Investor

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An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). [1] [2] Through this allocated capital the investor usually purchases some species of property. [3] Types of investments include equity, debt, securities, real estate, infrastructure, currency, commodity, token, derivatives such as put and call options, futures, forwards, etc. This definition makes no distinction between the investors in the primary and secondary markets. That is, someone who provides a business with capital and someone who buys a stock are both investors. An investor who owns stock is a shareholder.

Contents

Types of investors

There are two types of investors: retail investors and institutional investors. [4]

A retail investor is also known as an individual investor. [5]

There are several sub-types of institutional investor:

Investors might also be classified according to their profiles. In this respect, an important distinctive investor psychology trait is risk attitude.

Investor protection through government

Investor protection through government involves regulations and enforcement by government agencies to ensure that market is fair and fraudulent activities are eliminated. An example of a government agency that protects investors is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which works to protect reasonable investors in the United States. [1]

Similar protections exist in other countries, including the United Kingdom where individual investors have certain protections via the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). [7]

Investment tax structures

Company dividends are paid from net income, which has the tax already deducted. Therefore, shareholders are given some respite with a preferential tax rate of 15% on "qualified dividends" in the event of the company being domiciled in the United States. Alternatively, in another country having a double-taxation treaty with the US, accepted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Non-qualified dividends paid by other foreign companies or entities; for example, those receiving income derived from interest on bonds held by a mutual fund, are taxed at the regular and generally higher rate of income tax. When applied to 2013, this is on a sliding scale up to 39.6%, with an additional 3.8% surtax for high-income taxpayers ($200,000 for singles, $250,000 for married couples). [8]

Role of the financier

A financier ( /fɪnənˈsɪər,fə-,-ˈnæn-/ ) [9] [10] is a person whose primary occupation is either facilitating or directly providing investments to up-and-coming or established companies and businesses, typically involving large sums of money and usually involving private equity and venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, corporate finance, investment banking, or large-scale asset management. A financier makes money through this process when his or her investment is paid back with interest, [11] from part of the company's equity awarded to them as specified by the business deal, or a financier can generate income through commission, performance, and management fees. A financier can also promote the success of a financed business by allowing the business to take advantage of the financier's reputation. [12] The more experienced and capable the financier is, the more the financier will be able to contribute to the success of the financed entity, and the greater reward the financier will reap. [13] The term, financier, is French, and derives from finance or payment.

Financier is someone who handles money. Certain financier avenues require degrees and licenses including venture capitalists, hedge fund managers, trust fund managers, accountants, stockbrokers, financial advisors, or even public treasurers. Personal investing on the other hand, has no requirements and is open to all using the stock market or by word-of-mouth requests for money. A financier "will be a specialized financial intermediary in the sense that it has experience in liquidating the type of firm it is lending to". [11]

Perceptions

Economist Edmund Phelps has argued that the financier plays a role in directing capital to investments that governments and social organizations are constrained from playing:

[T]he pluralism of experience that the financiers bring to bear in their decisions gives a wide range of entrepreneurial ideas a chance for insightful evaluation. And, importantly, the financier and the entrepreneur do not need the state's or social partners' approval. Nor are they accountable later on to such social bodies if the project goes badly, not even to the financier's investors. So projects that would be too opaque and uncertain for the state or social partners to endorse can be undertaken. [14]

The concept of the financier has been distinguished from that of a mere capitalist based on the asserted higher level of judgment required of the financier. [15] However, financiers have also been mocked for their perceived tendency to generate wealth at the expense of others, and without engaging in tangible labor. For example, humorist George Helgesen Fitch described the financier as "a man who can make two dollars grow for himself where one grew for someone else before". [16]

See also

Further reading

Related Research Articles

Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to and distinct from Economics which is the study of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The discipline of Financial Economics bridges the two fields. Based on the scope of financial activities in financial systems, the discipline can be divided into personal, corporate, and public finance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dividend</span> Payment made by a corporation to its shareholders, usually as a distribution of profits

A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders, after which the stock exchange decreases the price of the stock by the dividend to remove volatility. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, it is able to pay a portion of the profit as a dividend to shareholders. Any amount not distributed is taken to be re-invested in the business. The current year profit as well as the retained earnings of previous years are available for distribution; a corporation is usually prohibited from paying a dividend out of its capital. Distribution to shareholders may be in cash or, if the corporation has a dividend reinvestment plan, the amount can be paid by the issue of further shares or by share repurchase. In some cases, the distribution may be of assets.

Financial capital is any economic resource measured in terms of money used by entrepreneurs and businesses to buy what they need to make their products or to provide their services to the sector of the economy upon which their operation is based. In other words, financial capital is internal retained earnings generated by the entity or funds provided by lenders to businesses in order to purchase real capital equipment or services for producing new goods or services.

Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources to achieve later benefits". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later". From a broader viewpoint, an investment can be defined as "to tailor the pattern of expenditure and receipt of resources to optimise the desirable patterns of these flows". When expenditures and receipts are defined in terms of money, then the net monetary receipt in a time period is termed cash flow, while money received in a series of several time periods is termed cash flow stream.

An index fund is a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) designed to follow certain preset rules so that it can replicate the performance ("track") of a specified basket of underlying investments. While index providers often emphasize that they are for-profit organizations, index providers have the ability to act as "reluctant regulators" when determining which companies are suitable for an index. Those rules may include tracking prominent indexes like the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average or implementation rules, such as tax-management, tracking error minimization, large block trading or patient/flexible trading strategies that allow for greater tracking error but lower market impact costs. Index funds may also have rules that screen for social and sustainable criteria.

A closed-end fund, also known as a closed-end mutual fund, is an investment vehicle fund that raises capital by issuing a fixed number of shares at its inception, and then invests that capital in financial assets such as stocks and bonds. After inception it is closed to new capital, although fund managers sometimes employ leverage. Investors can buy and sell the existing shares in secondary markets.

In the field of finance, private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public. Private equity is offered instead to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the companies. In casual usage, "private equity" can refer to these investment firms rather than the companies that they invest in.

A mutual fund is an investment fund that pools money from many investors to purchase securities. The term is typically used in the United States, Canada, and India, while similar structures across the globe include the SICAV in Europe, and the open-ended investment company (OEIC) in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Venture capital</span> Form of private-equity financing

Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.

A real estate investment trust is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate. REITs own many types of commercial real estate, including office and apartment buildings, warehouses, hospitals, shopping centers, hotels and commercial forests. Some REITs engage in financing real estate.

Preferred stock is a component of share capital that may have any combination of features not possessed by common stock, including properties of both an equity and a debt instrument, and is generally considered a hybrid instrument. Preferred stocks are senior to common stock but subordinate to bonds in terms of claim and may have priority over common stock in the payment of dividends and upon liquidation. Terms of the preferred stock are described in the issuing company's articles of association or articles of incorporation.

An income trust is an investment that may hold equities, debt instruments, royalty interests or real properties. It is especially useful for financial requirements of institutional investors such as pension funds, and for investors such as retired individuals seeking yield. The main attraction of income trusts, in addition to certain tax preferences for some investors, is their stated goal of paying out consistent cash flows for investors, which is especially attractive when cash yields on bonds are low. Many investors are attracted by the fact that income trusts are not allowed to make forays into unrelated businesses; if a trust is in the oil and gas business, it cannot buy casinos or motion picture studios.

An income fund is a fund whose goal is to provide an income from investments. It is usually organized through a trust or partnership, rather than a corporation, to obtain more efficient flow through tax consequences in relation to the income that it earns and distributes.

A stock fund, or equity fund, is a fund that invests in stocks, also called equity securities. Stock funds can be contrasted with bond funds and money funds. Fund assets are typically mainly in stock, with some amount of cash, which is generally quite small, as opposed to bonds, notes, or other securities. This may be a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund. The objective of an equity fund is long-term growth through capital gains, although historically dividends have also been an important source of total return. Specific equity funds may focus on a certain sector of the market or may be geared toward a certain level of risk.

Social venture capital is a form of investment funding that is usually funded by a group of social venture capitalists or an impact investor to provide seed-funding investment, usually in a for-profit social enterprise, in return to achieve an outsized gain in financial return while delivering social impact to the world. There are various organizations, such as Venture Philanthropy (VP) companies and nonprofit organizations, that deploy a simple venture capital strategy model to fund nonprofit events, social enterprises, or activities that deliver a high social impact or a strong social causes for their existence. There are also regionally focused organizations that target a specific region of the world, to help build and support the local community in a social cause.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Financial market participants</span>

There are two basic financial market participant distinctions, investors versus speculators and institutional versus retail. Action in financial markets by central banks is usually regarded as intervention rather than participation.

A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the primary stimuli for the development of new companies and technologies.

A Business Development Company ("BDC") is a form of unregistered closed-end investment company in the United States that invests in small and mid-sized businesses. This form of company was created by the US Congress in 1980 in the amendments to the Investment Company Act of 1940. Publicly filing firms may elect regulation as BDCs if they meet certain requirements of the Investment Company Act.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corporate finance</span> Framework for corporate funding, capital structure, and investments

Corporate finance is the area of finance that deals with the sources of funding, and the capital structure of corporations, the actions that managers take to increase the value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and analysis used to allocate financial resources. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize or increase shareholder value.

References

  1. 1 2 Lin, Tom C.W. (2015). "Reasonable Investor(s)". Boston University Law Review. 95 (461): 466.
  2. ↑ "Investor". Cambridge English Dictionary. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved November 29, 2019.
  3. ↑ Fisher, Jonathan; Bewsey, Jane; Waters, Malcolm; Ovey, Elizabeth (2003). The Law of Investor Protection (2nd ed.). London: Sweet & Maxwell.
  4. ↑ Palmer, Barclay (August 11, 2023). "Institutional vs. Retail Investors: What's the Difference?". Investopedia . Retrieved October 5, 2023.
  5. ↑ Hayes, Adam. "Retail Investor Definition". Investopedia. Retrieved December 17, 2020.
  6. ↑ "Institutional Investor – Overview, Types, Investing Risks". Corporate Finance Institute. Retrieved December 17, 2020.
  7. ↑ "Investments". Financial Services Compensation Scheme Ltd. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
  8. ↑ "Investment Tax Basics for All Investors". Investopedia. Retrieved December 30, 2014.
  9. ↑ "financier". The American Heritage Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
  10. ↑ "financier | meaning of financier". Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.
  11. 1 2 Xavier Freixas, Jean-Charles Rochet, Microeconomics of Banking (2008), p. 227.
  12. ↑ Landström, Hans (2007). Handbook of Research on Venture Capital. p. 202.
  13. ↑ Neave, Edwin H. (2009). Modern Financial Systems: Theory and Applications. p. 8.
  14. ↑ Phelps, Edmund S. (October 10, 2006). "Dynamic Capitalism" (PDF). Europa-Institut.
  15. ↑ Elliott, Sterling, ed. (1896). Good Roads: Devoted to the Construction and Maintenance of Roads. Vol. 24. p. 366.
  16. ↑ Fitch, George (1916). Vest Pocket Essays. p. 123.
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