24h Market Info

pA stock market, or equity market, is a private or public market for the trading of company stock and derivatives of company stock at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately. The size of the world stock market is estimated at about dollar 36.6 trillion US at the beginning of October 2008. /p
pThe world derivatives market has been estimated at about dollar 480 trillion face or nominal value, 12 times the size of the entire world economy. It must be noted though that the value of the derivatives market, because it is stated in terms of notional values, cannot be directly compared to a stock or a fixed income security, which traditionally refers to an actual value. /p
pMany such relatively illiquid securities are valued as marked to model, rather than an actual market price. A recommendation in the European Union (introduced in Article 249/EC) is one of two kinds of non-binding acts cited in the Treaty of Rome. Recommendations are without legal force but are negotiated and voted on according to the appropriate procedure./p
pRecommendations differ from regulations, directives and decisions, in that they are not binding for Member States. Though without legal force, they do have a political weight. The Recommendation is an instrument of indirect action aiming at preparation of legislation in Member States, differing from the Directive only by the absence of obligatory power./p
pAccording to the terms of the Treaty on the European Union In order to ensure the proper functioning and development of the common market, the Commission formulate recommendations or deliver opinions on matters dealt with in this Treaty, if it expressively so provides or if the Commission considers it necessary. The stocks are listed and traded on stock exchanges which are entities a corporation or mutual organization specialized in the business of bringing buyers and sellers of the organizations to a listing of stocks and securities together. /p
pThe stock market in the United States includes the trading of all securities listed on the NYSE, the NASDAQ, the Amex, as well as on the many regional exchanges, e.g. OTCBB and Pink Sheets. European examples of stock exchanges include the London Stock Exchange, the Deutsche Bourse and the Paris Bourse, now part of Euronext. The stock market is one of the most important sources for companies to raise money. This allows businesses to be publicly traded, or raise additional capital for expansion by selling shares of ownership of the company in a public market. /p
pThe liquidity that an exchange provides affords investors the ability to quickly and easily sell securities. This is an attractive feature of investing in stocks, compared to other less liquid investments such as real estate. The financial system in most western countries has undergone a remarkable transformation. One feature of this development is disintermediation. A portion of the funds involved in saving and financing flows directly to the financial markets instead of being routed via the traditional bank lending and deposit operations. In the middle of the 13th century, Venetian bankers began to trade in government securities. /p
pIn 1351 the Venetian government outlawed spreading rumors intended to lower the price of government funds. Bankers in Pisa, Verona, Genoa and Florence also began trading in government securities during the 14th century. This was only possible because these were independent city states not ruled by a duke but a council of influential citizens. The Dutch later started joint stock companies, which let shareholders invest in business ventures and get a share of their profits - or losses. In 1602, the Dutch East India Company issued the first shares on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. It was the first company to issue stocks and bonds./p
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pA mutual fund is a professionally managed type of collective investment scheme that pools money from many investors and invests it in stocks, bonds, short-term money market instruments, and/or other securities. The mutual fund will have a fund manager that trades the pooled money on a regular basis. Currently, the worldwide value of all mutual funds totals more than dollar 26 trillion. /p
pA Trading Fund is a UK government department, or an executive agency or part of the department, which has been established as such by means of a Trading Fund Order made under the Government Trading Funds Act 1973. A trading fund can only be established with HM Treasury agreement. One may only be set up where more than 50 per cent of the trading fund’s revenue will consist of receipts in respect of goods and services provided by the trading fund, and where the responsible Minister and the Treasury are satisfied that the setting up of the trading fund will lead to improved efficiency and effectiveness in management of operations. /p
pAn exchange-traded fund (or ETF) is an investment vehicle traded on stock exchanges, much like stocks. An ETF holds assets such as stocks or bonds and trades at approximately the same price as the net asset value of its underlying assets over the course of the trading day. Most ETFs track an index, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the Samp;P 500. ETFs may be attractive as investments because of their low costs, tax efficiency, and stock-like features. /p
pIn a survey of investment professionals conducted in March 2008, 67% called ETFs the most innovative investment vehicle of the last two decades and 60% reported that ETFs have fundamentally changed the way they construct investment portfolios. The significance of a trading fund is that it has standing authority under the 1973 Act to use its receipts to meet its outgoings. Some trading funds have, as their main function, the collection and supply of information to both public and private sectors; others have not. /p
pSince 1940, there have been three basic types of investment companies in the United States: open-end funds, also known in the US as mutual funds; unit investment trusts (UITs); and closed-end funds.Similar funds also operate in Canada. However, in the rest of the world, mutual fund is used as a generic term for various types of collective investment vehicles, such as unit trusts, open-ended investment companies (OEICs), unitized insurance funds, and undertakings for collective investments in transferable securities (UCITS)./p
pThe term mutual fund is the common name for what is classified as an open-end investment company by the SEC. Being open-ended means that, at the end of every day, the fund issues new shares to investors and buys back shares from investors wishing to leave the fund. Mutual funds must be structured as corporations or trusts, such as business trusts, and any corporation or trust will be classified by the SEC as an investment company if it issues securities and primarily invests in non-government securities. A relatively recent innovation, the exchange-traded fund or ETF, is often structured as an open-end investment company. /p
pETFs combine characteristics of both mutual funds and closed-end funds. ETFs are traded throughout the day on a stock exchange, just like closed-end funds, but at prices generally approximating the ETF’s net asset value. Most ETFs are index funds and track stock market indexes. Shares are issued or redeemed by institutional investors in large blocks (typically of 50,000). Equity funds, which consist mainly of stock investments, are the most common type of mutual fund. Equity funds hold 50 percent of all amounts invested in mutual funds in the United States. Often equity funds focus investments on particular strategies and certain types of issuers./p
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pAn online trading community provides participants with a structured method for trading, bartering, or selling goods and services. These communities often have forums and chatrooms designed to facilitate communication between the members. An online trading community can be likened electronic equivalent of a bazaar, flea market, or garage sale./p
pOne of the earliest trading sites on the internet (with exception to eBay which accepts cash transactions for all goods) was Game Trading Zone. The domain name ugtz was implemented in an independent database in the spring 1999. This was a departure from simply listing items on a forum or text document. The database helped traders by showing them a list of potential trading matches, and showed historical transactions as well./p
pA formal trading community consists of a website or network of websites that facilitate and track trade transactions. Some websites, such as the video game trading site Goozex charge transactional fees per trade. Once a trade is completed, a record is created on the site for future reference./p
pSome online trading communities have specific rules adopted by the users of that community, and though they can differ most have settled upon a few standard practices: The less experienced trader (usually indicated by their feedback or trade history) sends their half first. /p
pIt is generally frowned upon by most communities to thread crap (A term referring to a user not involved in the pending trade undercutting a trade in progress with either a better deal or reasons for the trade not to take place)./p
pWhen online trading any used items be sure to include the condition and quality of the product so as the receiver can determine the overall value of it. Craigs List is a site for posting personal advertisements but many users have found this a less than conventional means of trading goods online with local residents./p
pAn anime club is an organization that meets to discuss, show, and promote anime in a local community setting and can also focus on broadening Japanese cultural understanding. Anime clubs are increasingly found at universities and high schools. Organizers may also utilize public meeting spaces such as a library or a government center./p
pMany anime club attendees that identify as otaku. Although the core of anime club attendees are in their twenties, there are generally no age requirements. Adults in their fifties and sixties and teenagers also attend./p
p1UP is a website dedicated to the publishing of news, videos, and other related media dealing with video games. There is a growing section of the site though dedicated the trading of games and DVDs on their message boards. /p
pIGN is another website dedicated to videogame news and media that also has message boards dedicated to online trading. The distinguishing factors being that IGN has a much larger integrated database of games and DVDs in existence that users can add to their collection lists for trade purposes as well as mark the ones they are playing to lock from trade./p
pA trading circle is a form of online trading designed to facilitate viewing of television series and episodic media. Physical media such as videocassettes, DVDs and CDs are exchanged via mail. Each member agrees to pass an episode on to the next member in a timely fashion, thereby allowing all members of the group to view the series. This communal trading method is also used by special interest clubs such as anime clubs./p
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pDay trading is a very risky trading style. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) makes new amendments to address the intraday risks associated with day trading in customer accounts. Intraday Forex Trading, Forex Risk Calculator, Trading China, Penny Share Stock Market Bombay Stock Exchange Wikipedia the free encyclopedia to provide best intraday and long term share market calls daily. /p
pOur trading tips covers NSE and BSE. Mobile phone - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Intraday Graph BSE NSE. Most Popular. E-mailed. Read. Rated 28-12 Wikipedia lacks maturity Sanger. 26-12 Orissa land of sun sand amp steel. A point and figure chart is used for technical analysis of securities. Unlike most other investment charts, point and figure charts do not present a linear representation of time. Instead, they show trends in price. The aim of point and figure charting is to filter out the noise (unimportant price movement) and focus on the main direction of the price trend./p
pPoint and figure charting is said to have had its origins in the US during the early 1900s and with the first book appearing to by deVilliers, V. (1933), The Point amp; Figure Method of Anticipating Stock Price Movements showed that these charting technique was already known by insiders and stock traders. Point and figure charts where already there in the trading rooms for the purpose to record daily tick movements of stocks when Charles Dow was beginning to create his famous index. Several books have been written during the 20th century./p
pThere are two typical ways to plot point and figure charts-using closing prices, or with high/low prices. The most common method is high/low prices of a specific timeframe normally daily prices. The close (EOD) method was used until 1947 when A.W. Cohen invented a different system to work with point and figure charts using high/low prices. Since point and figure charting in the last part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century was used to record price movement of tick charts the close only price would be one tick to be specific our last tick for the trading day. /p
pIt’s easy, We do all the research and work, and you get the benefits. Take a look at some of our past picks like USNA, which we alerted our members to when it was trading at dollar 1.30. Soon after it had soared towards dollar 53.00. To uncover the hottest stocks before they make their moves takes a massive amount of work. It also requires resources and time that most people do not have to spare. In addition, it takes an industry knowledge that can only be developed by years of experience in the trenches. At Penny Stock Insider we understand this. /p
pKeeping your needs in mind, I have personally assembled a team that has got the experience and skills to uncover the most explosive penny stock investments before they make their moves. If you learn one thing today, let it be this: Beware of free stock information on the Internet! The source of the advice obviously has some hidden stake in the fortunes of the stock, through options or personal holdings, and they don’t care if you lose your shirt as they make a few bucks. /p
pThe amendments require that equity and maintenance margin be deposited and maintained in customer accounts that engage in a pattern of day trading in amounts sufficient to support the risks associated with such trading activities. In addition, the SEC believes that people whose account sizes are less than dollar 25,000 may represent less sophisticated traders, who may be more prone to being misled by advisory brokers and/or tipping agencies. /p
pThis is along a similar line of reasoning that hedge fund investors typically must have a net worth in excess of dollar 1 million. Nonetheless, an argument can be made that the requirement is governmental paternalism and anti-capitalist in a sense that it puts the government in the position of protecting investors/traders from themselves, thus hindering the ideals of the free markets./p
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pEvery homebuyer operating in the deflation of the housing bubble needs to consider what loan terms will be available in the future. At some point, most buyers become sellers. The future buyer will likely need to borrow most of the money necessary to complete a real estate transaction. The availability of credit and the loan terms this future buyer will face is the primary determinant of the price this buyer will pay for real estate./p
pDuring the rally of the housing bubble, buyers did not concerned themselves with the day they were going to become sellers. Why would they? There was an endless demand for properties, and buyers were paying whatever was asked. If they wanted a price above current market values to pay off a loan, all they had to do was wait. Once the bubble burst and home prices started to decline, the conditions people were accustomed to during the rally dramatically changed. /p
pAnyone considering buying a home in the aftermath of a crash should think about the buyer who is going to buy their home from them at some point in the future, and more specifically, what debt-to-income ratio and loan terms this future buyer will utilize. This is important, because the amount of money this take-out buyer will pay for the home is completely dependent upon these variables. At most, a house is only worth what a buyer can pay for it. In a declining market with few qualified buyers, many of those qualified buyers will only make offers if the deal is exceptional or simply wait for further price declines./p
pIn a market environment where prices are detached from fundamental valuations, bubble buyers face a daunting challenge just to break even on their purchase when the time comes to sell it. A future buyer must have favorable borrowing terms allowing for a high degree of leverage or they may not be able to borrow the prodigious sums borrowers during the bubble rally were able to obtain. /p
pIf a future buyer is not able to borrow as much with their income as bubble buyers, then wages must increase over time to permit future borrowers to borrow the same sum and allow a bubble buyer to avoid a loss. Unfortunately, it will take many years for wages to catch up to bubble prices. Even when this occurs, and a seller can recover their purchase price, inflation will have diminished the value of those dollars. If the prices are adjusted for inflation, many bubble buyers will never see an inflation adjusted breakeven price./p
pFor all our wisdom and collective experience, none of us knows what the markets will do next. Like an ocean current or a raging river, a financial market charts its own course. It is fickle and feckless and flows without regard to our hopes and dreams. The ebbs and flows of financial markets are meaningful to us, but in reality they are just movements in price; nothing more. Price rallies make homeowners blissful and renters bitter, while price declines make homeowners gloomy and renters gleeful. These feelings and emotions are independent of movements in price. The market just moves, that is all it does. It is benign, yet dangerous; it is indifferent, yet demonstrative; the market is a paradox which we must simply accept./p
pDespite the difficulty in market forecasting, many who have examined the residential real estate market point to continued declines through 2009 and beyond./p
br /h2About the Author/h2pa href=http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com/author/Lawrence Roberts/a is the author of The Great Housing Bubble: Why Did House Prices Fall?br /
Learn more and get FREE eBooks at: a href=http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com/http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com//abr /
Read the author’s daily dispatches at The Irvine Housing Blog: a href=http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/http://www.irvinehousingblog.com//a/p
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pThe fundamental value of all housing prices is equivalent rents. Rents define the fundamental value of real estate because rental is a direct proxy for ownership; both rental and ownership provide for possession of property. Most people believe comparable sales define the value of real estate. In reality, comparable sales measure the collective foolishness of buyers who often have no idea what a property is really worth./p
pEquivalent rents are a major component of the United States Government’s Consumer Price Index (CPI). According to the US Department of Labor, This approach measures the change in the price of the shelter services provided by owner-occupied housing. Rental equivalence measures the change in the implicit rent, which is the amount a homeowner would pay to rent, or would earn from renting, his or her home in a competitive market. Clearly, the rental value of owned homes is not an easily determined dollar amount, and Housing survey analysts must spend considerable time and effort in estimating this value. Prior to the first California housing bubble in the late 1970s, the housing cost component of the CPI was measured using actual price changes in the asset. When this bubble created an enormous distortion in this index, the rental equivalence model was constructed. It has been used to smooth out the psychologically-induced housing price bubbles ever since./p
pAn argument can be made for the real cost of construction as the fundamental valuation of houses. If house prices in a market fall below the cost of new construction, no new houses will be built because a builder cannot make a profit. If there is continuing demand for housing, the lack of supply will create an imbalance which will cause prices to increase. When new construction becomes profitable again, new product will be brought to market bringing supply and demand back into balance. If demand continues to be strong, builders will increase production to meet this demand keeping prices near the real cost of construction./p
pBased on a theory of rational market participants, one would expect that when prices go up and the cost of ownership exceeds the cost of rental, people choose to rent rather than own, and the resulting drop in demand would depress home prices: The inverse would also be true. Therefore, the proxy relationship between rental and ownership would keep home prices tethered to rental rates. However, this is not the case. If there were only a consumptive value to real estate, the cost of ownership and the cost of rental probably would stay closely aligned; however, since there is an opportunity to profit from speculative excesses in the market, rising prices can lead to irrational exuberance as buyers chase speculative gains./p
pRental rates tend to keep pace with wages because people normally pay rent out of current income. As people make more money, they compete for the available rentals and drive prices up at a rate about 1% greater than the overall rate of inflation. There are times when supply and demand issues in local markets create fluctuations in this relationship, but as a rule, rents track wages pretty closely. Since house prices are tied to rents, and rents are tied to wages, house prices are indirectly tied to wages. When house prices increase faster than wage growth, the price levels become unsustainable, and if the differential is too great, a bubble is inflated. /p
pThe great housing bubble witnessed an unprecedented detachment from fundamental valuations. The crash in housing prices was no surprise to those who understand the real value of residential real estate. It was a complete surprise to those who foolishly believe comparable sales represent the true value of property./p
br /h2About the Author/h2pa href=http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com/author/Lawrence Roberts/a is the author of The Great Housing Bubble: Why Did House Prices Fall?br /
Learn more and get FREE eBooks at: a href=http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com/http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com//abr /
Read the author’s daily dispatches at The Irvine Housing Blog: a href=http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/http://www.irvinehousingblog.com//a/p
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pDespite the difficulty in market forecasting, many who have examined the residential real estate market point to continued declines through 2009 and beyond. The most likely scenario has resale residential real estate markets bottoming in 2011 at prices 30% off the peak nationally./p
pAll methods of predicting future price action rely on the same basic premise: prices are tethered to some fundamental value, and although prices may deviate from this value for extended periods of time, prices eventually return to fundamental valuations. This premise has been reinforced by market observation; in fact, many estimates of fundamental value are based on market action. Since many market participants believe in buying and selling based on fundamental values, there is also an element of self-fulfilling prophecy contained therein. /p
pThe efficient markets theory is based on this idea, and although the behavioral finance theory is needed to explain the wide deviations from fundamentals real-world prices exhibit, both theories share the same notion of an underlying fundamental valuation on which prices are ultimately based. The challenge to market prognosticators is to select a fundamental valuation to which prices will return, and then extrapolate a period of time in which the return of prices to fundamental valuation will take place./p
pThere are a number of ways to project how far and how fast prices will fall. One is to look at the price charts themselves and try to project reasonable trend lines to approximate bottoming valuations. This is not an accurate methodology as it is based on the assumption of a repetition of past performance without examining the reasons for this past performance; however, it does serve as a useful rough estimate. /p
pA more accurate and detailed method is to examine the variables that determine market pricing and see how changes in these variables impact resale values. This process involves assessing current fundamental values to make a statement as to where prices should be, and would have been if there had not been a residential real estate bubble, then estimating how long it will take for these variables to return to their historic norms. /p
pThere are a number of exogenous forces that act on market pricing in an indirect manner. These include debt-to-income ratios, availability of credit and changes in loan terms, mortgage interest rates, unemployment rates, foreclosure rates, home ownership rates, possible government intervention in the markets, and other factors. These forces do not directly impact house prices as changes in these variables do not have strong correlation with house prices; however, these variables can and do impact the variables that do correspond with house prices, therefore an evaluation is provided of the role these factors play in market pricing./p
pThe timing of the decline is the most difficult parameter to evaluate and estimate. House prices are notoriously sticky during price declines because sellers are loath to sell at a loss. The timing of a decline is impacted both by psychological and technical factors. The motivations of sellers based on their personal circumstances and emotional states will determine if there is a heightened sense of urgency to sell which would push prices down quickly. /p
pDuring the price correction of the coastal bubble of the early 90s, prices declined very slowly as unmotivated sellers held on and waited for prices to come back. The market experienced denial and fear, but there was not a stage of capitulatory selling that drove prices down quickly as is typical in the deflation of a speculative bubble. /p
pThe primary technical factor impacting the rate of price decline is the presence of foreclosures and real estate owned (REO). REOs are a form of must-sell inventory (as are new homes). If there is more inventory of the must-sell variety than the market can absorb, prices are pushed lower. The more of this must-sell inventory there is on the market, the faster prices decline. If the pattern of the early 90s is repeated, the price decline of the great housing bubble may drag out slowly while fundamentals catch up to market pricing. In fact, this probably what will occur on the national market unless the foreclosure numbers and resultant REOs overwhelm market buyers. /p
pIn the extreme bubble markets like Irvine, California, the combination of high foreclosure rates and general market panic will likely push prices lower much more quickly. Even though the percentage decline in house prices is projected to be double the decline witnessed in the coastal bubble of the early 90s, the duration of the decline may be similar as capitulatory selling pushes prices lower at a faster rate./p
pReal estate market prices are difficult to measure accurately. By most estimates, prices will continue to drop at least through 2009, and most likely through 2011. Nationally, prices will drop around 30%, and in certain extreme coastal markets, prices will drop up to 50%./p
br /h2About the Author/h2pa href=http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com/author/Lawrence Roberts/a is the author of The Great Housing Bubble: Why Did House Prices Fall?br /
Learn more and get FREE eBooks at: a href=http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com/http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com//abr /
Read the author’s daily dispatches at The Irvine Housing Blog: a href=http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/http://www.irvinehousingblog.com//a/p
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pCommodities are items of value and uniform quality produced in large quantities and sold in an open market. Although every residential real estate property is unique, these properties became uniformly desired by investors because all real estate prices rose during the housing bubble. The commoditization of real estate and the active, open-market trading it inspires caused houses to lose their identity as places to live and call home. Houses became tradable stucco boxes similar to baseball playing cards where buying and selling had nothing to do with possession and use and everything to do with making money in the transaction. /p
pIn a commodities or securities market, rallies unsupported by valuation measures fall back to fundamental values. It is very clear the rally in house prices was not caused by a rally in the fundamental valuation measures of rent or income. Many people forgot the primary purpose of a house is to provide shelter, something which can be obtained without ownership by renting. Ownership ceased to be about providing shelter and instead became a way to access one of the world’s largest and most highly leveraged commodity markets: residential real estate./p
pCommodities markets are notoriously volatile. In fact, this volatility is the primary draw of commodities trading. If market prices did not move significantly, traders would not be interested in the market, and liquidity would not be present. Without this liquidity, hedgers could not sell futures contracts and transfer their risk to other parties, and the whole market would cease to function. Commodities markets exist to transfer risk from a party that does not want it to a party who is willing to assume this risk for the potential to profit from it. /p
pThe commodities exchange controls the volatility of the market through the regulation of leverage. It is the exchange that sets the amount of a particular commodity that is controlled by a futures contract. They can raise or lower the amount of leverage to create a degree of volatility attractive to traders. If they create too much leverage, the accounts of traders can be wiped out by small market price movements. If they create too little leverage, traders lose interest. /p
pThe same principles of leverage that govern commodities markets also work to influence the behavior of speculators in residential real estate markets. If leverage is very low (large downpayments or low CLTV limits,) then speculators have to use large amounts of their own money to capture what become relatively small price movements. If leverage is very high (small downpayments or high CLTV limits,) then speculators do not have to put up much money to capture what become relatively large price movements. /p
pThe more leverage (debt) that can be applied to residential real estate, the greater the degree of speculative activity that market will see. Also, the smaller the amount of money required to speculate in a given market, the more people will be able to do so because more people will have the funds necessary to participate. /p
pWhen lenders began to offer 100% financing, it was an open invitation to rampant speculation. This makes the return on investment infinite because no investment is required by the speculator, and it eliminates all barriers to entry to the speculative market. In a regulated commodities market, the trader is responsible for all losses in the account. In a mortgage market dominated by non-recourse purchase money mortgages, lenders end up assuming liability for losses in the speculative residential real estate market./p
br /h2About the Author/h2pa href=http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com/author/Lawrence Roberts/a is the author of The Great Housing Bubble: Why Did House Prices Fall?br /
Learn more and get FREE eBooks at: a href=http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com/http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com//abr /
Read the author’s daily dispatches at The Irvine Housing Blog: a href=http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/http://www.irvinehousingblog.com//a/p
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pI had a revelation a few years back, when I asked a solar engineer to price a solar electric system for my home./p
pWhy, he said, did I want to install solar power when my electricity consumption was so high?/p
pWhat, I thought? My family’s consumption was about half that of the typical family in my area. I’d already switched many incandescent lights to compact fluorescent lights, bought ENERGY STAR replacements for my fridge, washer and dryer, and torn out the energy-wasting electric baseboard heaters in my poorly insulated kitchen extension after adding decent insulation./p
pHe told me I ought to be able to cut my electricity use in half again. Down to a quarter of what my neighbors use, I asked? Why not, he said? And he told me how to do it./p
pFirst, he talked me into buying a little device - the Kill A Watt meter - which is a home energy monitor. You plug the Kill A Watt meter into a wall outlet, then you plug a device (fridge, coffee maker, table lamp, whatever) into the meter. The meter tells you how many watts of electricity the device consumes, and, over time, how many kilowatt hours an appliance like a refrigerator uses./p
pThen he told me to measure everything in my house. Since I’m a numbers guy, the idea of measuring appealed to me; I measured everything I could. Fridge, freezer, toaster, stereo, computer, cable modem, clock radio, plug-in carbon monoxide detector, you name it. I measured devices that couldn’t be plugged into the meter (such as dishwasher, where the plug is buried, and stove, which runs on 220 volts) by watching the electricity meter outside my home. Then I estimated what was left, which mainly consisted of lights (the wattage is printed on the bulb; multiply by hours of use per day and divide by 1,000 to get kwh per day). I used an Excel spreadsheet to calculate how much electricity our house used each month, and, to my surprise, when I checked my utility bill, my estimate was bang on./p
pThe revelation was how much electricity my stuff used that I really didn’t benefit from. For example:/p
ul
liMy coffee maker was plugged in all day with its little LED clock. 2 watts of continuous power doesn’t sound like much, but that adds up to 17 kilowatt hours per year. That was more than one day’s worth of my family’s energy consumption just to avoid having to unplug and plug in the coffee maker./li
liI always hibernate my computer when I’m not using it, but I was leaving the cable modem and wireless router on. Between them, they were using 30 watts continuously - 262 kilowatt hours a year./li
liThat carbon monoxide detector was drawing 5 watts. What incentive does the manufacturer have to make it as energy efficient as possible, when I’m the one paying the bill? Why not use a battery-powered CO detector instead?/li
liThe television and DVD player combined were using another 30 watts even when turned off. Why? Because both were sitting there waiting for me to power them on via remote control. (There are actually home energy saving devices known as standby savers, that you can use that save most of this power.)/li
liThe fridge was using more than it was supposed to. So I checked that with a thermometer, and discovered one of my kids had accidentally bumped the temperature dial on the freezer compartment (ours is a bottom freezer) and set it way colder than it needed to be. Fixing that saved nearly 1 kwh a day right there!/li
/ul
pMost of these things sound insignificant on their own - especially when you just look at the watts consumed or the amount of power per day. But when you consider that they’re all running continuously, it really does add up - in our case, cutting this kind of waste did almost exactly what the solar engineer said it would - it cut our energy bills nearly in half again!/p
pThat’s right - we were only using about 16 kilowatt hours per day of electricity before I started toying with solar energy, and the local average in my area for a house of 4 people is about 33 kwh per day. By the time I was done with my Kill A Watt meter, we had our consumption down to 8 kwh per day./p
pOnce you get your consumption down to that level, a solar electric system starts to make sense (especially with all the financial incentives for installing solar power). But in the end, what did I do?/p
pJust kept track of electricity usage and made sure we kept it down. The net impact is that we now save more energy through these conservation measures, than we would have generated if we’d installed a solar power system and not made any changes in our behavior./p
pI’d recommend a Kill A Watt meter - or any similar home electricity monitoring tool - to anyone seriously interested in cutting their electricity use. I paid $60 for mine, and it paid for itself in only three months. Nowadays you can buy them for about $20, so the payback period could be down to a month. And if you didn’t have the head-start I had - if your home is in the 30+ kwh per day range to start with - you’ll save even more./p
pAs far as electricity consumption goes, what you don’t know can’t help you!/p
br /h2About the Author/h2pRobin Green is the owner of a href=http://www.green-energy-efficient-homes.comGreen Energy Efficient Homes/a, a website dedicated to helping people save energy on heating, cooling, lighting, and other energy uses in their homes. There you’ll find free ideas on a href=http://www.green-energy-efficient-homes.com/how-to-save-electricity.htmlhow to save electricity/a as well as more details on the a href=http://www.green-energy-efficient-homes.com/kill-a-watt.htmlKill A Watt meter/a and other home energy monitors./p
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pIs it better to turn a light off every time you leave a room, or leave it on if you’ll be coming back to the room shortly?/p
pIf you’re into energy conservation, or trying to cut your home energy bills, you have probably asked yourself this question. And chances are you have accepted the conventional wisdom, that it is better to leave the light on for short periods, than turn it off, then on again./p
pIn this case, the conventional wisdom is dead wrong./p
pHere is how the argument goes: When you first power a light on, it will use as much as five (or fifteen) minutes of the regular consumption of the bulb, within the first second. So if a three-year-old flicks the switch continuously for a minute, on or off every second, they are actually burning 5 minutes worth of electricity every other second (30 times in one minute). That works out to 30 x 5 minutes, or 150 minutes, worth of electricity in that one minute./p
pIt is fairly easy to prove that this is impossible. Let’s assume the toddler is turning on and off a 100 watt bulb. Over the course of that one minute, if we assume that turning the bulb on uses 5 minutes worth of the typical consumption of the bulb, we have used 150 minutes worth of electricity at 100 watts./p
pNow, 150 minutes worth of electricity at 100 watts is the same amount of power as 1 minute of electricity at 15,000 watts. And since the light was turned on and off over the course of one minute, it means that if our assumption about the size of the initial power surge is correct, during that one minute the light bulb behaved as if it were burning 15,000 watts continuously./p
pIf you studied electricity at all in high school, you probably remember the formula: Watts = Amps X Volts. In this case, we know both the Watts and the Volts so we can take this equation:/p
p15,000 (Watts) = Amps X 110 (Volts)/p
p(I am assuming the toddler lives in the Americas, where voltage is typically 110). To resolve Amps, we can divide both sides by 110 so we get:/p
p15,000 / 110 = Amps/p
pIn other words, Amps = 136./p
pNow I don’t know about your house, but mine is certainly not going to be able to handle a 136 amp current on one light for a whole minute, since the whole house has a power supply of just 100 amps. And my circuit breakers are all 15 or 30 amp breakers - which means they trip off when the power surges to much more than their rated amperage of 15 or 30 amps. So that toddler turning the light on every other second for a minute, yielding a 136 amp draw, would blow the circuit breaker for the circuit the light is on, and possibly blow the main circuit breaker for the house./p
pIt is true that there is a power surge when you power a light bulb on. But the surge is for less than a second - it is actually a tiny fraction of a second. And the amount of the surge is far smaller than the touted 5 minutes of normal use of the light./p
pAll right, you say, but won’t the light burn out if I keep flicking it on and off?/p
pYes, it will burn out faster. I’ve seen my own kids blow a light bulb with the on-off trick - especially if they do it repeatedly for a minute or more, and the bulb was old to start with./p
pBut even if each time you turn a light on you shorten its life by an hour - and the figure is probably far lower than that - you will still save energy and money if you turn off lights whenever you leave a room./p
pAgain, consider the lowly incandescent. You can buy a cheap 100 watt bulb for around 25 cents and it lasts about 1,000 hours. They burn 0.1 kilowatt hours each hour they are on. If we assume we burn a bulb out in 1,000 on-off cycles, and electricity costs us 10 cents a kilowatt hour, that means it costs us 1 cent to run the bulb for one hour (100 watts = 0.1 kilowatt, X 10 cents = 1 cent)./p
pSo, every time you turn a bulb off (which means you will later have to turn it on) you are using 1/1000 of the $0.25 you paid for the bulb, or 0.05 of a cent (that’s $0.0005!)/p
pAnd every time you turn a bulb off for five minutes you are saving 5/60 of the $0.01 it costs to run the bulb for an hour, or 0.16 of a cent./p
pSo you actually save over three times as much by turning the light off for five minutes, as you would by extending the bulb life by leaving it on. And my assumption that it takes an hour of the life of the bulb each time you turn it on is probably a big over-estimate. It was just to prove a point./p
pThere is one other flaw with the leave-the-light-on conventional wisdom: it fails to take into account what happens when we get distracted./p
pYou step out of a room for a couple of minutes to do something else, and you leave the light on because you know you will be back soon. But you get distracted - a knock at the door, a phone call, you suddenly remember an errand you have to run - and half an hour or several hours later, you discover the light you had left on. The worst is when the light is in a seldom-used room - furnace room or a guest bedroom - and you don’t remember to go back and turn the light off. Days later you discover it is still on. One distraction like that canl cost you far more than the cost of one hour of the operating life of the bulb./p
pSo make it your philosophy to turn off lights. Not only will you save electricity when you turn off lights, and save money overall, but it will remind you to be an energy saver in other ways. And you will be setting a visible example to others, who will become more conservation conscious as well./p
br /h2About the Author/h2pRobin Green runs a href=http://www.green-energy-efficient-homes.comGreen-Energy-Efficient-Homes.com/a, a website that helps you save energy in your home. There you’ll find free ideas on a href=http://www.green-energy-efficient-homes.com/energy-efficient-lighting.htmlenergy efficient lighting/a as well as more on a href=http://www.green-energy-efficient-homes.com/turn-off-lights.htmlturning off lights/a to save energy./p
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