Universal Healthcare in the United States Term Paper

Universal Healthcare in the United States - Term Paper Example To be noted is that as a concept, universal health care does not simply imply the coverage of individuals for all risks i.e. one-size-fits-all conceptualization. Rather as Navarro (1989) portrays, it is determined by three fundamental dimensions – those covered; services that are covered, and what amount of total costs (accrued), are covered. Health care systems are in a majority of states funded through mixed models of funding. Generally, revenues accrued from taxation do compose the primary funding source, with most countries supplementing the revenues with specific levies. This is essentially by way of a mix of private and public contributions thereby ‘spreading’ the costs over a larger population. Compulsory insurance is a key avenue of enhancing universal healthcare, usually enforced by way of legislation in given jurisdictional arenas. This may thereafter, necessitate citizens to purchase their insurance; but in many cases (in effect), it is the government that provides such insurance, as part of its social welfare responsibilities. Examples of compulsory insurance contexts are exemplified by both the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the Swiss Healthcare system. In the U.S., the crusade for some form of universal healthcare (government-funded) is traceable to the 20th Century with advocacy of the same facing different obstacles despite close success. While other developed states had initiated some form of social insurance, proponents in the U.S. continued facing hurdles, especially as a result of the federal government (then), leaving each state to its own doing. The different states in turn left such matters to voluntary and/ or private programs, based perhaps on the lack of national legislation. It is however during the Progressive Era that major undertakings took place, with reformers working on enhancing social conditions for the growing working class (Navarro, 1989). Unlike

Strategic Capability of Organization Assignment

Strategic Capability of Organization - Assignment Example The marketing strategy and orientation focus on innovation, strategic capabilities and competitive environment, general business environment of the company, and the political, environmental, economic, social and technological factors would be considered along with the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the business environment. Sony is a leader in the global electronics industry and global market as its global presence is seen in all markets across different regions of the world. Sony has global competitors and different competitors for its wide ranging products from cameras to cell phones, computers to MP3 players. In case of mobile phones, Nokia would be its toughest competitor whereas for MP3 players, Apple would be its closest competitor, for computers and laptops, Toshiba and Compaq would be the other players in the market and Samsung also remains one of its major competitors in all other product areas. The research and development unit of Sony is studied here and the R&D unit of the company would relate to marketing and strategic needs of the organization and recommendations are provided on what changes should be made within the strategic management of the company so that maximum productivity and performance could be attained within the specific business environment (Bradbury and Kissel, 2006). SWOT Analysis - Competitive Advantages The strengths of Sony or its competitive advantages would be its brand name and strong brand presence (Kerckhove, 2002) and its extensive advertising and marketing strategy that highlights innovative products around the world in accordance with the needs of the global markets. Sony is focused on meeting the needs of consumers of all ages and cultures and especially focuses on meeting the needs of the youth by constantly upgrading its technology to meet the demands of the market and to keep up with a rapidly changing electronics market. The focus of the company is on innovation (Harryson, 1997), well developed and well equipped R&D facilities, talented product engineers and managers and the company's leadership and established position in a global market. Capability Gaps The weaknesses or capability gaps would be its flaws in its corporate strategy that may not always be culturally sensitive, very established competitors and continuous new product development initiatives by competitors can leave Sony behind, higher costs of Sony products may not be within reach of a large consumer base and fluctuating economies in certain countries where Sony has made its foray would be a major disadvantage. Opportunities for Sony will be entry into new markets and focusing on continuous and new innovative products and product development through R&D that can give it an edge over competitors (Arimura, 1999). The threats of the company would be its competitive environment and in product areas such as mobile phones, Nokia is its primary competitor, in computers and laptops, Toshiba and Compaq are close competitors, in MP3 music players, Apple seems to have a leading role in the market with its

The Affordable Care Act (frequently known as Obamacare) Essay

The Affordable Care Act (frequently known as Obamacare) - Essay Example The Affordable Act provides improved opportunities for the already insured citizens and offers affordable plans and healthcare services for those who have been uninsured up till now. Extension of Medicaid services in conjunction with the Child Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) and addition of new reforms improves the availability of health services to families and for individuals. Medicaid is a health program that provides health coverage to children, pregnant women, parents, seniors and disabled individuals. The Affordable Act reaches out to treat the States of America equally and simplifying the enrolment for the families and individuals. Under the Title II, Subtitle B, Section 2101, 2102 â€Å"Enhanced Support for the Children’s Health Insurance Program† is focused in improving the federal budget for the health services provided to the children (U.S Department of Health & Human Services). This includes the increase in federal financial participation for the Child Health Insurance Program and technical corrections. The Affordable Act also focuses on the simplification of the CHIP enrolment plan through Medicaid according to the Title II, Subtitle C, Section 2201, 2202 (U.S Department of Health & Human Services). This reform allows the hospitals to make presumptive eligibility determinations for ass Medicaid eligible populations and simplifies the enrolment and coordination with the State Health Insurance Exchanges (U.S Department of Health & Human Services). The extension of Child Health Insurance Plan allows a new group of children to become eligible for the health care services which is a good source of preventive medicine and public health support for the children. The health plan provides the services of vaccinations, routine check-ups, emergency room visits, dental care, laboratory and X-ray facilities and inpatient and outpatient hospital care. The Affordable Act introduced by

High school diploma Essay Example for Free

High school diploma Essay Did you know that education in school is really important? Many parents believe that education is important because it leads to a degree which grants you a good job. With an education you can get a steady pay check. With that pay check you will get away to financial independence as an adult. Why is Education So Important? he first thing that strikes me about education is knowledge gain. Education gives us knowledge of the world around us. It develops in us a perspective of looking at life. It helps us build opinions and have points of view on things in life. People debate over the subject of whether education is the only thing that gives knowledge. Some say, education is the process of gaining information about the surrounding world while knowledge is something very different. They are right. But then, information cannot be converted into knowledge without the catalyst called education. Education makes us capable of interpreting things rightly. It is not just about lessons in textbooks. It is about the lessons of life. Did you know that education in school is really important? School and education help people you understand beyond the world around them. Education helps ones immediate family, area, region, country, culture, race, or civilization. These different subjects open up information and knowledge. An important aspect of education is learning how to learn in order differentiate fact from fiction. Education is important because it equips us with all that is needed to make our dreams come true. Education opens doors of brilliant career opportunities. It fetches better prospects in career and growth. Every employer of today requires his prospective employees to be well educated. He requires expertise. So, education becomes an eligibility criterion for employment into any sector of the industry. We are rewarded for exercising the expertise required for the field we venture. We are weighed in the market on the basis of our educational skills and how well we can apply them. Education brings about economic wealth, political stability and social prosperity; all these are hallmarks of a prosperous society. It can therefore be said that education playas an important role if a society is to be successful. Tertiary education is an important aspect in the development of any society that considers or aspires to be modern. It is by far the best investment that a nation or an individual can make in its youth or oneself respectively. Educated people are in a better position to contribute to the development of their country; these educated individuals get employment opportunities that give them satisfaction and also earn some form of respect among their work mates. It also plays an important role in the integration of a society in that by interacting with people from various areas, it will raise different issues that people in rural areas are facing thereby promoting knowledge and understanding of these areas Life is nothing without education? Life without education is like living in the streets. Without education youll become lost. You will not have a guaranteed future. You will no go home ridding your favorite car to your Own home. By learning your basic alphabets youll work your way through to have a professional career. Therefore with out Education to school you will not learn at all. Life is never without education. In societies without formal schools, parents pass skills on to children. Education starts before you ever go to school and goes on after you finish school. That said, formal education is a great way to ensure that every child knows what is most necessary to live in a particular society. Without education you will be an illiterate person your children in the future will come up to you and you’re not going to know how to answer them with a right answer. Education will help build your own perspective. Schools are the place you school of started how to pronounce and count. Importance of education is needed in order to succeed in today’s world. In order to receive education you must go through some process. Your first process is to graduate from high school with your diploma. The next step is to attend college to obtain a degree in a trade that you would like to pursue. Without education you wouldn’t get good pay or promotion that you deserve. However, some people feel that they can get by in life without education, sadly that is not true. If you would like at the graphic at the bottom you will see that the higher the education you have the more money you can make. Education is important to have in today’s society. Importance of education able you to have a good job security and knowledge of your field supporting the hard work a person put into there education. Overall, school is the basic start that will drive you to your future. With knowledge youll get the sense of pride that you know must of the things. Education will help brighten your children’s future. 66% of the US population has a high school diploma or high. You should be amongst these people.

I Know What You Did Last Summer :: essays research papers

1) Julie, Ray, Helen, and Barry are four close friends, Julie and Ray being a couple and Barry and Helen also being one. Being high school students, they went late one night up to a clearing in the forest to hang out. When driving home, they had been a little drunk and were still kissing, they ran over a ten year old kid, David Gregg, who was riding a bicycle. Ray had been driving. The four kept driving until they reached a telephone, where an anonymous ambulance was called for help for the child. The four formed a pact as to keep the incident between them and not to anyone else. Julie and Ray had been against it, but agreed and made it. After that happened, Julie and Ray isolated themselves from the rest of the group. Julie, normally a highly school activity involved social girl, turned to studying and working hard for her senior year, having a new boyfriend named Bud. Ray totally fled the scene, moving to be carefree in California for a year. Helen and Barry remained a couple, Bar ry going to the local University and Helen being the channel 5 Golden Girl, or weather reporter. The real plot of the story begins with Julie receiving a note at home simply stating: â€Å"I know what you did last summer.† She gets upset over it and after not talking to her for a year since the incident, calls Helen to talk to her. Helen arranges a meeting for the three, but they all convince each other that it was just a kid pulling a prank. That blows over until Ray finally shows up, and upon finding an apartment, is mailed the article about the incident. Ray and Julie take a drive to talk about the note and article, and Julie convinces Ray to take her to see David’s parents. Not confess, just meet and ask about. They arrived at the house and rung the doorbell a few times, only to meet Megan, the sister of David. She told Julie, while Ray was off â€Å"calling for help for their car†, that David’s mother was put in a hospital due to an unstable mental s tate, her father staying by her side. Her older brother was off and out of the house. Anyway, as they left, Ray notes that Megan was hanging up men’s shirts to dry and the house’s paint looked fairly new – and in places that Megan, who was short, couldn’t reach, even with a ladder.

Shakespeare with Professor Ken Tomkins

In at least four plays of the Shakespeare Canon, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Richard II, and Romeo and Juliet, the function of class structure and economics governs the conduct of the characters and provides a central conflict that moves each story towards it's climax. Shakespeare wrote these plays with the social class system in mind. Audiences from all economic levels of society viewed these plays, which included characters from each social set as well. The economic fortunes of certain classes is influenced by life at court and the political and social commentaries which are imbedded in particular plays reflect the injustices which were common practice during those times. Dutiful daughters, regarded as second-class citizens, rebel against advantageous marriages, kingdoms are overthrown, commoners discuss royal figures with derision, and characters reject court life and tyranny. Economics is a fine web that supports different characters and the destinies they are to fulfill. One not born to an economically advantaged world cannot fulfill that destiny. 1 We, as audience, are invited to court to learn the mannerisms of the nobility and we experience banishment into the â€Å"green world†2 countryside, with its resulting restoration of social order. Audience Audience is one key to understanding the function of class and economics in William Shakespeare's plays. We generally understand that he wrote his plays for economic gain as well as for artistic expression; therefore, we cannot afford to overlook his audience, and the potential impact they had upon his writing style. His audience was comprised of the three-tiered social structure and there had to be something in each play to charm them all. Class and economics determined the set-up of the theaters in that time, so it is not an issue that could be ignored by this playwright; rather he echoes it in his works. Separation from the masses was assured by the seating arrangements. The top tiers were reserved for royalty and the middle areas were for the landed gentry, while the floor seats where the â€Å"groundlings† viewed the proceedings resemble our modern-day mosh pits. In that time, it would have been unthinkable for the lowest class to be seated in seats above the other social strata and it is interesting that this seating arrangement has shifted over the centuries. Shakespeare made sure to guarantee his patron base by appealing to the people who financed his plays. Frequently the most important roles were kings and queens or nobles. The acting out of the schemes that take place in court life was undoubtedly familiar and welcome to members of that class. Shakespeare targeted women as consumers because they are historically strong patrons of the arts, while men probably enjoyed gambling and carousing more. In that patriarchal society, class, and expectations restricted women's actions. As characters in Shakespeare's dramas, they challenged their long- accepted roles. The â€Å"groundlings† were satisfied because they, like our society today, liked to see the nobility in disarray. There is an entire sub-culture of gossip publications and news shows that deal exclusively with the nobility of our time, Hollywood actors, and sports personalities. Much interest was generated to the same end in Shakespeare's time. The peasant class thrived on scandal that involved the nobility. Shakespeare made sure to include as much court-inspired strife as was possible, without ostracizing that particular set of patrons. He was able to get away with it because the lords and ladies, the middle-class, enjoyed gossip even more that the plebeians did. In As You Like It, and Richard II, he portrays the usurpers in an unflattering light, while the true Duke and King respectively, gain the audiences pity. This is a very delicate matter, groundlings can enjoy watching nobility fall, and the nobility can watch the usurpers get their own back. The plays satisfy a variety of audiences. Class Conflict Class conflict is a function of Shakespeare's work because, without it, there is no conflict to be resolved. It is the driving force behind many of his plays. Conflicts always start in the court setting, and cannot be resolved until the natural order of each monarchy is reinforced or put back in place. There can be no subversion at the end. The role of class in Romeo and Juliet reflects royal determinations regarding the family rivalry between the Capulets and the Montagues. The play opens with an angered prince and closes with one. Apparently, with both families on the same higher social level, the fighting between them is not something that should happen at this altitude. They are playing out their feud at the street level, which is demeaning to both families. â€Å"From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. † (1. P. 5). The word, â€Å"unclean,† suggests that they have tarnished their images. The prince re-emphasizes this image in his admonishment, â€Å"Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel-â€Å"(1. 1. 82). The prince is a minor character in this tragedy; he has not many lines to speak. It is clear to all that he controls the social order in the following quote. â€Å"And then will I be general of your woes, And lead you even to death. â€Å"(5. 3. 219). The drama that occurs in his kingdom is subject to Royal will and dictates. A Midsummer Night's Dream starts in the human court and ends with the balance of power in the Fairy court. Social order always returns to whoever was the rightful owner. We can make an argument that in the end of Richard II, the wrong king is in power, but we must remember that Richard himself upset the divine right of succession by stealing away Bullingbrook's inheritance and name. Richard upset the class system, and he pays the price. It is interesting that these Henriad plays focus on placing the â€Å"Ideal Christian King† in power. Richard, while the object of pity in the end, obviously was not such a king because he was the catalyst for change, and he paved the way for the â€Å"New Man. â€Å"3 The fortunes of all in Richard II depend upon who is in power; indeed, the change of power changes not only the economics, but also the life status of the characters Bushy and Green. This theme is still prevalent today, the change in power structure extends down the power line, only now instead of losing one's life, administrative employees lose their positions, which in political life, is the death of one's career for a time. Class, Social Rank & Freedom Class serves the function of determining degrees of wealth and freedom in many plays. Mapped out, it looks something like the following: 1. Royalty & Nobility- (ruling-class) they enjoy great power and authority that is limited only by the expectations of their subjects. The magnificence of these offices is sadly linked to the loss of freedom. They are subject to the severe maxims that govern this class, which include their personal conduct, lines of succession, and ability to marry. The role that government fulfills also affects the economic stability of their subjects. When speaking to one another they use the more formal poetry, and when they speak to someone below their station, they tend to resort to a simpler prose form of speech. As rulers, they are also targets, everyone will come out of the woodwork to overthrow them or create stress for them. Duke Sr. in As You Like It, holds forth, † Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? † Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court? † (2. 1. 2-4). 2. Middle-ranks- (landed gentry and merchants) The survival of the middle ranks depends upon the survival of the highest ranks, that is changes in power are reflected at this level because they are the supporting class. As gentry, their lives can be forfeit or spared, their lands can be confiscated or returned, and their titles bestowed or revoked. As merchants or citizens, they can experience economic changes that can enhance or deplete their fortunes. Their speech patterns also vary according to their conversations, just as we use different language with our bosses than we do with our peers, so did they use prose when speaking with lower classes and poetry with those in the upper ranks. 3. Lower-ranks- (peasants and laborers)- This class of society â€Å"enjoys the most freedom and their lives are the least bruised† by whoever is in power, as they never alter their position in society. No matter who is in power, their privileges and fortunes do not change. They have the least expectations placed upon them and do not have to strive to impress any one outside of their social class other than the people who employ them (Reynolds). 4 In each of these plays, the complicating action starts in the court as the ruling classes that will affect the families and country around them, make catalytic decisions. Since Shakespeare introduces most of his characters in the first act, the complicating actions hinge upon the fact that the primary characters never resist the opportunity to make a better outcome for themselves. Luckily, they forge ahead on their ill-advised paths; otherwise, there would be no end to the first plateau of each play. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, we have two sets of Royals: the King and Queen of the fairies, and the Duke, Theseus and soon-to-be Duchess of Athens. Egeus needs permission to send his wayward daughter to a nunnery or her death, for her refusal to marry Demetrius. Her refusal is a blatant upset in the social order, mirrored in the fairy world by Tatania disobeying Oberon. Only when the conflict is resolved in the fairy world can it be resolved in the human world. 5 In this particular play, the Fairy King and Queen are the uppermost level of classes. Their actions are affecting those classes below. The decision made by the Duke forces the young characters departure from the court to the â€Å"green world. † The tension begins with his proclamation: â€Å"For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself To fit your fancies to your fathers will; Or else the law of Athens yields you up (Which by no means we may extenuate) To death or vow of single life. â€Å"(1. 1. 120). â€Å"Extenuate† is a very important word in this passage, as it explains the rules that the upper classes must live by. Theseus seems to care about Hermia, and almost appears to be pleading with her to make the right decision, because he cannot mitigate the rules. Bound by the traditions of his office, he cannot resolve the problem. Once the Fairy world is back in order, and the lovers are in love with their rightful partners, then only can Theseus pardon their behavior. It is an empty pardon, for the highest ruling class already resolved the conflict. Another line that reveals the importance of class is, â€Å"Know of your youth, examine well your blood. â€Å"(1. 1. 68). Said by Theseus to Hermia, it is telling that bloodlines are important and come with a specific set of expectations that must be fulfilled. Hermia and Juliet struggle from the dictums of their class, they are pre-destined to execute their duty under the patriarchal system, and they go to extreme measures to escape their restrictive environments. Juliet blithely wishes that Romeo would deny his name and fate, because she wants to eat her cake and still have it. If he were to refuse his name, she could avoid the â€Å"dutiful daughter† restraints, and retain her true love. Montague wishes his daughter to have a few more years on the planet before she is married off, but he submits to Paris' request because of the social climbing nature of society. Both he and his wife wish to make the most advantageous match for their daughter, and would marry her off immediately after the death of a kinsman no matter how socially unseemly it is. The nurse character in Romeo & Juliet appears strangely unbound by the traditions of this level of society. Her place in the family is assured, as she has raised Juliet. Her place in the class system is as a â€Å"Natural†. She speaks of sex and practical matters and is viewed as a â€Å"bawdy character,† according to Tomkins. 6 Lady Montague seems to have a bit of trouble deciding weather or not this woman is worthy of joining in on family discussions of Juliet's future, but the nurse feels confident enough to meddle in their affairs. Expectations of this character are mixed according to the players on the stage. Tatania also strays from the expectations of fairy society by taking a clown with an Asses head as lover, but this was not by choice, but rather by trickery. This is a blatant upset of social order. Bottom represents the lower human kingdom, the lower class, and the lowest of all possible levels, an animal used for the most menial tasks. Bottom, while not the lowest class of human, but close to it, is affected by the decisions of King Oberon and for a brief while enjoys being pampered, cosseted and loved by the Fairy Queen. As an actor, Bottom's economic fortune is dependant upon the Duke picking the play of â€Å"Pyramus and Thisby† to view as his wedding's entertainment. We never find out if the rustics are paid for their work, but it is suggested that they gain something of value for being chosen. Banishment Romeo is destroyed by his banishment from Verona; it represents his banishment from his economic base as well as his social milieu. He equates banishment with death, â€Å"And world's exile is death; then banished Is death misterm'd. (3. 3. 21). Banishment suggests rustication, or the stripping away of all economic and family scaffolding, typically in a country setting. In Shakespeare, all of important society lives in cities, certainly not in the country. 7 In As You Like It, not only is the Duke exiled from his duchy, he is exiled from comfort and he is leading the life of a different social order. Shakespeare, by his choice of speeches, shows us that court life is truly preferable in terms of creature comforts. Orlando complains of his treatment by his brother Oliver, † For my part, he keeps me rustically at home, † and â€Å"Stays me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an Ox? â€Å"(1. 1. 7-11). Duke Sr. complains in a roundabout way, † Here feel we not the penalty of Adam, The seasons difference, as the icy fang And churlish chiding of the winter's wind-â€Å"(2. 1. 7). The symbols of office are of important economic importance in Richard II and represent something of a crisis to Bullingbrook. Without the symbols of office, he is not truly king. He needs to secure those symbols because without them his character is still one exiled from his country and disinherited from his family line. He is a man without any social class at all without that crown (4. 1. 175-80). The young gentry in A Midsummer Night's Dream act strangely once they are out of the court setting. They, under the spell of the fairy kingdom, fight and act rudely towards one another. Lysander said, â€Å"Get you gone you dwarf; You minimus, of hind'ring knot-grass made; You bead, you acorn. It appears that with the removal of the trappings of court, or higher society, former members of high society experience a breakdown of manners and class characteristics (3. 2. 327-9). The four plays that are discussed in this essay have countless references to the expectations of social class; however, it would take a much longer document to include them all. For our purposes, it is clear from the examples above, that Shakespeare deliberately used social class and economics as a function to move story lines along and to satisfy the needs of his audience. According to Tomkins, â€Å"Silliness is not a class thing, it crosses gender and nobility lines. 8 The role that the ruling class played is most important, because it usually establishes the outcome of all the players in each performance. In the end, each character fulfills their own personal destiny according to the dictums of their identifiable economic sphere. It is also clear that Shakespeare's audience was aware of, and possible approved the preference of the court over the â€Å"green world. † If the â€Å"green world† were a preferable locale, story lines would end in that vicinity.

Seeing the World Through a Broken Heart

The world is a pit of suffering and pain yet we see it not. All across the world, people are suffering from injustice, oppression, and from other afflictions caused by our very own brothers yet we feel not these things, least of all, know of them.A worse thing we have done is make ourselves be the very cause of their pain as if our indifference is not enough a mockery. We do not know their plight, we cannot see their sufferings, we cannot feel their pain all because our hearts remain unbroken.We think the world is confined to the corners in which we move. We have learned to deafen our ears and harden our hearts to the grave injustice and oppression that our brothers across the continents go through everyday. We have downplayed their sufferings with cliches and punchlines we learned from self-help books and by doing so, our hearts do not turn to see their reality.And then, a single movie, carrying a powerful message, turns our worlds upside down. It breaks our hearts to millions of pi eces and opens the eyes of our hearts. We witness the realities of this world and we get shaken. We start to stir up inside.We begin to ponder intently and thoughtfully about what the world goes through, we start to philosophize and discuss within ourselves who we are and what man is and what does man do. We start to wander through life's realities and we always ask why. Our hearts have been broken and now see things in their most naked honest state, and so, it refuses to rest.What is a broken heart?A broken heart simply is an honest heart. It is a heart which is not blinded with fantasies but clearly sees reality as it is. It is a heart that looks at people through a clear glass and not through a rose-tinted window. It is a heart which does not deceive itself with promptings taught by the learned but contents itself only with what it has witnessed.Hotel RwandaHotel Rwanda pounded on my chest like a jackhammer with a deadline. It crushed my heart down to its basic components and for ced me to adopt a whole new perspective about things. I never knew that a world such as that I have seen in the movie existed. I thought people from Africa suffered only from hunger.I never knew of a racial prejudice of that magnitude. I thought only Saddam Hussein was guilty of racial cleansing. How could have I been so base so as to be ignorant of what our brothers go through? I have never seen man so vicious. I have never seen man treat their brothers as â€Å"cockroaches† all because they are of a different race.My heart was shaken and the scenes remain vivid in my mind long after I have seen the movie. Often, in solitude, I contemplate on the movie and I ponder on why man such as the Hutus will do such a thing as they have done. Their skin color was the same.The only reason for the discrimination which I could gather from the movie is that the Tutsis were taller and had the more handsome features. And I ask: what is that?! Perhaps, it is envy.As I continue to ponder, I h ave come to believe that envy really is one viable reason for racial discrimination. The Great Holocaust, which executed hundreds of thousands of Jews, was inspired by envy. Aryanism is built upon envy over the chosen people of God.So perhaps too, the thing that happened in Hotel Rwanda was inspired by envy. The Hutus were envious of the Tutsis because the latter had better physical features. It is a shallow reason but it is enough to cause man to want to eliminate an entire tribe of people.Envy is the second of the seven deadly sins. And rightly so. The movie has proven how deadly it is. What does envy do to man? Among lovers it has caused a lot of broken relationships, unstable marriages, and even manslaughter.Stories of lovers shooting each other because of jealousy have passed by our ears millions of times. Among families, it has caused dissension.Families get broken up because of envy. Envy has caused brothers to hate their own brothers. It is noteworthy that the first murder c ommitted was inspired by envy. The Bible account of Cain and Abel contains the story of the first murder where Cain killed his own brother, Abel, because of envy. Among friends, envy has caused contempt. Among classes and races of people, it has caused discrimination.

The Best Way to Read the SAT Writing Passages

The Best Way to Read the SAT Writing Passages SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips The format of the SAT Writing section is very unique, and you may not have taken a test with a similar format. To reach your target score, you're going to need a specific approach to tackle the passage-based questions. In this article, I will explain the various approaches you can take when reading the SAT Writing passages, and I'll guide you on how to identify the strategy that will work best for you. Why Do You Need a Specific Approach to Reading SAT WritingPassages? The format of the SAT Writing section is unique and determining which approach will work best for you will help you combat likely mistakes. Some students only look at the underlined portions of sentences without understanding their context. Another common mistake is to rush through the section and make careless mistakes. Having a tested approach will help you maximize your efficiency. Regardless of the approach you take, you should always read the complete sentence that contains the underlined portion. Also, you have to be consistent. Once you decide the best approach for you, use that approach on all your practice questions. Omar Reyes/Flickr The Top 4Strategies for Reading SAT Writing Passages These are the different approaches you can take to reading the passages. #1: Paragraph-by-Paragraph For this approach, you read each paragraph, and then you answer the questions in that paragraph. The benefits of using this approach are that you’ll understand what’s going on in the passage before you answer questions, and you’ll be forced to read full sentences before answering questions. The main drawback of this approach is that it can be time-consuming. I recommend trying this approach on a practice section and seeing if you’re able to finish the section in 35 minutes. If you only need a couple extra minutes to finish, this approach can still work for you because you'll probably speed up with repeated practice. If you don't feel comfortable or confident being able to finish using this approach, you may want to use one of the other strategies I'll discuss. Let's go through how the paragraph-by-paragraph approach works using a practice SAT Writing section. If you were using the paragraph-by-paragraph approach on this section, you would read the entire paragraph up until â€Å"conversation† and then do question 31. This approach would work well here because question 31 requires an understanding of the paragraph. Then, you would read the next paragraph before attempting to answer questions 32 and 33. On the SAT, you would repeat this process for each paragraph in each passage. In case you're curious, I've provided the answers to these questions. Answers:31. C, 32. A, 33. A Paragraphetzel (Windell Oskay/Flickr) #2: Answer as You Go In this approach, you read through the passage, and when you come to an underlined portion, you read past it to the end of the sentence. Then you answer the question before continuing. The benefits of this strategy are that it’s straightforward and fast. It’s a good strategy to try if you find yourself running out of time on the paragraph-by-paragraph approach. The biggest drawback of this strategy is that you may have trouble answering questions about paragraphs and transitions that require a more thorough understanding of the passage. Personally, I like to use the answer as you go approach, but when I come to a question that requires me to read more of the passage, I continue reading until I have enough information to correctly answer the question. You can also save the questions that require a more complete understanding of the passage until the end when you’ve answered the other questions and have completely read the passage. If you use the answer as you go strategy, make sure you read until the end of sentences before answering questions. Here’s how to use this approach correctly: If you used this approach, you would read the paragraph up until â€Å"machines† before doing question 26. After completing question 26, you would read the next sentence until â€Å"presentations.† Then you would do question 27. Finally, you would read the final sentence of the paragraph and then do question 28. For question 28, you may need to refer to the earlier paragraphs or the paragraph that follows to eliminate answer choices. However, for this particular question, because you will have read the entire passage up until this point, you can correctly answer this question without doing any additional reading. While this approach is quicker, it can lead to more errors if you’re unable to recognize when you need to do more reading to correctly answer questions. Answers:26. A, 27. B, 28. C #3: Sentence-by-Sentence In the sentence-by-sentence approach, you only read sentences that include underlined portions. This strategy has significant drawbacks because you won’t comprehend the passage as well, and that may make answering some of the writing style questions that require a more thorough understanding of the passage rather difficult. I don’t recommend using this approach if you’re shooting for a 650 or above on Reading and Writing. However, if you find yourself running out of time using other approaches or you’re getting distracted by irrelevant details, this could be a good approach for you. Just make sure you’re reading the entire sentence. Let’s take a look at this approach in practice: Read the first sentence and then do questions 34 and 35. Then read the next sentence and do 36. After, you can skip the sentence that starts with "Planned" and read the sentence containing 37 that starts with â€Å"It also reinforces.† Again, if you encounter a question that requires a more thorough understanding of the passage, you can skip it and come back to it later, or you can read more of the passage until you know enough to answer the question. If you’re using this strategy, follow this approach for each question in every passage. Answers:34. D, 35. A, 36. D, 37. A #4: Passage First The last approach is to skim the entire passage, and then go back through using sentence-by-sentence to answer the questions. This strategy is the most thorough, and it can be helpful if you find yourself having trouble on the organization or big picture questions. However, this approach can take too much time and be trouble than it’s worth.If you're a fast reader and have the most difficulty with the organization and content-based questions, this approach can be beneficial. If you struggle with time or feel more comfortable answering the questions as you read the passage, then this isn't the ideal approach for you. How to Find the Right Strategy and Use It Effectively Here are the steps to go through to figure out which approach to use. Step #1: Try Paragraph-by-Paragraph For most students, this approach will yield the best results. It may not be the best one for you, but try it first to see how it works. Step #2: Analyze Why You’re Missing Questions to Decide on the Best Approach After you finish your practice section, go over it very carefully; figure out why you got questions wrong and where you struggled. Make sure you know how to review practice tests. Think about these questions to decide which approach to try: Did you run out of time? If you’re running out of time with 5 or fewer questions left, try the answer as you go approach. If you’re running out of time with 6 or more, try sentence-by-sentence. Do you have time left over? How much? If you have more than 3-4 minutes left at the end and you’re missing questions, you need to slow down. You’re probably rushing. Make sure to read the passage and questions carefully. Are you missing a lot of the big picture questions that ask about entire paragraphs or the passage as a whole? If so, you may want to focus on your reading comprehension and attentively reading the passage. Based on your answers to these questions, decide which approach is best for you, and then practice that approach. It may take a couple of attempts to figure out what works best for you. Remember that regardless of which approach you take, you need to read the whole sentence before answering questions. Step #3: Practice Your Approach Repeatedly Once you decide on an approach, use it on every practice test and question. The purpose of having a designated approach to the passages is to enable you to correctly answer the questions as efficiently as possible. If you’re having difficulty maintaining a certain approach, you may want to try another one that’s easier for you to follow. It may take some time to find the best approach for you, but once you find it, you’ll be able to maximize your score. These approaches only work if you use them consistently. What's Next? If you're trying to master the content for SAT Writing, make sure you know the 12 most important grammar rules. Also, you're going to want to review my articles on punctuation and transitions. For those of you aiming for perfection, get expert advice from a perfect scorer on how to get a 1600. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? Check out our best-in-class online SAT prep program. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your SAT score by 160 points or more. Our program is entirely online, and it customizes what you study to your strengths and weaknesses. If you liked this Writing and grammar lesson, you'll love our program.Along with more detailed lessons, you'll get thousands ofpractice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Check out our 5-day free trial:

Self Discovery and Myers Brigg

Self Discovery and Myers Brigg Free Online Research Papers The purpose of self discovery is to discover the truth about who you are and what you want to do with your life. This is easier said than done! The first step I took towards self discovery was when I completed the Myers Brigg. It helped me to discover many traits about myself such as strong-willed and forceful in presenting my ideas. The Meyers Brigg is a self scorable test that helps show you how you like to look at things and how you like to go about deciding. Discovering who you are as a person can be fun, yet surprising. On paper I’m a totally different person than I thought I was. By completing and analyzing the Myers Brigg, I’ve discovered a lot of things about myself that I never knew before. Self discovery has helped me to grasp who I am as a person and to become more aware of my career choices. Now I am considering other options and different career choices. The Myers Brigg also helped me to see what type of study habits I’ve incurred over the years and what type of characteristics I need to acquire for my career choices. My characteristics have been mostly good, but not perfect. I am a good reader, but my mind tends to wonder off. Now that I have a better sense of me, I can carefully decide what path I want to follow. The traits that I have discovered are not set in stone! I can add a few characteristics and tame a few others to make me out to be the best person that I can be. I plan on attending school, work, and my home with a better knowledge of my own preferences, while keeping others’ in mind. I will also strive to be better in all aspects of perfection. It is not an option for me to limit my characteristics to that of an â€Å"ENTJ† from the Myers Brigg assignment. Reading Reading is something that everyone has to do at least one time in their life. Having reading skills can take you a long way in the work place. This chapter discusses various reading techniques needed to be successful. I enjoyed exercise 14 which explained how to relax and take a timed break before going back to reading. Muscle reading is also a technique that was discussed in this chapter and that can help the average person minimize the amount of times their mind may drift off into space. This technique is also a way to â€Å"decrease effort and struggle by increasing energy and skill.† (Ellis, page 125) Learning and mastering the three phases of muscle reading is what I concentrated most on during this chapter. It has helped me to comprehend what I’m reading better. This is very helpful to me because I will be in college for the next three years and being in school requires an extensive amount of reading. My career field, which is criminal justice, also requires a lot of reading, paper work, and good communication skills. Since reading is in fact required for every college course and my career choice, exercise 14 has taught me how to relax more while reading. It has also taught me that it is okay to take a break as long as you’re disciplined enough to come back to it. Before I graduate from Westwood College, I hope to have mastered the muscle reading technique. I have always loved reading for pleasure, but when I have to read for an assignment or work, I instantly freeze up. I don’t want to waste any more valuable time rereading a paragraph because of lack of understanding and comprehension. Now, when I open a book, I will be more confident and sure of myself. Reading isn’t so bad after all, and this chapter helped me to see that. Planning Planning is a key necessity to have in order to be successful in the real world. This chapter explains the advantages of time management and planning. My favorite exercise in this chapter was exercises 5 which consisted of monitoring my days for two weeks and record everything that I do in 15min. intervals. By doing this, I’ve learned that I waste much of my time during the week and get most things done over the weekend. Now that I know that I have bad time management skills, I can work on planning my day according to things I may have to do. There is always a time when someone will say that they don’t have enough time to do something. In reality they’re just not taking the time to plan their day out. I am a true victim of this scenario! Planning has helped me tremendously by teaching me how to avoid the activities that I don’t have to do. Now I can make a list of things to do in order of priority and caring them out successfully. Applying planning and time management to everyday life can be helpful in school, work, and personal activities. I now realize that if I take a few minutes out of my day and plan my week in advance, I can accomplish a lot of things. One major thing is homework and my key graded assignments for all of my classes. There is no time to play around and my grades are important to me. â€Å"Planning involves determining what you want to achieve and how you intend to go about it.†(Ellis, page 61) Research Papers on Self Discovery and Myers BriggThree Concepts of PsychodynamicMind TravelStandardized TestingHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows EssayThe Relationship Between Delinquency and Drug UsePersonal Experience with Teen PregnancyHip-Hop is ArtAnalysis of Ebay Expanding into AsiaResearch Process Part OneCapital Punishment

Introduction to Pop - The History of Soft Drinks

Introduction to Pop - The History of Soft Drinks Soft drinks can trace their history back to the mineral water found in natural springs. Bathing in natural springs has long been considered a healthy thing to do, and mineral water was said to have curative powers. Scientists soon discovered that gas carbonium or carbon dioxide was behind the bubbles in natural mineral water. The first marketed soft drinks (non-carbonated) appeared in the 17th century. They were made from water and lemon juice sweetened with honey. In 1676, the Compagnie de Limonadiers of Paris was granted a monopoly for the sale of lemonade soft drinks. Vendors would carry tanks of lemonade on their backs and dispensed cups of the soft drink to thirsty Parisians. Joseph Priestley In 1767, the first drinkable man-made glass of carbonated water was created by Englishman Doctor Joseph Priestley. Three years later, Swedish chemist Torbern Bergman invented a generating apparatus that made carbonated water from chalk by the use of sulfuric acid. Bergmans apparatus allowed imitation mineral water to be produced in large amounts. John Mathews In 1810, the first United States patent was issued for the means of mass manufacture of imitation mineral waters to Simons and Rundell of Charleston, South Carolina. However, carbonated beverages did not achieve great popularity in America until 1832, when John Mathews invented his apparatus for making carbonated water. John Mathews then mass-manufactured his apparatus for sale to soda fountain owners. Health Properties of Mineral Water The drinking of either natural or artificial mineral water was considered a healthy practice. The American pharmacists selling mineral waters began to add medicinal and flavorful herbs to unflavored mineral water. They used birch bark, dandelion, sarsaparilla, and fruit extracts. Some historians consider that the first flavored carbonated soft drink was that made in 1807 by Doctor Philip Syng Physick of Philadelphia. Early American pharmacies with soda fountains became a popular part of culture. The customers soon wanted to take their health drinks home with them and a soft drink bottling industry grew from consumer demand. The Soft Drink Bottling Industry Over 1,500 U.S. patents were filed for either a cork, cap, or lid for the carbonated drink bottle tops during the early days of the bottling industry. Carbonated drink bottles are under a lot of pressure from the gas. Inventors were trying to find the best way to prevent carbon dioxide or bubbles from escaping. In 1892, the Crown Cork Bottle Seal was patented by William Painter, a Baltimore machine shop operator. It was the first very successful method of keeping the bubbles in the bottle. Automatic Production of Glass Bottles In 1899, the first patent was issued for a glass-blowing machine for the automatic production of glass bottles. Earlier glass bottles had all been hand-blown. Four years later, the new bottle-blowing machine was in operation. It was first operated by the inventor, Michael Owens, an employee of Libby Glass Company. Within a few years, glass bottle production increased from 1,500 bottles a day to 57,000 bottles a day. Hom-Paks and Vending Machines During the 1920s, the first Hom-Paks were invented. Hom-Paks are the familiar six-pack beverage carrying cartons made from cardboard. Automatic vending machines also began to appear in the 1920s. The soft drink had become an American mainstay.

Diabetic food Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Diabetic food - Essay Example Therefore, imaging presentation will vary due to lack of specificity in complex clinical circumstances. This should only be ordered to confirm a suspected diagnosis and direct patient management. A simple definition of diabetes is a disorder of metabolism. It is a serious disease that can be developed from lack of insulin production in the body. Most of the food we eat is broken into glucose. This glucose is the form of sugar and the main fuel of the body. Glucose passes into the bloodstream where it is used for the growth and energy. Insulin must be present in order for the glucose gets into the cells. It is a hormone produced by pancreas gland that helps the process of food we eat and turn it into energy. The symptoms of diabetes may begin gradually and can be hard to identify first. These may include feeling tired or ill, slow healing of infections and genital itching. When there is extra sugar in blood, one way the body gets rid of it is through frequent urination. This loss of fluid in the body causes extreme thirst. According to Burke A. Cunha diabetes often goes undiagnosed because of it's harmless symptoms like frequent urination, excessive thirst, extreme hunger, irritability and blurry vision. Complications can be associated with diabetes. This disrupts the vascular system that affects many areas of the body such as eyes, kidneys, legs and feet. However, people with this kind of disease should pay special attention to their feet because the smallest of the injuries can lead to a medical emergency. This is because the common problems of people with diabetes are foot infections. These individuals are predisposed to foot infections because of a compromised vascular supply. Moreover, patients with diabetes can have a combined infection involving bone and soft tissue called fetid foot. Pathophysiology Diabetes is a chronic metabolic disorder in which the body cannot metabolize carbohydrates, fats and proteins because of a lack of insulin. A disorder that affects microvascular circulation is diabetes mellitus. The microvascular disease due to sugarcoated capillaries limits the blood supply to deep structures. Pressure due to ill-fitting shoes further compromises the blood supply at the microvascular level that affects a person to infection. The infection may involve the skin, soft tissues, bone or all these tissues. The primary problem in diabetic foot infection is microvascular compromise, these occur in setting of good dorsalis pulse. Impaired microvascular circulation hinders white cell migration in the area of infections and limits the ability of antibiotic reach the infected area. The chronic osteomyelitis represents an island of infected bone. This bone fragment that are isolated have no blood supply. However, administered antibiotics do not penetrate the devascularized infected bone fragments. They can only enter through the remaining blood supply. In conclusion, antibiotic therapy alone cannot cure patients with chronic osteomyelitis without surgical debridement to remove these isolated infected elements. Epidemiology Diagnosed diabetes is most prevalent in middle-aged and elderly populations. The highest rates occurring in people aged 65 years

Causes and effects of globalization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Causes and effects of globalization - Essay Example the importance of multinationals operating in their nation and as companies recognized the importance of expanding their business globally (Ritzer, 2007, p.70). Decrease in trade barriers such as quota systems and import, export duties even became an underlining reason that promoted globalization. When trade barriers were removed, consumers realized that they can obtain goods and services at much lesser prices as compared to the goods and products available and produced locally. Globalization was even created as organizations and nations understood the importance of technological advancements that were taking place in other regions and due to their desire to obtain these technological advancements. Globalization has been impacting humankind both in negative and positive way. This process has increased job opportunities for the workforce throughout the world, now people can find employment anywhere around the world. Another positive effect was that the developing nations have started working for developed nations which aided in solving the problem of unemployment rate in these nations. Due to globalization, interaction between cultures increased and cultural boundaries became blurred, and due to this people of one nation started accepting and adopting the cultures of other

Crafting a Compensation & Benefits Plan Research Paper

Crafting a Compensation & Benefits Plan - Research Paper Example important aspects of comparison salary, medical, dental, vision, retirement, life insurance and vacation benefits of three companies are taken into consideration. Moreover, the paper based on the aforementioned factors will formulate a compensation plan for the organization I am associated. The welding company was founded in the year 2000. During the period of 2009, it was recognized as a limited organization. The prime aim of establishing the company is to supply products that include metal, submerged arc, wires and other products across a city. The company had faced difficulties with respect to obligations towards its employees. The company is required to select the appropriate alternative compensation and benefits plan in order to meet the labor difficulties. Additionally, the company needs to make significant analysis of other companies offering benefits and compensations for the retention of employees and working conditions to mitigate the challenges of the company. The tabulated compensation and benefit plan of Joe’s Welding and Machine, Paragon Pipe Fitting and Acme Tool and Engineering indicates that the compensation benefits that were offered by Acme Tool and Engineering company is significantly better than the offering of other companies. The salary offered by the Acme is higher compared to other companies. Moreover, the analysis also reveals that Acme has witnessed high stability in its human resource management compared to that of Joe’s and Paragon. The evaluation reflected that the Acme depicts a strong choice and section for the people who were looking for the new job in the welding and manufacturing industry. Moreover, implementation of more or less similar policy into our organization would help to meet the significant challenges and the changing requirements of the business. In the changing business dynamics, organizations need to change their working structure constantly with the technological advancement. In this regard, in order to manage

THOMSON REUTERS CURRENT STRATEGIC REVIEW Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

THOMSON REUTERS CURRENT STRATEGIC REVIEW - Essay Example The study analyses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the company and also discusses on the strategic measurements of the company that has the led the company build up its value chain attracting and sustaining customers across the world. The major strategic options for the company could thus be determined from the study of this company as found to be essential strategic measures for the success of a business. Introduction: The Thomson Reuters organization was formed from two powerful brands- Reuters in Europe and Asia, and Thomson in US and Canada- and aims to present the professional markets across the world with Intelligent Information intended to generate Knowledge to Act. Thus the organization focuses to serve its customers across the world involving the established strengths of both these brands. Powering the market across the entire globe is the primary goal of the company. Thus the organization focuses on creating and maintaining simplicity, offer insight through autonomous information and substance to facilitate resolutions and are the reliable association between individuals, dealings and information. Innovation is the primary objective of the organization. The organization intends to deliver excellent service to its customers through its products and improve the reliability, stability and quality of the operations of the company (Thomson Reuters: Knowledge to Act n.d.). The performance of the company over the years has been recognized and rewarded by several publications and organizations across the globe. Considering the recent times, the company’s AlertNet Climate was chosen as an Official Honoree in the Green Category by the 16th Annual Webby Awards. The Technical Analyst Award for 2012 was also won by Thomson Reuters News Analytics. AlertNet received the recognition for the Best Designed Site and the Best Video Journalism was achieved by The Egyptian Revolution. The company had also been awarded for their charity functi ons. Their data and technology, law, and accounting were equally recognized and awarded in the recent times (Awards & Recognition 2013). Thus it can be observed that the company over the years has considered effective measures towards achieving its significant position in the industry as reflected through such awards and recognitions. When strategic review of an organization is concerned, it is referred to the understanding of the strategic measures of an organization enabling it to perform successfully in the long run. It is generally difficult for an organization to consider measures that would prove to be effective in the long run. Organizational strategies need to be considered as a continuous process for an organization to discuss measures among the organizational members for plans that would be executed in the short as well as in the long terms. This would essentially focus on the objectives of an organization that need to be achieved. The internal and external factors of an o rganization are largely responsible in affecting and influencing the organizational strategies. Also, the organizational culture is a significant factor that affects the strategies considered by an organization (Hodge 2012). The present study focuses on Thomson Reuters and considers a strategic review of the organization thus discussing about the current strategic

Journal Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 18

Journal - Assignment Example Harry Truman had warned earlier. It became prevalent because of the â€Å"guilt by association† principle without any solid proof of disloyalty (Faragher et al. 694). Anybody is a suspect and it was relatively easy for anyone to accuse someone of being a communist such as members of labor unions. . The extensiveness of the red scare at home can perhaps be partly explained by mass hysteria. People were not sure who is whom, or who were the card-carrying members of the Communist Party in America. At any rate, the rise of McCarthyism, as it came to be called, was basically an unacceptable form of ideological and political extremism. In the words of the observers, it was essentially demagoguery combined with witch-hunting. It was extensive since anyone could accuse anybody and â€Å" . . . it was an irresponsible and dangerous tactic . . . the reckless persecution of innocent or relatively harmless dissidents . . . â€Å" (Jenkins 2). When people are not sure who is the enemy, then anybody can become a suspect. Fears can become exaggerated when people lacked information and so imagination and irrationality took over. In those dangerous times, communism was on the march and it seemed unstoppable. People were attracted to its ideology of equality for all of whatever race or class (Fitzgerald 24). Joseph â€Å"Joe† R. McCarthy (1908-1957) was a Republican senator from the state of Wisconsin. He was a rarity among American politicians because he was a devout Catholic and a part of his religious beliefs was strong opposition to communism because it was atheistic that is opposed to any kind of organized religion. Communists like to call religion as an opiate (or opium) that deprives normal people the faculty to think clearly and rationally so they do not believe in a god or any supreme being who determines human affairs. Rather, the main logic of communists is that the people themselves can chart their own destiny. McCarthy was

THOMSON REUTERS CURRENT STRATEGIC REVIEW Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

THOMSON REUTERS CURRENT STRATEGIC REVIEW - Essay Example The study analyses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the company and also discusses on the strategic measurements of the company that has the led the company build up its value chain attracting and sustaining customers across the world. The major strategic options for the company could thus be determined from the study of this company as found to be essential strategic measures for the success of a business. Introduction: The Thomson Reuters organization was formed from two powerful brands- Reuters in Europe and Asia, and Thomson in US and Canada- and aims to present the professional markets across the world with Intelligent Information intended to generate Knowledge to Act. Thus the organization focuses to serve its customers across the world involving the established strengths of both these brands. Powering the market across the entire globe is the primary goal of the company. Thus the organization focuses on creating and maintaining simplicity, offer insight through autonomous information and substance to facilitate resolutions and are the reliable association between individuals, dealings and information. Innovation is the primary objective of the organization. The organization intends to deliver excellent service to its customers through its products and improve the reliability, stability and quality of the operations of the company (Thomson Reuters: Knowledge to Act n.d.). The performance of the company over the years has been recognized and rewarded by several publications and organizations across the globe. Considering the recent times, the company’s AlertNet Climate was chosen as an Official Honoree in the Green Category by the 16th Annual Webby Awards. The Technical Analyst Award for 2012 was also won by Thomson Reuters News Analytics. AlertNet received the recognition for the Best Designed Site and the Best Video Journalism was achieved by The Egyptian Revolution. The company had also been awarded for their charity functi ons. Their data and technology, law, and accounting were equally recognized and awarded in the recent times (Awards & Recognition 2013). Thus it can be observed that the company over the years has considered effective measures towards achieving its significant position in the industry as reflected through such awards and recognitions. When strategic review of an organization is concerned, it is referred to the understanding of the strategic measures of an organization enabling it to perform successfully in the long run. It is generally difficult for an organization to consider measures that would prove to be effective in the long run. Organizational strategies need to be considered as a continuous process for an organization to discuss measures among the organizational members for plans that would be executed in the short as well as in the long terms. This would essentially focus on the objectives of an organization that need to be achieved. The internal and external factors of an o rganization are largely responsible in affecting and influencing the organizational strategies. Also, the organizational culture is a significant factor that affects the strategies considered by an organization (Hodge 2012). The present study focuses on Thomson Reuters and considers a strategic review of the organization thus discussing about the current strategic

Reflection about my study based on feedback and analysis it Essay

Reflection about my study based on feedback and analysis it - Essay Example I really enjoyed the final project, and I thought it was a good idea! In general, I was satisfied with my final project. I did a lot of work and research on it. But there are also some points I failed to show in the project. Since I did not have a plenty time on my final project, I did not get the whole ideas in my mind. So I think next time I could work better. I got fresh ideas with other classmates’ projects. Some of them did pretty good job in discussing this by the method of video. It is pretty impressive for me. Also the advices given from classmates also filled my blank. For further project or paper, I will work more on fresh ideas and prepared a lot before I start Related to the wellbeing of children, childhood obesity is one of main issues these days in almost every part of the world. This medical condition adversely affects the mental and physical health of children, as well as their level of self-confidence. On academic level, it puts an unpleasant impact on the mind and confidence of obese children because of which they usually do not show good academic performances. In developed countries, childhood obesity has become a serious health concern. Obese children usually do not perform well in their studies because they feel inferiority complex when their peers make fun of them. Their level of confidence and self-esteem go down as the result which makes them unable to talk to their teachers and peers in a confident way. It is obvious that at school level, children are not as mentally mature as they get when they grow up. So they do not have any idea whether they are doing a good act by laughing at a comparatively fat fellow or not. They laugh at him/her, make fun, and call him/her by improper names because of which the confidence level of the targeted fellow goes down and he/she becomes unable to cope with the situation. This results in making the child self-conscious and less focused towards studies. Moreover, obese children feel

Probability lesson plan Essay Example for Free

Probability lesson plan Essay Probability the study of chance (Mathematics-sophomore) The purpose of this lesson aid is to help each student to know the basic principle of probability and to apply it to their everyday life. Probability or the study of chance is an important branch of mathematics that can be applied in other branch of sciences like biology, chemistry and physics. Example: What is the probability of getting a black queen from a standard deck of cards? We all know that there are 52 cards in a standard deck of cards and there are only two queens in it. So, the probability of drawing a queen is 2 out of 52 or 4. 16 %. Quiz: 1. What is the probability of getting a red card in a standard deck of card? 2. What is the chance of getting a face card in a deck of card? 3. In a game of poker, what is the chance of getting a straight? 4. Given a fair die, what is the probability of getting a 7 if you to toss the die two times? 5. Given the same die, what is the chance of drawing an even number? 6. Given a pair of dice, what is the chance of drawing an odd number? 7. Given a pair of dice, what is the chance of rolling a 7? 8. What is the probability of getting a flush in a deck of cards? 9. What is the probability of getting a royal flush in a game of poker? 10. Given a tetrahedron, what is the chance of rolling a 4? Lucky 9 The material needed in this game is a standard deck of playing cards. The rule of this game is obtaining a sum of nine from the two cards that will be given to you by the dealer. If none of the player has an exact card value of nine, the player with the highest card value wins. Instruction: 1. This game is for 2-4 persons. Each player is given two cards. 2. Each player will sum up their card using their respective value. The face card has a value of ten. 3. The player may opt to get another card if he/she is not satisfied with the sum of his/her card but it can be done only once. 4. If all the players are player are already satisfied with their cards, each will reveal their cards and add them up. 5. If the player obtains an exact value of nine, that player wins. 6. If the added card value is greater than nine, only the ones digit will be taken. Example, the total card values is equal to 14 then your score is 4. 7. If none of the players got an exact added value of nine, then the player with the highest score wins. If two or more player acquires the same added value, then it is a tie. For further explanation on probability, visit: http://www. betweenwaters. com/probab/probab. html. In this site, you will play a probability game. Just play this game and you will understand the concept of probability. Reference: Lemoine, Shirley (2001). Probability: the study of chance. Retrieved August 24, 2007 from http://www. col-ed. org/cur/math/math15. txt.

Artificial Neural Networks to forecast London Stock Exchange

Artificial Neural Networks to forecast London Stock Exchange Abstract This dissertation examines and analyzes the use of the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to forecast the London Stock Exchange. Specifically the importance of ANN to predict the future trends and value of the financial market is demonstrated. There are several contributions of this study to this area. The first contribution of this study is to find the best subset of the interrelated factors at both local and international levels that affect the London stock exchange from the various input variables to be used in the future studies. We use novel aspects, in the sense that we base the forecast on both the fundamental and technical analysis.The second contribution of this study was to provide well defined methodology that can be used to create the financial models in future studies. In addition, this study also gives various theoretical arguments in support of the approaches used in the construction of the forecasting model by comparing the results of the previous studies and modifying some of the existing approaches and tested them. The study also compares the performance of the statistical methods and ANN in the forecasting problem. The main contribution of this thesis lies in comparing the performance of the five different types of ANN by constructing the individual forecasting model of them. Accuracy of models is compared by using different evaluation criteria and we develop different forecasting models based on both the direction and value accuracy of the forecasted value. The fourth contribution of this study is to investigate whether the hybrid approach combining different individual forecasting models can outperform the individual forecasting models and compare the performance of the different hybrid approaches. Three hybrid approaches are used in this study, two are existing approaches and the third original approach, the mixed combined neural network -is being proposed in this study to the academic studies to forecast the stock exchange. The last contribution of this study lies in modifying the existing trading strategy to increase the profitability of the investor and support the argument that the investor earns more profit if the forecasting model is being developed by using the direction accuracy as compared to the value accuracy. The best forecasting classification accuracy obtained is 93% direction accuracy and 0.0000831 (MSE) value accuracy which are better than the accuracies obtained by the previous academic studies. Moreover, this research validates the work of the existing studies that hybrid approach outperforms the individual forecasting model. In addition, the rate of the return that was attained in this thesis by using modified trading strategy is 120.14% which has shown significant improvement as compared to the 10.8493% rate of return of the existing trading strategy in other academics studies. The difference in the rate of return could be due to the fact that this study has developed good forecasting model or a better trading strategy. The experimental results show our method not only improves the accuracy rate, but also meet the short-term investors’ expectations. The results of this thesis also support the claim that some financial time series are not entirely random, and that contrary to the predictions of the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), a trading strategy could be based solely on historical data. It was concluded that ANN do have good capabilities to forecast financial markets and, if properly trained, the investor could benefit from the use of this forecasting tool and trading strategy. Chapter 1 1 Introduction 1.1 Background to the Research Financial Time Series forecasting has attracted the interest of academic researchers and it has been addressed since the 1980.It is a challenging problem as the financial time series have complex behavior, resulting from a various factors such as economic, psychological or political reasons and they are non-stationary , noisy and deterministically chaotic. In today’s world, almost every individual is influenced by the fluctuations in the stock market. Now day’s people prefer to invest money in the diversified financial funds or shares due to its high returns than depositing in the banks. But there is lot of risk in the stock market due to its high rate of uncertainty and volatility. To overcome such risks, one of the main challenges for many years for the researchers is to develop the financial models that can describe the movements of the stock market and so far there had not been an optimum model. The complexity and difficulty of forecasting the stock exchange, and the emergence of data mining and computational intelligence techniques, as alternative techniques to the conventional statistical regression and Bayesian models with better performance, have paved the road for the increased usage of these techniques in fields of finance and economics. So, traders and investors have to rely on the various types of intelligent systems to make trading decisions. (Hameed,2008). A Computational Intelligence system such as neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms etc has been widely established research area in the field of information systems. They have been used extensively in forecasting of the financial market and they have been quite successful to some extent .Although the number of purposed methods in financial time series is very large , but no one technique has been successful to consistently to â€Å"beat the market†. For last three decades, opposing views have existed between the academic communities and traders about the topic of â€Å"Random walk theory â€Å"and â€Å"Efficient Market Hypothesis(EMH)† due to the complexity of the financial time series and lot of publications by different researchers have gather various amount of evidences in support as well as against it. Lehman (1990), Haugen (1999) and Lo (2000) gave evidence of the deficiencies in EMH. But the investors such as Warren Buffet for long period of time have beaten the stock market consistently. Market Efficiency or â€Å"Random walk theory† in terms of stock trading in the financial market means that it is impossible to earn excess returns using any historic information. In essence, then, the new information is the only variable that causes to alter the price of the index as well as used to predict the arrival and timing. Bruce James Vanstone (2005) stated that in an efficient market, security prices should appear to be randomly generated. Both sides in this argument are supported by empirical results from the different markets across over the globe. This thesis does not wish to enter into the argument theoretically whether to accept or reject the EMH. Instead, this thesis concentrates on the methodologies to be used for development of the financial models using the artificial neural networks (ANN), compares the forecasting capabilities of the various ANN and hybrid based approach models, develop the trading strategy that can help the investor and leaves the research of this thesis to stack up with the published work of other researchers which document ways to predict the stock market. In recent years and since its inception, ANN has gained momentum and has been widely used as a viable computational intelligent technique to forecast the stock market. The main challenge of the traders is to know the signals when the stock market deviates and to take advantage of such situations. The data used by the traders to remove the uncertainty in the stock market and to take trading decisions whether to buy or sell the stock using the information process is â€Å"noisy†. Information not contained in the known information subset used to forecast is considered to be noise and such environment is characterized by a low signal-to noise ratio. Refenes et.al (1993) and Thawornwong and Enke (2004) described that the relationship between the security price or returns and the variables that constitute that price (return), changes over time and this fact is widely accepted within the academic institutes. In other words, the stock market‘s structural mechanics may change over time which causes the effect on the index also change. Ferreira et al. (2004) described that the relationship between the variables and the predicted index is non linear and the Artificial neural networks (ANN) have the characteristic to represent such complex non-linear relationship. This thesis presents the mechanical London Stock Market trading system that uses the ANN forecasting model to extract the rules from daily index movements and generate signal to the investors and traders whether to buy, sell or hold a stock. The figure 1 and 2 represents the stock exchange and ANN forecasting model. By viewing the stock exchange as a financial market that takes historical and current data or information as an input, the investors react to this information based on their understanding, speculations, analysis etc. It would now seem very difficult to predict the stock market, characterized by high noise, nonlinearities, using only high frequency (weekly, daily) historical prices. Surprisingly though, there are anomalies in the behavior of the stock market that cannot be explained under the existing paradigm of market efficiency. Studies discussed in the literature review have been able to predict the stock market accurately to some extent and it seems that forecasting model developed by them have been able to pick some of the hidden patterns in the inherently non-linear price series. While it is true that forecasting model need to be designed and optimized with care in order to get accurate results . Further, it aims to contribute knowledge that will one day lead to a standard or optimum model for the prediction of the stock exchange. As such, it aims to present a well defined methodology that can be used to create the forecasting models and it is hoped that this thesis can address many of the deficiencies of the published research in this area. In the last decade, there has been plethora of the ANN models that were developed due to the absence of the well defined methodology, which were difficult to compare due to less published work and some of them have shown superior results in their domains. Moreover, this study also compares the predictive power of the ANN with the statistical models. Normally the approach used by the academic researchers in the forecasting use technical analysis and some of them include the fundamental analysis. The technical analysis uses only historical data (past price) to determine the movement of the stock exchange and fundamental analysis is based on external information (like interest rates, prices and returns of other asset) that comes from the economic system surrounding the financial market. Building a trading system using forecasting model and testing it on the evaluation criteria is the only practical way to evaluate the forecasting model. There has been so much prior research on identifying the appropriate trading strategy for forecasting problem. This thesis does not wish to enter into the argument which strategy is best or not. Although, the importance of the trading strategy can hardly be underestimated, but this thesis concentrates on using one of the existing strategy, modify it and compares the return by the forecasting models. But there has always been debate in the academic studies over how to effectively benchmark the model of ANN for trading. Some of the academic researchers stated that predicting the direction of the stock exchange may lead to higher profits while some of them supported the view that predicting the value of the stock exchange may lead to higher rate of return. Azoff (1994) and Thawornwong and Enke (2004) discussed about this debate in their study. In essence, there is a need for a formalized development methodology for developing the ANN financial models which can be used as a benchmark for trading systems. All of this is accommodated by this thesis. 1.2 Problem Statement and Research Question The studies mentioned above have generally indicated that ANN, as used in the stock market, can be a valuable tool to the investor .Due to some of the problems discussed above, we are not still able to answer the question: Can ANNs be used to develop the accurate forecasting model that can be used in the trading systems to earn profit for the investor? From the variety of academic research summarized in the literature review, it is clear that a great deal of research in this area has taken place by different academic researchers and they have gathered various amounts of evidences in support as well as against it. This directly threatens the use of ANN applicability to the financial industry. Apart from the previous question, this research addresses various other problems: 1. Which ANN have better performance in the forecasting of the London Stock Exchange from the five different types of the ANN which are widely used in the academics? 2. Which subset of the potential input variables from 2002-08 affect the LSE? 3. Do international stock exchanges, currency exchange rate and other macroeconomic factors affect the LSE? 4. How much the performance of the forecasting model is improved by using the regression analysis in the factor selection? 5. Can use of the technical indicators improve the performance of the forecasting model? 6. Which learning algorithm in the training of the ANN give the better performance? 7. Does Hybrid-based Forecasting Models give better performance than the individual ANN forecasting models? 8. Which Hybrid-based models have the better performance and what are the limitations of using them? 9. Does the forecasting model developed on the basis of the percentage accuracy gives more rate of the return as compared to the value accuracy? 10. Does the forecasting model having better performance in terms of the accuracy increase the profit of the investor when applied to the trading strategy? Apart from all questions outlined above, it addresses various another questions regarding the design of the ANN. †¢ Are there any approaches to solve the various issues in designing of the ANN like number of hidden layers and activation functions? This thesis will attempt to answer the above question within the constraints and scope of the 6-year sample period (from 2002-2008) using historical data of various variables that affect the LSE. Further, this thesis will also attempt to answer these questions within the practical constraints of transaction costs and money management imposed by real-world trading systems. Although a formal statement of the methodology or steps that is being used is left until section 3, it makes sense to discuss the way in which this thesis will address the above question. In this thesis, various types of ANN will be trained using fundamental data, and technical data according to the direction and value accuracy. A better trading system development methodology will be defined, and the performance of the forecasting model will be checked by using evaluation criteria rate of the return .In this way, the benefits of incorporating ANN into trading strategies in the stock market can be exposed and quantified. Once this process has been undertaken, it will be possible to answer the thesis all questions. 1.3 Motivation of the Research Stock market has always had been an attractive appeal for the researchers and financial investors and they have studied it over again to extract the useful patterns to predict the movement of the stock market. The reason is that if the researchers can make the accurate forecasting model, they can beat the market and can gain excess profit by applying the best trading strategy. Numerous financial investors have suffered lot of financial losses in the stock market as they were not aware of the stock market behavior. They had the problem that they were not able to decide when they should sell or buy the stock to gain profit. Nevertheless, finding out the best time for the investor to buy or to sell has remained a very difficult task because there are too many factors that may influence stock prices. If the investors have the accurate forecasting model, then they can predict the future behavior of the stock exchange and can gain profit. This solves the problem of the financial investors to some extent as they will not bear any financial loss. But it does not guarantee that the investor can have better profit or rate of return as compared to other investors unless he utilized the forecasting model using better trading strategy to invest money in the share market. This thesis tries to solve the above problem by providing the investor better forecasting model and trading strategies that can be applied to real-world trading systems. 1.4 Justification of Research There are several features of this academic research that distinguish it from previous academic researches. First of all, the time frame chosen for the investigation of the ANN (2002-08) in the London Stock Exchange has never been tested in the previous academic work. The importance of the period chosen is that there are two counter forces, which are opposing each other. On the one hand, the improvement of the UK and other countries economy after the 2001 financial crises happened in this period as a whole. On the other hand, this period also shows the decline in the stock markets from Jan, 2008 to Dec, 2008. So, it is important to test the forecasting model for bull, stable and bear market. Second, some of the research questions addressed in the above section, have not been investigated much in the academic studies, especially there is hardly any study which have done research on all the problems. Moreover, original hybrid based mixed neural network, better trading strategy and other modified approaches have been successfully being described and used in this study Finally, there is a significant lack of work carried out in this area in the LSE. As such, this thesis draws heavily on results published mainly within the United States and other countries; from the academics .One interesting aspect of this thesis is that it will be interesting to see how much of the published research on application of ANN in stock market anomalies is applicable to the UK market. This is important as some of the academic studies (Pan et al (2005)) states that each stock market in the globe is different. 1.5 Delimitations of scope The thesis concerns itself with historical data for the variables that affect London Stock Exchange during the period 2002 – 2008. 1.6 Outline of the Report The remaining part of the thesis is organized in the following six chapters. The second chapter, the background and literature review, provides a brief introduction to the domain and also pertinent literature is reviewed to discuss the related published work of the previous researchers in terms of their contribution and content in the prediction of the stock exchange which serves as the building block for much of the research. Moreover, this literature review also gave solid justification why a particular set of ANN inputs are selected, which is important step according to the Thawornwong and Enke (2004) and and some concepts from finance. The third chapter, the methodology, describes the steps in detail, data and the mechanics or techniques that take place in the thesis along with the empirical evidence. In addition, it also discuss the literature review for each step. Formulas and diagrams are shown to explain the techniques when necessary and it also covers issues as software and hardware used in the study. The fourth chapter, the implementation, discusses the approaches used in the implementation in detail based on the third chapter. It also covers such issues as software and hardware used in the study. The fifth chapter, the results and analysis, present the results according to the performance and benchmark measures that we have used in this study to compare with other models. It describes the choices that were needed in making model and justifies these choices in terms of the literature. The sixth chapter, conclusions and further work, restates the thesis hypothesis, discuss the conclusions drawn from the project and also thesis findings are put into perspective. Finally, the next steps to improve the model performance are considered. Chapter 2 Background and Literature Review 2 Background and Literature Review This section of thesis explores the theory of three relevant fields of the Financial Time Series, Stock Market, and Artificial Neural Networks, which together form the conceptual frameworks of the thesis as shown in the figure 1. Framework is provided to the trader to make quantitative and qualitative judgments concerning the future stock exchange movements. These three fields are reviewed in historical context, sketching out the development of those disciplines, and reviewing their academic credibility, and their application to this thesis. In the case of Neural Networks, the field is reviewed with regard to that portion of the literature which deals with applying neural network to the prediction of the stock exchange, the various type of techniques and neural networks used and an existing prediction model is extended to allow a more detailed analysis of the area than would otherwise have been possible. 2.1 Financial Time Series 2.1.1 Introduction The field of the financial time series prediction is a highly complex task due to the following reasons: 1. The financial time series frequently behaves like a random-walk process and predictability of such series is controversial issue which has been questioned in scope of EMH. 2. The statistical property of the financial time series shift with the different time. Hellstr ¨om and Holmstr ¨om [1998]). 3. Financial time series is usually noisy and the models which have been able to reduce such noise has been the better model in forecasting the value and direction of the stock exchange. 4. In the long run, a new forecasting technique becomes a part of the process to be forecasted, i.e. it influences the process to be forecasted (Hellstr ¨om and Holmstr ¨om [1998]). The first point is explained later in this section while discussing the EMH theory (Page).The graph of the volatility time series of FTSE 100 index from 14 June, 1993 to 29 December, 1998 and Dow Jones from 1928 to 2000 by Nelson Areal (2008) and Negrea Bogdan Cristian (2007) illustrates the second point of the FTSE 100 [2.1.r]in figure 2.1.1 and 2.2.2.These figures also shows that the volatility changes with period , in some periods FTSE 100 index value fluctuates so much and in some it remains calm. The third point is explained by the fact the events on a particular data affect the financial time series of the index, for example, the volatility of stocks or index increases before announcement of major stock specific news (Donders and Vorst [1996]). These events are random and contribute noise in the time series which may make difficult to compare the two forecasting models difficult to compare as a random model can also produce results. The fourth result can be explained by the example. Suppose a company develop a model or technique that can outcast all other models or techniques. The company will make lot of profits if this model is available to less people. But if this technique is available to all people with time due to its popularity, than the profits of the company will decrease as the company will not no longer take advantage of this technique. This argument is described in Hellstr ¨om and Holmstr ¨om [1998] and Swingler [1994] . 2.1.2 Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) EMH Theory has been a controversial issue for many years and there has been no mutual agreed deal among the academic researchers, whether it is possible to predict the stock price. The people who believe that the prices follow â€Å"random walk† trend and cannot be predicted, are usually people who support the EMH theory. Academic researchers( Tino et al. [2000]), have shown that the profit can be made by using historical information , whereas they also found difficult to verify the strong form due to lack of all private and public data. The EMH was developed in 1965 by Fama (Fama [1965], Fama [1970]) and has found widely accepted (Anthony and Biggs [1995], Malkiel [1987], White [1988], Lowe and Webb [1991]) in the academic community (Lawrence et al. [1996]).It states that the future index or stock value is completely unpredictable given the historical information of the index or stocks. There are three forms of EMH: weak, semi-strong, and strong form. The weak EMH rules out any form of forecasting based on the stock’s history, since the stock prices follows a random walk in which in which successive changes have zero correlation (Hellstr ¨om and Holmstr ¨om [1998]). In Semi Strong hypothesis, we consider all the publicly available information such as volume data and fundamental data. In strong form, we consider all the publicly and privately available information. Another reason for argument against the EMH is that different investors or traders react differently when a stock suddenly drops in a value. These different time perspectives will cause the unexpected change in the stock exchange, even if the new information has not entered in the scene. It may be possible to identify these situations and actually predict future changes (Hellstr  ¨om and Holmstr ¨om [1998]) The developer have proved it wrong by making forecasting models, this issue remains an interesting area. This controversy is just only matter of the word immediately in the definition. The studies in support of the argument of EMH rely on using the statistical tests and show that the technical indicators and tested models can’t forecast. However, the studies against the argument uses the time delay between the point when new information enters the model or system and the point when the information has spread across over the globe and a equilibrium has been reached in the stock market with a new market price. 2.1.3 Financial Time Series Forecasting Financial Time series Forecasting aims to find underlying patterns, trends and forecast future index value using using historical and current data or information. The historic values are continuous and equally spaced value over time and it represent various types of data . The main aim of the forecasting is to find an approximate mapping function between the input variables and the forecasted or output value . According to Kalekar (2004), Time series forecasting assumes that a time series is a combination of a pattern and some error. The goal of the model using time series is to separate the pattern from the error by understanding the trend of the pattern and its seasonality Several methods are used in time series forecasting like moving average (section ) moving averages, linear regression with time etc. Time series differs from the technical analysis (section) that it is based on the samples and treated the values as non-chaotic time series. Many academic researchers have applied t ime series analysis in their forecasting model, but there has been no major success. [1a] 2.2 Stock Market 2.2.1 Introduction Let us consider the basics of the stock market. MM What are stocks? Stock refers to a share in the ownership of a corporation or company. They represent a claim of the stock owner on the company’s earnings and assets and by buying more stocks; the stake in the ownership is increased. In United States, stocks are often referred as shares, whereas in the UK they are also used as synonym for bonds, shares and equities. MM Why a Company issues a stock? The main reason for issuing stock is that the company wants to raise money by selling some part of the company. A company can raise money by two ways: â€Å"debt financing† (borrowing money by issuing bonds or loan from bank) and â€Å"equity financing â€Å"(borrowing money by issuing stocks).It is advantageous to raise the money by issuing stocks as the company has not to pay money back to the stock owners but they have to share the profit in the form of the dividends. MM What is Stock Pricing or price? A stock price is the price of a single stock of a number of saleable stocks traded by the company. A company issue stock at static price, and the stock price may increase or decrease according to the trade. Normally the price of the stocks in the stock market is determined by the supply/demand equilibrium. MM What is a Stock Market? Stock Market or equity market is a public market where the trading and issuing of a company stock or derivates takes place either through the stock exchange or they may be traded privately and over-the counter markets. It is vital part of the economy as it provides opportunities to the company to raise money and also to the investors of having potential gain by selling or buying share. The stock market in the US includes the NYSE, NASDAQ, the AMEX as well as many regional exchanges. London Stock Exchange is the major stock exchange in the UK and Europe.As mentioned in the Chapter 1, in this study we forecast the London Stock Exchange (Section 2.2.2.). Investing in the stock market is very risky as the stock market is uncertain and unsteady. The main aim of the investor is to get maximum returns from the money invested in the stock market, for which he has to study about the performance, price history about the stock company .So it is a broad category and according to Hellstrom (1997), there are four main ways to predict the stock market: 1. Fundamental analysis (section 2.2.3) 2. Technical analysis, (section 2.2.4) 3. Time series forecasting (section 2.1) 4. Machine learning (ANN). (Section 2.3) 2.2.2 London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange is one of the world’s oldest and largest stock exchanges in the world, which started its operation in 1698, when John Casting commenced â€Å"at this Office in Jonathan’s Coffee-house† a list of stock and commodity prices called â€Å"The Course of the Exchange and other things† [2] .On March 3, 1801, London Stock Exchange was officially established with current lists of over 3,200 companies and has existed, in one or more form or another for more than 300 years. In 2000, it decided to become public and listed its shares on its own stock exchange in 2001. The London Stock market consists of the Main Market and Alternative Investments Market (AIM), plus EDX London (exchange for equity derivatives). The Main Market is mainly for established companies with high performance, and AIM hand trades small-caps, or new enterprises with high growth potential.[1] Since the launch of the AIM in 1995, AIM has become the most successful growth market in the world with over 3000 companies from across the globe have joined AIM. To evaluate the London Stock Exchange, the autonomous FTSE Group (owned by the Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange) , sustains a series of indices comprising the FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 250 Index, FTSE 350 Index, FTSE All-Share, FTSE AIM-UK 50, FTSE AIM 100, FTSE AIM All-Share, FTSE SmallCap, FTSE Tech Mark 100 ,FTSE Tech Mark All-Share.[4] FTSE 100 is the most famous and composite index calculated respectively from the top 100 largest companies whose shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange. The base date for calculation of FTSE 100 index is 1984. [2] In the UK, the FTSE 100 is frequently used by large investor, financial experts and the stock brokers as a guide to stock market performance. The FTSE index is calculated from the following formula: 2.2.3 Fundamental Analysis Fundamental Analysis focuses on evaluation of the future stock exchange movements Artificial Neural Networks to forecast London Stock Exchange Artificial Neural Networks to forecast London Stock Exchange Abstract This dissertation examines and analyzes the use of the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to forecast the London Stock Exchange. Specifically the importance of ANN to predict the future trends and value of the financial market is demonstrated. There are several contributions of this study to this area. The first contribution of this study is to find the best subset of the interrelated factors at both local and international levels that affect the London stock exchange from the various input variables to be used in the future studies. We use novel aspects, in the sense that we base the forecast on both the fundamental and technical analysis.The second contribution of this study was to provide well defined methodology that can be used to create the financial models in future studies. In addition, this study also gives various theoretical arguments in support of the approaches used in the construction of the forecasting model by comparing the results of the previous studies and modifying some of the existing approaches and tested them. The study also compares the performance of the statistical methods and ANN in the forecasting problem. The main contribution of this thesis lies in comparing the performance of the five different types of ANN by constructing the individual forecasting model of them. Accuracy of models is compared by using different evaluation criteria and we develop different forecasting models based on both the direction and value accuracy of the forecasted value. The fourth contribution of this study is to investigate whether the hybrid approach combining different individual forecasting models can outperform the individual forecasting models and compare the performance of the different hybrid approaches. Three hybrid approaches are used in this study, two are existing approaches and the third original approach, the mixed combined neural network -is being proposed in this study to the academic studies to forecast the stock exchange. The last contribution of this study lies in modifying the existing trading strategy to increase the profitability of the investor and support the argument that the investor earns more profit if the forecasting model is being developed by using the direction accuracy as compared to the value accuracy. The best forecasting classification accuracy obtained is 93% direction accuracy and 0.0000831 (MSE) value accuracy which are better than the accuracies obtained by the previous academic studies. Moreover, this research validates the work of the existing studies that hybrid approach outperforms the individual forecasting model. In addition, the rate of the return that was attained in this thesis by using modified trading strategy is 120.14% which has shown significant improvement as compared to the 10.8493% rate of return of the existing trading strategy in other academics studies. The difference in the rate of return could be due to the fact that this study has developed good forecasting model or a better trading strategy. The experimental results show our method not only improves the accuracy rate, but also meet the short-term investors’ expectations. The results of this thesis also support the claim that some financial time series are not entirely random, and that contrary to the predictions of the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), a trading strategy could be based solely on historical data. It was concluded that ANN do have good capabilities to forecast financial markets and, if properly trained, the investor could benefit from the use of this forecasting tool and trading strategy. Chapter 1 1 Introduction 1.1 Background to the Research Financial Time Series forecasting has attracted the interest of academic researchers and it has been addressed since the 1980.It is a challenging problem as the financial time series have complex behavior, resulting from a various factors such as economic, psychological or political reasons and they are non-stationary , noisy and deterministically chaotic. In today’s world, almost every individual is influenced by the fluctuations in the stock market. Now day’s people prefer to invest money in the diversified financial funds or shares due to its high returns than depositing in the banks. But there is lot of risk in the stock market due to its high rate of uncertainty and volatility. To overcome such risks, one of the main challenges for many years for the researchers is to develop the financial models that can describe the movements of the stock market and so far there had not been an optimum model. The complexity and difficulty of forecasting the stock exchange, and the emergence of data mining and computational intelligence techniques, as alternative techniques to the conventional statistical regression and Bayesian models with better performance, have paved the road for the increased usage of these techniques in fields of finance and economics. So, traders and investors have to rely on the various types of intelligent systems to make trading decisions. (Hameed,2008). A Computational Intelligence system such as neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms etc has been widely established research area in the field of information systems. They have been used extensively in forecasting of the financial market and they have been quite successful to some extent .Although the number of purposed methods in financial time series is very large , but no one technique has been successful to consistently to â€Å"beat the market†. For last three decades, opposing views have existed between the academic communities and traders about the topic of â€Å"Random walk theory â€Å"and â€Å"Efficient Market Hypothesis(EMH)† due to the complexity of the financial time series and lot of publications by different researchers have gather various amount of evidences in support as well as against it. Lehman (1990), Haugen (1999) and Lo (2000) gave evidence of the deficiencies in EMH. But the investors such as Warren Buffet for long period of time have beaten the stock market consistently. Market Efficiency or â€Å"Random walk theory† in terms of stock trading in the financial market means that it is impossible to earn excess returns using any historic information. In essence, then, the new information is the only variable that causes to alter the price of the index as well as used to predict the arrival and timing. Bruce James Vanstone (2005) stated that in an efficient market, security prices should appear to be randomly generated. Both sides in this argument are supported by empirical results from the different markets across over the globe. This thesis does not wish to enter into the argument theoretically whether to accept or reject the EMH. Instead, this thesis concentrates on the methodologies to be used for development of the financial models using the artificial neural networks (ANN), compares the forecasting capabilities of the various ANN and hybrid based approach models, develop the trading strategy that can help the investor and leaves the research of this thesis to stack up with the published work of other researchers which document ways to predict the stock market. In recent years and since its inception, ANN has gained momentum and has been widely used as a viable computational intelligent technique to forecast the stock market. The main challenge of the traders is to know the signals when the stock market deviates and to take advantage of such situations. The data used by the traders to remove the uncertainty in the stock market and to take trading decisions whether to buy or sell the stock using the information process is â€Å"noisy†. Information not contained in the known information subset used to forecast is considered to be noise and such environment is characterized by a low signal-to noise ratio. Refenes et.al (1993) and Thawornwong and Enke (2004) described that the relationship between the security price or returns and the variables that constitute that price (return), changes over time and this fact is widely accepted within the academic institutes. In other words, the stock market‘s structural mechanics may change over time which causes the effect on the index also change. Ferreira et al. (2004) described that the relationship between the variables and the predicted index is non linear and the Artificial neural networks (ANN) have the characteristic to represent such complex non-linear relationship. This thesis presents the mechanical London Stock Market trading system that uses the ANN forecasting model to extract the rules from daily index movements and generate signal to the investors and traders whether to buy, sell or hold a stock. The figure 1 and 2 represents the stock exchange and ANN forecasting model. By viewing the stock exchange as a financial market that takes historical and current data or information as an input, the investors react to this information based on their understanding, speculations, analysis etc. It would now seem very difficult to predict the stock market, characterized by high noise, nonlinearities, using only high frequency (weekly, daily) historical prices. Surprisingly though, there are anomalies in the behavior of the stock market that cannot be explained under the existing paradigm of market efficiency. Studies discussed in the literature review have been able to predict the stock market accurately to some extent and it seems that forecasting model developed by them have been able to pick some of the hidden patterns in the inherently non-linear price series. While it is true that forecasting model need to be designed and optimized with care in order to get accurate results . Further, it aims to contribute knowledge that will one day lead to a standard or optimum model for the prediction of the stock exchange. As such, it aims to present a well defined methodology that can be used to create the forecasting models and it is hoped that this thesis can address many of the deficiencies of the published research in this area. In the last decade, there has been plethora of the ANN models that were developed due to the absence of the well defined methodology, which were difficult to compare due to less published work and some of them have shown superior results in their domains. Moreover, this study also compares the predictive power of the ANN with the statistical models. Normally the approach used by the academic researchers in the forecasting use technical analysis and some of them include the fundamental analysis. The technical analysis uses only historical data (past price) to determine the movement of the stock exchange and fundamental analysis is based on external information (like interest rates, prices and returns of other asset) that comes from the economic system surrounding the financial market. Building a trading system using forecasting model and testing it on the evaluation criteria is the only practical way to evaluate the forecasting model. There has been so much prior research on identifying the appropriate trading strategy for forecasting problem. This thesis does not wish to enter into the argument which strategy is best or not. Although, the importance of the trading strategy can hardly be underestimated, but this thesis concentrates on using one of the existing strategy, modify it and compares the return by the forecasting models. But there has always been debate in the academic studies over how to effectively benchmark the model of ANN for trading. Some of the academic researchers stated that predicting the direction of the stock exchange may lead to higher profits while some of them supported the view that predicting the value of the stock exchange may lead to higher rate of return. Azoff (1994) and Thawornwong and Enke (2004) discussed about this debate in their study. In essence, there is a need for a formalized development methodology for developing the ANN financial models which can be used as a benchmark for trading systems. All of this is accommodated by this thesis. 1.2 Problem Statement and Research Question The studies mentioned above have generally indicated that ANN, as used in the stock market, can be a valuable tool to the investor .Due to some of the problems discussed above, we are not still able to answer the question: Can ANNs be used to develop the accurate forecasting model that can be used in the trading systems to earn profit for the investor? From the variety of academic research summarized in the literature review, it is clear that a great deal of research in this area has taken place by different academic researchers and they have gathered various amounts of evidences in support as well as against it. This directly threatens the use of ANN applicability to the financial industry. Apart from the previous question, this research addresses various other problems: 1. Which ANN have better performance in the forecasting of the London Stock Exchange from the five different types of the ANN which are widely used in the academics? 2. Which subset of the potential input variables from 2002-08 affect the LSE? 3. Do international stock exchanges, currency exchange rate and other macroeconomic factors affect the LSE? 4. How much the performance of the forecasting model is improved by using the regression analysis in the factor selection? 5. Can use of the technical indicators improve the performance of the forecasting model? 6. Which learning algorithm in the training of the ANN give the better performance? 7. Does Hybrid-based Forecasting Models give better performance than the individual ANN forecasting models? 8. Which Hybrid-based models have the better performance and what are the limitations of using them? 9. Does the forecasting model developed on the basis of the percentage accuracy gives more rate of the return as compared to the value accuracy? 10. Does the forecasting model having better performance in terms of the accuracy increase the profit of the investor when applied to the trading strategy? Apart from all questions outlined above, it addresses various another questions regarding the design of the ANN. †¢ Are there any approaches to solve the various issues in designing of the ANN like number of hidden layers and activation functions? This thesis will attempt to answer the above question within the constraints and scope of the 6-year sample period (from 2002-2008) using historical data of various variables that affect the LSE. Further, this thesis will also attempt to answer these questions within the practical constraints of transaction costs and money management imposed by real-world trading systems. Although a formal statement of the methodology or steps that is being used is left until section 3, it makes sense to discuss the way in which this thesis will address the above question. In this thesis, various types of ANN will be trained using fundamental data, and technical data according to the direction and value accuracy. A better trading system development methodology will be defined, and the performance of the forecasting model will be checked by using evaluation criteria rate of the return .In this way, the benefits of incorporating ANN into trading strategies in the stock market can be exposed and quantified. Once this process has been undertaken, it will be possible to answer the thesis all questions. 1.3 Motivation of the Research Stock market has always had been an attractive appeal for the researchers and financial investors and they have studied it over again to extract the useful patterns to predict the movement of the stock market. The reason is that if the researchers can make the accurate forecasting model, they can beat the market and can gain excess profit by applying the best trading strategy. Numerous financial investors have suffered lot of financial losses in the stock market as they were not aware of the stock market behavior. They had the problem that they were not able to decide when they should sell or buy the stock to gain profit. Nevertheless, finding out the best time for the investor to buy or to sell has remained a very difficult task because there are too many factors that may influence stock prices. If the investors have the accurate forecasting model, then they can predict the future behavior of the stock exchange and can gain profit. This solves the problem of the financial investors to some extent as they will not bear any financial loss. But it does not guarantee that the investor can have better profit or rate of return as compared to other investors unless he utilized the forecasting model using better trading strategy to invest money in the share market. This thesis tries to solve the above problem by providing the investor better forecasting model and trading strategies that can be applied to real-world trading systems. 1.4 Justification of Research There are several features of this academic research that distinguish it from previous academic researches. First of all, the time frame chosen for the investigation of the ANN (2002-08) in the London Stock Exchange has never been tested in the previous academic work. The importance of the period chosen is that there are two counter forces, which are opposing each other. On the one hand, the improvement of the UK and other countries economy after the 2001 financial crises happened in this period as a whole. On the other hand, this period also shows the decline in the stock markets from Jan, 2008 to Dec, 2008. So, it is important to test the forecasting model for bull, stable and bear market. Second, some of the research questions addressed in the above section, have not been investigated much in the academic studies, especially there is hardly any study which have done research on all the problems. Moreover, original hybrid based mixed neural network, better trading strategy and other modified approaches have been successfully being described and used in this study Finally, there is a significant lack of work carried out in this area in the LSE. As such, this thesis draws heavily on results published mainly within the United States and other countries; from the academics .One interesting aspect of this thesis is that it will be interesting to see how much of the published research on application of ANN in stock market anomalies is applicable to the UK market. This is important as some of the academic studies (Pan et al (2005)) states that each stock market in the globe is different. 1.5 Delimitations of scope The thesis concerns itself with historical data for the variables that affect London Stock Exchange during the period 2002 – 2008. 1.6 Outline of the Report The remaining part of the thesis is organized in the following six chapters. The second chapter, the background and literature review, provides a brief introduction to the domain and also pertinent literature is reviewed to discuss the related published work of the previous researchers in terms of their contribution and content in the prediction of the stock exchange which serves as the building block for much of the research. Moreover, this literature review also gave solid justification why a particular set of ANN inputs are selected, which is important step according to the Thawornwong and Enke (2004) and and some concepts from finance. The third chapter, the methodology, describes the steps in detail, data and the mechanics or techniques that take place in the thesis along with the empirical evidence. In addition, it also discuss the literature review for each step. Formulas and diagrams are shown to explain the techniques when necessary and it also covers issues as software and hardware used in the study. The fourth chapter, the implementation, discusses the approaches used in the implementation in detail based on the third chapter. It also covers such issues as software and hardware used in the study. The fifth chapter, the results and analysis, present the results according to the performance and benchmark measures that we have used in this study to compare with other models. It describes the choices that were needed in making model and justifies these choices in terms of the literature. The sixth chapter, conclusions and further work, restates the thesis hypothesis, discuss the conclusions drawn from the project and also thesis findings are put into perspective. Finally, the next steps to improve the model performance are considered. Chapter 2 Background and Literature Review 2 Background and Literature Review This section of thesis explores the theory of three relevant fields of the Financial Time Series, Stock Market, and Artificial Neural Networks, which together form the conceptual frameworks of the thesis as shown in the figure 1. Framework is provided to the trader to make quantitative and qualitative judgments concerning the future stock exchange movements. These three fields are reviewed in historical context, sketching out the development of those disciplines, and reviewing their academic credibility, and their application to this thesis. In the case of Neural Networks, the field is reviewed with regard to that portion of the literature which deals with applying neural network to the prediction of the stock exchange, the various type of techniques and neural networks used and an existing prediction model is extended to allow a more detailed analysis of the area than would otherwise have been possible. 2.1 Financial Time Series 2.1.1 Introduction The field of the financial time series prediction is a highly complex task due to the following reasons: 1. The financial time series frequently behaves like a random-walk process and predictability of such series is controversial issue which has been questioned in scope of EMH. 2. The statistical property of the financial time series shift with the different time. Hellstr ¨om and Holmstr ¨om [1998]). 3. Financial time series is usually noisy and the models which have been able to reduce such noise has been the better model in forecasting the value and direction of the stock exchange. 4. In the long run, a new forecasting technique becomes a part of the process to be forecasted, i.e. it influences the process to be forecasted (Hellstr ¨om and Holmstr ¨om [1998]). The first point is explained later in this section while discussing the EMH theory (Page).The graph of the volatility time series of FTSE 100 index from 14 June, 1993 to 29 December, 1998 and Dow Jones from 1928 to 2000 by Nelson Areal (2008) and Negrea Bogdan Cristian (2007) illustrates the second point of the FTSE 100 [2.1.r]in figure 2.1.1 and 2.2.2.These figures also shows that the volatility changes with period , in some periods FTSE 100 index value fluctuates so much and in some it remains calm. The third point is explained by the fact the events on a particular data affect the financial time series of the index, for example, the volatility of stocks or index increases before announcement of major stock specific news (Donders and Vorst [1996]). These events are random and contribute noise in the time series which may make difficult to compare the two forecasting models difficult to compare as a random model can also produce results. The fourth result can be explained by the example. Suppose a company develop a model or technique that can outcast all other models or techniques. The company will make lot of profits if this model is available to less people. But if this technique is available to all people with time due to its popularity, than the profits of the company will decrease as the company will not no longer take advantage of this technique. This argument is described in Hellstr ¨om and Holmstr ¨om [1998] and Swingler [1994] . 2.1.2 Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) EMH Theory has been a controversial issue for many years and there has been no mutual agreed deal among the academic researchers, whether it is possible to predict the stock price. The people who believe that the prices follow â€Å"random walk† trend and cannot be predicted, are usually people who support the EMH theory. Academic researchers( Tino et al. [2000]), have shown that the profit can be made by using historical information , whereas they also found difficult to verify the strong form due to lack of all private and public data. The EMH was developed in 1965 by Fama (Fama [1965], Fama [1970]) and has found widely accepted (Anthony and Biggs [1995], Malkiel [1987], White [1988], Lowe and Webb [1991]) in the academic community (Lawrence et al. [1996]).It states that the future index or stock value is completely unpredictable given the historical information of the index or stocks. There are three forms of EMH: weak, semi-strong, and strong form. The weak EMH rules out any form of forecasting based on the stock’s history, since the stock prices follows a random walk in which in which successive changes have zero correlation (Hellstr ¨om and Holmstr ¨om [1998]). In Semi Strong hypothesis, we consider all the publicly available information such as volume data and fundamental data. In strong form, we consider all the publicly and privately available information. Another reason for argument against the EMH is that different investors or traders react differently when a stock suddenly drops in a value. These different time perspectives will cause the unexpected change in the stock exchange, even if the new information has not entered in the scene. It may be possible to identify these situations and actually predict future changes (Hellstr  ¨om and Holmstr ¨om [1998]) The developer have proved it wrong by making forecasting models, this issue remains an interesting area. This controversy is just only matter of the word immediately in the definition. The studies in support of the argument of EMH rely on using the statistical tests and show that the technical indicators and tested models can’t forecast. However, the studies against the argument uses the time delay between the point when new information enters the model or system and the point when the information has spread across over the globe and a equilibrium has been reached in the stock market with a new market price. 2.1.3 Financial Time Series Forecasting Financial Time series Forecasting aims to find underlying patterns, trends and forecast future index value using using historical and current data or information. The historic values are continuous and equally spaced value over time and it represent various types of data . The main aim of the forecasting is to find an approximate mapping function between the input variables and the forecasted or output value . According to Kalekar (2004), Time series forecasting assumes that a time series is a combination of a pattern and some error. The goal of the model using time series is to separate the pattern from the error by understanding the trend of the pattern and its seasonality Several methods are used in time series forecasting like moving average (section ) moving averages, linear regression with time etc. Time series differs from the technical analysis (section) that it is based on the samples and treated the values as non-chaotic time series. Many academic researchers have applied t ime series analysis in their forecasting model, but there has been no major success. [1a] 2.2 Stock Market 2.2.1 Introduction Let us consider the basics of the stock market. MM What are stocks? Stock refers to a share in the ownership of a corporation or company. They represent a claim of the stock owner on the company’s earnings and assets and by buying more stocks; the stake in the ownership is increased. In United States, stocks are often referred as shares, whereas in the UK they are also used as synonym for bonds, shares and equities. MM Why a Company issues a stock? The main reason for issuing stock is that the company wants to raise money by selling some part of the company. A company can raise money by two ways: â€Å"debt financing† (borrowing money by issuing bonds or loan from bank) and â€Å"equity financing â€Å"(borrowing money by issuing stocks).It is advantageous to raise the money by issuing stocks as the company has not to pay money back to the stock owners but they have to share the profit in the form of the dividends. MM What is Stock Pricing or price? A stock price is the price of a single stock of a number of saleable stocks traded by the company. A company issue stock at static price, and the stock price may increase or decrease according to the trade. Normally the price of the stocks in the stock market is determined by the supply/demand equilibrium. MM What is a Stock Market? Stock Market or equity market is a public market where the trading and issuing of a company stock or derivates takes place either through the stock exchange or they may be traded privately and over-the counter markets. It is vital part of the economy as it provides opportunities to the company to raise money and also to the investors of having potential gain by selling or buying share. The stock market in the US includes the NYSE, NASDAQ, the AMEX as well as many regional exchanges. London Stock Exchange is the major stock exchange in the UK and Europe.As mentioned in the Chapter 1, in this study we forecast the London Stock Exchange (Section 2.2.2.). Investing in the stock market is very risky as the stock market is uncertain and unsteady. The main aim of the investor is to get maximum returns from the money invested in the stock market, for which he has to study about the performance, price history about the stock company .So it is a broad category and according to Hellstrom (1997), there are four main ways to predict the stock market: 1. Fundamental analysis (section 2.2.3) 2. Technical analysis, (section 2.2.4) 3. Time series forecasting (section 2.1) 4. Machine learning (ANN). (Section 2.3) 2.2.2 London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange is one of the world’s oldest and largest stock exchanges in the world, which started its operation in 1698, when John Casting commenced â€Å"at this Office in Jonathan’s Coffee-house† a list of stock and commodity prices called â€Å"The Course of the Exchange and other things† [2] .On March 3, 1801, London Stock Exchange was officially established with current lists of over 3,200 companies and has existed, in one or more form or another for more than 300 years. In 2000, it decided to become public and listed its shares on its own stock exchange in 2001. The London Stock market consists of the Main Market and Alternative Investments Market (AIM), plus EDX London (exchange for equity derivatives). The Main Market is mainly for established companies with high performance, and AIM hand trades small-caps, or new enterprises with high growth potential.[1] Since the launch of the AIM in 1995, AIM has become the most successful growth market in the world with over 3000 companies from across the globe have joined AIM. To evaluate the London Stock Exchange, the autonomous FTSE Group (owned by the Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange) , sustains a series of indices comprising the FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 250 Index, FTSE 350 Index, FTSE All-Share, FTSE AIM-UK 50, FTSE AIM 100, FTSE AIM All-Share, FTSE SmallCap, FTSE Tech Mark 100 ,FTSE Tech Mark All-Share.[4] FTSE 100 is the most famous and composite index calculated respectively from the top 100 largest companies whose shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange. The base date for calculation of FTSE 100 index is 1984. [2] In the UK, the FTSE 100 is frequently used by large investor, financial experts and the stock brokers as a guide to stock market performance. The FTSE index is calculated from the following formula: 2.2.3 Fundamental Analysis Fundamental Analysis focuses on evaluation of the future stock exchange movements