Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Facts about Papaya

The importance of health and nutrition can not be emphasized any further. We keep coming across world of information pertaining to different aspects of health and fitness. One of the most nutritious fruit is papaya. It is also a commonly seen fruit and available in almost every part of the country. Papaya plant is surprisingly not a tree but rather an overgrown herb. This herb is scientifically known as herbaceous perennial. It is found in almost all the tropical destinations. Central America especially Mexico is said to be the birthplace of this delicious fruit.

Papaya offers many nutritional values and foremost among them is in digestion. Papaya contains papain that helps in breaking down the protein and consequently that proves tremendously useful in digestion. Papaya is also considered wonderful for the people who want to lose weight. So all those people struggling with weight issues, start nibbling on this nutritional masterpiece. Apart from that papayas are known for having huge amount of folate, vitamin C and potassium. Other crucial things contained within papaya are, lycopene, vitamin A, carotenoids lutein (very important for eyes), vitamin E and zeaxanthin.

Papaya scores heavily in terms of its nutritional values. Compared to other fruits, it is definitely a nutritional masterpiece. It is recommended to eat 2 cups of papaya on a daily basis. One can use them in salad or blend them into sauces or salad dressings or even salsa.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Market Cap and Free Float Method

Most of you must have come across data pertaining to top companies. Many institutions and prestigious magazines publish such data every now and then. While deciding about a company’s position and size, few parameters are used. One of them and the most common one is market capitalization. Other parameters could be sales figure, net profit, or gross profit. Talking about market capitalization, it basically refers to multiplication of number of shares of a company and market value of each share. For example, if company X has total 1 million shares and per share value is Rs 50 then market capitalization of company X will be 50 multiplied by 1 million and that comes to Rs 50 million.

If we talk about market capitalization in terms of index then all the stocks listed in the index has a certain weight attached to it. This weight depends upon the market capitalization of the particular company. More the weightage of a company, higher the chances of it impacting the index. Also known as full market capitalization methodology. One more term that will help us knowing this concept even better is free float weightage. It refers to the fact that not the entire lots of shares are taken into consideration while giving weightage to the company in the index.

That’s because not all the shares are for trading. A good percentage of the shares are unavailable for trading because they are held by promoters or FII or government. In such case, the number of shares available for trade is multiplied by share prices and that’s how weightage of the stock is decided. India stock exchange; BSE use free-float method whereas NIFTY uses market cap method.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Stock Exchange- Advance Information

Previous article covered basics of stock exchange. To continue with our learning, let’s talk about few other interesting facts. Stock market is an indicator of price movement of the equity market. Whenever you hear that Sensex is rising it means prices of the stocks are going up. Now you must be wondering why the prices rise or fall? There could be few valid reasons for that. There will be news from macro-perspective. These news could be of terrorist attack, nuclear attack, war declaration, interim budget, news about monsoon, change in government etc. known as index news, these developments can make movements of index very volatile. All the above mentioned news can affect prices of all the stocks listed in the stock exchange. In popular terms, this is known as sentiments of the market or market sentiments. For example, when terrorists attacked Taj hotel in Mumbai, stock prices fell.

Stock specific news is different from index news. The former one refers to particular news about a company, its financial results, product launch, and news of collaboration or tax exemptions by government etc. such news have great power to affect the price movement of a particular stock. To maintain balance in price movements, the authorities make sure to pick stocks from diverse sectors.

That ensures even if particular news pertaining to one sector is causing heavy price movements in stocks of that sector, other stocks are not getting affected by it. That way balance is maintained and Sensex saves itself from forced manipulation.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Sensex – Basic Knowledge



Stock market has become an important part of several people. A robust stock market is indicative of a country’s rising wealth. Sky-rocketing stock exchange symbolizes power and growth of an economy. From India’s point of view Bombay Stock Exchange is the barometer of our financial health and performance indicator of hundreds of companies listed over there. Also known as Sensex, it has witnessed a topsy-turvy ride in last one year after 4-5 years of uninterrupted rise.

There are few not so known facts about Sensex. Let’s take a look at few of those interesting facts. However, to begin with Sensex is nothing but an abbreviated version of The Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index. Sensex along with Nifty is most renowned terms in popular stock market. Nifty denotes National Stock Exchange whereas Sensex is the standard benchmark index of Indian stock market. Nifty is also known as S&P CNX Nifty in official terms. Nifty comprises of top 50 stocks whereas Sensex is comprised of 30 stocks.

Stocks represented in Sensex and Nifty belongs to diverse sectors and all of them are shining lights of their respective industries. Index committee also known as stock selection committee chooses these stocks based on market capitalization and industry standing. However there are few basic conditions to be fulfilled before getting picked in the index. One of them is chosen company must be among the top 150 companies in terms of trade number. Trade number signifies both number of shares sold and purchased apart from average value of trade. This data is considered over a period of one year.