAS GOT THE HIGHEST ANNUAL GAIN IN A DECADE

Crude oil resulted in a bit of a change before this annual gain in itelf. On the forecast US stockpilers are narrowing while there is unrest in Iran for the concerns on supplies being disrupted.

US crude inventory went down 1.85 million barrels last week. Iran, the holder of the world's second largest crude reserves, detained about 1,000 people after the biggest anti-government demonstrations in six months.

Crude oil delivered in February costed $78.73 a barrel, 14 cents lower in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 12.57 p.m. London time. It earlier rose as much as 32 cents, or 0.4%, to $79.19 a barrel.Futures are set for a 77% gain this year, the biggest since 1999. Prices have tripled in the past decade.

A stronger dollar is limiting gains in oil prices by reducing the appeal of commodities as an investment. The dollar may rise against the Euro for the third day before a report economist said will how US manufacturing expanded in December for a fifth month, adding to signs the economy is gaining momentum. The dollar traded for $1.4341 against the euro at 9:38a.m. London time.

Brent crude for February settlement rose for a sixth day, advancing as much as 56 cents or 0.7% to $78.20 a barrel on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange.

SOFTWARE COMPANIES PUT HIGHER REVENUES THIS QUARTER

Flowing orders from US and Europe has shown improvement regarding economies merging out of recession.

Software companies Infosys technologies and Tata consultancy Services are ready to report higher revenues for December as firms like British Petroleum increased its outsourcing but the rupee and higher wages can reduce the profitability.

$60 billion Indian technology sector which depends on the US and europe for revenue has faced tough business conditions for more than a year as their client such as Citigroup and General Electric cut costs as the credit crisis reduced demand. But the situation improved in the last few months with steady flow of order as developed economies emerge out of recession. But the appreciation of Indian rupee against the US dollar would again reduce profitability.

The quarter saw deals like British Petroleum global vendor consolidation contract worth over $2 billion shared among others by TCS and Infosys. Software packages like SAP and Oracle which were onsite heavy are now about 60% offshore. Lot of Indian companies like HCL Technologies have gained from this shift and HCL's buyout of Axon a year earlier helped too.

The revival of business may ensure continued order flows, but may not necessarily lead to rising profitability as the currency movements may be adverse.

END OF 2009

AN EVENTFUL 2009

Financially, 2009 was not a very welcoming year. Investors have had a down and out year but taking an overall view 2009 has given us new perspectives of the financial world.

As positives there have been surprises regarding the Sensex as it came to be profitable in the second half of the year.

It seems that 2009 gives a lesson to be learned by the investors on how they can invest better. As we know only a handful were left happy.

Here are some shocking moments of 2009

1. Ramalinga Raju cooked up the accounts of his big IT firm.

2. The public sector made an alltime high profits even though they still are below the private sector banks in terms of profit.

.3. The central bank bought 200 tonnes of gold and hence added gold to its financial reserve. This has lead to increase of gold reserves of the world central bank since the last nine years.

4. The Automobile sector has had its sales even quadripled in some cases. It has been a great year for them.

5. Defence sector, that is FMCG and Pharma underperformed during the year but the comapnies have had a good performin sensex.