Nicole asked:


I am searching to find the best resources available for someone who is new to investing. My knowledge is limited on the subject and I am attempting to find a solid cornerstone to begin building an understanding of the investment world. Any advice as to where to begin would be most appreciated!

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sammmm asked:


If I want to invest $1000 in something and not touch that money for 30 years, what will give me the best return with a minimal amount of risk? Should I be looking at bonds, mutual funds, stocks, etc?

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ozie asked:


What kind of market would I be investing in if I keep part of my wealth in gold. Is it the commodity market? But in commodity markets, people buy and sell Contracts. Therefore, I don’t think keeping part of my savings in gold is similar to investing in commodity market. Any ideas?

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Vladimir NewBiznet asked:


Europe’s largest country by area, Ukraine combines the advantages of the longest border with the EU, some of the richest agricultural lands in the world, large and growing domestic market, as well as skilled workforce with labour rates of one tenth of the European average. The location of Lviv oblast on the crossroad of trade routes from Europe to Asia as well as from Scandinavia to South lands provides the access to 100-million consumer markets of Ukraine, Russia and other CIS countries.

Attractiveness of Lviv oblast is ensured by:

- dynamically developing market,

- highly educated and skilled labour force that easily adapts oneself to market requirements (150 thousand students graduate from 62 higher educational establishments located on the territory of Lviv oblast annually),

- significant share of modern industries in the economy of the oblast, increase in the amount of innovation enterprises, wide network of research institutions,

- developed telecommunication infrastructure,

- modern market of financial services,

- low-expense production base and rich recourses,

- International airport “Lviv” as well as transport corridors that run through the oblast’s territory,

- unique charm of Lviv city, which is included in UNESCO World Heritage List, and lots of recreation opportunities,

- ancient traditions of trade with Russia and countries of CIS,

- implementation of a number of international development programs in the oblast.

Priorities of Regional Development

The priority task of the regional state authorities and local self-governments of all levels is to increase investment inflows to Lviv oblast. The Investment Program Welcoming Investors was adopted in the region. The regional Investment Program will provide achievement of the four following goals of the Strategy of Lviv Oblast Development 2015:

1. Lviv oblast is a region of sustainable economic and entrepreneurial development.

2. Lviv oblast is a gateway of Ukraine into the EU.

3. Lviv oblast is a region of highly qualified people, innovation potential and technologically advanced companies.

4. Lviv oblast is a region of clean and attractive natural environment, culture, tourism and recreation.

The investment policy will be based on the well-defined partnership of the state and private sectors and realized taking into account the following principles:

- providing investors with the equal rights and terms for investment activity,

- providing investors with guarantees against non-commercial risks (deterioration of investment terms, caused by the actions of state officials or local regulatory documents),

- matching potential investors’ interests and tasks of strategic economic development of the oblast,

- improving investment infrastructure,

- promoting Lviv oblast on the investment markets.

Preparation for Euro 2012 Final Tournament and creation of the possibilities for the implementation of wide-scale and small investment projects are the primary tasks of the Investment Program.

The information for investors including propositions of land lots, unfinished construction and other investment projects is available at the official Internet Portal of Lviv oblast. www.invest.lviv.ua

Priority Investment Projects

1) Reconstruction of International airport “Lviv”

International airport “Lviv” is an air junction in Western Ukraine that provides air transportation between the city of Lviv and regions of Ukraine as well as the whole world. 100 thousand passengers and approximately 40 tons of high value cargo run through the airport annually. The airport is included in 2nd geographical zone of the world air space. The Austrian company Airport Consulting Vienna worked out the concept of International airport “Lviv” development. Modernization of Lviv airport was also included in the State Program of Preparation for the Final Tournament of Euro 2012 Football Championship. The project cost USD 166.1 million, including investor’s contribution of USD 97.2 million.

2) Construction of a stadium in Lviv

A brand new stadium is planned to be constructed in Lviv within the preparations for Euro 2012. The new stadium will be favourably located 12 km from the city centre, near the hugest residential area within the transport corridor # 5. 25 hectare land plot has been opted for the construction of the stadium, its infrastructure together with car parking. According to the project plan, the stadium will be able to host 40 thousand people and that will allow to play quarter-final games. The project of the stadium was developed by the German company HOCHTIEF. The construction of the stadium and its infrastructure requires USD 290 million investments.

3) Construction and maintenance of Lubelska Mine.

Lviv oblast is rich in coke. The project foresees extraction of coal with the help of highly effective innovative technologies. The coal from Lubelska Mine is eligible for carbonization and belongs to the most valuable sorts of “K” mark. Its reserves are reported to be estimated at 86 million tonnes. After the completion of mine construction there will be partly national deficiency for cock coal reduced. General need for investment is USD 400 million.

State and Dynamics of Investment Processes

The trend of stable investment inflows to the oblast’s economy is observed:

- for the 9 months of 2007 foreign investors invested USD 164.7 million and that is 2.2 times more than for the corresponding period of 2006.

- the total investments in Lviv oblast made up USD 653.2 million. By the volume of investment inflows in Ukraine Lviv oblast belongs to the 10 most attractive investment regions holding 8th position, among the western regions it is ranked as the most attractive investment area.

Currently 61 countries successfully invest in Lviv oblast. The most significant investments come from Poland, Germany, Denmark and Hungary. Foreign investments were attracted in 1206 companies of Lviv oblast. By the number of the companies that received foreign investments, Lviv oblast holds the 2nd place after the capital of Ukraine Kyiv. The largest investment inflows were directed to the basic branches of the oblast’s economy as well as its banking sector.

The following cities and rayons of the oblast were the most active in attracting investments:

- the city of Lviv - USD 425.1 million or 65.2% of the total volume of investments (Laura Ltd. (Italy) - clothing manufacture, Subsidiary Gangso Ukrayina (Denmark) - furniture production, Merkuriy Ukrayina Ltd. (the USA) - transportation services);

- Stryy Rayon - USD 52.3 million or 8.0% of the total volume of investments (Leoni Waering Systems UA GmbH (Germany) - automobile wire systems production, Halychyna Zakhid Ltd. (Germany) - pig farming);

- Yavoriv Rayon - USD 35.9 million or 5.5% of the total volume of investments (Provimi Ltd. (Poland) - production of fodder, Yevroshpon Ltd. (Spain) - wood processing).

The highest rates of investment resources increase are expected in the following areas: production of details for machine-building industry, production of packaging materials and plastic items, agriculture sector, cargo and passenger transportation industry. Significant investments are expected in the development of the construction sector and production of modern construction materials. In 2008 the financial and banking industries will be developing as well.



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PARMAR12 asked:


Property investment seminars are property developers and realestate agent’s brochures which is produced to discuss on property development or property market in order to get the investor to part on the property investment seminars which gives own housing projects. Property investment seminars provide property investment information on a wide variety of topics. UK property experts in the property marketplace, stands at the top to represent the best investment properties in UK.

In property investment seminars you can get valuable property investment information. To check about property Investment Seminars search online. You will get more details on how to attend, schedule or learn more about such property investment seminars and opportunities.

Property investment seminars are of one and a half hour presentation which aims to wealth building through real estate. Property investment seminars are usually conducted free of cost. Property investment seminar will provide an insight overview to investing in commercial and industrial properties. Property investment seminars will mainly focus on the valuation and pricing methods related to the field of investment Properties, with specific reference to UK. Property investment seminars features a number of renowned speakers, who will tackle major practical issues related to the realestate, industrial and commercial properties which are important area of capital growth. Additionally, property investment seminars will address the issue of how to evaluate Intellectual Property Rights by adopting international best practices. The property investment seminars many make discussions at length a range of topics relevant to properties in the UK and the importance of Intellectual Property Valuation in Intellectual Asset Management.

England is the home of large number of companies with intangible assets such as trademarks. ‘Moreover, several indigenous companies in the UK are expanding their presence beyond their homeland and are going global, which accentuates the need to adopt international best practices in evaluating the companies’ worth’. So, London is the best place to conduct such great property investment seminars in a big level.

From property investment seminars, property builders find a good way to get suitable investment properties. Property investment seminars are generally a great opportunity to purchase a investment property at below market prices. You just need to attend the property investment seminars to understand the property marketplace.

Property investment seminars gather both the newer property investor and the investor that feels like they require some help in these areas, and much more! Property investment seminars will act as a workshop to allow property builders time to get their questions answered in a group setting and also expand their connections in this field.



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karoake_macheen asked:


Just say I want to start investing money here and there and deposit every month. Should I do a ROTH IRA, grab a certain stock from a company Walgreen, Wal-Mart, Sony or a High Yield Bond etc?…. How much should I plan to use to get a program going?

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Craig Mattoli asked:


Most people, at least, in the West, know that art can have value.  After all, they have been reading about Van Gogh, Picasso, or Klimt paintings selling for millions of dollars for decades.  However, most people do not know that you do not have to be a millionaire to invest in and make money from art.  Art is simply another investment asset class that savvy investors include in their arsenal.  Therein lays the key to understanding.

The sad truth is, also, that most people who invest in the more common investment assets, like stocks and bonds, do not understand investment in those more common investments.  I always hear people talking about “playing the market”, yet, as any professional investor will tell you (it just so happens that there are so few that odds are that you never met one), although it is a game, it is not a game for novices.

The first person to formalize a mathematical framework for economics and finance was John VonNeumann, a mathematical physicist, who invented game theory as the basis for studying those fields, in the early part of the twentieth century.  Indeed, until the 1980’s, most of economics and finance sprang from this basis, and the focus was to assume, just like in playing dice with perfectly symmetrical cubes or flipping a so-called fair coin, that investment was a fair game: there was equal probability of gain or loss and the distribution of outcomes was the bell-shaped curve. 

Since the 1980’s the behavioral school has gained ground, in the theoretical realm, by assuming that since people are not perfectly rational, we should examine the actual behavior of people in business and investment situations.  Of course, that is something that investment professionals have been doing for centuries.  Dow and Jones, in the 1880’s, said, for example, that at market tops the professionals are already well out of the market.  After a crash, which will always happen because emotional human beings are markets, professionals quietly begin to buy.  Their buying, eventually excites technical market analysts’ technical market indicators, which are somewhat based on supply and demand analysis, in real markets, and technicians begin to buy and recommend buying.  Eventually, the general public catches onto this news, which is really very old news, and they jump onto the band wagon.  Everyone tells everyone how smart they are and how much money they made yester day trading on-line.  Meanwhile the professionals have begun to quietly exit the market.  A peak comes; a crash comes.  Then, all of those self-proclaimed investment mavens console each other and support each other in their ecstasy turned agony.  Some run to the authorities and claim that they were duped because they did not understand the complex nature of the mini-bonds that they bought: translation - they were so greedy when they were told that they could make unbelievable returns, and they did not want to hear about the risks.  Another lesson that the theoreticians finally came to admit after the stock market crash of 1987, which, statistically, should not have happened in the whole history of the solar system, was that the distribution of returns is skewed with a longer tail on the down side.

It will be beneficial to understand the basic framework of a market, investing, and basic economics.  Economics assumes that people are self-interested.  Its only fault is that it assumes that people follow enlightened self-interest: no greed, lying, or cheating.  Finance says that there is a difference between price and value: value is what someone thinks that something is worth, while price is the amount that someone actually paid for something.  People make markets.  A market is not, necessarily a place, like the New York Stock Exchange.  Indeed, many people do not even realize that the NASDAQ market is not like the NYSE, it is simply a network of dealers, connected by computers, who maintain bid and ask prices for NASDAQ stocks.  This is referred to as a dealer market or an over-the-counter market (OTC), as opposed to the NYSE, which is one physical exchange through which all orders to buy and sell are funneled.  In fact, many people do not even know that the NYSE is a very special exchange, in that all of the stocks on the exchange are assigned to specialists who are the only one that you can buy a particular stock from.  The specialist maintains an order book of bids and offers, and he has the ultimate in information about supply and demand for his stocks at any moment in time.  As part of his job as a specialist, he can invest his own capital, in his stocks.  All the other layers of the business that deal with the investing public, after that, are in marketing.  A stock broker, for example, is just trying to make commissions when he calls you with a hot tip.  Even at the level of institutional sales, salesmen, analysts and block traders are just trying to get commission dollars.  None of them risk their own capital.  There are also investment bankers who help companies raise capital by issuing new stocks and bonds, and there is a large market effort accompanying that.  An underwriter might risk his capital by agreeing to underwrite the deal at a price for leftovers and may support the stock, in the secondary markets, by buying for a month or so.

So, let’s look at the art market.  A market is where supply and demand sort out price and volume.  Art buyers, collectors and investors make up the demand side.  Retail investors are smaller buyers of art, while high-net-worth individuals, trusts, corporations and museums fulfill the role of institutional investor.  Art dealers act as brokers, dealers, and investment bankers for art.  They act as brokers by taking consignments for sale or request to buy from customers.  They buy and sell art for their own account as dealers.  By taking on new, undiscovered artists, by having shows for artists at galleries (much like the road show investment bankers do for IPO’s of stock), and by acting as agent or dealer for an artist, they fulfill a role, much like investment banker.  Ultimately, supply is limited, depending on the artist.  Once an artist is dead, supply is fixed.

Value begins, as in all of economics, with scarcity.   It is the same principle that drives the precious metals market, the crude oil market, and the art markets.  As with anything else, quality also plays a role in determining an appropriate price.  However, also, like with many other things, including any type of investment, marketing plays a major role.  Galleries, dealers, and art critics try to tell people what is good and what is bad art.  Sometimes, I wonder about their opinions.  Other times I have benefited, as in the sale of a table made of roots onto which birds were carved, and as one of only two found examples by this unknown folk artist from the 1800’s. Sale of the table brought over $4,000, back in the mid-1990’s.  These art market analysts play the same role as securities analysts, in the stock and bond markets.  They might even make buy and sell recommendations, and they might estimate values of artworks.  Since art is supposed to make you feel good, your basic starting point should be to look to buy things that you, personally, like, then, check out the price.

In the securities markets, smart investors value things on a comparative basis.  Instead of trying to figure out what prices or returns should be, stock analysts use comparative P/E ratio analysis, comparing one company to other companies, in the same industry, and comparing P/E’s of stocks and industries to those of the general market.  In bonds, the yield-to-maturity (YTM) of a bond is compared to current market YTM’s of bonds of the same company and to general bonds with similar maturity, coupon rate, and risk.  In the same manner, the value of works by an artist can be compared to one another and to those of other artists.  Normalization, in the context of paintings, involves an artifice: converting prices to price per square meter or per square inch.  One might make similar size normalizations for, e.g., teapot art and sculpture.  However, price per unit of size might vary over an artist’s work with larger ones, perhaps, trading for lower price per unit of size, and their more famous works trading at higher price per unit of size.

Having built a comparative pricing system for art, one can compare the prices of one artist to another and the average prices of one artist over, a school, a movement or a period by construction single artist or composite price indexes and looking at their evolution over time.  That also allows you to calculate returns since return is defined as the percentage change in price over time.  You can compare prices from galleries, which is the retail market.  The next layer of the market, much like in other investment markets, is an inter-dealer market.  The final layer is the auction market, which in some respects is like the exchanges, in the securities markets, but it is a stop-out market: a market of last resort for sellers.  The auction markets are more fragmented than the auction markets, in securities; they are not open every day, either, unlike their counterparts in securities.  Price information of one sort can also be garnered from the auction markets for artists for whom there are auction records.  There are also research and information services, in the art markets, mirroring similar services in securities and commodities markets. 

I bought my first piece by a famous artist, Joan Miro, in the mid-1980’s.  I was surprised to find that the price was only several thousand dollars.  By the time that I bought my third Miro, I had learned about and used information from the auction record to pay the proper price.  In succeeding years I bought art by many famous artists.  Although the art that makes the headlines makes it seem that all art is out of reach of the man on the street, you will be surprised to find out that art by many known artists, past and present, is not that expensive.  Another little known fact is the good returns that can be made in art, especially when one approaches the market with the tools and techniques as one would in any other investment asset market.  During my decades of trading art, in the U.S., I cannot recall a time when I lost money, and returns have always been exceptionally good, especially when compared to returns of other investment assets.  I can even recall times that I have continued to earn a profit, in art, even during downturns in securities and real estate markets.  

Now, we are investing in and have set up a dealer in Chinese art.  I moved to China four years ago to teach finance and economics at South China Normal University.  I have been immersed in the Chinese social and economic scene, and I have concluded that the best current market in China, today, is the not the export market or the stock market or real estate, but, instead, the art market.  Returns, in art, in China, have been above twenty percent per year over the last decade, in local currency, and the continued undervaluation of the Yuan versus foreign currencies, coupled with other socio-economic factors, make investment, in this market, appear to offer good opportunities over the next several years, especially for foreign investors.

Up through the 1970’s and early-1980’s, investment in stocks and bonds seemed outside the reach of the man on the street.  By the 1990’s everyone and their brother was trading stocks on-line through discount brokers.  Now that we are in the twenty-first century, the next time you think about art, remember that it is just like any other investment asset, like stocks, bonds, and commodities, it is not outside the realm of investment possibilities for the average investor.  Think of the analogies that we have laid out between art and securities investing and markets.  You can also find out more information about investment, art, China, and investment in art in China on various parts of our website. 

 

February 24, 2009 Craig Mattoli, CEO, Red Hill Capital, owner of Leona Craig Art, Guangzhou, China



Learn The Basics Of Painting

Hugh McInnes asked:


Whichever way you plan to invest, this section will give you some tips and techniques to get you started

Understand why you are investing.

One of the keys to successful investing is identifying your investment goals, and the time frame over which you will invest. What do you want to do with your money?

Do you want to save for a goal? Do you want to invest a certain amount? How long do you want to put that money away for?

Your goals and time frame

When investing money, many people have a specific goal in mind. If this is the case for you, you need to decide what time frame is attached to that goal — short term, medium term or long term?

Short term (1–3 years) deposit on a home overseas holiday new car starting a family Medium term (3–7 years) boat house renovations Long term (7+ years) children’s education deposit on a holiday house retirement

Rather than having a particular investment goal, some people may just want to invest a sum of money, for example, an inheritance. If you are in this situation, you need to decide what you want from that money. Do you want to use the money in the next year or two? (in which case you are a short-term investor).

Or do you want a regular income? Or do you want it to achieve capital growth over the long term?

A short-term investor would be more likely to choose a more conservative investment like cash, to ensure that their capital is available in the next one to three years when they need to access it. A long-term investor would be more willing to invest in growth assets such as shares, as they do not need to access their capital for at least five years, so are usually less concerned about short-term ups and downs. They recognise that the potential returns are higher in growth investments, and if they are held over the long term the risk associated with short-term volatility is reduced.

Don’t forget that superannuation is one of the most tax-effective ways to invest for the long term. If you would like more information on superannuation, contact your financial adviser.

In considering which type of investment is most suitable for your goals, a professional financial adviser can help you with this decision after analysing your investment objectives, particular needs and financial situation.

2. Become an investor instead of a saver.

Many people invest but only some become wealthy. Why? The mistake many people make when investing is that they treat their investment as saving. So what is the difference between saving and investing? Saving is what you do to build up funds for something, like a holiday, and when you have the amount saved, you withdraw your capital from your investment and spend it.

Investing is different. People who want to build wealth invest their money for the long term in growth assets, such as shares and property. Their strategy is to spend the income that the investment produces, but leave the capital invested. They don’t withdraw the capital, so it stays there to grow, which in turn allows more income to be produced.

If you do this it will take you a while longer initially to get to your investment goal, but in the long run you will find that the extra wait has been worth it. As the years go by, you may have an increasing additional income stream from your investments and your standard of living can rise accordingly.

So what’s the secret to becoming wealthier? It’s easy! Start investing, and stay invested.

Other Tips to Remember…

Start early and take advantage of compound interest.

There is always a ‘good’ reason for not investing, but there is actually an even better reason to start investing right away. In fact, starting sooner rather than later is one of the best investment decisions you can make. The reason? So you can take advantage of compand interest. The problem is that compound interest works against those who hesitate. Most of us studied compound interest at school, so we know how it works. But it’s not until you start looking at practical examples that you realise how powerful it can be.

Use market movement to your advantage.

Dollar cost averaging - One way to ride out the market’s ups and downs is a technique called dollar cost averaging, typically used in managed funds. With dollar cost averaging, you don’t have to focus on where share prices or interest rates are headed. You simply invest a set amount of money on a regular basis. Dollar cost averaging is an investment technique that can help turn the odds in your favour. The idea is that you buy less units when the market is up, and more units when it is down — automatically.

Don’t try to time the market.

One of the excuses many use for not investing is that it is not the right time to invest. These people are likely to be under the misconception that they have the magical powers to be able to predict the future. They are under the illusion that the path to riches is a matter of getting on the right horse at the right time.

However, as investors begin to learn the vagaries of markets, they begin to realise the insurmountable difficulty in picking market movements. Trying to pick the magnitude and direction of market movements has cost even the most experienced investor dearly. Don’t chase returns.

Investing in the fund that had the best performance last year may be a big mistake! Most fund managers will offer you a choice of many different types of managed funds, from shares and property to fixed interest and cash, to mixtures of all of them. There are also usually a range of different share funds investing in different parts of the world. Given such a wide choice of investments, and the ability to switch your investments between them for little or no fees, some people make the mistake of chasing returns.

Chasing returns means that you are moving your investments across to the fund that had the best performance last year. Why can this be a mistake?



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Uchenna Ani-Okoye asked:


I completed that assignment, got paid, and then won another bid, a series of articles on stock market investing. Stock market investing isn’t something to be done on a whim, but if you’re careful and follow a set plan it can be a good way to grow your money. The exact same concept holds true for stock market investing.

Because fixed income investing simply isn’t regarded as being as exciting as other stock market investing, it has often been relegated to the ‘ho-hum’ category by writers and not as much ink has been devoted to its ins and outs as has been expended on other types of investing. Through entertaining anecdotes and practical pearls of wisdom, the book explores the basic principles of successful stock market investing and then reveals a “magic formula” that makes buying good companies at bargain prices automatic. Real estate investing can carry more significant consequences than stock market investing if you guess wrong, since there’s generally a great deal more money involved.

Stock market investing is the only profession where the amateurs think they know as much as the professionals because they might have picked a winner at one time. People think that share market investing is specialised and complicated, that financial advisers and experts have done a lot of study and know a lot more than you. Selling is the key to successful stock market investing.

A person who opens a trading account in any investing market has a responsibility of knowing what is happening with his/her money. Don’t let Wall Street fool you into thinking that the path to stock market investing riches is through laborious financial analysis because it is a fool’s journey. Some people think that fundamental information about the nature of a business, its balance sheet, the state of the economy and other such factors are the key to making money through share market investing.

Just like any other market investing, you must be disciplined to be successful in foreign currency trading if you intend to be successful at it. It was the mainstay of stock market investing for decades and decades. But here’s one I got out of a book, Straight Talk about Stock Market Investing, I think it was called that.

This mentality often takes over with stock market investing. If stock market investing is something you’d like to get into, you need to plan wisely and don’t invest more money than you can afford to lose. The problem is, when we fall in love, we overlook some of the things that would normally make us avoid either that person, or, in the case of stock market investing, a company.

Basically there are two main types of stock market investing1. Forex trading strategy is also quite different from futures market investing and desired results - other than making money of course - are different. All investing markets are driven primarily by the emotions of fear and greed.

But without the usual risks of stock market investing, the best way to go about your search is to find specific information on particular aspects of share market investing. The internet is full of them running the gamut from do-it-yourself real estate ventures to stock market investing to internet marketing.

As you should be able to see this is a logical and practical approach to share market investing. Hurst’s price-motion model also maintains the integrity of fundamental analysis as a worthwhile exercise of stock market investing. For some, their capital would have been wiped off if they had just got on the bandwagon of stock market investing or trading the week before.



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hola asked:


I am a university student. I want to start investing and i have researched about it recently. There are some companies i want to buy stocks from.

How much money should i have to invest without risking my future?

and as a first time investor should i choose Bonds or stocks?
BCNDQ, thanks ive never heard of Scalping, its interesting and ill look into it

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