Investment is putting money into something with the hope of profit. More specifically, investment is the commitment of money or capital to the purchase of financial instruments or other assets to gain profitable returns in the form of interest, income {dividend}, or appreciation of the value of the instrument. It is to saving or deferring consumption. Investment is involved in many areas of the economy, such as business management and finance no matter for households, firms, or governments. An investment involves the choice by an individual or an organization to place or lend money in a vehicle, instrument or asset, such as property, commodity, stock, bond, financial derivatives. It may be a foreign asset denominated in foreign currency that has certain level of risk and provides the possibility of generating returns over a period. Investment comes with the risk of the loss of the principal sum. The investment can be highly risky with respect to the investment owner because the possibility of losing money is not within the owner's control. The difference between speculation and investment can be subtle. It depends on the investment owner's mind whether the purpose is for lending the resource to someone else for economic purpose or not. In the case of investment, rather than store the good produced or its money equivalent, the investor chooses to use that good either to create a durable consumer or producer good, or to lend the original saved good to another in exchange for either interest or a share of the profits. In the first case, the individual creates durable consumer goods, hoping the services from the good will make his life better. In the second, the individual becomes an entrepreneur using the resource to produce goods and services for others in the hope of a profitable sale. The third case describes a lender, and the fourth describes an investor in a share of the business. In each case, the consumer obtains a durable asset or investment, and accounts for that asset by recording an equivalent liability. As time passes, and both prices and interest rates change, the value of the asset and liability change. An asset purchase, or equivalently a deposit is in a bank, in hopes of getting a future return or interest from it. The word originates in the Latin-meaning garment, and refers to the act of putting things into others' pockets. The basic meaning of the term being an asset held to have some recurring or capital gains. An asset expected to give returns without any work on the asset per se. Economists refer to a real investment, while financial economists refer to a financial asset, such as money put into a bank or the market, which may then be to buy a real asset. The investment decision is one of the fundamental decisions of business management: Managers determine the investment value of the assets that a business enterprise has within its control or possession. These assets may be physical, intangible, or financial. Assets are to produce streams of revenue that often are associated with particular costs or outflows. All together, the manager must determine whether the net present value of the investment to the enterprise is positive using the marginal cost of capital that is associated with the particular area of business. In terms of financial assets, these are often marketable securities such as a company stock or bonds. At times, the goal of the investment is to produce future cash flows, while at others it may be for the purpose of gaining access to more assets by establishing control or influence over the operation of a second company.

Notary Public

A notary public or notary or public notary in the common law world is a public officer constituted by law to serve the public in non-contentious matters usually concerned with estates, deeds, powers-of-attorney, and foreign and international business. A notary's main functions are to administer oaths and affirmations, take affidavits and statutory declarations, witness and authenticate the execution of certain classes of documents, take acknowledgments of deeds and other conveyances, protest notes and bills of exchange, provide notice of foreign drafts, prepare marine or ship's protests in cases of damage, provide exemplifications and notarize copies, and perform certain other official acts depending on the jurisdiction. Any such act is known as a notarization. The term notary public only refers to common-law notaries and should not be confused with civil-law notaries.

With the exceptions of Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Quebec, whose private law is based on civil law, and British Columbia, whose notaries tradition stems from scrivener notary practice, a notary public in the rest of the United States and most of Canada has powers that are far more limited than those of civil-law or other common-law notaries, both of whom are qualified lawyers admitted to the bar: such notaries may be referred to as notaries-at-law or lawyer notaries. Therefore, at common law, notary’s service is distinct from the practice of law, and giving legal advice and preparing legal instruments is forbidden to lay notaries such as those appointed throughout most of the United States of America.

Notaries are appointed by a government authority, such as a court or lieutenant governor, or by a regulating body often known as a Society or Faculty of Notaries Public. For lawyer notaries, an appointment is usually for life, while lay notaries are usually commissioned for a briefer term, with the possibility of renewal.

In most common law countries, appointments and their number for a given notaries district are highly regulated. However, since the majority of American notaries are lay persons who provide officially required services, commission numbers are not regulated, which is part of the reason why there are far more notaries in the United States than in other countries 4.5 million vs. approx. 740 in England and Wales and Approx. 1,250 in Australia and New Zealand. Furthermore, all U.S. and some Canadian notary’s functions are applied to domestic affairs and documents, where fully systematized attestations of signatures and acknowledgment of deeds are a universal requirement for document authentication. By contrast, outside North American common law jurisdictions, notaries practice is restricted to international legal matters or where a foreign jurisdiction is involved, and almost all notaries are also qualified lawyers.

For the purposes of authentication, most countries require commercial or personal documents which originate from or are signed in another country to be notarized before they can be used or officially recorded or before they can have any legal effect. To these documents a notary affixes a notaries certificate which attests to the execution of the document, usually by the person who appears before the notary, known as an appearer or constituent U.S.. In places where lawyer notaries are the norm, a notary may also draft legal instruments known as notaries acts or deeds which may have probative value and executory force, as they do in the civil law jurisdictions. Originals or duplicate originals are then filed and stored in the notary's archives, or protocol. Acts of lawyer notaries in general do not have this executory force.

Notaries are generally required to undergo special training in the performance of their duties. Some must also first serve as an apprentice before being commissioned or licensed to practice their profession. In many countries, even licensed lawyers, e.g., barristers or solicitors, must follow a prescribed specialized course of study and be mentored for two years before being allowed to practice as a notary e.g., British Columbia, England. However, notaries public in the U.S., of which the vast majority are lay people, require only a brief training seminar and are expressly forbidden to engage in any activities that could be construed as the practice of law unless they are also qualified attorneys. Yet, despite these apparent differences, notaries practice is universally considered to be distinct and separate from that of attorney solicitor/barrister. In England and Wales, there is a course of study for notaries who are conducted under the auspices of the University of Cambridge and the Society of Notaries of England and Wales. In the State of Victoria, Australia, applicants for appointment must first complete a Graduate Diploma of Notaries Practice which is administered by the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre in Victoria University, Melbourne.

In bi-juridical jurisdictions, such as South Africa or Louisiana, the office of notary public is a legal profession with educational requirements similar to those for attorneys. Many even have institutes of higher learning that offer degrees in notaries law. Therefore, despite their name, "notaries public" in these jurisdictions are in effect civil law notaries.