Planning a vacation can be stressful and sometimes frustrating. But of course, it is important to plan your vacations to make it the most enjoyable and least stressful. Especially if you are planning to travel outside of the country or you are planning to have a cruise, then you must be able to give time in preparing for the trip to avoid any disappointments in your travel.If you are particularly planning to have a cruise for your vacation, here are a few cruise travel tips that you may find helpful. You would surely want a perfect vacation, thus invest in a little time to research and learn from those who have been there. Most especially if it is your first time in going to a cruise for a vacation, here are ideas that may be of help.- Know what you want in a cruise. You can actually have lots of choices and different cruise ships can have different services, facilities and amenities. To help you choose the perfect cruise for you, then you should first consider what you want to do in your vacation. Cruise ships may have casinos, spas, swimming pool, theaters – so you have to make sure you know what you want to do so you can fully appreciate and enjoy your cruise.- Determine the destination that you want to go and visit. Whether you want to go to the Caribbean or tropical islands or some luxurious cities, or beaches, you have to make sure what you want. There are a lot of destinations, so make sure you also know where you want to go.- Check your budget. Of course, the biggest factor that you have to consider is your budget. For sure, you don’t want to go on a vacation and take the burden of having heaps of credit card payables when you come back. You also have to make sure you have enough budget for the activities you want to enjoy as well as your destination choice. You may want to prioritize your preferences as well, depending on your budget as well.- Study the weather beforehand. The weather is one important factor to consider as well if you want to go on a vacation. Of course, you can’t enjoy the beaches more when the weather is stormy. You may not also enjoy the activities that you want to do outdoors if you are going on a cruise on a not-so-favorable weather.- Spend wisely. Enjoying your vacation does not always mean having to spend too much. You can learn a few cruise travel tips to help you make the most out of your budget. A little research can be very helpful in making your vacation enjoyable with the budget that you have.- Start with short cruises first. Especially if it is your first time in a cruise, get on a short cruise such as those that will last for 3 to 4 days. Get those 10-day cruise only if you already have experience or you know what to expect in the cruise.These are just a few cruise travel tips and things that you may find helpful in planning your trip.
Risk Management Policies In Financial Services: Hedge Funds
Many financial services make use of a well-structured risk management policy to manage their day-to-day exposure to risk, including exclusive investment entities such as hedge funds. For many years hedge funds were considered the high-stakes bad boys of the investing world; an image that the industry despised and rejected in the public eye, yet celebrated behind the closed doors of their high-rise offices and their swanky exclusive nightclubs. Over the past 36 months the hedge fund community has stepped up their efforts to shed the negativity and weariness that is often associated with them. Of course in some ways this “risky market gambler” perception was always unfounded, especially considering hedge funds use complex strategies and investment vehicles to hedge away systemic and market risk.Due to their size and unique capital structure, hedge funds were previously allowed to operate outside the stringent oversight of investment regulators, but this has changed over the past decade. While hedge funds continue to abstain from using the comprehensive risk management ‘best-practices’ of other financial services such as banks and large fund managers, they have certainly increased their use of risk management policies. These processes have evolved to monitor not only how their range of investments mitigate inherent market risk for their investors, but also how they conduct their business in general.The organizational risk philosophy at any particular hedge fund typically reflects the interest-level and commitment of that fund’s top traders and officials. The greater these managers believe in not chasing greater return at the expense of risk compliance, the stronger the fund’s risk policy is embedded throughout the entire fund’s other personnel. Many hedge funds now employ a Chief Risk Officer and have doubled their expenditures on risk management processes and risk compliance. They are increasingly seeking individuals who have obtained at least one risk management certification, focusing on credit and financial risk. These changes are the result of not only clearer minds within the hedge fund management community, but also from changing investor expectations. While hedge fund have always used complex quantitative risk management models to quell investor fears, most managers will tell you that in the past few investors know, or cared to know, how they worked. While this sentiment has not dramatically changed during these past few months, there are changing expectations from investors, especially large institutional money managers, in regards to transparency, risk analysis processes, and how business is conducted. Fund managers typically benefit from long investment time-horizons and leeway from their investors, but even traditionally ‘sticky’ investors are demonstrating a willingness to pull assets out of hedge funds if managers do not comply with the changing risk expectations.As a consequence of the 2008 financial upheaval the fund community has witnesses the creation of a series of private oversight groups, such as the ‘Hedge Fund Standards Board’. These self-regulatory bodies are creating industry benchmarks and best-practices in risk management, and from which the community can develop their own risk policies.Hedge funds of all sizes have developed and incorporated risk management policies into their operational and trading strategies. These processes include limits on acceptable losses per trader, controls and limits on the types of investments made, and formal communication and internal policing procedures. These funds offer limited transparency on how they conduct business to anyone outside their inner circle of investors, and thus individual firms are expected to internally police themselves. An predominant precursor of risk in this business is the overuse of leverage, and risk management in this area has become a hot-button issue within the fund community. Many fund managers use borrowed money (funds borrowed against the assets provided by their investors) to maximize the return on their positions, and achieve the above-market gains the industry is famous for. However, this practice leaves the firm and its investors assets exposed to unforeseen market risks. The majority of funds now have risk assessment policies in place that monitor their liabilities-to-assets ratios and prevent individual traders from exceeding leverage limits.Due diligence in many aspects of the hedge fund business has increased since the 2008 financial crisis. Fund managers are now acutely mindful of their brokerage trading connections, as well as the structure of asset-custody with transaction partners. Since the 2008 financial crisis hedge funds have learned the hard way that counter-party risks certainly do exist in the financial services sector, and the domino effect resulting from the collapse of Lehman Brothers demonstrated that even the best and brightest can be left exposed.