Fancy color diamonds from the Aurora Butterfly of Peace Diamond Collection, ranging from 0.62 to 2.00 ct. Courtesy of Alan Bronstein and Aurora Gems.

Just when you think the market for fancy colored diamonds can’t get any hotter… it does.

This year has seen some notable gem auctions by high-end auction houses and jewelers. And while it’s not just diamonds to go on the block – stunning sapphire, emerald and jade creations have been among the touted pieces – it’s the colored diamonds that have captured the attention and opened the pocketbooks of the most discerning investors.

Indeed, the market for the comparatively scarce fancy colored diamonds has been booming for a number of years. The value of colored diamonds generally has grown 142 percent over the last decade, while the value of fancy pink colored diamonds has really soared, up 315 percent, according to The Fancy Color Research Foundation. Blues, meanwhile, have experienced a surge of 154 percent.

This has all created a lot of anticipation each time another diamond auction is announced, and small wonder, given the records the sales are setting. Among the events that have set this year’s pace:

• The Pink Star sale by Sotheby’s at its April auction in Hong Kong may have been the event of the year – if not the decade. The Pink Star is the stunning 59.6 carat diamond that is the largest flawless fancy vivid pink ever to have been graded by the Gemological Institute of America. The winning bid of $71.2 million by Hong Kong jeweler Chow Tai Fook smashed all previous world records for any diamond or jewel – even if it fell short of an earlier $83 million failed bid by New York diamond cutter Isaac Wolf.
• Bonhams New York auction, also in April, may not have featured a marquee draw like the Pink Star, but still offered enough variety to entice a crowd. Fancy colored diamonds were the highlight of the lot, but also of interest were signed pieces by Cartier, Art Deco items and statement sapphires and emeralds. A fancy vivid yellow diamond and diamond ring (valued at $400,000 to $600,000) was the sale’s top piece. It was notable for its unusual old-fashioned cutting style that showcased its brilliance and depth of color.
• Christies, too, has been showcasing colored diamonds alongside other gems in its auctions, and its most recent, the Hong Kong Magnificent Jewels Sale in May, lived up to its billing. The auctions provided an exciting selection of magnificent gems. The top piece was an exceptional fancy vivid blue diamond ring by Moussaieff, highlighted by a pink diamond surround, valued at between $8 million to $10 million. Another noteworthy auction piece was a rare platinum and gold bracelet of colored and white diamond florets – each flowerhead featuring a oval-shaped pink diamond at its center, with the clasp featuring a blue one. It was valued at between $2.8 million to $3.8 million.

Although details are not yet known, there’s also a high level of anticipation building over a similar planned showcase of fancy pink diamonds – the 2017 Argyle Pink Diamond Tender. This invitation only-event provides an opportunity to appreciate and bid on some of the rarest stones produced by the Rio Tinto Group’s Argyle Mine. It’s the source of 90 percent of the world’s high quality pink diamonds.

Events like these underscore the unabated enthusiasm for diamonds – and colored diamonds especially – as a likely option for discerning investors.

There’s more demand for them among investors these days. But they get an added bonus as their investment is in an asset that is also a stunning piece of jewelry, notes Michael King, Director of Trading at Paragon International Wealth Management, a Toronto-based firm that is a leader in acquiring and managing hard investment assets, with a specialty in fancy colored diamonds. Paragon International Wealth Management’s King also adds that, “They’re [colored diamonds] long-term investments with a great return — often many times over their original price.

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Professional trading platform is invaluable for Forex traders as offer tools that are beneficial for effective performing and ensuring successful outcome.

Profitable trading: secrets of success

Trading on Forex attracts a lot of attention and many people consider that it is a sort of gambling that involves making bets on world currencies trade. It is also believed that earning millions overnight is possible with the right bet. Not all of us realize that earning real money requires time. Successful trading involves effective analysing, setting goals, assessing risks, and choosing suitable strategies.

Trading platforms make this process much easier as have all necessary tools that maintain effective operation. One of the market leaders – MetaTrader 4 is preferred by brokers and Forex traders worldwide. Also metatrader 4 download app is available that ensures an access to trading account from any place. Apart from using this platform there are other principles of successful start of a Forex trader’s career:

1. -Setting goals and developing a strategy is essential;
2. -It is important to stay realistic and not to expect earning millions for the first year;
3. -Analysing every challenging aspect, every loss and success is beneficial for success in future performances;
4. -Self-discipline is a key feature: make a habit of performing weekend analysis of your activity of the market in general. Look for patterns that can affect your performance;
5. -Be prepared for losses and try not to succumb to anxiety. Learn all the possible risks and build a strategy that allows evading them;
6. -Try not to borrow someone’s trading systems but develop your own.

These tips will help you to stay focused in building a career.

MetaTrader 4 effectiveness in Forex trading

Nowadays MT 4 can be considered as industry standard and was specifically designed for online trading in future markets, Forex, and CFD’s. Traders and brokers worldwide prefer using exactly this platform as it proved to be safe and highly effective. With provided tools it is easy to analyse prices, place trades and manage them at any convenient time. Here you can find the other key features of MT4:

1. -This platform allows users trading over 30 currency pairs;
2. -With customer friendly interface even a beginner is able personalizing platform and improve own productivity by performing trades more effectively;
3. -Navigator Window allows quick access to any tool or feature you need to use:
4. -MetaTrader 4 allows choosing required language with ease;
5. -Advanced charts make sure that trading and analysing is possible at the same time. Moreover, it is possible choosing styles and colours according to one’s preferences;
6. -Communication tools are as well advanced and allow traders and brokers communicating with one another and posting messages. No more confusing e-mail threads are required;
7. -MT4 doesn’t disrupt PC operation as it is low on resources;
8. -Enhanced security prevents any hackers’ attacks.

Available mobile app will help you to stay well-informed and perform effectively from any place.

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If you’ve ever been to a financial advisor you’ll know that there’s no easy way to build serious wealth through investing. It takes an enormous amount of research and there are no shortcuts. At least, that’s what your conservative financial advisor will tell you.

He’ll say you need to ‘save’ as much as possible and keep your money in a safe place – like the bank – even though doing these things pay you no income. Saving is great, but what if there was another way?

Trading pairs through online brokers such as XTrade offers you a way to invest and grow your wealth yourself.

Banks

Strangely enough this way of building wealth still involves banks. No, not saving in the banks, but following what they trade. Banks account for a large chunk of the forex market. If they aren’t working, then the volume of transactions being carried out is greatly reduced. Many traders on XTrade and other leading platforms can attest to seeing a null period when the banks aren’t trading. This can lead to either really static markets or on worse still, erratic markets that can send any trader into a downwards spiral. Banks tend to trade the Forex markets at least once a day for balance sheet reasons and can also trade a number of times throughout the day for speculation reasons. They need a certain amount of each currency to meet the demand of their customers, both personal and business, that will need to buy foreign currency from the bank or exchange their foreign currency for their local currency.

Keep your money safe while trading pairs

Online platforms such as XTrade should have good reviews by their traders. To ensure successful pair trading, you need to choose shares that generally move together but are showing an abnormal deviation in share prices. And to profit from this deviation, you need to get the weighting right.

By this, I simply mean that you want to place the same monetary amount on each trade.

This will protect you and will isolate the move you’re looking for.

This is just one strategy showing how you can use CFDs and single stock futures to profit in the fast paced world of trading.

Maintain a diversified investment interest

Consider going between trading pairs and CFD’s. By selecting a mix of trades that invests in a variety of markets, you are minimizing risk of a single big loss. Online trading platforms such as XTrade offer you a wide variety of markets to trade in – all from one single trading account.

Keep it together

Whilst learning to deal with the common trading psychological pitfalls such as fear and greed are very important, the real key to trading success is learning to be comfortable with uncertainty. No matter how great any trade or setup may look, a trader must learn to accept that every outcome is uncertain. Whilst a trader may have a trading edge that does not mean they will win every trade and learning to deal with the uncertainty of when the winners will come and when the losers will come is the key to profitability overall.

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Whether the upcoming effects of CRM2 are groundbreaking or an incremental change is of question. For advisors, the impact on the transparency of fees to clients will be very real. However, can the new rules deliver a win-win situation for all?
It is vitally important that advisors now get on board because more Canadians are expressing dissatisfaction and heading for the door. A recent survey from Accenture’s Global Consumer Pulse Research group confirmed that 49% of Canadian consumers have switched their investments to retail oriented companies in the past year due to poor customer service.

Remarkably, 80% said they could have been retained before switching. Since many clients are unaware of the fees they are paying , the new rules could be the catalyst to trigger wholesale defections

Combine this with the fact that competition is intensifying. Banks and stock brokers, who previously targeted clients with assets greater than $1 million to invest, are starting to look further down the ladder to increase revenue. Increased competition from robo-advisors also means that traditional investors are becoming more aware of the opportunities and advantages of digital investment services. This essentially allows advisors to support smaller accounts with a low maintenance service model.

To succeed in this new investment world, advisors will have to be better relationship managers and optimize their practice, likely using different tools and outsourcing models. Cookie-cutter solutions do not always provide the optimal results and clients with smaller accounts want to feel they are not just receiving a highly commoditized, pre-package offering.

Meanwhile, wealthier clients have access to other diversification alternatives, like hedge funds, and managed commodity funds. Advisors need to meet the needs of both and offer clients customized solutions, if they are willing to shift from a product-centric approach to a client-centric approach.

Technology has been a great equalizer allowing advisors to offer formerly complex and costly services to less wealthy clients. Advisors may become extinct if they do not integrate such online efficiencies. This includes optimizing tax efficiencies by holding portfolio assets in optimal asset locations, such as RRSPs, TFSAs and non-registered accounts, etc.

To compete, advisors will need to focus more on fostering relationships rather than on technical expertise, which can be outsourced to more specialized investment management firms. Practicing behavioral coaching can help clients avoid making costly mistakes during periods of volatility. Canadians need for sound financial advice has never been greater. Faced with longer life expectancies and volatile markets the need for prudent financial counsel is more imperative than ever. To enhance client relationships, advisors can also offer tax planning services or succession plan seminars.

With the upcoming changes, prosperous advisors will need to be highly versatile and focus their efforts on activities that have a greater probability of adding value to clients, such as holistic wealth management and financial planning advice. This approach, rather than a product push approach, is necessary to grow a practice, increase profitability and better service clients.

Chris Ambridge, is President of Transcend Private Client Corp. and President & CIO of Provisus Wealth Management. Chris has nearly 30 years of experience in the investment industry and works with independent financial advisors across the country.

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Stockbroking has been around for centuries. The stock market was initiated on wanting to invest on a business and from that make profit off of its performance. This still remains the same today. Stock markets are very important today for they also help economic growth in countries all over the world. Stock markets do emerge because this way they get the public to continue investing or begin to invest their money into stocks.

Stocks aren’t the only thing the public can invest in there is also bonds from the government. Next we will speak on three great moments in the history of stockbroking.

The Birth of Stock Exchange

The first stock exchange to ever happen was in Belgium. Antwerp was where it all happened, back in 1531. The way this stock exchange worked was by dealing with it with promissory notes as well as bonds. In the 1500’s there were no real stocks meaning that there was no real share. Beurzen’ was what early stock markets were called.

This was due to the influence of the Van der Beurze family whom was a resident of Belgium. This stock market resembled a lot of what’s going on today in companies such as CMC Markets and the stockbroking world. The way they were organized and ran was very similar to what we have today. The only major difference was what was being traded. No real company trading shares were being traded.

The East India Company

Belgium might have had the first stock exchange happen, but East India had the first publically traded company. Simply because they were willing to take the risk that everyone else didn’t. No company was willing to take the risk to go across the planet. This company was called Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading with the East Indies.’ So what was different about this company aside from taking the risk?

They came up with a plan that was a lot more intriguing when it came to investing. Investors would no longer have to invest everything on one voyage and take the risk of losing everything. They would now be able to invest and purchase share in more than one company. This meant that if ships were lost the investors would still make a profit instead of it being a complete loss.

The First Major Stock Exchange in the U.S.

The New York Stock & Exchange Board was the first major stock exchange in the U.S. This stock was initiated in 1792 in New York City’s infamous Wall Street. NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) grew quickly, so quickly they had to relocate to a much bigger and spacious building in order to keep the large amount of traders they had.

NYSE is one of the most well-known and largest stock exchanges in the world. CMC Markets keeps traders up to date by following the world’s largest stock exchange. In 2000 NYSE launched an electronic trading platform that introduced a lot more transparency with a more accessible way to the OTC energy markets. It has continually kept growing with inspiration from their customer’s needs. They strive to keep their markets, clearing, risk management, listings, technology, data and customer service up to date to keep customer needs in top priority.

These three great moments in the stockbroking history definitely changed the world of stock exchange. Shaping the stock exchange into the way it is today and still learning from important events like these. Nowadays basically every country has it’s own stock market. Millions and trillions of dollars are being traded on the daily in the stock market all around the world. Of course major stocks have gone through the ups and downs of having a crash at some point. Some of the biggest crashes include one’s like Black Thursday and Terrible Thursday back in 1929.

The electronic trading had it’s own crash in 1987 which nobody saw coming. Stock markets that are on the rise as of today include the Bombay Stock Exchange in Mumbai, India, BM&F Bovespa in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Today there are 18 major stocks exchanges in the planet. A big rise of online trading has made it quite easier to trade stocks all over the world.

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