Code of conduct for Management Accountants

Practitioners of management accounting and financial management have an obligation to the public, their profession, the organization they serve, and themselves, to maintain the highest standards of ethical conduct. In recognition of this obligation, the Institute of management Accountants has promulgated the following standards of ethical conduct for practitioners of management accounting and financial management. Adherence to these standards internationally is integral to achieving objective of management accounting.

Competence

Practitioners of management accounting and financial management have a responsibility to:

* Maintain an appropriate level of professional competence by ongoing development of their knowledge and skills.
* Perform their professional duties in accordance with relevant laws, regulations and technical standards.
* Prepare complete and clear reports and recommendations after appropriate analysis of relevant and reliable information

Confidentiality:

Practitioners of management accounting and financial management have a responsibility to:

* Refrain from disclosing confidential information acquired in the course of their work except when authorized, unless legally obligated to do so.
* Inform subordinates as appropriate regarding the confidentiality of information acquired in the course of their work and monitor their activities to assure the maintenance of that confidentiality
* Refrain from using or appearing to use confidential information acquired in the course of their work for unethical or illegal advantage either personally or through third parties.

Integrity

Practitioners of management accounting and financial management have a responsibility to:

* Avoid actual or apparent conflicts of interest and advise all appropriate parties of any potential conflict.
* Refrain from engaging in any activity that would prejudice their ability to carry out their duties ethically.
* Refuse any gift, favor, or hospitality that would influence or would appear to influence their actions.
* Refrain from either activity or passively subverting the attainment of the organization's legitimate and ethical objectives.
* Recognize and and communicate professional limitations or other constraints that would preclude responsible judgment or successful performance of an activity.
* Communicate unfavorable as well as favorable information and professional judgment or opinion.
* Refrain from engaging or supporting any activity that would discredit the profession.

Objectivity:

Practitioners of management accounting and financial management have a responsibility to:

* Communicate information fairly and objectively
* Disclose fully all relevant information that could reasonably be expected to influence an intended user's understanding of the reports, comments, and recommendations presented.

Practitioners may encounters conflict in applying the above ethics, resolutions are suggested here.

Resources:
Managerial Accounting Articles
Managerial Accounting, Ray H. Garrison Eric W. Noreen
Cost Accounting, Adolph Matz Milton F. Usrey
Advanced Financial Accounting M. A. Ghani
http://www.accountingformanagement.com/
Read more!

Resolution of Ethical Conflicts

In applying the standards of ethical conduct, practitioners of management accounting and financial management may encounter problems in identifying unethical behavior or in resolving an ethical conflict. When faced with significant ethical issues practitioners of management accounting and financial management should follow the established policies of the organization bearing on the resolution of such conflict. If these policies do not resolve the ethical conflict, such practitioner should consider the following course of action.

# Discuss such problems with immediate superior except when it appears that superior is involved, in which case the problem should be presented to the next higher managerial level. If a satisfactory resolution cannot be achieved when the problem is initially presented, submit the issue to the next higher managerial level.
# If the immediate superior is the chief executive officer or equivalent, the acceptable reviewing authority may be a group such as the audit committee, executive committee, board of directors, board of trustees, or owners. Contact with a level above the immediate superior should be initiated only with the superior's knowledge. assuming the superior is not involved. Except where legally prescribed, communication of such problems to authorities or individuals not employed or engaged by the organization is not considered appropriate.
# Clarify relevant ethical issues by confidential discussion with an objective adviser to obtain a better understanding of possible course of action
# Consult your own attorney as to legal obligations and rights concerning the ethical conflict.
# If the ethical conflict still exists after exhausting all levels of internal review, there may be no other recourse on significant matters than to resign from the organization and to submit an informative memorandum to an appropriate representative of the organization. After resignation, depending on the nature of the ethical conflict, it may also be appropriate to notify other parties.
Resources:
Managerial Accounting Articles
Managerial Accounting, Ray H. Garrison Eric W. Noreen
Cost Accounting, Adolph Matz Milton F. Usrey
Advanced Financial Accounting M. A. Ghani
http://www.accountingformanagement.com/
Read more!

Principles of Islamic Financial System

Islamic finance may be viewed as a form of ethical investment, or ethical lending and is prohibiting interest charging whether it is "nominal" or "excessive," simple or compound, fixed or floating. Islamic financing is an ethical and equitable mode of financial services that derives its principles from the Shariah (Islamic law). The Shariah is based on the Quran and the Hadits of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him), and it governs all aspects of personal and collective life. Its practitioners and clients need not be Muslim, but they must accept the ethical restrictions underscored by Islamic values. Islamic unit trusts would never invest in companies involved in gambling or any food which is considered as Haram such as alcoholic beverages, or porcine food products. Other elements include the emphasis on equitable contracts, the linking of finance to productivity, the desirability of profit sharing, and the prohibition of gambling and certain types of uncertainty.

The basic principles of an Islamic financial system can be summarized as follows:

It is not allowed to charge interest. Interest is defined as money earned on the lending out of money. Prohibition of riba, a term literally meaning "an excess" and interpreted as "any unjustifiable increase of capital whether in loans or sales" is the central tenet of the financial system. Any positive, fixed, predetermined rate tied to the maturity and the amount of principal (i.e., guaranteed regardless of the performance of the investment) is considered riba and is not allowed. The general consensus among Islamic scholars is that riba covers not only usury but also the charging of "interest" as widely practiced.

This prohibition is based on arguments of social justice, equality, and property rights. Islam encourages the earning of profits but forbids the charging of interest because profits. It is symbolized by successful entrepreneurship and creation of additional wealth. Whereas interest is a cost that is accrued irrespective of the outcome of business operations and may not create wealth if the business are losses. Social justice demands that borrowers and lenders share rewards as well as losses in an equitable fashion and that the process of wealth accumulation and distribution in the economy be fair and representative of true productivity.
It is promoting Risk sharing. Because interest is prohibited, suppliers of funds become investors instead of creditors. The provider of financial capital and the entrepreneur share business risks in return for shares of the profits.

Money is considered as "potential" capital. Money is treated as "potential" capital--that is, it becomes actual capital only when it joins hands with other resources to undertake a productive activity. Islam recognizes the time value of money, but only when it acts as capital, not when it is "potential" capital. Money in Islam is not regarded as an asset from which it is ethically permissible to earn a direct return. Money tends to be viewed purely as a medium of exchange. In order for a Shariah-compliant financier to earn a return on his money, it is necessary to obtain an equity, or ownership, interest in a non-monetary asset. Hence, there is no real 'lending' in Islam since all 'lenders' obtain ownership interests in the assets that they finance, or earn purely fee-based remuneration. Conventional loans therefore tend to be re-cast as sale-and-purchase or lease-then-buy transactions.

Speculative behavior is prohibited. An Islamic financial system discourages hoarding and prohibits transactions featuring extreme uncertainties, gambling, and risks. Speculative transaction is called Gharar in Islam, means an excessive, speculative uncertainty, as in casino-gambling games or in a sale of goods in a situation where the seller offers his goods for sale without a proper description to the buyer, hence making it impossible to ascertain precisely what the buyer is paying for. In such a situation the sale and purchase contract would be void in Islam. In financial markets, investing in stocks and equity funds is permitted but must conform to certain guidelines. Undesirable companies and industries are screened out on the basis of both qualitative criteria (nature of business) and quantitative criteria (level of involvement with interest). Islamic investment also discourages speculation and prohibits short selling, conventional debt instruments and conventional derivatives.

Islam upholds Sanctity of contracts. Islam upholds contractual obligations and the disclosure of information as a sacred duty. This feature is intended to reduce the risk of asymmetric information and moral hazard. In addition to this, Islam are opposing zalim, meaning oppression or excessive unfairness between the parties to the contract. Read more!

Rukn (Pillars) of Mudharabah

Mudharabah is cooperation between an investor who gives fund/ capital to a party who will manage the fund/ capital for trading. Mudharabah has three rukn (pillars).
First, there are two or more parties; they are investor, and care taker/ organizer.
Second, object of the cooperation, this included fund/ capital, business and profit.
Third, saying the agreement orally (sighat).

The first pillar, two or more parties should involve in the cooperation, they are the investor and the care taker or organizer. All parties should have competencies required (jaiz al tasharruf), meaning that all parties are mature enough (baligh), have normal sense (not idiot), rasyid (normal) and are allowed to make transaction to their wealth.


The second pillar, object of cooperation included fund/ capital, type of business and profit.
a. Fund/ Capital
The requirements of capital are as follows:
1. Fund/ Capital should be in the form of monetary exchange (al naqd). The base is Ijma, or goods in which the value is determined before the transaction.
2. Fund/ Capital which is given should be known clearly.
3. Fund/ Capital which is given should be determined before the transaction.
4. Fund/ Capital which is given should be received by the care taker/ organizer directly, and he can make transaction with it.

So in Mudharabah, capital should be known, and given to care taker (mudharib), also it should be in monetary value like gold, silver or a common monetary exchange. It should not be in form of goods, unless the value of the goods is calculated based on value of money at the time the transaction taken place, so the value of the goods become the capital of Mudharabah.

It is important to have clarity of total value of the capital to determine the profit sharing. If the capital are in form of goods and are not clear at the time of transaction, the value of the goods may changes as the time goes by and it may lead to dispute at the time of profit sharing.

b. Type of business
The requirements for type of business are as follows:
1. It is in trading sector.
2. It is not putting the care taker/ organizer in difficult position, example the capital should be used to trade on very expensive jewelry or diamond which is very rare and difficult to trade.
3. It is not prohibited by Shariah like alcoholic beverage or pork.
4. There is a time limit or time frame of the investment.

c. Profit
The purpose of any work is to get profit. In Mudharabah the requirement of profit are as follows: 1. Profit is only for the parties who joined the cooperation. It is not allowed to share the profit with the party who are not involving in the cooperation.
2. Profit sharing is for both parties, it is not allowed to give the profit only for one party.
3. It is required to have the clarity of the profit.
4. It is required to define the percentage of profit sharing for the investor and the care taker/ organizer.

While at the time of sharing the profit, we need to see the following:
1. Profit sharing is done based on the agreement by both parties, but the investor need to bear all the loss.
2. The care taker/ organizer should define his part from the profit sharing. If both parties are not defining it, then the care taker/ organizer should receive salary, and the profit will become the right of the investor.
3. The care taker/ organizer should not receive his part from the profit sharing before he hand over the whole fund/ capital to the investor. If there is any profit and loss at the same time, the loss should be covered from the profit. It’s mean that the profit is defined from the excess of the initial fund/ capital.
4. Profit can be shared at the middle of the cooperation as long as it is agreed by both parties.
5. Profit sharing should be done after final calculation has been done for the cooperation.
There are two applications for final calculation:
- To do the final calculation at the end of the cooperation, so the investor can withdraw the fund/ capital and ends the cooperation.
- Finish cleansing toward the profit calculation. This is done by cashing all the assets and calculates the value. At this time the investor is allowed to withdraw the capital. He is also allowed to re-invest the capital with the new contract/ agreement. The contract cannot be rolled over without making new contract.


The third pillar, saying the agreement orally (sighat the transaction).
Sighat is saying the transaction by both parties who join the cooperation. It shows the expression and desire of doing the cooperation. The Mudharabah transaction is considered valid by saying the desire of doing the cooperation and by doing the transaction.

More explanation about this topic can be found here.
Read more!

Efficient Market Hypothesis

The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) infer that financial markets are "informationally efficient", or that prices on traded assets, e.g., stocks, bonds, or property, already reflect all known information. The efficient-market hypothesis states that it is impossible to consistently outperform the market by using any information that the market already knows, except through luck. Information or news in the EMH is defined as anything that may affect prices that is unknowable in the present and thus appears randomly in the future. The EMH was developed by Professor Eugene Fama at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Thus, according to the EMH, no investor has an advantage in predicting a return on a stock price because no one has access to information which is not already available to everyone else.

There are three common forms in which the efficient-market hypothesis is commonly stated:

Weak-form efficiency
* Excess returns cannot be earned by using investment strategies based on historical share prices.
* Technical analysis techniques will not be able to consistently produce excess returns, though some forms of fundamental analysis may still provide excess returns.
* Share prices exhibit no serial dependencies, (there are no "patterns" to asset prices). This implies that future price movements are determined entirely by unexpected information and therefore are random.

Semi-strong-form efficiency
* Share prices adjust to publicly available new information very rapidly and in an unbiased fashion, such that no excess returns can be earned by trading on that information.
* Neither fundamental analysis nor technical analysis techniques will be able to reliably produce excess returns.
* To test for semi-strong-form efficiency, the adjustments to previously unknown news must be of a reasonable size and must be instantaneous. To test for this, consistent upward or downward adjustments after the initial change must be looked for. If there are any such adjustments it would suggest that investors had interpreted the information in a biased fashion and hence in an inefficient manner.

Strong-form efficiency
* Share prices reflect all information, public and private, and no one can earn excess returns.
* If there are legal barriers to private information becoming public, as with insider trading laws, strong-form efficiency is impossible, except in the case where the laws are universally ignored.
* To test for strong-form efficiency, a market needs to exist where investors cannot consistently earn excess returns over a long period of time. Even if some money managers are consistently observed to beat the market, no argument even of strong-form efficiency follows: with hundreds of thousands of fund managers worldwide, even a normal distribution of returns (as efficiency predicts) should be expected to produce a few dozen "star" performers.

The nature of information does not have to be limited to financial news and research alone; indeed, information about political, economic and social events, combined with how investors perceive such information, whether true or rumored, will be reflected in the stock price. According to EMH, as prices respond only to information available in the market, and, because all market participants are privy to the same information, no one will have the ability to out-profit anyone else.

In efficient markets, prices become not predictable but random, so no investment pattern can be discerned. So, a planned approach to investment cannot be successful.

In the real world of investment, however, there are obvious arguments against the EMH. There are investors who have beaten the market - Warren Buffett, whose investment strategy focuses on undervalued stocks, made millions and set an example for numerous followers. There are portfolio managers who have better track records than others, and there are investment houses with more renowned research analysis than others.... Read more!

Defining goals

Before deciding on an investment decision, we need to know our investment goals.
Below are three categories to help us deciding what kind of assets we are going to acquire for our investment especially in stock market. Each implies a different level of risk.

- Capital appreciation. Our primary goal is to grow the value of the portfolio. The best capital appreciation prospects are usually the most volatile, and hence, the riskiest stocks.

- Balance of capital appreciation and capital preservation. We want to grow the capital but without undue risk.

- Capital preservation: You want to achieve reasonable returns but priority No. 1 is preserving your existing capital. This is the lowest risk category.

Pick portfolio objectives with risk tolerance in mind. If we're likely to lose sleep when one of our stocks drops 10%, avoid the pure capital appreciation portfolios. Conversely, these portfolios might be our bag and craving excitement and want something to talk about with friends and co-workers. Some investors put their "serious" money into low-risk portfolios, but allocate a small amount of "fun" money for speculative portfolios.


Do you have the time?
Some portfolios require monitoring on a daily basis, while others require only occasional checks. Here are a specification of time commitment for each portfolio:

• High. Check on stocks daily, or at least, weekly.
• Medium. Check on stocks weekly or, at a minimum, monthly.
• Low. Check on portfolio only occasionally.

Spread your bets
Spreading the risk by acquiring stocks through diversification.

With only a few stocks, one bad performing stock will banish our returns. At a minimum, each portfolio should contain at least 10 stocks, and 15 would be better.

Whether that's practical depends on how much we're planning to invest.

Momentum Stock
Capital Appreciation (Time Commitment: High)

Momentum-stock selection strategies are the favorites of hedge-fund managers and other pros because they're effective at spotting growth stocks likely to move up fast. Two common characteristics in momentum strategy: They require stocks with a combination of strong price charts and strong recent earnings growth.
This particular stock are profitable small companies that have outperformed most stocks over the past year and are trading near their 52-week highs. They must have recorded at least 18% year-on-year earnings growth in their last quarter and have some institutional ownership.
Because these are "hot" stocks, you must watch them closely, preferably, daily. Sell any stock that falls 10% or more from its recent high.

Growth stocks
Capital Appreciation (Time Commitment: Medium)

This stock looks for reasonably priced stocks that have recorded moderate sales and earnings growth over the past five years. It is not as volatile and doesn't need to be watched as closely as the Momentum stocks. Buy it and plan to hold for one year. Until then, sell only stocks that have been acquired by another company or become involved in major ongoing scandals.

Dogs
Balanced (Time Commitment: low)

The Dogs is a contrarian, are likely to overcome problems that are currently pressuring their share prices.
The analysis are based on market capitalization (recent share price multiplied by number of shares outstanding). The dogs strategy screened for stocks that have market big caps, but the price drops over the past 12 months. The strategy involves picking the 10 worst performers from that list. Buy it and hold for one year. Then repeat the process. Do not sell any stocks during the year unless they are acquired by another company.

Boring dividends
Capital Preservation (Time Commitment: low)

Reduced expectations generally drive share prices down. This strategy pinpoints stocks with already-low expectations. They're only expected to grow earnings around 10% to 15% annually, which is too low to interest most growth investors. They pay dividends equating to 2.25% to 5% yields, which is too low to attract dividend yield chasers. The fact that they've grown dividends at least 5%, on average, annually over the past five years doesn't impress many. Buy it and hold for one year.

Please remember these techniques are not putting into account of the economic turbulence, political situation and so on and may not applicable in all the situation..... Read more!

Building a Stock Portfolio To Meet The Investment Goals

When it comes to building a stock portfolio, it is very important to understand the investment goal, and considering how much time is devoted to do the monitoring, the amount of money you have (as suppose to suffer financially if thing goes against yours positions) and how much risk ones are willing to take when investing in the stock market. These two later is similar, just want to emphasize it rather to regret it.

There are many vehicles to do an investments: time deposit, bond, real assets investments, stock, forex trading etc. Stock investments as one of the investment vehicle can help your investment portfolio by providing potential growth, income from dividends or a combination of the two, which is known as return.

However, the value of stocks can fluctuate, and when you sell your stock, it may be worth more or less than you originally paid. When building a stock portfolio, you should carefully consider the risks of investing in the stock market and develop a diversified asset allocation strategy that fits your goals, investing time frame and risk tolerance.

Diversifying stock portfolio is a way to help offset the risk in the stock investments. The goal is to spread out stock investments in different sectors and include different investment characteristics so that when a stock or sector performs poorly, the performance of your stock investments in other sectors may help offset the swings in the total value of your stock portfolio.


Following are some basic tips which can be used to make the diversification:

• Invest in approximately 20 to 30 stocks in at least six to eight sectors with different investment characteristics.
• No more than 25% of the total value of your stock portfolio should be in any one sector.
• No more than 15% of the total value of your stock portfolio should be in any one stock.
• You should invest a minimum of approximately 3% to 4% of the total value of your stock portfolio in each stock.

Deciding which stocks to invest can be difficult, especially if the tolerance for risk is too low or the money which are allocated for stock investment are too low. That's why it's important to develop an asset allocation strategy, research stocks that fit within your strategy and invest in stocks that have the potential to meet your specific goals, whether you want growth, income or a combination of the two. In this points, the "do-it yourself investor" need to make a research to find the best stock for his/ her own portfolio. There are plenty of resources in the internet to learn, the suggestion is do not rush, take it slowly, if the money to invest is too low do not push it, wait till the amount is enough to make a good diversification.... Read more!