Airbus to Pay Compensation to Mas for Plane Delivery Delay

Airbus Industrie will have to pay compensation for the delay in delivering the aircraft and hopes the issue will be settled before year-end.
"There will be compensation," managing director Idris Jala said when asked on the discussions between the airline and Airbus. "(There is) no change, we are still talking to them, nothing new," he said.
Asked on the progress of the national carrier's Business Turnaround Plan, Idris said: "Probably before year-end we will complete the plan and also settle the compensation issue with Airbus.
"All of them will be settled before year-end, a lot of things are going on, but we are making a lot of progress, I am happy," he told Bernama at the national carrier MAS charity gala dinner last Saturday.
Idris said MAS would focus on growing the company.
"There is a lot (that) we have to do now. As you know we have ordered some aircraft and we will turn around and make MAS a profitable business," he said.
He said the charity event was held "to celebrate a bit of the airline's success." Penerbangan Malaysia Bhd (PMB), the parent of MAS, ordered six A380 planes for RM1.6 billion (US$467.9 million) in 2003 to lease to the airline.
Under the sale and puchase agreement signed between PMB and Airbus, the first three planes were due to be delivered later this year, and the rest a year later.
In June last year, MAS said it was reviewing the terms of the purchase agreement after Airbus advised that technical problems meant a sharp cutback in planned deliveries.
MAS had planned to use the planes on its long-haul European routes, including London, Paris and Amsterdam.

Reliance Vision Fund: Invest

Investments can be considered in Reliance Vision Fund, based on its long-term track record. The fund's three- and five-year returns are over 50 per cent and it finds a place among the top quartile of diversified funds.

In the same period, it significantly outpaced the benchmark BSE-100 and marginally beat the HDFC Equity Fund, which has a similar investment style of marginal exposure to mid-cap stocks.
Suitability: Reliance Vision is now predominantly invested in large-cap stocks, though it has some exposures to mid- and small-cap stocks too.
However, it has a flexible investment style and in the past year, its exposure to stocks with market capitalisation of less than Rs 5,000 crore did rise to as high as 25 per cent.
In comparison to some of its peers, such as HDFC Equity, Reliance Vision churns its portfolio more actively. •
Investors who prefer to have marginal exposure to mid- and small-cap stocks to boost their returns can consider investment in this fund and it can also be part of your core portfolio.
The fund has had a track record of declaring high dividends, paying out close to 100 per cent for the past three years.
Performance: The NAV has grown by 52 per cent the past year. Over the same time-frame it outpaced the benchmark BSE-100 by 8 percentage points.
The recovery in mid-cap stocks helped the fund outpace peers such as HDFC Equity. Despite the presence of mid-cap stocks in the portfolio, the fund's SIP returns trailed lump-sum investments for the past five years.
Profile: Reliance Vision has a very compact portfolio and hold, on an average, close to 30 stocks. Capital goods, software, pharmaceuticals and petroleum products have been the preferred choices over the past year.
The top ten stocks account for 45 per cent of the assets. Stock-specific exposures were restricted to 8 per cent each of the portfolio.
The fund had a significant exposure to auto stocks, which have under-performed the past year, possibly dragging down the fund's returns.
Fund facts: Reliance Vision is one of the few funds with a 10-year track record. The fund was launched in October 1995 and Ashwani Kumar manages it. The minimum one-time investment is Rs 5,000 and the entry load is 2.25 per cent.

Forex Basics

Forex is an interbank market internationally available worldwide that was created in 1971 when international trade transitioned from fixed to floating exchange rates. Since then the rates of currencies relative to each other are determined by the most obvious means which is the exchange at a mutually agreed rate.This market surpasses the others in its volume. For example, the daily turnover of world securities market is estimated at $300 billion, while Forex approaches 1 to 3 TRILLION US dollars in the same amount of time.However, Forex is not a market in a traditional sense. It doesn't have a fixed location of the trading floor as, for example, futures market does. The trading is done over the telephone and at the computer terminals in hundreds of banks around the world simultaneously.Futures and securities markets have one more significant feature distinguishing them from Forex, and at the same time restricting them. The trading is suspended at the end of each day and resumed only next morning. Thus, should certain significant developments occur in the USA, the opening of Russian market next morning could quite surprise you, if you're trading there.Forex is open 24 hours a day, and the currency exchange operations are maintained throught working days of the week. Almost every time zone (London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney) has dealers willing to quote currencies.1. Purpose of tradingThe purpose of trading on any market is to buy low and sell high. The foreign currency market FOREX is no exception. The goods traded on this market are rates of currencies of different countries. As any other goods the currencies have their prices.To settle transactions between businesses located in different countries, governments, speculative transactions and so forth, banks around the world execute currency trades on FOREX market. Depending on various trade, economical and other parameters, interest rates, central bank policies, time of the day, preferences and anticipations of the market players, and many other causes, the rates, that is prices, of currencies stay in ceaseless motion.Your task as a trader is to determine the trend of the rate and buy an appreciating currency or sell a depreciating one, and then take your profits through execution of a reverse transaction.Our dealing center gives you the opportunity to use AFM (Akmos FOREX Master) software suite to obtain real time currency quotations from different banks and largest world exchanges participating in FOREX market. At the same time, the rate charts for every currency are displayed for you, and hottest economical News that may affect currency rates now or in the future directly or indirectly are fed to your screen. You may familiarize yourself with AFM by reading the user manuals.And, at last, you will have a special trading account allowing you to buy and sell desired currencies. Despite of having US dollars in your account, you may start your trading from selling deutchemarks or japanese yens not concerning yourself with not having bought them in advance.2. Some codes, numbers and definitions.Each currency is assigned a three-letter code. For example, US dollar is coded - USD (United States Dollar), euro is coded EUR (EURo), Swiss frank is coded CHF (Confederation Helvetica Franc), Japanese yen is coded JPY (JaPanese Yen), British pound is coded GBP (Great British Pound). The currency codes are defined by ISO-4217 standard. Usually they are formed as a two-letter ISO-3166 country code and the first letter of currency name. There are a few exceptions most notable being the euro (EUR).Currency rates are equal to ratios of currency units of different countries relative to each other. The rates are represented by 6-letter words composed of two three-letter currency codes. The first position is occupied, as a rule, by the code of a more expensive currency. The rates are expressed in units of the second currency per unit of the first one. For example, rates USDCHF (USD-CHF) show the number of Swiss franks in one US dollar, but rates GBPUSD (GBP-USD) show the number of US dollars having to be paid for one British pound. More detailed information on the codes of financial instruments may be found in this table.3. How to read quotes.The rates are usually expressed as five-digit numbers. For example, USDJPY = 121.44 means that 1 US dollar is valued at 121.44 Japanese yens (i.e. they are willing to pay you that many yens for one US dollar while you are buying or selling). At the same time, GBPUSD = 1.6262 means that 1 British pound is valued at 1.6262 US dollars. Generally, if the rate XXXYYY = Z, it means that one unit of XXX is worth Z units of YYY.When the rate has changed, for example USDJPY = 121.44 to USDJPY = 121.45 or GBPUSD = 1.6262 to 1.6263, they say that the rate has moved 1 point. As it follows from the information above, yen in this example has DEPRECIATED by 1 point, but the pound has APPRECIATED, also by 1 point.While watching the charts, you should keep in mind that only euro (EURUSD), British pound (GBPUSD) and Australian dollar (AUDUSD) charts reflect real movements of the rates of these currencies (that is, chart going up, means increasing price), as growth (that is, charts moving up) mean decreasing rates (prices) for the other currencies.Sometimes quotes are given as a pair, for example 121.44/49. It is a BID/ASK pair: the first number is BID, then the two last figures of ASK. Knowing that ASK is always higher than BID and that the spread is under 100 points, the full ASK real prices can always be defined. In this example ASK = 121.49.4. BID and ASK prices.It is known, that every transaction is executed at a rather well defined and concrete price, while the table Quote Spread Sheet lists three prices for each currency, for example:Each of the participants of FOREX market enters each trade as either a SELLER or a BUYER of a particular currency. In so doing, the seller offers the currency at a higher price, for example GBPUSD at 1.6325, while the buyer bids for it at a lower price, for example, GBPUSD at 1.6322. The seller's price is called ASK and the buyers price is called BID accordingly. This is why, if you anticipate GBPUSD to appreciate (your GBPUSD chart to go up), then you should decide to buy the pound when it is low to sell it high later. You can BUY only from a seller offering it at the price equal to ASK. Should you be selling the pound (this operation is called SELL), the buyer will bid at a price equal to BID for it (this holds true for all currencies). The obvious conclusion is that if you have OPENED a position (the operation is called OPEN), that is you have executed BUY GBPUSD, and want to CLOSE it immediately (the operation is called CLOSE), that is to sell the pounds you have just bought, then you could do it only at a loss, similar to what would happen at any currency exchange booth. Consequently, to make a profit you should let the rate move in the anticipated direction more than the difference between BID and ASK. The third number is called LAST, which is an average of last BID and ASK on Forex.As described in the section 3 above, currencies with a direct quote only appreciate when the chart goes up. Currencies with inverse quote depreciate when the chart goes up. Considering an upward movement on the chart, BUY operation would be confusing if it's profitable for some currencies but not for the others. To clear the confusion, the BUY operation for currencies with inverse quote, like USDJPY, was altered. BUY for USDJPY and the like buy not the currency itself, like JPY but it buys the US dollars instead, selling the other currency. For example, BUY USDCHF at 1.4500 buys 100,000 US dollars for 145,000 swiss franks. Thus, the BUY operation is always profitable when the chart goes up, SELL is always profitable when the chart goes down.OPEN BUY (up) is executed at the ASK, CLOSE - at the bid BID; OPEN SELL (down) – at the BID, CLOSE - at the ASK.5. STOP and LIMIT orders.Let us get aquainted with some useful trading tools allowing us to protect ourselves from unforeseen losses to certain degree and take the expected profits.These are STOP and LIMIT. For a previously opened position an instruction may be entered at any moment (during the working days) to close it, if the rate reaches a preset level. For example, you have opened a position expecting the rate to go up (on the chart). To protect yourself from significant losses if the rate moves down, especially in such a situation when you don't have or are about to lose control of the market, you should enter a STOP, that is set a price at below its current value at which your position should be closed with no further instructions. Similarly, if you have opened a down position, then you should specify a price above its current value. In this case you should bear in mind that if the STOP is set too closely to the current rate value, then a random rate fluctuation may close a correctly open position at a loss, but if it is set too far, then the losses could become unreasonably high. LIMIT is a rate value that you set at which the position should be closed with a profit, that is the value of the LIMIT should always be above the current level, if you play long, and below it, if you play short.