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BEIJING (Xinhua) – Inventories of iron ore at 25 of China’s major sea ports rose to 96.21 million tonnes in the week ending Sept. 5, according to the Xinhua-China Iron Ore Price Index released on Tuesday.
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A company planning to do cost-cutting by reducing its manpower may cause them more harm than good. In a company with unionized organization for example, it is usually written in the union contract that newer people go first and the senior workers remain when lay-offs are deemed necessary.

When manpower reduction happens, there are lower level jobs used to be performed by the newer people yet have to be done. These lower level jobs are then assigned to the senior workers left in the workplace.

In this scenario, what often happens is that senior workers gradually retrogress to cover the gaps, landing into the tasks which they never learned, or tasks which they have not done years ago and have mostly forgotten the task.

When a union contract includes prohibition for a tenured worker in receiving a reduction in salary, the result is that the employee performs a lower-level job for high-level pay.

In short, the employee gets paid more than the job is worth which is obviously not cost effective. The worst scenario would be, the reduction could mean a downturn in product quality.

Any plan for cost-cutting must be thoroughly evaluated to prevent this kind of ineffectiveness. There are other options possible than automatic lay-offs. A good example would be improving inventory control to keep stock at a lower level but the turn-over can be past.

It is always necessary to remain impartial when considering cost-cutting method. In most cases, the “boss” preserves his own pet projects while reducing other operation functions that are capable of providing a larger return.

What is mutual fund? It is an investment provided by a group of investors, wherein they hire a collection manager and merge their money. The role of a manager is to invest the fund into different investment securities, such as stocks, bonds, etc.

Mutual funds offer many advantages than to individual stocks. Advantages are:

1. Well-managed by professionals – the individual investors usually do not have time to watch and analyze their potential assets. In mutual funds, investors usually hired professional and experienced managers to do the researching, analyzing and some things needed in this business.
2. Cost-effective diversification – this will give you an access into hundreds of stocks or bonds which can obtain into much lower transaction cost for the reason that the cost were divided among shareholders.
3. It offers clarity – The process is often to the public and will give assurance to the investors for the accurate payment.
4. The shares can converted into cash – mutual fund is the same with the individual stock, in which the shares can convert into cash upon request.
5. There are different types of mutual funds – this will let you easily expand your portfolio at low cost.
6. Small amount of investment – several companies offer a minimal amount as an investment.
7. Automatic reinvestment – reinvesting has no additional fee and shareholder gains can automatically reinvest.
8. Mutual fund is systematic – the investing and withdrawing is systematic, their transactions are usually via bank.

In all business, there are good and bad points. It is important to know both things. The success has no assurance; the good thing to do is to give your best in everything, always guided with the policy and study everything about the business. Mutual fund is a good investment, just make sure to maintain a record of accomplishment, bear in mind that the value of the mutual fund is always fluctuating and any moment the value may depreciate hence make sure you are ready for those possibilities.

Whenever you happen to be an investor in the business world, one of the worst positions that you can find yourself in is the position where you are actually hoping for a loss. The reason that this is bad should be self-evident, but what is perhaps not as obvious is that the reason you would be hoping for a loss is that the loss you would be hoping for is smaller than losses you had already sustained.

This is what the position of Citigroup investors has been over the last few quarters and the first quarter loss of $5.1 billion that had been reported certainly cheered many of these investors up because of the fact that it was significantly smaller than what most of them had been projecting.

However, there is usually a double edge to news like this and the news is simply that since the losses are still mounting, Citigroup is going to have to look to sales of assets and dividend cuts in order to maintain their own company, keep the head of the corporation above water. This means that many investors might see even more losses in the near future than they have already withstood with Citigroup stock.

To give you an idea of just how bad the situation is, consider the fact that this month Citigroup’s Tier 1 capital ratio was reported as 7.7%; an amount that is lower than it was in February. In addition to that, Citigroup requires a 7.5% ratio in order to maintain its credit rating. Considering nobody seems to know right now just how low that ratio can go, I don’t blame investors for being pessimistic at this stage.