Grain of Hope in Breakfast of Champions :: Breakfast of Champions Essays

Grain of Hope in Breakfast of Champions â€Å"I think I am trying to clear my head of all the junk in there...the flags...I’m throwing out characters from my other books too. I’m not going to put on any more puppet shows.† This proud exclamation is made in the introduction of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. It caught my attention and drew me to continue reading. The book continues to take the reader on a bizarre journey through the human mind. Our mental trip is made easier through Vonnegut’s childlike â€Å"artwork,† which mostly consists of underwear, guns, cows, and other odds and ends. Finishing the introduction I was instantly fed a synapse of the plot. The story follows the mental decline of a rich Pontiac dealer, Dwayne Hoover, and the rise of an unknown science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout, who is to become one of the most beloved and respected human beings in history. All this is revealed on the first page. In my closed mind, I figured that I already knew the plot, so there was no point in continuing. On a whim, I flipped through the book and saw the picture of a gravestone. On the gravestone was written, â€Å"Not even the Creator of the universe knew what the man was going to say next-perhaps the man was a better universe in its infancy.† For some reason this rather simple line hooked me and so I went back to page one and decided to read a bit more. To be honest, I’m glad I did. As soon as I finished the first chapter, I was really hooked. It was one of the few novels I had ever read straight through from beginning to end in one all-night sitting. I’ll admit-so far this essay has been more of a narrative telling of my exploits with this novel, but I felt it necessary to explain a little about my initial feelings. This book is pregnant with symbols. Many of the mechanics of the book (including the chapters) became symbols in Vonnegut’s hands. The first chapter goes into American culture in depth. It explains that in our country color means everything.   â€Å"The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the continent, who were already living full and imaginative lives, were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced, the slaves were black.

Assignment 1 Essay

Professor Identify the pros and cons of the partnership as a form of ownership. Discuss funding options for small businesses. Determine and discuss how managerial accounting can help managers with product costing, incremental analysis and budgeting. Discuss the basic components of the marketing process using a product or service of your choice as an example. Discuss the roles of social responsibility and technology in the marketing function. A partnership as a form of ownership is formed quite simply. When two or more people get together and come to an agreement on what type of business to take part in, then all parties share investment, profit, and of course loss. Let’s discuss the pros and cons ofa partnership. Pros, one of the many things all investors would like to see out weight the cons in anything they are engaged in mentally, physically, and of course financially. First of all, one pro would be how easy it is to create a partnership. You simply get with at least one other person come to an agreement over all the business details, and â€Å"BAM† you have a partnership. Some people are comfortable in erbal agreements but I personally would suggest you get all your partnership details on a written legal document Just in case. Funding is another advantage toa partnership. When two or more people come together to form a business partnership money is invested from all parties involved in turn the business has a stronger financial backing to support it. Not only will the business have a strong financial backing all partners invested may have access to outside money to support the business even further along. One of the best advantages in being in a business partnership is shared responsibility. Shared responsibility is crucial in a successful business and of course partnership. When the business starts to get a bit heavy you can hand it to your partner or partners to carry the work load for a while. You can also look to your partners for moral support when you may think things aren’t going as stated in your business plan. So far we have heard the pros ofa business partnership but like every bandage that fixes that painful spot you eventually have to pull it off. Cons, the opposite of Pro, the many things that all business investors need to know before investing but never want to hear. You may be thinking since it was a breeze to create this business partnership the rest will come as a breeze. You could your mind; everyone who is a partner is liable for all debts. You and your partners are all Jointly or individually liable for all debts accumulated by the business. For example, let’s say your partner or partners are taking the profits the business is making and gambling with it. Your partners blow away all the profits on poker games and skip town what then, that’s right you are still liable for any debt accumulated by the business. Another obvious con is your business partners will want to share the rofits made by the business. You can’t assume when the business makes profit everyone will agree on saving it. Your partner or partners may want to buy cars, houses, or maybe boats. You don’t have total control of the business. Business decisions are made Jointly not on your own. You may run into disagreements that in turn create the other partner to leave the business, or even lead to buying out the other partner. Pros and cons are a great way to see if you’re the, â€Å"partner type†, if so make sure you pick the right partner or partners for your business. There are many ther factors in owning and running a business. For example, in order to get your business off the ground you have to find the money to do so. Debt financing is one way you can start up your business. Debt financing is simply going to a bank that knows you have good credit, a good standing history with them, and apply for a small business loan. In the current economy most banks can be very hesitant to offer you the loan so another way is equity. Selling a share of your business meaning you aren’t solely in charge or will now be sharing the profits may be scary, but it can help you start up your business. After starting up your business you now have to manage the business or appoint someone for the Job. Managing the accounting is a great way to stay on top of product cost, and budgeting. Managerial accounting is detailed data used for inside members of a company. Managerial accounting includes things like cost of the product, cost of shipping, cost of employee benefits, cost of turnover, basically every number available to you and your partners. You can determine if you have the budget to raise wages for your employees to boost employee morale. Each business owner can use the data to do their Job better. You can go to your losses data and determine if your employees are stealing from you. Then determine how much more security you will need in order to prevent product loss. If you or your manager for your business needs to determine if their product was set at the right price they could view the sales data to see if the supply met the demand. If you see that one of your items hasn’t been selling very well you can set it at a lower price or you can Just order less of such product. If you see you sold a lot of a particular product you can raise the price as you see fit. You now know if you are the partner ype, you know a couple ways to possibly fund your business, and you know how to manage your data and budget. How are you going to get costumers through your door or buying your product? How will you market yourself? Let’s use my dream business as an example. I would like to open up a caf © lounge that serves fair trade coffee, craft beer, and fine wines. In order for me to make any kind of better profit for my business I have to market my business. You have to give the people what they want in my case I would produce amazing cups of coffee. My business would offer a coffee with better taste, and appeal. My coffee would be made with love and not thrown at you in the pickup line simultaneously saying, â€Å"NEXT†. My caf © lounge would major downtown street. Location is important for my caf © lounge so doing a little research of the area by visiting throughout all times of the day to see the amount of traffic the area receives is crucial. Then maybe you can ask around the nearby stores to see if customers purchase a lot of coffee. You can even go to the nearest coffee shop and see what coffee and vibe they offer and simply ask the locals what kind of coffee they like or would like to drink in what kind of atmosphere. After finding your target market, a great location, building your business, affordable product pricing, and setting your hours of operation it is time to promote your business. You can put ads in the local newspaper, ads in local magazines, and maybe even do a commercial broadcast in the tri county area. You will have to set your product apart from all the other competitors. For me coffee is all about personality, process, and taste. In order to retain customers your employees have to be personable, professional, and building customer relationships. Then there’s process, customers will see you make heir drink every step of the way making it an enjoyable experience. Lastly is taste, my employees being highly trained baristas will make you a drink to your satisfaction in a timely fashion all the while maintaining a welcoming atmosphere for my caf © lounge. Having the best tasting coffee and vibe may do Justice but for long term business it may not be enough this is when you bring in the events. Doing special events with your business such as charities, open mic nights, acoustic Jam sessions, and book clubs is a great way to attract more customers and maintain current ones. Internet is your best friend. Creating a website for your business is an amazing marketing play. It allows your customers to have 2417 access to information, and product choices. You can post updates on new product arrivals, special events, and specific information for each product you offer. The best part about having a website is they can look you up anywhere in the world that offers internet. Another great marketing strategy is purchasing ad space on other websites like a grocery franchise or sports sites. Green marketing is another great way to market your business. Customers love knowing your business is eco friendly by recycling, or using recycled aterial. By simply pushing customers to buy coffee to drink in house rather than take away conserves paper cups in turn less garbage. If customers choose to take to go anyways inform the customers all your paper products are recycled and recyclable. Offering organic treats to eat along with their coffee can promote a green business as well. In the end knowing everything there is to build, manage, and market your business your goal is to have long term profitability. You want to exceed customer satisfaction, you want to blow away the competition, and be prepared for even harder competition in the future.

How Efficient Market Hypothesis Explains Share Price Movements Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1169 Downloads: 4 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Finance Essay Type Narrative essay Did you like this example? The Efficient Market Hypothesis is perhaps the most prevalent, controversial and well-known market theory in the world. EMH is one of the arguments made in favour of the stock market. It was developed throughout the 20th Century however it became more prevalent once Eugene Fama penned the term Efficient Market Hypothesis in his thesis from 1970. Since then the theory has grown and evolved, however the basic concept has remained the same. If new information comes onto the market concerning a business and its performance, this will be quickly and rationally transferred into the business share value. For example if an investment analyst found that in terms of its actual and expected dividends, a particular share was underpriced and thus represented a bargain, the analyst would advise investors to buy. As people then bought shares, their price would rise, pushing the value up to their full worth. So by attempting to gain from inefficiently priced securities, investors will encourage the market to become more efficient (Sloman 2009). The EMH further states that stock prices already reflect all known information and are therefore accurate, and that the future flow of news (that will determine future prices) is random and unknowable in the present. The Random Walk theory in its most primitive; says that stocks take a random and unpredictable path. The chance of a stocks future price going up is the same as it going down. A follower of random walk believes it is impossible to outperform the market without assuming additional risk. (www.investopedia.com) Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "How Efficient Market Hypothesis Explains Share Price Movements Finance Essay" essay for you Create order There are three forms of the EMH that show the structure of the theory: Weak Form of Efficiency: Stock prices reflect all the past information in prices. Thus, current stock prices are the best estimated value, provided no change to the companies fundamental value. Fundamental analysis can be used to investigate if the stocks are undervalued or overvalued, as share prices move in cycles that do not reflect underlying performance, however as these techniques are used more and more knowledge/information becomes more perfect making the market more efficient and cycles withdraw. Consequences result in no excess return being made from investment strategies that based on historical stock price or financial information. Technical analysis can also be difficult to implement, but some fundamental analysts still make profits in the stock market. Semi-Strong Form of Efficiency: Stock prices reflect all past and current publicly available information. The stock prices can be adjusted in an unbiased movement to any new public information; e.g. on business news on local newspaper. However, the adjustment is relatively small. The outcome of SSF is that not much gain can be earned by trading on this information. Though fundamental analysis is still useful, nonetheless the returns are normally not as high as in the weak form. Strong Form of Efficiency: Stock prices reflect all relevant information, including data that is not yet disclosed to the general public such as insider information. The effect of this info is that almost nobody can earn high returns on investments over a long period of time. Unless people have access to privileged information, such as CEOs i.e. who know the company will release better than expected profit figures and buy shares prior to this knowledge being unrestricted, if this is the case large returns can be made. Nevertheless it must be noted that the EMH theory relies on the fact that, investors are assumed to be rational and subsequently value securities rationally (Shleifer 2000). Rational investors value each security for its elemental value. When these investors learn something about the value of securities they react quickly to the new information by pushing prices up when news is good and down when the news is bad, by buying securities they expect to have a higher-than-average return and selling those they expect to have lower returns. So for a market to be efficient the current prices should reflect the net result of the entire buy and sell decisions by all investors based on their interpretation of all the information that is known about a company at that time, The hypothesis that new information about a companys current or future performance will be quickly and accurately reflected in its share price (Sloman 2009). Regardless of what one analyst or every investor believes, the market is always right according the EMH theory. However there are cracks within the foundations of EMH that have formed over time. Different investors have different judgements (random walk, rational/irrational) it is impossible to say how their judgements would affect a security to immediately go up or down on notable news. Investor perception can be affected by an infinite number of developments, innumerable events happen every day throughout the world that impact a companies short term and long term earnings/growth rates and therefore, the price/earnings ratios that investors will be willing to pay for different securities. (Pike 1996) Because of this many observers/academics/professionals argue against the concept that markets behave consistently within the efficient market hypothesis, especially in its stronger forms. Some economists, mathematicians and market experts cannot believe that man-made markets are strong/semi strong-form efficient when there are, under closer analysis, reasons for inefficiency i.e. the slow diffusion of information, the relatively great power of some market participants e.g. financial institutions and the existence of apparently sophisticated professional investors e.g. Peter Lynch, Warren Buffett, George Soros etc. The way that markets react to surprising news is perhaps the most visible flaw in the efficient market hypothesis. For example, news events such as surprise interest rate changes from central banks are not instantaneously taken account of in stock prices, but rather cause sustained movement of prices over periods from hours to months. Only a privileged few may have prior kn owledge of laws about to be passed, new pricing controls set by pseudo-government agencies such as the Federal Reserve banks, and judicial decisions that effect a wide range of economic parties. The public must treat these as random variables, but those who act on such inside information can correct the market, generally in a discrete method to avoid detection. Warren Buffett who has argued that the EMH is not correct, on one occasion saying Id be a bum on the street with a tin cup if the markets were always efficient and on another saying, The professors who taught Efficient Market Theory said that someone throwing darts at the stock tables could select stock portfolio having prospects just as good as one selected by the brightest, most hard-working securities analyst. Observing correctly that the market was frequently efficient, they went on to conclude incorrectly that it was always efficient. (www.moneyscience.com) Secondly, to the extent that some investors are not rational, their trades are random and therefore cancel each other out without affecting prices. Third, to the extent that investors are irrational in similar ways, they are met in the market by rational arbitrageurs who eliminate their influence on prices.