A market analysis can take time and effort, but it's easy to do on your own in just seven steps.

SWOT Analysis is a tool to find out the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats that are to be expected in a project or in a business venture or in something similar. It means that the situation (internal and external to the organization or individual) is looked at. It is one of the best tools to conduct the internal and external analysis for any company. Internal and external factors Internal factors may include employment, finance, manufacturing opportunities, and all of the marketing mix's 4Ps. External factors include macroeconomics, technological change, legislation, and sociocultural changes, as well as changes in the marketplace. Use SWOT analysis can be used in any decision-making situation. SWOT analysis can be used: to build organizational or personal strategy; for matching and converting; allow organizations to achieve their goals; as a basis for the analysis of business and environmental factors; in marketing — analyzing competitors....

Learn how to use a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis to make smarter business decisions.

Learn how to perform a competitive analysis to see where your business is performing well, where it can improve and how to capture a bigger market share.

In this edition: Shrinkage for third parties, another primary day in New England, and polls that will elevate the Democratic panic level from their usual 9 out of 10 to a solid 9.5.

A market trend is a perceived tendency of financial markets to move in a particular direction over time. Analysts classify these trends as secular for long time-frames, primary for medium time-frames, and secondary for short time-frames. Traders attempt to identify market trends using technical analysis, a framework which characterizes market trends as predictable price tendencies within the market when price reaches support and resistance levels, varying over time. A market trend can only be determined in hindsight, since at any time prices in the future are not known. Market terminology The terms "bull market" and "bear market" describe upward and downward market trends, respectively, and can be used to describe either the market as a whole or specific sectors and securities. The terms come from London's Exchange Alley in the early 18th century, where traders who engaged in naked short selling were called "bear-skin jobbers" because they sold a bear's skin (the shares) before catching the bear. This was simplified...

Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to attain strategic goals. Furthermore, it may also extend to control mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the strategy. Strategic planning became prominent in corporations during the 1960s and remains an important aspect of strategic management. It is executed by strategic planners or strategists, who involve many parties and research sources in their analysis of the organization and its relationship to the environment in which it competes.Strategy has many definitions, but it generally involves setting strategic goals, determining actions to achieve the goals, setting a timeline, and mobilizing resources to execute the actions. A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources) in a given span of time. Often, Strategic Planning is long term and organizational action steps are established from two to five years in the future. The senior leadership of an organization is generally tasked with determining strategy. Strategy can be planned (intended) or can be observed as a...

In finance, margin is the collateral that a holder of a financial instrument has to deposit with a counterparty (most often their broker or an exchange) to cover some or all of the credit risk the holder poses for the counterparty. This risk can arise if the holder has done any of the following: Borrowed cash from the counterparty to buy financial instruments, Borrowed financial instruments to sell them short, Entered into a derivative contract.The collateral for a margin account can be the cash deposited in the account or securities provided, and represents the funds available to the account holder for further share trading. On United States futures exchanges, margins were formerly called performance bonds. Most of the exchanges today use SPAN ("Standard Portfolio Analysis of Risk") methodology, which was developed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1988, for calculating margins for options and futures. Margin account A margin account is a loan account with a broker which can be used for share trading. The funds available under the margin...