What happens in the brain when choosing between two financial products? How about when the decision is perceived as ‘risky’? Can individual decisions be a predictor of how financial markets work?

These are the sorts of questions that have emerged from the developing relationship between neuroscience and finance… sometimes called “neurofinance” or “neuroeconomics”.

Understanding what happens in the brain when we make financial decisions is relatively new science but it is already proving to be interesting.

The neuroscience

A new lab at the University of Miami’s School of Business has been set up to examine the relationship between the brain and finance.

Using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure electrical activity in the brain, and eye-tracking technology, it conducts experiments on finance students without the need for expensive fMRI technology.

One of the lead researchers explains what the neuroscience is trying to discover:

“Money doesn’t exist in nature. When a person says, ‘I’m going to save 20% of my paycheck to put into a retirement account,’ is that the same part of the brain a squirrel would use to put away nuts for the winter?”

“We’re trying to figure out what parts of the brain we use today to make financial decisions, what they were originally intended to do, and the consistency they have.”

The common assumption is that the decisions we make (regarding finances or anything else deemed as ‘important’) are purely rational decisions, taken without emotions interfering. In terms of finance there is a vast array of metrics used that allow us to make ‘informed’ decisions.

However, the findings from the lab back up previous neuroscience that shows that emotion plays a very important part in all decision-making.

The work of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio demonstrated that people with damage in the part of the brain where emotions are generated are also unable to make decisions – even simple ones like what clothes to wear.

In one of the experiments, students are given two institutions with exactly the same metrics, but with different names of people who run the funds. The latter information should not be a factor in the analysis of which fund to go with, but students consistently choose an American-sounding name over a foreign-sounding name. This is the effect of emotions in the decision-making process.

Can this help explain financial markets?

Neuroeconomics is a growing field that encompasses many fields including neuroscience, experimental and behavioural economics, cognitive and social psychology, theoretical biology, and mathematics.

One of the questions at the forefront of the field is whether understanding what happens in an individual’s brain when they make a financial decision may be extended to financial market behaviour.

The lead researcher at the University of Miami’s School of Business suggests the following:

“If you really think about the market, it’s a collection of people doing stuff. If you really want to understand group behavior, it makes sense to understand how they would make decisions at an individual level.”

A study from the California Institute of Technology sheds more light on this, suggesting that it is a biological impulse to predict how others behave – and that this helps to drive the type of fluctuations in the markets seen in ‘booms’ and ‘busts’. It was found that, rather than making dispassionate decisions based solely on explicit price and value data, traders were driven to predict how the market will change from the behaviour of other traders (in the belief that others in the market knew better than them).

There are times when it is extremely difficult to stand your ground, but sometimes it needs to be done. It is absolutely necessary that a person not give in to high-pressure sales tactics when he knows that it will be a bad thing. Submitting oneself to another’s persistent and possibly obnoxious behavior may cause undue hardship and regret. Giving in to an unscrupulous person will likely be an unwise action, which may produce unwanted results in the end.

Everyone wants to get ahead financially. It is common to want more money and more freedom which can be derived from having more funds. It is a natural thing to want to listen to others who make big promises. But can they deliver on those promises? Often the answer is a resounding NO.

This life has many challenges, not the least of which are financial problems for many people. It may be difficult to get ahead so a person tries new so-called opportunities, which come his way. There are gurus in many fields of endeavor, such as home based businesses, Internet business, and stock trading. They can talk a big story, but they are often just trying to make a sale without regard for the person with whom they are attempting to conduct business. There are many who cannot and should not be trusted.

Shortly before Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated during World War II, there were rumors going around as to what was going to happen to them. They thought they could trust their own government and the constitution of the United States of America. They found that they were rejected and persecuted by their fellow citizens when they were imprisoned in camps. Government leaders turned their backs on them and went along with this inhumane treatment of these innocent people who had done no wrong. They experienced a lot of hatred toward them. They found that life was extremely difficult. Some tried to stand their ground and resist the curfew and imprisonment imposed upon all the Japanese Americans living on the west coast of the United States. It did no good, but at least they tried to resist.

People can find themselves in difficult circumstances when they are not strong enough to stand their ground against pressure from another person. Some stock traders trick or coerce people out of their hard earned money with false promises and unlikely claims of fortune and prosperity. They are people who are usually out for their own interests although they may maintain that they have a program, which will not and cannot lose.

If you know what they are trying to make you do is not in your best interest and/or you do not have the money, which they think you have, it is important to not give in to them. They must not win when you are going to be the loser. You need to stand your ground when you know you should and it is for your own good.

Asset management is the financial umbrella term for any system that monitors or maintains things of value, whether for an individual or a group. An asset is anything that has actual or potential value as an economic resource. Anything tangible or intangible that can be owned and produce a profit (turned into cash) is considered an asset. Tangible assets are physical items including inventory, buildings, trucks, or equipment. Intangible assets are not physical items, and include copyrights, trademarks, patents, stocks, bonds, accounts receivable, and financial goodwill (when a buyer purchases an existing company and pays more than it is worth, the excess is considered the goodwill amount). Both tangible and intangible assets work to build the owner’s financial portfolio. While this concept has been in play for more than a hundred years, recent developments have lead to several shifting variables worth considering. The following are recent management trends and some of the implications for asset investment.

The Globalization of the Market

Even as recently as 20 years ago, the majority of investments were made in U.S. based companies. As technology expanded our range of communication and information, our interest in investing in overseas companies expanded as well. Until recently, most investing in international assets was pooled into mutual funds. Those mutual funds were typically run by a manager who specialized in the country and made all of the decisions. However, the rapid development of previously underdeveloped markets, such as those in Eastern Asia, and the formation of the European Union, has made international investment less daunting. Recently there has been a large shift to investing in individual companies instead of the previously dominant international mutual funds. This allows the assets to be managed as the investor sees fit.

Use of Index Funds

The rise of technology has not only affected the global market, it has also affected the way we invest in our own stock market. There has been a large shift away from the fund manager driven investments of before and into index funds. Index funds are a group of investments that align with the index of a specific market, like the Dow Jones for instance. As they are primarily computer driven, index funds remove the need for an asset manager, which allows for advantages such as lower costs, turnovers, and style drift. They are also simpler to understand as they cover only the targeted companies and need only to be rebalanced once or twice a year.

Drop of Interest Rates

Traditionally, stocks and bonds were the ideal assets. However, with the severe drop in interest rates that has occurred over the past 7 or 8 years, many investors are looking to alternative assets. Bonds are not providing as steady returns as they used to, and the constantly changing risk and volatility of the stock market is turning those looking for higher returns towards alternative investments. These alternatives include hedge funds, private equity (stocks held in private companies), and real estate. These have become popular as they offer relatively greater returns in a shorter time frame. However, these alternatives also carry a higher long-term risks.

While these are all trends to take into consideration when examining your investments, the key to good asset management still lies in diversification. Any investment, no matter the type, comes with some degree of risk. The best solution to limit the risk is to spread out your investments over different types and reassess as needed. A balanced portfolio and good asset management leads to a happy investor.

Over the past few years, SEO has evolved faster than the previous decade. And this has made it harder for users to keep up with most recent updates. The launch of Penguin and Panda changed the way things worked in the past. In short, the way Google used to rank website has changed a lot. But if you want to reach your objectives, make sure you avoid some common SEO mistakes.

1. Avoiding RELEVANT CONTENT

In the start, Google said that it would rank websites that have the most relevant content on its first page. This statement is still valid. What has happened is that the search engine has become a lot better at achieving the objectives. In other words, now, Google is in better position to know what is relevant and what is not.

So, what you need to do is offer content that is relevant and avoid content is not relevant to your niche. Of course, the content should be informative and unique.

2. Following Tricks

People have been using many illegal ways of cheating the search engine algorithms for traffic, exposure and backlinks. Some of these tactics can still give you a temporary edge, but they are bad for your blog or website for the long-term.

So, you should avoid using low-quality, duplicate content, keyword stuffing, questionable redirects or cloaking for traffic. It may be tempting to go for these short-cuts, but they will just hurt your ranking, and may even get you banned for good.

3. Overloading your site

It has been a common perception that photos, videos and other graphics make a website more appealing for the viewers. To some extent, this perception is true; however, there should not be too much of it or your website will take ages to load. Your viewers don’t have all day to wait for your site to load. If your blog takes longer to load than other websites, the viewers will just click away. You will not only lose viewers, you will also lose ranking against other websites.

4. Making navigation difficult

Navigation is one of the most important factors for any website. It’s important for both viewers and search engines. Ideally, your viewers should be able to get the desired information from your website in one or two clicks. This may not be an easy task for you. So, what you can do is put important content on the main page of your site. This the users will be able to get what they want more easily.

5. Misunderstanding THE BACKLINK PROCESS

You may not want to be obsessed with obtaining a lot of backlinks. Although you don’t have to have backlinks from authority websites to establish your credibility, it helps a lot. However, what you need to do is try to get backclinks in a nature fashion. But it’s not a good idea to buy backlinks. This is one of the worst mistakes that you can make.

Quality content is the key to SEO success. Content doesn’t just mean your text contents. Images must be an integral part of your content strategy. At times, single images can be far more effective than your 1000 word blog post. It also helps you improve blog post quality and performance.

Images, Infographics, Videos and all other multimedia contents on your web page will help you in increasing the user engagement on your site and makes the visitors stay on your site for longer duration which helps in reducing the bounce rate.

Not just adding images to your contents, you should also optimize those images for better SEO performance. Optimization of images must be the one important aspect of your on-page SEO process.

If you are using images in your content, there are many aspects to be considered related to SEO.

Relevancy

Using images doesn’t mean that you should fill up your content with loads of pictures. You should use it only when it is required and also you should use images that are more relevant to your content.

Placement of your images is an another important aspect. It should be placed at a relevant location in your content according to your text content.

Use original images

Originality always helps in improving your user experience and your authority. Usage of original images will be helpful in improving your SEO performance. You can create original images with a graphic designer or you can take your own photographs with a quality camera. It is the reason top White hat SEO companies employ talented graphic designers for creating quality images.

If you are not able to employ an in-house graphic designer or if you are running out of time, you can always use high quality images from the web. But the important factor to be considered is it should be copyright free.

There are many tools available for getting copyright free images without any cost. The most popular ones are Unsplash, Flicker, Freeimages.

Image Size

Images are the main source for damping your site’s speed. And site speed is a crucial factor in your SEO performance. So, you should be extra cautious in using images without compromising your page speed.

It should not also affect your image quality, you should have a correct balance between. You can achieve this by reducing the file size by compression. You can use tools like Photoshop for compression.

File name

Search engine crawlers are visually impaired, it can even interrupt a 5000 word text content, but it cannot interrupt a single image and what the image is about. It is the reason using a keyword rich file names for your images is an important aspect in image optimization.

Google bots and other search engine crawlers can read your image’s file name and if it is named with your target keyword, it gives a signal to search engines about the image topic and thus helps your SEO performance.

For example, if your image is related to selling sports shoes, rather than using the file name as “IMG_89868″ you can use it as “Black_Tennis_Shoes”.

Alt text

Similar to the file name, search engines can read Alt text of the images. Alt text is known as “Aleternative Text”, is an HTML attribute used to describe the content of images.

You should use Alt text which is relevant to your images and it should be clear and descriptive. You can use your target keywords in the Alt text but be cautious about Keyword stuffing.

If you are not focusing on Image optimization, you are missing a huge opportunity in improving your SEO performance. You can use above mentioned best practices in your on-page optimization process.

American youth currently face challenging realities along their way to adulthood. With parents working longer hours and the absence of grandparents and other community adults who used to make up support systems, the intergenerational fabric of community has been frayed. Youth development strategies aim to reweave community fabric in a new way – one that takes the supports and opportunities young people should have, and re-institutes them in the context of young people’s realities today. While many of these realities are harsh ones, we know that young people themselves want to be involved in their communities. The importance of building positive youth/adult partnerships in this process cannot be stressed enough.

The mobilization effort is based on influencing three critical elements: information, attitudes, involvement. The transformation of each of these areas, both in the public and private domains, is a necessary condition for change. For example, in the area of information, the country is currently focused on collecting primarily negative youth information, e.g., teenage births, dropouts, and juvenile arrest rate. Inspiring a 180 degree shift, we need to collect information such as: average number of hours youth participate in after-school activities, computer to youth ratio in non-school hours, and the percentage of youth who hold part-time jobs. The three elements are intertwined, for how information is gathered and communicated impacts attitudes as well as how and if people choose to become involved.

Only through broad community commitment, strong public will, and diverse partnerships can youth development take root, go to scale, and be sustained over time. Ultimately, the mobilization must be supported by partnerships among all of the systems in a community that affect young people (i.e., education, corporations, health care, juvenile justice, religious groups, and recreation). To build these relationships and establish youth development infrastructures to improve developmental paths of adolescents will take at least 10 years.

Localities currently spending their resources on efforts to “fix youth” will need to pool, redirect, and increase their financial commitment to youth development. These additional dollars will ensure all youth equal access to supports and opportunities, especially youth living in economically distressed areas.

Our information on the services young people need, and use, is still hit or miss. Communities do not know what they have or what they need. They usually have no way to tell how well services are being used and what services need to be improved.

Good information is important for youth services for exactly the same reasons it is important for everything else. Accurate, accessible standardized information lets people find the services they need and use them effectively. It lets communities manage, evaluate and improve their services and determine the need for changing them, eliminating them, or developing new ones.

Many national efforts to measure outcomes presently use deficit-driven indicators to assess young people’s condition in society, such as teen pregnancy rates, juvenile crime numbers, and percentages of high school dropouts. Although these measures are important, they do not tell the whole story about young people’s experiences. Measures that reflect positive conditions and experiences of young people are also important.

The accelerated trend of the past decade toward empowering our nation’s young people to succeed has fostered a new awareness and commitment to this most valuable resource. Some basic questions are:

- How much do we currently spend?

- How much should we spend?

Some progress has been made through new initiatives in education finance reform and services integration, providing more effective delivery of social, health and educational services for children and youth from the classroom up to the government. This document establishes an initial framework and formula for assessing the financial resources and mechanisms necessary to move American society closer to this ideal. The following were found to be potential root causes of these trends in spending:

- Devaluation of adolescents.

- Lack of consensus on youth development.

- Lack of adequate and protected funding. Funds are not protected and dedicated in the manner necessary to sustain the long-term, comprehensive process that is youth development.

We can support the move toward the ideal by:

- Seeking new types of information.

- Building on the after-school momentum.

- Making a sustainable public investment.

Youth development is an investment that must be made by each sector of the wider community – public and private. Examination of the federal-state matching, local dedicated taxes an incentives for business and philanthropy could lead to models for providing adequate and sustainable funding for youth development. National intermediaries must work to cultivate this leadership at all levels of government, and at the grassroots, by creating constituencies.

Several states are taking the lead from California, Oregon and Illinois by offering state-sponsored retirement plans that encourage or require private sector employers to participate.

The plans are referred to as auto-IRAs because eligible workers are automatically enrolled, generally within 30 days of employment. The default contribution rate is typically 3-5% of a paycheck and the employee can stop, restart or transfer plan assets depending on their needs. Referred to as “public-private partnerships” by the Pew Charitable Trust, there is no cost to the employer. Proceeds are managed by a private financial firm management for a pre-determined fee. The plans are subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) like other sponsored pension and benefit plans.

This article provides an overview of the states that currently offer savings programs, as well as those that plan to do so in the future.

OregonSaves

Oregon was one of the first states to implement a savings program for employees of small businesses who are not otherwise eligible for a workplace sponsored pension plan. Titled OregonSaves, it is a state retirement program that is available to an employer or an individual planning for the future.

OregonSaves had almost $57 million in assets as of mid-2020. Employee contributions averaged $127 to $135 per month as of that time.

Enrollment is automatic for employees, with contributions being made through payroll deductions. Each employee account is portable and can be moved from one job to another.

All Oregon employers, regardless of employee size, must facilitate the State’s program for their employees if they do not offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan. The plan is working with small employers to make the process as simple as possible.

CalSavers

CalSavers is available to California workers whose employers do not offer a workplace retirement plan, self-employed individuals, and others who want to increase their savings. Plan participants contribute to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) that belongs to them.

California employers with more than 50 employees must register with CalSavers by June 30, 2021 if they do not already sponsor a retirement plan. Registration is available to all California employers with at least five employees.

The CalSavers program opened statewide in July 2019 and had $4.3 million in assets as of mid-2020. On average, participating employees contribute $105 to $120 monthly. Like the Oregon plan, the default savings rate is 5% of the employee’s pay and employees are automatically enrolled after 30 days of employment. They can stop, restart or transfer plan participation at any time if they change employers.

CalSavers Retirement Savings Program is designed to simplify employer participation with no employer fees, no fiduciary responsibility, and minimal ongoing responsibilities. Employers that fail to offer participation in the plan as required are subject to fines.

In May 2021, a federal appeals court in San Francisco dismissed a legal challenge to the CalSavers plan.

Illinois Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program

Illinois launched its Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program in 2018. It is a state-facilitated retirement program that is open to employees who work for an eligible employer as well as other employees who want to enroll independent of their employer. Approximately 32,000 Illinois employees saved $8.5 million in the first year of the Illinois Secure Choice program, according to state reports.

The Illinois Secure Choice account is a Roth IRA for the employee. The default savings rate is 5% of gross pay. Employees are automatically enrolled through payroll contributions after 30 days of employment. An employee can opt out at any time. Plan participants are charged a fee of 0.75% of assets per year ($0.75 for every $100 saved), which pays for program administration and operating expenses.

The Illinois Secure Choice had 5,544 registered employers as of May 2020. There are no fees for employers to facilitate the program and employers cannot make contributions to their employee accounts. Employers serve a limited role as a facilitator. As of November, 2019, employers with 25 or more employees that have been in business for two years or more are required to participate in the program. Employers that already offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan are exempt from this legislation.

New Jersey Secure Choice Savings

The “New Jersey Secure Choice Savings Act,” was signed into law in March 2019, with a two-year time frame scheduled to take effect in March 2021.

The Act requires employers that have been in business for two years and have 25 or more employees to participate in a retirement savings program administered through automatic payroll deductions. Private sector employees of businesses of any size are able to participate in the retirement savings program. Smaller or newer employers could join voluntarily. Failure to comply will result in fines to the employer.

Employees will be automatically enrolled at the leve of a 3% paycheck contribution. The annual contribution maximum is $6,000 for those under 50 years old, and $7,000 for those 50 or older.

Connecticut Secure Choice Savings Plan

Connecticut employers with five or more employees must offer a retirement plan to employees, and private employers with four or fewer employees may choose to do so. Employees are auto-enrolled within 120 days of employment, and employees must be notified of their rights within 30 days. Employers are not permitted to make contributions to the program.

The Connecticut Retirement Security Authority, a quasi-public agency, was formed in 2016 to oversee the program. The state estimates that as many as 600,000 employees may benefit from the plan.