Question

Video Transcript

>> If someone wants to be successful in life, there are certain obligations that they're going to have to themselves in terms of making the right decisions. And if you want to work for the rest of your life, then you won't really have to worry about planning in terms of financially speaking. If you are concerned, and you don't want to work for the rest of your life, then you'll have to be concerned about your finances. In doing so, that's where investing comes into play. It's doing the right thing with your money over time.

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People tend to confuse the topic. That has a lot to do with the media, the grapevine individuals. The typical individual learns about investing through the grapevine. I think the most important thing for a young individual is education. Learning the proper techniques and the proper components about investing. Where they should have their money, why certain things work the way they do. What's the difference between a stock and a bond? Things of this nature. As you become more comfortable about investing, you will make better financial decisions. In 1997, Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter merged. They took the top talent from both organizations and created a global financial institution. They have investment banking, which is kind of like the Morgan Stanley side, and they have retail investing, or the individual investing section, which is the Dean Witter side. The organization focuses on all aspects of the financial markets, whether it be lending, investments, investment banking, merchant banking. It's really unlimited when it comes to the resources that Morgan Stanley has to offer an individual client. There are many different types of investments. A new investor, or a young investor, could utilize when making, starting off a portfolio. One of the most popular investments, and the one that I would probably recommend would be a mutual fund. A mutual fund gives you two very important things. The first thing, and the most important thing, is diversification. Mutual funds can invest in a basket of different types of investments. They could invest in stocks and bonds. They could invest in just stocks. They could invest in just bonds. It's a multi-faceted type of product that the mutual fund manager has the ability to invest in any type of investment that they want based on the prospectus. So you, as an average investor, or a new investor who is not really sure what stocks do I buy, which bond do I buy, you relieve that responsibility to the mutual fund manager. And within the scope of mutual funds, there's hundreds of different types of mutual funds. Number two, I would say would be an individual stock for a growth investor. With an individual stock, you have direct ownership in the company that you're buying. If it's a common stock, which a typical investor buys, you have one share if you buy one share, you have one share of the, of ownership of that company, and you're buying that one share because you feel that this stock is going to be a good investment, the company's going to do well, and the share price of that stock is going to grow over time. That's appreciation. That's the reason why you're buying an individual stock. It could be more risky than another type of investment, because if that company doesn't do well, unfortunately its stock price is not going to do well, and you know, negatively affect your portfolio. On the flipside of that, you have a bond type of investment. This investment typically is a little less risky in the sense that it's giving you the opportunity to put a certain amount of money up to the individual issuing the bond. That individual, the issuing company, or corporation, or whomever is issuing the bond, pays you an interest rate over the duration of the bond. At the end of the bond, they give you your money back, however much you originally put into it. So you have somewhat of a fixed idea of the exact dollar amount of money that you're going to be receiving from that type of an investment, whereas with a stock, you're putting money in, you could lose money, you could make money, there's really no set idea of exactly how much money you're going to be getting. With a bond, typically, you have a set idea of exactly how much, in terms of return, you're going to be receiving. After you make a decision, and you decide you want to start investing. There's three things that you need to focus on before you make any type of investment decision. The first thing is to determine your goals and objectives. Your goals and objectives will give you an idea of what exactly you want to do, whether it be your retirement. You could usually set sort term goals, medium term goals, and long-term goals. That's kind of like the blueprint for your financial future. The second thing is your time horizon. And that's your duration in investment terms. How long do you have to reach those goals? The earlier you start as an investor, the more of an opportunity you have to obtain your goals. You want to buy something like a house, you might want to wait three years. Medium term, you might be thinking about starting a business. That might be 5 to 10 years. You're usually, your longest term goal is retirement, that might be 20 to 25 years. With the effects of compounding interest. What that means is money doubles by certain percentages every year, or every number of years. By giving yourself the opportunity to have more years in the pipeline, that gives yourself, with the effects of compounding interest, the opportunity for your money to double more often. The third thing is your risk tolerance. I call it your sleep-ability. That is, how are you going to invest your money and be comfortable, and be able to put your head on the pillow at night and be able to sleep. That is something that is not easy to figure out as a new investor because you don't have the education or the experience with the overall market. One of the things that I use to kind of gauge an individual is, if you invested in a stock or a bond, and that stock went down by 20%, what would you do? The typical investor, early on, because they're not educated and experienced, they tend to do the exact opposite of what they're supposed to do. The old theory goes, buy low, sell high. The typical individual does not invest that way. This is how it works. An individual makes a decision to invest. He starts to talk to a couple of his friends. One of his friends says, "Oh, I invested in this mutual fund last year, it did 75% return in one year." Investor's delighted to hear those terms. What type of fund was it? Gets the name, runs home, puts X amount of dollars into the mutual fund, buying it high, because it was up 75%. What happens, because the market is cyclical, typically the mutual funds that did well this year, do poorly the following year. The fund drops down. Now he's losing money. He thinks about it for a second and says, what was I thinking. I just rushed into this. I should have never bought this fund. I don't even like any of the investments in this fund. He sells the fund. He or she sells the fund. Then they say, "Okay, now what am I going to do with the money?" They do a little of their own research, based on performance, and short-term thinking, they buy another fund that was up 50, 60%. For whatever reason, they put more money into that fund. You can see this cycle starting to develop. They're buying high, selling low. Buying high and selling low. That's the exact opposite from what you want to be doing. An old saying goes is buy straw hats in December because it's the winter time, that's when they're cheap. When prices are low, and things don't look good, that's when you want to be investing in them. Not when everything looks really good, corporate profits are high, you know, the CEO of the company is on the cover of every magazine. That's typically when you sell the stock, not when you buy it. As a result of the bull market that happened in the late '90s, we saw double-digit returns many years in a row, it drew a lot of investors into the market because they thought it was going to be a quick hit. That they were going to be able to make a lot of money in a very short period of time, which a lot of individuals did. Kind of like the gold rush in California, the market drew thousands and hundreds of thousands of investors all looking for that quick, that quick rich hit. Basically, what happened was, that pushed equity prices well above what the fundamentals warrant for these stocks and that went on for a few years. And unfortunately, as some of the economic numbers didn't work out the way they were supposed to, the economy slowed down a little bit, corporate earnings fell a little short, it burst that bubble. The individual that was able to get out ahead of time did okay. Unfortunately, probably the majority of the people did not. And it's that short-term, kind of day trading mentality that could force you not to make the right investment decisions in terms of short-term thinking, irrational type thinking. When you're investing, it's for the long-term. If you invest for the short-term, that's like basically gambling. That's what not we're trying to achieve. I conduct seminars all the time. The typical individual thinks that when they retire, social security is going to be their means of retirement income. Number one, we don't know if social security's going to be around and number two, if it is around, that's not going to really be the sum of money you want to have available for yourself in retirement. The responsibility of savings relies on you. It's not necessarily savings starting off with the right dollar amount. I'm sure we could all attain to this because we've all been young at one time, but it's not necessarily managing your assets, it's managing your liabilities. When you graduate, you have huge student loans, you have huge credit card bills, maybe a personal loan, you have your car loan, and that is going to prevent you from investing the right way. So the first, my first recommendation would be to manage your debt. Focus on acting somewhat prudently when you're at a younger age. In terms of the investment end, what I would recommend would be to start off small. Typically, I say to someone that your checkbook, every month you're balancing your checking, hopefully, if you have one. Usually, every month you'll have that dollar amount at the bottom of the registry that you're not using that's kind of carrying over every month, whether it be $100 or, take that dollar amount and invest that into maybe a mutual fund or some type of investment that makes sense for your overall profile. That's called dollar cost averaging. That's a strategy that we use that allows you to slowly put money into the market at highs and lows, and over the long-term, you'll get a better average price. It's never too early to start investing. Even if you start with $100, $200 a month, a week, whatever you could afford in your budget, those small dollar amounts over time will grow to be the money that you'll need in terms of a nest egg to retire on when you hit your retirement age.

Chapter 10

Securities Markets: Trading Financial Resources

Video Case: Morgan Stanley Builds Its Future One Client at a

Time

Founded as an investment bank in 1935, Morgan Stanley has a long history and a strong brand identity, ranking among Wall Street’s elite. The company also has a number of securities industry “firsts” to its credit, including the first computer model for financial analysis, the introduction of automated processing for securities trading, and the creation of innovative new types of securities.

In 1997 Morgan Stanley merged with Dean Witter, combining that company’s strong retail brokerage services with its own investment banking and institutional securities operations. Today the combined firm is global, with about 54,000 employees in more than 600 offices in 30 countries, and client assets under management totaling more than $622 billion.

Morgan Stanley is highly regarded for its financial advice and market execution, offering clients a wide range of services through four business segments: Institutional Securities (investment banking, institutional sales and trading, research), Individual Investor Group (investor advisory services, wealth management, individual investor services),Investment Management (global asset management products and services for individual and institutional investors), and Credit Services (Discover-branded cards and other consumer finance products and services). The firm continues to be on the cutting edge in its use of technology.

During the high-flying 1990s, Morgan Stanley and its Wall Street peers enjoyed a period

of fast growth and increasing profitability as the stock market soared and corporate financing

activity flourished. As the new century started, however, the 10-year bull market ended, bringing very different and volatile economic conditions. Few companies wanted to issue securities, merger activity fell off sharply, and individual investors retreated to the sidelines as stock prices tumbled.

Along with many other financial institutions, Morgan Stanley reduced its staff and closed offices in response to lower revenues from the financial markets. The Institutional Securities unit focused its resources on building stronger relationships with top clients. It developed its own systems to automate its NASDAQ and options trading, which offered clients improved execution at lower cost. The Individual Investor Group began emphasizing fee-based accounts rather than transactional arrangements.

As the markets improved, Morgan Stanley focused on building up relationships “one client at a time.” Whether working with large corporations looking to raise financing or individual investors saving for college or retirement, Morgan Stanley evaluates clients’ needs, develops

financial plans, and implements strategies to reach objectives. Current chairman and chief executive officer John J. Mack states, “We have the right team, the right assets, and the right business mix in place. Now we must maintain a relentless focus on one priority—performance…We will tear down any barriers that impede our ability to create a cohesive ‘one firm’ culture in which every employee acts and feels like an owner of the firm.” It is clear that Morgan Stanley has every intention of maintaining its position at the forefront of the securities industry.

1. Explain why it is important for Morgan Stanley’s clients to understand their personal investment objectives. What might some of these be for a corporate client?

2. As a potential individual client, list several of your personal financial goals. Visit the Morgan Stanley website, www.morganstanley.com, and explore the pages for individual investors. Which of the features and benefits presented on the site appeal to you most? Would you feel comfortable choosing Morgan Stanley as your investment adviser, and why?

Answer 1

1). Investment objective will help them to chose where to invest and how much they can take the risk. This will help them to understand how they can use the service of Morgan Stanley platform. As the company provide large number of services, deciding the goals will help us to evaluate how can avail it.

For more elaborate answer, you can define goals such has growth, income, diversification, safety, capital prevention etc. All the above goals are same for corporate clients plus we can add goals like cash flow management of investment, corporate loans available from such investment.

2).

The three most common types of investment goal are:

• Retirement planning for long term goals for 20-25 year.
• Start a new business is medium term for 5-10 years.
• Medical emergency or life style update funds are the medium to shorter term (5-10 years).
• Property purchaset short term goals for 3 year.

Morgan Stanley website has given me:-

• It helps create a financial plan
• You can expect personalized services
• They function on a relationship-based approach
• Cash flow planning
• Easy website handling
• Vartiy for investment options mix

For more detailed answer, kindly elaborate the points