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Why are earning credit card rewards often tied to groceries and gas? | Every reward program has to have a funding source. If the card gives you x percent back on all purchases. That means that their business is structured to entice you to pump more transactions through the system. Either their other costs are lower, or the increased business allows them to make more money off of late fees, and interest. If the card has you earn extra points for buying a type of item or from a type of store (home stores improvement in the Spring), they are trying to make sure you use their card for what can be a significant amount of business during a small window of time. Sometimes they cap it by saying 5% cash back at home improvement stores during the spring but only on the first $1500 of purchases. That limits it to $75 maximum. Adding more business for them, makes more money for them. Groceries and gas are a good year round purchase categories. Yes there is some variation depending on the season, and the weather, but overall there is not an annual cliff once the season ends. Gas and groceries account for thousands of dollars a year these are not insignificant categories, for many families are recession proof. If they perceive a value from this type of offer they will change their buying behavior. My local grocery store has a deal with a specific gas station. This means that they made a monetary deal. Because you earn points at the grocery store and spend points at the gas station, the grocery store is paying some compensation to the gas station every time you use points. The gas station must be seeing an increase in business so theoretically they don't get 100% compensation from the grocery store. In cases where credit cards give airline miles, the credit card company buys the miles from the airline at a discount because they know that a significant number of miles will never be used. |
How can I find out what factors are making a stock's price rise? | A few days ago they launched Fannie Mae Guaranteed Multifamily Structures (link) but who knows? It's a penny stock now. Google Finance is pretty good at marking news right on the chart for a particular stock. That's how I tracked that piece of news down. Can't say that it precipitated a lot of people buying the stock, but Google Finance isn't a bad place to start looking. |
CD interest rate US vs abroad, is there a catch? | If you invest in a foreign bank you are subject to their financial rules and regulations. If you put your money with their CD it will be converted to UAH (grivna) and you will be paid back in UAH, which introduces the exchange rate risk. FDIC is not the only reason why a CD in a US bank pays a lower interest, but it could be seen as a contributing factor. It all comes down to risk and what the bank is willing to pay for your money, when a bank issues a CD they are entering the debt market and competing against other banks, governments, or anyone looking for money. If the yield from lending to one bank is the same as the yield of another, the logical choice would be whichever loan is less risky. So in order for the riskier bank to receive loans they must entice investors by offering a greater rate of return. In addition, if a bank isn't looking for loans they might be less inclined to pay for them. - See "What is the “Bernanke Twist” and “Operation Twist”? What exactly does it do?" If your looking to invest in the CD's of foreign banks I would suggest doing research on their regulations. Especially if and how your money is protected in the event the bank goes bust. |
How does unemployment insurance work? | Unemployment insurance provides a temporary safety net to workers who lose their jobs by replacing a portion of their salary for certain periods. Each state administers its own unemployment insurance program so some rules may vary from state to state. To receive unemployment insurance payments, you must have lost your job through no fault of your own. If you quit your job or lost it because of poor performance or another justifiable reason, you are not eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. State unemployment insurance programs require claimants to have worked sufficiently before they can claim benefits. As soon as you apply for unemployment insurance, an agency with the state in which you live will verify that you were a victim of a layoff by contacting your previous employer and making sure you lost your job due to lack of work and not an action within your control. After the state verifies you were indeed the victim of a layoff, your weekly payment is calculated. Your payment will be a percentage of what you made in your previous job, generally between 20 percent and 50 percent, depending on your state. Unemployment insurance replaces only a portion of your previous pay because it is intended to pay only for the essentials of living such as food and utilities until you find new employment. Before you begin receiving benefits, you must complete a waiting period of typically one or two weeks. If you find a new job during this period, you will not be eligible for unemployment benefits, even if the job does not pay you as much as your previous job. After the waiting period, you will begin to receive your weekly payments. Employers pay for unemployment insurance through payroll taxes. So, while employees' work and earnings history are important to funding their unemployment benefits, the money does not come from their pay. Employer unemployment insurance contributions depend on several factors, including how many former employees have received benefits. Employers pay taxes on an employee's base wages, which vary by state. California, for example taxes employers on the first $7,000 of an employee's annual earnings, while neighboring Oregon taxes up to $32,000 of wages. Employers must set aside funds each payroll period and then report taxes and pay their states quarterly. States have several categories of tax rates they charge employers. New businesses and those first adding employees pay the "new rate," which is typically lower and geared toward small businesses. Established businesses who haven't paid their taxes recently or properly are usually assessed the "standard rate" --- the highest possible tax rate, which in 2010 ranged from 5.4 percent in several states including Georgia, Hawaii and Alaska to 13.56 percent in Pennsylvania. Businesses in good standing may receive discounts under the "experienced rate." Depending on the number of employees a business has and how many former employees have claimed unemployment, states can give sizable rate reductions. The fewer claims, the lower the rate a business pays in unemployment insurance taxes. As a result of the economic crisis legislation has been passed to extend Unemployment benefits. Regular unemployment benefits are paid for a maximum of 26 weeks in most states. However, additional weeks of extended unemployment benefits are available during times of high unemployment. The unemployment extension legislation passed by Congress in February 2012 changed the way the tiers of Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) are structured. A tier of unemployment is an extension of a certain amount of weeks of unemployment benefits. There are currently four tiers of unemployment benefits. Each tier provides extra weeks of unemployment in addition to basic state unemployment benefits. Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) Tiers June - August 2012: Source and further information can be found here - Unemployment Tiers - About.com Sources: Unemployment Insurance(UI) - US Dept. of Labor How Does Unemployment Insurance Work? - eHow Percentage of Pay That Goes to Unemployment Insurance - eHow Additional Info: You can file for UI over the internet here are some useful resources. OWS Links State Unemployment Offices - About.com How to Apply for Unemployment Over the Internet - eHow |
What does “interest rates”, without any further context, generically refer to? | Generically, interest rates being charged are driven in large part by the central bank's rate and competition tends to keep similar loans priced fairly close to each other. Interest rates being paid are driven by what's needed to get folks to lend you their money (deposit in bank, purchase bonds) so it's again related. There certainly isn't very direct coupling, but in general interest rates of all sorts do tend to swing (very) roughly in the same direction at (very) roughly the same time... so the concept that interest rates of all types are rising or falling at any given moment is a simplification but not wholly unreasonable. If you want to know which interest rates a particular person is citing to back up their claim you really need to ask them. |
Why does the biotechnology industry have such a high PE ratio? | Most biotech companies do not have a product they are selling. They have a set of possible drugs that they are developing. If any of these drugs get proven to be better than the current drugs they can be sold at a great profit. Therefore as soon as a biotech company proves a drug candidate is likely to pass large scale trials the company is often taken over by a large pharmaceutical company and is therefore no longer listed on the stock market. So mostly profit comes after the company stops being listed, therefore the profit will be negative for most biotech companies that are publicly traded. |
I earn $75K, have $30K in savings, no debt, rent from my parents who are losing their home. Should I buy a home now or save? | To be honest, if it's a home all of you share you should try and save the home for your parents. your 26, you will have plenty of time to make 30k again. Having a home headquarters will bring some security to the family. Not only that your parents are old now, it could be hard for them to get another home. They have sacrificed for you, so maybe you should sacrifice for them? Thank god i have no family. |
How to manage currency risk in international investing | Let's make a few assumptions: You have several ways of achieving (almost) that, in ascending complexity: Note that each alternative will have a cost which can be small (forwards, futures) or large (CFDs, debit) and the hedge will never be perfect, but you can get close. You will also need to decide whether you hedge the unrealised P&L on the position and at what frequency. |
For net worth, should I value physical property at my cost to replace it, or the amount I could get for selling it? | You are not asking for insurance purposes. So I'll go with this - I have two asset numbers I track. All investments, retirement accounts, etc, the kind that are valued at day's end by the market, etc. From that number I subtract the mortgage. This produces the number that I can say is my net worth with a paid in full house. The second number simply adds back the house's value, give or take. Unless I owned art that was valued in the six figures, it seems pointless to me to add it up, except for insurance. If my wife and I died tomorrow, the kid can certainly auction our stuff off, but knowing that number holds no interest for us. When most people talk 'net worth', I don't see them adding these things up. Cars, maybe, but not even that. |
What do the suffixes on stock symbols indicate | The suffix represents the stock exchange the stock is traded on. N represents the New York Stock Exchange and O represents the Nasdaq. Sometimes a stock can be listed on more than one exchange so the suffix will give you an indication of which exchange the stock is on. For example the Australian company BHP Billiton Ltd is listed on multiple exchanges so is given a different suffix for the different exchanges (especially when the code is the same for each exchange). Below are a few examples of BHP: |
How to interpret a 1,372.55% dividend payout ratio (GSK)? | I don't think it makes sense to allow accounting numbers that you are not sure how to interpret as being a sell sign. If you know why the numbers are weird and you feel that the reason for it bodes ill about the future, and if you think there's a reason this has not been accounted for by the market, then you might think about selling. The stock's performance will depend on what happens in the future. Financials just document the past, and are subject to all kinds of lumpiness, seasonality, and manipulation. You might benefit from posting a link to where you got your financials. Whenever one computes something like a dividend payout ratio, one must select a time period over which to measure. If the company had a rough quarter in terms of earnings but chose not to reduce dividends because they don't expect the future to be rough, that would explain a crazy high dividend ratio. Or if they were changing their capital structure. Or one of many other potentially benign things. Accounting numbers summarize a ton of complex workings of the company and many ratios we look at could be defined in several different ways. I'm afraid that the answer to your question about how to interpret things is in the details, and we are not looking at the same details you are. |
How much of each stock do index funds hold? | An index fund is just copying the definition of an index. The group that defines the index determines how to weight the different parts of the index. The index fund just makes sure they invest the same way the index creator wants. Think of a non-investment scenario. A teacher can grade tests, quizzes, homework, in-class assignments, research papers. They decide how much weight to give each category and how much weight to give each part of each category. when a student wants to see how they are doing they take the information in the syllabus, and generate a few formulas in a spreadsheet to calculate their current grade. They can also calculate what they need to get on the final exam to get the grade they want. |
Why would a company care about the price of its own shares in the stock market? | Shareholders get to vote for the board, the board appoints the CEO. This makes the CEO care, which in turn makes everybody else working in the company care. Also, if the company wants to borrow money a good share price, as sign of a healthy company, gives them more favorable conditions from lenders. And some more points others already made. |
Will a credit card issuer cancel an account if it never incurs interest? | I've got a card that I've had for about 25 years now. The only time they charged me interest I showed it was their goof (the automatic payment failed because of their mistake) and they haven't cancelled it. No annual fee, a bit of cash back. The only cards I've ever had an issuer close are ones I didn't use. |
When are stock trade fees deducted? | Typically the fees are charged when the order is executed. The only catch I have ever ran into is when an order is partially executed. A good-till-cancel order that gets executed in several blocks over multiple days may get charged a separate commission for each day (but typically not each block). If this is a simple brokerage account, you could avoid the whole question by using robinhood.com, which charges no commissions or maintenance fees. |
Are variable rate loans ever a good idea? | Fixed You are confirming the amount you are going t pay over the term of the loan. Variable: 3.79% over 82mo. The total difference over the life of the loan comes to around $1200 That is the wrong way to calculate the variable portion. The variable is primarily set with a margin over a certain benchmark i.e. Fed rate. Assuming the Fed rate doesn't change over or only goes lower the variable rate is the one to go. If it rises then your payment will increase. And the margin they take over the benchmark rate may increase, so the total amount you pay might increase too. I would assume a read through the T&Cs should clarify that for you. Is it ever a good idea to choose a variable rate loan? Only if you think we are in a low interest rate environment i.e. the economy is in doldrums and the Feds are trying to simulate the economy by decreasing the benchmark rates. And you are sure that the lender isn't going to increase his margins if the rate remains low for quite a substantial amount of time. And I might assume there will be penalties for paying off a loan quicker. |
Does an Executed Limit Order Imply a Spot Price? | I can't say I know everything about the underlying details, but from what I understand, your limit buy adds to the bid side of open orders, and one possibility is that someone placed a market order to sell when the bid price for the stock fell to $10 which was matched to your open limit order. So using your terminology, I would say the spot bid price is what fell to $10, even if for a brief moment. Whether or not it is possible for your order to be filled when the limit buy price is deeper than the current bid price is beyond me. It may have something to do with lot sizes. |
How to “pay” one self in a single member LLC w/ separate checking account? | Basically, yes. Don't use your business account for personal spending because it may invalidate your limited liability protection. Transfer a chunk of money to your personal account, write it down in your books as "distribution" (or something similar), and use it in whatever way you want from your personal account. The IRS doesn't care per se, but mixing personal and business expenses will cause troubles if you're audited because you'll have problems distinguishing one from another. You should be using some accounting software to make sure you track your expenses and distributions correctly. It will make it easier for you to prepare reports for yourself and your tax preparer, and also track distributions and expenses. I suggest GnuCash, I find it highly effective for a small business with not so many transactions (if you have a lot of transactions, then maybe QuickBooks would be more appropriate). |
Put a dollar value on pensions? | @JoeTaxpayer's answer outlines how to value it. Some other considerations: As I understand it, some public pensions may be tax-free if you still live in the state that is paying the pension. E.g. when a Massachusetts teacher receives pension, it is exempt from state taxes, but if that person moves to Vermont he will have to pay Vermont income tax on those payments. So if you plan to stay in the state post-retirement, this provides additional value. Pension payments aren't fully guaranteed by the PBGC. And not all pension plans are fully funded. Depending on the political and economic environment when you hit retirement, your retirement plan could suffer. (And if you aren't working, you may not have a union vote any more when the other working members are voting on contract amendments that affect pensions.) I'm not certain of all of the rules, but I hear news reports from time to time that formulas like what you've posted in the original question are changed through negotiation with the union. If you make an employment decision using the formula in year X and then the formula changes in year X+10, your expected pension payment will change. |
What is the best use of “spare” money? | There's a hellova lot to be said for investing in real estate (simple residential real estate), even though it's grandma's advice. The two critical elements are 1) it's the only realistic way for a civilian to get leverage. this is why it almost always blows away "tinkering in the stock markets" in the 10-year frame. 2) but perhaps more importantly - it's a really "enforced" saving plan. you just have to pay it off every month. There are other huge advantages like, it's the best possible equity for a civilian, so you can get loans in the future to start your dotcom, etc. Try to buy yourself a very modest little flat (perhaps to rent out?) or even something like a garage or storeroom. Real estate can crash, but it's very unlikely; it only happens in end of the world situations where it won't matter anyway. When real estate drops say 30% everyone yells about that being a "crash" - I've never, ever owned a stock that hasn't had 30% down times. Food for thought! |
How can I find a high-risk, high-reward investment that is not strongly correlated with the U.S. economy? | It requires fairly large levels of capital, but what about seed funding/angel investments in startups? This would be before venture capital gets involved, so the amounts are relatively low (tens of thousands, vs. millions of USD), but as valuations this early in the game are also low, you can get a significant portion of equity in a startup that you feel is being run by good people and is in a promising market. Paul Graham of Y-Combinator has a number of articles about this from both sides of the table that you can take a look at and see if this is for you. It's definitely very high-risk, but if you can pick successful startups before their valuation shoots up, get some equity, help them succeed, and they eventually go public or get acquired, you can stand to bring in some big returns. Note that this isn't a hands-off investment. You'll need to build connections in the startup community, and it isn't uncommon for angel investors to become involved in the day-to-day operations of the businesses in which they invest. |
Hedging against Exchange Rate Risk | You can calculate your exposure intuitively, by calculating your 'fx sensitivity'. Take your total USD assets, let's assume $50k. Convert to EUR at the current rate, let's assume 1 EUR : 1.1 USD, resulting in 45.5k EUR . If the USD strengthens by 1%, this moves to a rate of ~1.09, resulting in 46k EUR value for the same 50k of USD investments. From this you can see that for every 1% the USD strengthens, you gain 500 EUR. For every 1% the USD weakens, you lose 500 EUR. The simplest way to reduce your exchange rate risk exposure, is to simply eliminate your foreign currency investments. ie: if you do not want to be exposed to fluctuations in the USD, invest in EUR only. This will align your assets with the currency of your future expenses [assuming you intend to continue living in Europe].This is not possible of course, if you would like to maintain investments in US assets. One relatively simple method available to invest in the US, without gaining an exposure to the USD, is to invest in USD assets only with money borrowed in USD. ie: if you borrow $50k USD, and invest $50k in the US stock market, then your new investments will be in the same currency as your debt. Therefore if the USD strengthens, your assets increase in relative EUR value, and your debt becomes more expensive. These two impacts wash out, leaving you with no net exposure to the value of the USD. There is a risk to this option - you are investing with a higher 'financial leverage' ratio. Using borrowed money to invest increases your risk; if your investments fall in value, you still need to make the periodic interest payments. Many people view this increased risk as a reason to never invest with borrowed money. You are compensated for that risk, by increased returns [because you have the ability to earn investment income without contributing any additional money of your own]. Whether the risk is worth it to you will depend on many factors - you should search this site and others on the topic to learn more about what those risks mean. |
Can you explain “time value of money” and “compound interest” and provide examples of each? | Time Value of Money - The simple calculation for this is FV = PV * (1+r)^N which reads The Future Value is equal to the Present Value times 1 plus the interest rate multiplied by itself by the number of periods that will pass. A simple way to look at this is that if interest rates were 5%/yr a dollar would be worth (1.05)^N where N is the number of years passing. The concept of compound interest cannot be separated from the above. Compounding is accounting for the interest on the interest that has accrued in prior periods. If I lend you a dollar at 6% simple interest for 30 years, you would pay me back $1 + $1.80 or $2.80. But - 1.06^30 = 5.74 so that dollar compounded at 6% annually for 30 years is $5.74. Quite a difference. Often, the time value of money is discussed in light of inflation. A dollar today is not the same dollar as 30 years ago or 30 years hence. In fact, inflation has eroded the value of the dollar by a factor of 3 over the past 30 years. An average item costing $100 would now cost $300. So when one invests, at the very least they try to stay ahead of inflation and seek additional return for their risk. One quirk of compounding is the "rule of 72." This rule states that if you divide the interest rate into the number 72 the result is the number of years to double. So 10% per year will take about 7.2 years to double, 8%, 9 years, etc. It's not 100% precise, but a good "back of napkin" calculation. When people talk about the total payments over the thirty year life of a mortgage, they often ignore the time value of money. That payment even ten years from now has far less value than the same payment today. |
What is the opposite of a hedge? | The opposite of a hedge is nothing. Because if you don't want to hedge you bets, you don't, therefore you merely have the original bet. The opposite state of being hedged, is being unhedged. |
Why don't more people run up their credit cards and skip the country? | I take it the premise of the question is that we're assuming the person isn't worried about the morals. He's a criminal out for a quick buck. And I guess we're assuming that wherever you go, they wouldn't arrest you and extradite you back to the U.S. As others have noted, you can't just walk into a bank the day you graduate high school or get out of prison or whatever and get a credit line of $100,000. You have to build up to that with an income and a pattern of responsible behavior over a period of many years. I don't have the statistics handy but I'd guess most people never reach a credit limit on credit cards of $100,000. Maybe many people could get that on a home equity line of credit, but again, you'd have to build up that equity in your house first, and that would take many years. Then, while $100,000 sounds like a lot of money, how long could you really live on that? Even in a country with low cost of living, it's not like you could live in luxury for the rest of your life. If you can get that kind of credit limit, you probably are used to living on a healthy income. Sure, you could get a similar lifestyle for less in some other countries, but not for THAT much less. If you know a place where for $10,000 a year you can live a life that would cost $100,000 per year in the U.S., I'd like to know about it. Even living a relatively frugal life, I doubt the money would last more than 4 or 5 years. And then what are you going to do? If you come back to the U.S. you'd presumably be promptly arrested. You could get a job in your new country, but you could have done that without first stealing $100,000. Frankly, if you're the sort of person who can get a $100,000 credit limit, you probably can live a lot better in the U.S. by continuing to work and play by the rules than you could by stealing $100,000 and fleeing to Haiti or Eritrea. You might say, okay, $100,000 isn't really enough. What if I could get a $1 million credit limit? But if you have the income and credit rating to get a $1 million credit limit, you probably are making at least several hundred thousand per year, probably a million or more, and again, you're better off to continue to play by the rules. The only way that I see that a scam like this would really work is if you could get a credit limit way out of proportion to any income you could earn legitimately. Like somehow if you could convince the bank to give you a credit limit of $1 million even though you only make $15,000 a year. But that would be a scam in itself. That's why I think the only time you do hear of people trying something like this is when they USED to make a lot of money but have lost it. Like someone has a multi-million dollar business that goes broke, he now has nothing, so before the bank figures it out he maxes out all his credit and runs off. |
Is equity research from large banks reliable? | If by "can we trust the analyst recommendations" you mean "are they right 100% of the time" the answer is absolutely no. Analysts are human and make mistakes, some more than others. There are many stories of "superstar managers" that make killings for several straight years, then have a few bad years and lose it all back. However, don't take "you can't trust them" to mean that they are nefarious in some way. While there may be some that recommend stocks for selfish purposes, I suspect that the vast majority are just going off what information they have, and can't predict market behavior or future performance with perfect accuracy. Look at many analysts' recommendations. Do your own analysis. If you're still not comfortable buying individual stocks, then don't buy them. Buy index funds if you are satisfied with market returns, or other mutual funds if you want to invest in specific sectors. Or at the very least make sure you are sufficiently diversified so that you don't lose your entire investment by one bad decision. One rule of thumb is to not have more than 10% of your entire portfolio in any one company. |
Does a stay at home mom need term life insurance? | Absolutely! Just because a spouse doesn't have a taxable income, doesn't mean they aren't providing real, tangible benefit to the family economy with an important job. As tragic as it is to consider losing your spouse, are you truly in a position to replace everything they do you for you? Knowing what they do for you and appreciating the effort your spouse gives is important, but don't sell short the dollar amount of what they provide. Your life insurance policy should be to keep you whole. Without your spouse, you will need childcare. You might need domestic services to the home. What about a nanny or similar service? Would $50K cover that until your child is an adult? There are a number of added expenses in the short and long term that would occur if a spouse died. How much for a funeral? Obviously you know the amount and term depends on the age of your kid. But I think you should really try to account for the number of daily hours you spouse puts in, and try to attach a cost to those hours. Then buy insurance for them just as you would for a wage earning. For example, buy a policy that is 10x the annual cost for services it would take to compensate for your spouse. Your tolerance for risk and cost can adjust it up and down from there. |
How come the government can value a home more than was paid for the house? | From my perspective I suspect that if the government use the paid price, people will start to buy at very low nominal prices in order to pay less taxes, and will repay the seller by other means. |
How can I legally and efficiently help my girlfriend build equity by helping with a mortgage? | A 30-yr mortgage IS a committment. So, you are willing to commit to a place, but not your long-term girlfriend??? Either you don't do this "cheap" scheme idea, or you set up as a business arrangement, or you get married. This is quite a laissez-faire statement you make... "Maybe we will eventually get married, maybe we will eventually break up, who knows." Anything or anyone that is a "who knows" is not what you make a 30-yr committment on. I mean, unless you just want to risk throwing your money away. Now, man up, hire the lawyer to do official paperwork or else get a legal certificate of civil union or marriage or whatever you want to call it. If you try to do your cockamamie scheme "on the cheap" now, it will most surely cost you dearly in the future! Mixing money (particulary huge sums of 200,000 $!) when there is no legal obligation like marriage or a business contract, is a fool's errand! Now, grow up and do it the right way if you want to help her - and yourself too. |
How does refinancing work? | Since there was no sale, where does the money actually come from? From the refinancing bank. It's a new loan. How does a bank profit from this, i.e. why would they willingly help someone lower their mortgage payments? Because they sell a new loan. Big banks usually sell the mortgage loans to the institutional investors and only service them. So by creating a new loan - they create another product they can sell. The one they previously sold already brought them profits, and they don't care about it. The investors won't get the interest they could have gotten had the loan been held the whole term, but they spread the investments so that each refi doesn't affect them significantly. Credit unions usually don't sell their mortgages, but they actually do have the interest to help you reduce your payments - you're their shareholder. In any case, the bank that doesn't sell the mortgages can continue making profits, because with the money released (the paid-off loan) they can service another borrower. |
What percentage of my stock portfolio should be international (non-US) stocks? | Without knowing anything else about you, I'd say I need more information. If all of your investments are in stocks, then that's not really diversified, regardless of how many stocks you own. There are other things to invest in besides stocks (and bonds, for that matter). What countries? "International" is pretty broad, and some countries are better bets than others at the moment. If you're old, I'd say very little of your money should be in stocks anyway. I'd also seek financial advice that is tailored to your goals, sophistication, etc. |
Track uninvoiced (pre-invoiced?) expected income in Quicken | You are right on track with your idea of setting up a separate account for invoiced income. Create a new account with the type other asset and call it "Receivables" (or something similar). Every time you invoice a client, enter a credit to this account with the amount of the invoice. Once the client pays and you deposit a check, enter a transfer from the "Receivables" account to the bank account. EDIT I overlooked that you wish to account for not-yet-invoiced income. I think that's a bad idea. It will become confusing and will give you the false sense that your financial condition is better than it really is. There are plenty of stories about businesses that have stellar sales, but fail because of lack of cash flow (the business' bills become due before it gets paid by its own customers). |
I spend too much money. How can I get on the path to a frugal lifestyle? | Keep track of everything you buy. Write it down and be accountable. Try not to buy anything on credit cards, if the money is not in your account now then you can't afford it. Ask yourself whether what you're buying is a "need" or a "want". If you find that you are buying things because you are bored and you like shopping then try taking up a (cheap) hobby that fills that void and is something you enjoy doing. |
How would one follow the “smart money” when people use that term? | Smart money (Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary) is simply a term that refers to the money that successful investors invest. It can also refer to the successful investors themselves. When someone tells you to "follow the smart money," they are generally telling you to invest in the same things that successful investors invest in. For example, you might decide to invest in the same things that Warren Buffett invests in. However, there are a couple of problems with blindly following someone else's investments without knowing what you are doing. First, you are not in the same situation that the expert is in. Warren Buffett has a lot of money in a lot of places. He can afford to take some chances that you might not be able to take. So if you choose only one of his investments to copy, and it ends up being a loser, he is fine, but you are not. Second, when Warren Buffett makes large investments, he affects the price of stocks. For example, Warren Buffett's company recently purchased $1 Billion worth of Apple stock. As soon as this purchase was announced, the price of Apple stock went up 4% from people purchasing the stock trying to follow Warren Buffett. That having been said, it is a good idea to watch successful investors and learn from what they do. If they see a stock as something worth investing in, find out what it is that they see in that company. |
Calculating profits on a covered call. What method do you use? | yes, you are double counting. Your profit is between ($7.25 and $8) OR ($7.75 and $8.50). in other words, you bought the stock at $7.75 and sold at $8.00 and made $0.50 on top. Profit = $8.00-$7.75+$0.50 (of course all this assumes that the stock is at or above $8.00 when the option expires. If it's below, then your profit = market price - $7.75 + $0.50 by the way the statement won't call me away until the stock reaches $8.50 is wrong. They already paid $0.50 for the right to buy the stock at $8.00. If the stock is $8.01 on the day of expiration your options will be executed(automatically i believe). |
Is Investments by Bodie just an expanded version of Essentials of Investments? | They are actually both undergraduate texts; however, Investments is FAR more complex. Essentials of Investments really waters down the statistical and mathematical notation while Investments does not. Investments also has an entire section (4-5 chapters) called options, futures, and other derivatives while Essentials of Investments does not. [Of course, if you want to learn about options, futures, and other derivatives, there is a seminal book by John Hull with that exact title.] That notwithstanding, neither book is sophisticated enough to be considered a true graduate school textbook in quantitative investment theory. No grad schools worth their salt are going to rely too heavily on Investments in a specialized finance curriculum. It's a great book to start out, though. |
Do precious metals and mining sector index funds grow as much as the general stock market? | Metals and Mining is an interesting special case for stocks. It's relationship to U.S. equity (SPX) is particularly weak (~0.3 correlation) compared to most stocks so it doesn't behave like equity. However, it is still stock and not a commodities index so it's relation to major metals (Gold for instance) is not that strong either (-0.6 correlation). Metals and Mining stocks have certainly underperformed the stock market in general over the past 25years 3% vs 9.8% (annualized) so this doesn't look particularly promising. It did have a spectacularly good 8 year period ('99-'07) though 66% (annualized). It's worth remembering that it is still stock. If the market did not think it could make a reasonable profit on the stock the price would decrease until the market thought it could make the same profit as other equity (adjusted slightly for the risk). So is it reasonable to expect that it would give the same return as other stock on average? Yes.. -ish. Though as has been shown in the past 25 years your actual result could vary wildly both positive and negative. (All numbers are from monthly over the last 25 years using VGPMX as a M&M proxy) |
is the bankruptcy of exchange markets possible? | You seem to think that stock exchanges are much more than they actually are. But it's right there in the name: stock exchange. It's a place where people exchange (i.e. trade) stocks, no more and no less. All it does is enable the trading (and thereby price finding). Supposedly they went into mysterious bankruptcy then what will happen to the listed companies Absolutely nothing. They may have to use a different exchange if they're planning an IPO or stock buyback, that's all. and to the shareholder's stock who invested in companies that were listed in these markets ? Absolutley nothing. It still belongs to them. Trades that were in progress at the moment the exchange went down might be problematic, but usually the shutdown would happen in a manner that takes care of it, and ultimately the trade either went through or it didn't (and you still have the money). It might take some time to establish this. Let's suppose I am an investor and I bought stocks from a listed company in NYSE and NYSE went into bankruptcy, even though NYSE is a unique business, meaning it doesn't have to do anything with that firm which I invested in. How would I know the stock price of that firm Look at a different stock exchange. There are dozens even within the USA, hundreds internationally. and will I lose my purchased stocks ? Of course not, they will still be listed as yours at your broker. In general, what will happen after that ? People will use different stock exchanges, and some of them migth get overloaded from the additional volume. Expect some inconveniences but no huge problems. |
Different ways of looking at P/E Ratio vs EPS | all other things being equal if you have two stocks, both with a P/E of 2, and one has an EPS of 5 whereas the other has an EPS of 10 is the latter a better purchase? What this really boils down to is the number of shares a company has outstanding. Given the same earnings & P/E, a company with fewer shares will have a higher EPS than a company with more shares. Knowing that, I don't think the number of shares has much if anything to do with the quality of a company. It's similar to the arguments I hear often from people new to investing where they think that a company with a share price of $100/share must be better than a company with a share price of $30/share simply because the share price is higher. |
Where can I find announcements of official GDP figures for the US and other countries? | For immediate availability, by far the fastest (and cheapest) way to get macroeconomic figures as they are released, is by following (verified) Twitter accounts of the respective Central bank and institutions alike. Indeed, Twitter is the new trader tape. |
Why do financial institutions charge so much to convert currency? | Mainly because they can. Yes, there is a cost for banks to execute such transactions, and yes, there is a cost to cover the implied risks, but it is far from 3 or 4%. There are banks that charge a flat rate of less than 30$ (and no percentage), so for larger amounts, it is worth shopping around. Note that for smaller amounts, which are the majority of personal transactions, that is probably about as, if not more expensive, than paying 3% - below 1000$, 3% is less than 30$. So charging a percentage is actually better for people that want to transfer smaller amounts. |
Are car buying services worth it? | Depends on how you value your time. These programs do not say they will get you the lowest basement price; they say you get a reasonable price without negotiation. This is true. Use a service. Pick out the car you want and spend less than an afternoon picking up your vehicle. You don't have to fret or do all of the price research or comparison shopping because that is what the service does for you. Since you have to pick a make and model before you begin AND because you need to arrange your financing at a credit union before you being (regardless of a buying service) I don't think they actually work out financially for most folks. My anecdote: Because we were buying an already inexpensive new car, the Costco pre-negotiated discount was just a few hundred bucks. The discount is different for each car (naturally). Our base model was terrific in consumer reports, but the sticker price doesn't leave dealerships a lot of room for profit to start with. We ended up saving a couple thousand dollars by skipping the Costco program and following these tips from JohnFX: What are some tips for getting the upper hand in car price negotiations? But we did it all over email. We emailed any dealership we could find online that was in driving distance. (There were literally dozens of dealerships to choose from.) We made a new, throw away email address and starting to ask for a lower price. Whenever we got a lower price, we simply asked the others to beat it. All over email. It only took a few days, we know we got a low price and the stress really wasn't a factor. (A couple of the salespeople got a little rude, but it was over the email so we didn't care or fret.) I had time to kill, and the extra hassle and effort saved me much more money. |
The equivalent of the standing order in the internet age for the UK specifically | A standing order is still the right way to do this. Most bank accounts have online access and will let your customer setup the standing order online, without having to fill in a paper form. |
Personal finance software for Mac that can track stocks and mutual funds? (Even manual updating of share prices will do.) | I'm using iBank on my Mac here and that definitely supports different currencies and is also supposed to be able to track investments (I haven't used it to track investments yet, hence the 'supposed to' caveat). |
If throwing good money after bad is generally a bad idea, is throwing more money after good Ok? | The principle behind the advice to not throw good money after bad is better restated in economics terms: sunk costs are sunk and irrelevant to today's decisions. Money lost on a stock is sunk and should not affect our decisions today, one way or the other. Similarly, the stock going up should not affect our decisions today, one way or the other. Any advice other than this is assuming some kind of mispricing or predictability in the market. Mispricings in general cannot be reliably identified and stock returns are not normally predictable. The only valid (efficient markets) reason I know of to allow money you have lost or made on a stock to affect your decision today is the tax implications (you may want to lock in gains if your tax rate is temporarily low or vice versa). |
How do you measure the value of gold? | You acquire something because you expect to use it, or because you expect to exchange it for something that you want to use. Gold is a good candidate for storing value because it's rare, it's not easily counterfeited, it's divisible, it's portable, etc. Contrast this with your favorite currency: more can be printed up almost at will, etc. Overvaluedness/undervaluedness is only in reference to something else. How many dollars does it take to buy an ounce of gold? (About $1,500.) How many ounces does it take to equal the DJIA? (About 8.) How many ounces of silver does it take to buy an ounce of gold? How many barrels of oil can you buy with an ounce of gold? Etc., etc. But whatever measure you're using, the value of the gold you have is directly related to the mass of gold you own. Two ounces are twice as valuable as one ounce. As the old joke goes (no offense to taxi drivers intended!) when your cabbie starts talking about how to get rich with gold, it's probably overvalued. Sell it all! ;) |
How can I get a wholesaler ID number? | This is a state by state thing, and I'm cheating because I know you are in New York State: |
Can increasing my tax withholding from my full-time job cover FICA taxes for my freelance work? | Technically you owe 'self-employment' taxes not FICA taxes because they are imposed under a different law, SECA. However, since SE taxes are by design exactly the same rates as combining the two halves of FICA (employer and employee) it is quite reasonable to treat them as equivalent. SE taxes (and income tax also) are based on your net self-employment income, after deducting business expenses (but not non-business items like your home mortgage, dependent exemptions, etc which factor only into income tax). You owe SE Medicare tax 2.9% on all your SE net income (unless it is under $400) adjusted down by 7.65% to compensate for the fact that the employer half of FICA is excluded from gross income before the employee half is computed. You owe SE Social Security tax 12.4% on your adjusted SE net income unless and until the total income subject to FICA+SECA, i.e. your W-2 wages plus your adjusted SE net income, exceeds a cap that varies with inflation and is $127,200 for 2017. OTOH if FICA+SECA income exceeds $200k single or $250k joint you owe Additional Medicare tax 0.9% on the excess; if your W-2 income (alone) exceeds this limit your employer should withhold for it. However the Additional Medicare tax is part of 'Obamacare' (PPACA) which the new President and Republican majorities have said they will 'repeal and replace'; whether any such replacement will affect this for TY 2017 is at best uncertain at this point. Yes SE taxes are added to income tax on your 1040 with schedule SE attached (and schedule C/CEZ, E, F as applicable to your business) (virtually so if you file electronically) and paid together. You are supposed to pay at least 90% during the year by having withholding increased on your W-2 job, or by making 'quarterly' estimated payments (IRS quarters are not exactly quarters, but close), or any combination. But if this is your first year (which you don't say, but someone who had gone through this before probably wouldn't ask) you may get away with not paying during the year as normally required; specifically, if your W-2 withholding is not enough to cover your increased taxes for this year (because of the additional income and SE taxes) but it is enough to cover your tax for the previous year and your AGI that year wasn't over $150k, then there is a 'safe harbor' and you won't owe any form-2210 penalty -- although you must keep enough money on hand to pay the tax by April 15. But for your second year and onwards, your previous year now includes SE amounts and this doesn't help. Similar/related: |
Why would you not want to rollover a previous employer's 401(k) when changing jobs? | Another minor reason not to rollover would be to avoid the pro-rata taxes when doing a backdoor Roth IRA contribution. |
Historical Stock Price Quote on delisted stock without knowing stock symbol as of quote date | You need a source of delisted historical data. Such data is typically only available from paid sources. According to my records 20 Feb 2006 was not a trading day - it was Preisdent's Day and the US exchanges were closed. The prior trading date to this was 17 Feb 2006 where the stock had the following data: Open: 14.40 High 14.46 Low 14.16 Close 14.32 Volume 1339800 (consolidated volume) Source: Symbol NVE-201312 within Premium Data US delisted stocks historical data set available from http://www.premiumdata.net/products/premiumdata/ushistorical.php Disclosure: I am a co-owner of Norgate / Premium Data. |
Tracking my spending, and incoming and outgoing (i.e cashflow) | Systems to research that may help you out: Less Accounting and Wave are great because they can import data from banks / credit cards. I know you said your bank doesn't export it but it seems like something as a small business you would want. |
What is the minimum age for early retirement | You can withdraw from CPP as early as 60. However, by doing so, you will permanently reduce the payments. The reduction is calculated based on average life expectancies. If you live for an average amount of time, that means you'll receive approximately the same total amount (after inflation adjustments) whether you start pulling from CPP at 60, 65, or even delay your pension later. People may have pensions through systems other than CPP. This is often true for big business or government work. They may work differently. People who retire at 55 with a pension are not getting their pension through CPP. A person retiring at 55 would need to wait at least five years to draw from the CPP, and ten years before he or she was eligible for a full pension through CPP. Canada also offers Old Age Security (OAS). This is only available once you are 65 years old or older, though this is changing. Starting in 2023, this will gradually change to 67 years or older. See this page for more details. As always, it's worth pointing out that the CPP and OAS will almost certainly not cover your full retirement expenses and you will need supplementary funds. |
Why do volatility stocks/ETFs (TVIX, VXX, UVXY) trend down in the long-term? | There is more than a single reason why TVIX loses value over time. Futures curve. VIX is always expected to trend up when under 20(although this could change in the future). This means 1 month away futures contracts are bought at a premium closer to 20. If the .VIX stayed flat at 15, by the end of the month, that contract is only worth about 15. meaning you lost 25%. This affects all VIX ETFs and makes inverse VIX ETFs attractive to hold(if you don't mind your account blowing up periodically). Leverage decay. if VIX goes down 25% two consecutive days, your x2 ETF(TVIX, UVXY) goes down 75%. Even if it doubled back to yesterday's value next day, you'd still be 25% down. ETF funding costs. The fund managers take some money from the pot every day. |
How can a credit card company make any money off me? I have a no-fee card and pay my balance on time | Maybe they don't make much, but they make some for sure. In addition to what duffbeer703 says, they also have a warm body at the end of the line and will sell your contact info (or at least access to your eyeballs) to marketers. They stuff advertisements into your bill for example. If nothing else, you are brand value for them as they can convince merchants (who get charged monthly) that X billion people carry their card and that merchant would be missing out on sales by not accepting their product. If you have a rewards card that pays you for using it, the merchant has higher corresponding fees. |
Return on asset (ROA) value for a stock is reported differently on Yahoo Finance and MarketWatch | Why there is this huge difference? I am not able to reconcile Yahoo's answer of 5.75%, even using their definition for ROA of: Return on Assets Formula: Earnings from Continuing Operations / Average Total Equity This ratio shows percentage of Returns to Total Assets of the company. This is a useful measure in analyzing how well a company uses its assets to produce earnings. I suspect the "Average Total Equity" in their formula is a typo, but using either measure I cannot come up with 5.75% for any 12-month period. I can, however, match MarketWatch's answer by looking at the 2016 fiscal year totals and using a "traditional" formula of Net Income / Average Total Assets: I'm NOT saying that MatketWatch is right and Yahoo is wrong - MW is using fiscal year totals while Yahoo is using trailing 12-month numbers, and Yahoo uses "Earnings from Continuing Operations", but even using that number (which Yahoo calculates) I am not able to reconcile the 5.75% they give. |
Can a company control its stock through contracts with stockholders? | Your first scenario, involving shareholders in a private corp being limited by a contractual agreement, is common in practice. Frequent clauses include methods of valuing the shares if someone wants to sell, first right of refusal [you have to attempt to sell to the other shareholders, before you can sell to a 3rd party], and many others. These clauses are governed by contract law [ie: some clauses may be illegal in contract law, and therefore couldn't be applied here]. A Universal Shareholders' Agreement is just the same as the above, but applied to more people. You would never get an already public company to convert to a universal shareholders' agreement - because even 1 share voting 'no' would block it [due to corporate law limiting the power of a corporation from abusing minority shareholder value]. In practice, these agreements universally exist at the start of incorporation, or at least at the first moment shares become available. An example is the Canadian mega-construction company PCL*, which is employee-owned. When the original owner transferred the corporation to his employees, there was a USA in place which still today governs how the corporation operates. In theory you could have a 'public company' where most shares are already owned by the founders, and 100% of remaining shares are owned by a specific group of individuals, in which case you may be able to get a USA signed. But it wouldn't really happen in practice. *[Note that while PCL is broadly owned by a large group of employees, it is not a 'public company' because any random schmuck can't simply buy a share on the Toronto Stock Exchange. I assume most exchanges would prevent corporations from being listed if they had ownership restrictions like this]. |
Is it legal to sell my stock at any specified price to a specified person in US Market? | So I want to sell my 100 shares of AAPL to him at a price of 10 or even 1 US Dollar. Is that legal/allowed? Of course. It's your stocks - do with it what you want. if the two persons are not served by a same broker. You'll have to talk to your broker about the technicalities of the transaction. if the person who sell are US citizen and the person who buy are not, and and vice-versa Since you asked specifically about US citizenship, I'll assume you're in the US or the transaction is taking place in the US. Citizenship has nothing to do with it (except may be for economic sanctions against Russians or Iranians that may come into play). What is important is the tax residency status. Such a transfer is essentially a gift, and if you're a US tax resident (which doesn't correlate to your immigration status necessarily) - you'll have to deal with the gift tax consequences on the discount value. For example - you have 100 shares of AAPL which you sold to your friend for $1 each when the fair market value (FMV) was $501. So essentially, the friend got $50,100 value for $100. I.e.: $50K gift. Since this amount is above the annual $14K exemption - you'll have to deal with the gift tax and file gift tax return. There are also consequences for the capital gains tax for both you and your friend. I suggest you talk to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) about the specifics given your circumstances. If you (or the recipient) are also a foreign citizen/tax resident - then that country's laws also may affect your situation. |
Will I be liable for taxes if I work for my co. in India for 3 months while I am with my husband in UK | For information about the UK situation, check the government website at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/tax-arrive-uk.htm It all depends on the time. If I read it right (but you should check yourself) you can stay almost six months at a time, but at most 3 months on average over 4 years. Above this limit, you should either avoid the situation, or get professional advice, because things will be complicated. |
What argument(s) support the claim that long-term housing prices trend upward? | Several people have mentioned the obvious: inflation. But let's assume we are talking about real (inflation adjusted) prices. One argument is that populations keep rising while the land does not change. So the price of homes in desirable places gets pushed up and people move to second-best locations, pushing those prices up, etc. Similar Malthusian argument holds for raw materials (steel, granite, fine wood, etc.). Another argument is that the economy has a long-term upward trajectory (that's the assumption). So each generation, as a whole, has more disposable real income than the previous. As disposable income increases, people tend to put more and more money into their homes, pushing prices up. True for all goods, of course, but it may be more true for real estate than for other types of goods. |
Can I buy a new house before selling my current house? | You don't say why you want to move. Without knowing that, it is hard to recommend a course of action. Anyway... The sequence of events for an ECONOMICAL outcome in a strong market is as follows: (1) You begin looking for a new house (2) You rent storage and put large items into storage (3) You rent an apartment and move into the apartment (4) The house now being empty you can easily do any major cleaning and renovations needed to sell it (5) You sell the house (and keep looking for a new house while you do so). Since the house is empty it will sell a lot more easily than if you are in it. (6) You invest the money you get from selling the house (7) You liquidate your investment and buy the new house that you find. If you are lucky, the market will have declined in the meantime and you will get a good deal on the new house in addition to the money you made on your investment. (8) You move your stuff out of storage into the new house. There are other possibilities that involve losing a lot of money. The sequence of events above will make money for you, possibly a LOT of money. |
Car finance (loan) insurance requirements (store car) | Very generally speaking if you have a loan, in which something is used as collateral, the leader will likely require you to insure that collateral. In your case that would be a car. Yes certainly a lender will require you to insure the vehicle that they finance (Toyota or otherwise). Of course, if you purchase a vehicle for cash (which is advisable anyway), then the insurance option is somewhat yours. Some states may require that a certain amount of coverage is carried on a registered vehicle. However, you may be able to drop the collision, rental car, and other options from your policy saving you some money. So you buy a new car for cash ($25K or so) and store the thing. What happens if the car suffers damage during storage? Are you willing to save a few dollars to have the loss of an asset? You will have to insure the thing in some way and I bet if you buy the proper policy the amount save will be very minimal. Sure you could drop the road side assistance, rental car, and some other options, during your storage time but that probably will not amount to a lot of money. |
How to keep control of shared expenses inside marriage? | Why not start a third account, the "house" account? However you decide to fund it, equally or in proportion to income, you both chip in, and the payments for all joint expenses come from there. Rent, utilities, food, phone, cable. |
Is it a good idea to put everything in the S&P500? | What you choose to invest in depends largely on your own goals and time horizon. You state that your time horizon is a few decades. Most studies have shown that the equity market as a whole has outperformed most other asset types (except perhaps property in some cases) over the long term. The reason that time horizon is important is that equities are quite volatile. Who knows whether your value will halve in the next year? But we hope that over the longer term, things come out in the wash, and tomorrow's market crash will recover, etc. However, you must realize that if your goals change, and you suddenly need your money after 2 years, it might be worth less in two years than you expect. |
Frustrated Landlord | You are not a landlord. You have choices: The current situation is charity. And that's ok, so long as you acknowledge it. In the big picture, anything less than market rent is a gift that you are giving the person living in your house. A good tenant might keep the place in better shape, and deserve a lower rent, but that's a quid pro quo. In the end, landlording is a business. If you had 10-20 apartments, they would be proving an income to you and you would have a large chunk of your wealth tied up in it. You would keep the apartments in good shape both to be legal and not a slumlord, but you'd also collect market rent. $100/apt would be $1000-$2000/mo income to you and your family. You wife is right. As always. You have a decision to make to stop the bleeding. |
Should I pay off my student loan before buying a house? | Paying off your student loan before buying a house is certainly a great risk reduction move for you. It will lower your debt to income ratio allowing your mortgage approval to go easier and it will free up more of your dollars to pay for the many miscellaneous projects that come with buying a house. I think that if you are considering paying off your student loan before buying a house that means that your student loans are an amount you can fathom paying off and that you are motivated to be rid of your student loan debt. Go for it and pay off your student loan. |
If a company's assets are worth more than its market cap, can one say the shares must be undervalued? | You haven't mentioned how much debt your example company has. Rarely does a company not carry any kind of debt (credit facilities, outstanding bonds or debentures, accounts payable, etc.) Might it owe, for instance, $1B in outstanding loans or bonds? Looking at debt too is critically important if you want to conduct the kind of analysis you're talking about. Consider that the fundamental accounting equation says: or, But in your example you're assuming the assets and equity ought to be equal, discounting the possibility of debt. Debt changes everything. You need to look at the value of the net assets of the company (i.e. subtracting the debt), not just the value of its assets alone. Shareholders are residual claimants on the assets of the company, i.e. after all debt claims have been satisfied. This means the government (taxes owed), the bank (loans to repay), and bondholders are due their payback before determining what is leftover for the shareholders. |
Can an IRA be taxed? | The Motley Fool article is correct that if you earn UBTI over $1000, you will need to pay the tax, even if held in an IRA. C-corps won't generate UBTI, so you're fine with those. For non-C-corps, the most common are REITs, MLPs, and BDCs. REITs These typically invest in either real estate property or mortgages. The ones that invest in mortgages are sometimes notated: mREITs, and can occasionally generate UBTI. Tip: Don't let this stop you from investing in REITs in your IRA. REITs can be a great source of income and are best held in an IRA since the income will be tax free vs. your ordinary income tax bracket if held in a taxable account. Some examples of mREITs would be NLY, CIM, AGNC. Some property REITs would be: O, SNR, OHI, EQR. https://seekingalpha.com/article/1257351-tax-bomb-mortgage-reits-triggering-ubit MLPs Master Limited Partnerships are also pass-through entities, like REITs, but have the additional complication that most issue K-1 forms at tax time. K-1s can be very complex when the MLP owns assets across state boundaries, which is why I actually PREFER to hold MLPs in my IRA (against the advice of M. Fool) since I won't have to deal with the tax complications of filing the K-1, just as long as my MLPs don't generate over $1000 of UBTI. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4057891-mlps-kminus-1s-ubti-oh BDCs Business Development Companies like REITs and MLPs are also pass-through entities in that the income they give you will be taxed at your ordinary income bracket if held in a taxable account. Examples of BDCs include: MAIN, MCC, ARCC. You'd need to consult their 10-K to determine if there is a risk of UBTI. Tip: MLPs, BDCs, and especially REITs can all be very valuable sources of income and from my experience, UBTI is rare so don't let that scare you away if you otherwise like the investment. |
Will the stock market continue to grow forever? | The stock market may not grow "forever". There will be growth in the stock market, though. The stock market is a positive-sum game, since it is driven in large part by the profits earned by the companies. This doesn't mean that any individual stock will go up forever, it doesn't mean that any given index will go up forever, and it doesn't mean there won't be periods when the market as a whole drops. But it is reasonable to expect that long-term investing in the market as a whole will continue to return profits that reflect the success of companies invested in. Historically, that return has averaged about 8%; future results may be different and exact results will depend on exactly when and how you invest. Re "what about Japan, which has been flat over 30 years": Market being flat doesn't mean individual companies may not be growing strongly. Picking stocks may become more important, and we might need to relearn to focus on dividends rather than being so monomaniacal about growth (dividends are not reflected in the indices, please note), but there will be money to be made. How much, and how much effort is required to get it, and whether the market offers the best available bets, deponent sayeth not. Past results are no guarantee of future returns, and your results may be better or worse than average. You should be diversified into bonds and such anyway, rather than only in the stock market. |
Potential pitfalls of this volume trading strategy | First challenge: Creating a system which can understand written English well enough to read the news. Nothing short of IBM's Watson has proven very good at extracting meaning from unstructured text. Second challenge: By the time it reaches "the news", the big actors already know and have responded. Third challenge: It's not uncommon for a stock to drop on good news, or rise on bad, because the price had previously adjusted to an expectation of even better/worse news and is now correcting itself. Basic principle: It it was simple and obvious, everyone would already be doing it. |
Do Americans really use checks that often? | I know this an old thread, but one that caught my interest as I just moved to the USA from Australia. As per the OP I had never written a check in my whole life, and upon arriving in the US I was surprised as to their proliference. In Australia pretty much all bills you receive can be paid in a number of ways: For small amounts between friends cash is probably used most, but for larger amounts direct transfer is popular. Your friend/landlord will give you their bank account number and BSB number, which identifies their bank, and then you transfer the money in. We don't have a SSN like some other countries. Cheques are still used by some however, esp by the older generations. Now that I'm in the US initially I had tried to set up direct transfer to pay my rent however the bank has a $1000 daily transfer limit. I contacted the bank to get this increased however I was informed that this limit applies to ALL accounts at the bank. I asked how do people pay their rents with this low limit and was told that most people used cheques. (This explains the strange look I got from my landlord when I asked for their bank account details so I could pay the rent!) I now have some bills to pay here and I use online banking. You enter the biller's name and address and then the bank actually prints off a cheque and posts it to the biller on your behalf! My first couple of pays here were also cheques, which were the first actual "paychecks" I had ever received. |
Do I even need credit cards? | A credit card can be a long running line of credit that will help to boost your FICO score. However if you have student loans, a mortgage, or car payments those will work just as well. If you ever get to the point where you don't have any recent lines of credit, this may eventually end up hurting your score, but until then you really don't need any extras. |
How do I adjust to a new social class? | Under what conditions did you move? My favourite method of judging prices objectively comes from concepts written in Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez. Essentially it normalizes money spent by making you figure out how much an item costs with respect to the number of hours you needed to work to afford it. I prefer that method versus comparing with others since it is objective for yourself and looks beyond just the bare prices. |
Is it normal to think of money in different “contexts”? | Well, this relates to how you interpret something's value. We can use that magazine and restaurant as an example. For you the extra $10-$30 more on a decent meal or wine is worth it while $5 for a magazine entertainment on a train ride might not be. This is how all markets work, people make decisions about how they value something and hence choose to spend or not. If you're asking "should I value certain things the way I do?" well that's a different story e.g. should I keep that picture frame for years in the attic to sell it for $3 on eBay later. (probably not worth it) But again you are making that decision based on how YOU choose to value it. So to answer your question: How can I possibly care about this when my stock portfolio is losing (or gaining) $1000 a day? and is it normal? Yes it is normal and we all care. Everyone makes these decisions throughout each day, people will vary as to what they value something to be, but all in all everyone does just what you explained. Here is something that you may find interesting it is about how we value money: What color is your money? if the pdf doesn't work for you then try this link: What color is your money alt link |
My company owed taxes for many years, An accountant asked me to ignore it and register a new one. Is it a right thing to do? | I think the first step is to get an accountant whose advice you believe. Your accountant is far better placed to advise you on what sounds like a fairly complicated, fairly high stakes corporate arrangement than the internet. I would go back to the accountant and get him to explain in writing what his specific advice is. If you still don't like it absolutely get a second opinion. You may also want to speak to a lawyer. |
Mortgage company withholding insurance proceeds | My question is, how do you rebuild a home, without the money to rebuild the home? I ignorantly thought that was why we paid for insurance. The reason that you have insurance is so as to keep the mortgage lender from losing money. That's why you buy the insurance through the mortgage lender and they get paid. Without the insurance, you'd have no home but still have a mortgage. You'd either have to pay off a mortgage with no house or have to declare bankruptcy to shed the mortgage. You essentially have two paths. If you (or the builder/suppliers) can afford to float the cost, you can rebuild the original house. You'll eventually get the $161,000 and can pay off the builder and suppliers. This may involve taking out a construction mortgage to refinance the original mortgage. Presumably the construction mortgage would be with a different lender. The other path is that you can sell the existing property as is, and use the insurance and proceeds to pay off the existing mortgage. Then you'd have no house and no mortgage. You start over and buy a house with a mortgage. It's possible that your insurance payoff isn't enough to pursue either path. Then your option is to get the insurer to make a bigger payoff. This may involve suing them. Note that you may be able to talk the government into suing the insurer for you. They do have regulators who can review things. If you can't get government action, there are lawyers who will do the suing and take their fees out of their winnings. |
Using P/E Ratio of an ETF to decide on asset mix | P/E is a useful tool for evaluating the price of a company, but only in comparison to companies in similar industries, especially for industries with well-defined cash flows. For example, if you compared Consolidated Edison (NYSE:ED) to Hawaiian Electric (NYSE:HE), you'll notice that HE has a significantly higher PE. All things being equal, that means that HE may be overpriced in comparison to ED. As an investor, you need to investigate further to determine whether that is true. HE is unique in that it is a utility that also operates a bank, so you need to take that into account. You need to think about what your goal is when you say that you are a "conservative" investor and look at the big picture, not a magic number. If conservative to you means capital preservation, you need to ensure that you are in investments that are diversified and appropriate. Given the interest rate situation in 2011, that means your bonds holding need to be in short-duration, high-quality securities. Equities should be weighted towards large cap, with smaller holdings of international or commodity-associated funds. Consider a target-date or blended fund like one of the Vanguard "Life Strategy" funds. |
What is the difference between a bad/bounced check and insufficient funds? | There is no difference they are both insufficient in 1 form or another.Bad slang for any check the bank won't cash, for any reason, Ie. insf. unreadable amount, acct or routing number, the acct.has been closed, or you didn't write the check(fraud). Bounced is slang for bank returned check unpaid.I wrote a bad check but it didn't bounce.The check is still insufficient but the bank didn't return it. $500.00 is the felony threshold in okla. less than $500.00 is a misdemeanor. but insf. fees ranging from ($25.00 to $50.00 vendor returned check fee + amount of check) x (bank insf fees of $25 to $50)is an effective deterent. |
Recommendation on Options Back Testing tool please | As JoeTaxpayer says, there's a lot you can do with just the stock price. Exploring that a bit: Stock prices are a combination of market sentiment and company fundamentals. Options are just a layer on top of that. As such, options are mostly formulaic, which is why you have a hard time finding historical option data -- it's just not that "interesting", technically. "Mostly" because there are known issues with the assumptions the Black-Scholes formula makes. It's pretty good, and importantly, the market relies on it to determine fair option pricing. Option prices are determined by: Relationship of stock price to strike. Both distance and "moneyness". Time to expiration. Dividends. Since dividend payments reduce the intrinsic value of a company, the prospect of dividend payments during the life of a call option depresses the price of the option, as all else equal, without the payments, the stock would be more likely to end up in the money. Reverse the logic for puts. Volatility. Interest rates. But this effect is so tiny, it's safe to ignore. #4, Volatility, is the biggie. Everything else is known. That's why option trading is often considered "volatility trading". There are many ways to skin this cat, but the result is that by using quoted historical values for the stock price, and the dividend payments, and if you like, interest rates, you can very closely determine what the price of the option would have been. "Very closely" depending on your volatility assumption. You could calculate then-historical volatility for each time period, by figuring the average price swing (in either direction) for say the past year (year before the date in question, so you'd do this each day, walking forward). Read up on it, and try various volatility approaches, and see if your results are within a reasonable range. Re the Black-Scholes formula, There's a free spreadsheet downloadable from http://optiontradingtips.com. You might find it useful to grab the concept for coding it up yourself. It's VBA, but you can certainly use that info to translate in your language of choice. Or, if you prefer to read Perl, CPAN has a good module, with full source, of course. I find this approach easier than reading a calculus formula, but I'm a better developer than math-geek :) |
Need something more basic than a financial advisor or planner | In addition to a fee-only advisor, brought up by dg99, you could consider asking your questions on message boards such as Bogleheads.org. I have found the advice amazing, obviously conflict-free, and free. |
Estimated Tax on Unplanned Capital Gains | I'm assuming your talking USA. There are two ways to look. If you know you should pay on the cap gains, the best way to handle that separately from your salary is to file a quarterly tax payment. That, I understand, is what the self-employed have to do. I'm in the situation where at some point, probably this year, the company that employs me will be bought out, and I will owe capital gains taxes on my shares gobbled up in the buy-out. It's a cash-for-stock transaction. So, in my case, I've just adjusted my W-4 to take advantage of the safe-harbor provision related to taxes I payed in 2016 and my salary. The details vary depending on your situation, but in my case, I've calculated what it will take in W-4 allowances to make sure I pay 110% of my 2016 tax payment (after refund). I'm not worrying about what the actual taxes on those shares of company stock will be, because I've met the rules for safe-harbor. Safe harbor just means that they can't penalize you for under-withholding or underpayment. It doesn't mean I won't have to write a check on april 15. |
What prevents investors from buying high yield stocks and selling them as soon as their dividend is paid out? | This investment strategy may have tax advantages. In some countries, income received from dividends is taxed as income, whereas profits on share trades are capital gains. If you have already exceeded your tax-free income limit for the year, but not your capital gains tax allowance, it may be preferable to make a dealing profit rather than an investment income. These arrangements are called a bed-and-breakfast. |
Claiming car as a business expense in the UK | I'm going to look just at purchase price. Essentially, you can't always claim the whole of the purchase price (or 95% your case) in the year (the accounting period) of purchase, but you get a percentage of the value of the car each year, called writing down allowance, which is a capital allowance. It is similar to depreciation, but based on HRMC's own formula. In fact, it seems you probably can claim 95% of the purchase price, because the value is less than £1000. The logic is a bit involved, but I hope you can understand it. You could also claim simplified expenses instead, which is just based on a rate per mile, but you can't claim both. Note, by year I mean whatever your account period is. This could be the normal financial year, but you would probably have a better idea about this. See The HMRC webpage on this for more details. The big idea is that you record the value of any assets you are claiming writing down allowance on in one of a number of pools, that attract the same rate of writing down allowance, so you don't need to record the value of each asset separately. They are similar to accounts in accounting, so they have an opening balance, and closing balance. If you use an asset for personal use, it needs a pool to itself. HRMC call that a single asset pool. So, to start with, look at the Business Cars section, and look at the Rates for Cars section, to determine the rate you can claim. Each one links to a further article, which gives more detail if you need it. Your car is almost certainly in the special rate category. Special rate is 8% a year, main rate is 18%, and First year allowance is essentially 100%. Then, you look at the Work out what you can claim article. That talks you through the steps. I'll go through your example. You would have a pool for your car, which would end the account period before you bought the vehicle at zero (step 1). You then add the value of the car in the period you bought it (Step 2). You would reduce the value of the pool if you dispose of it in the same year (Step 3). Because the car is worth less than £1,000 (see the section on "If you have £1,000 or less in your pool"), you would normally be able to claim the whole value of the pool (the value of the car) in the first accounting period, and reduce the value of the pool to zero. As you use the car for personal use, you only claim 95% of the value, but still reduce the pool to zero. See the section on "Items you use outside your business". This £1000 is adjusted if your accounting period lasts more or less than 12 months. Once the pool is down to zero that it you don't need to think about it any more for tax purposes, apart from if you are claiming other motoring expenses, or if you sell it. It gets more complicated if the car is more expensive. I'll go through an example for a car worth £2,000. Then, after Step 3, on the year of purchase, you would reduce the value of the pool by 8%, and claim 95% of the reduction. This would be a 160 reduction, and 95%*160 = 152 claim, leaving the value of 1860 in the pool. You then follow the same steps for the next year, start with 1840 in the pool, reduce the value by 8%, then claim 95% of the reduction. This continues until you sell or dispose of the car (Step 3), or the value of the pool is 1000 or less, then you claim all of it in that year. Selling the car, or disposing of the car is discussed in the Capital allowances when you sell an asset article. The basic idea is that if you have already reduced the value of the pool to zero, the price you sell the car for is added you your profits for that year (See "If you originally claimed 100% of the item"), if you still have anything in the pool, you reduce the value of the pool by the sale value, and if it reduces to below zero (to -£200, say), you add that amount (£200, in this case), to your profits. If the value is above zero, you keep applying writing down allowances. In your case, that seems to just means if you sell the car in the same year you buy it, you claim the difference (or 95% of it) as writing down allowance, and if you do it later, you claim the purchase price in the year of purchase, and add 95% of the sale price to your profits in the year you sell it. I'm a bit unclear about starting "to use it outside your business", which doesn't seem to apply if you use it outside the business to start with. You can claim simplified expenses for vehicles, if you are a sole trader or partner, but not if you claim capital allowances (such as writing down allowances) on them, or you include a separate expense in your accounts for motoring expenses. It's a flat rate of 45p a mile for the first 10,000 miles, and 25p per mile after that, for cars, and 24p a mile for motorcycles. See the HRMC page on Simplifed Mileage expenses for details. For any vehicle you decide to either claim capital allowances claim running costs separately, or claim simplified mileage expenses, and "Once you use the flat rates for a vehicle, you must continue to do so as long as you use that vehicle for your business.you have to stick with that decision for that vehicle". In your case, it seems you can claim 95% of the purchase price in the accounting period you buy it, and if you sell it you add 95% of the sale price to your profits in that accounting period. It gets more complicated if you have a car worth more than £1000, adjusted for the length of the accounting period. Also, if you change how you use it, consult the page on selling selling an asset, as you may have disposed of it. You can also use simplified mileage expenses, but then you can't claim capital allowances, or claim running costs separately for that car. I hope that makes sense, please comment if not, and I'll try to adjust the explanation. |
Debt collector has wrong person and is contacting my employer | Did you receive a summons, or other notice of proceedings, from the court which granted the judgement? If you were not served with the proceedings, contact the court. It is unlawful to enforce a judgement against someone who was not a party to the original lawsuit. |
Using a self-directed IRA to buy vacation condo, rent it out to an LLC for $1 | I don't quite understand your thought process here. First, in a tax-advantaged retirement account you are NOT allowed to engage in a transaction with yourself. If you just want to run a business and be able to write off expenses, how is using the self-directed IRA relevant? You can either buy the condo using your tax-advantaged account and rent it out to regular tenants. Or you buy the condo yourself using your own money and then operate your business so you can deduct business expenses from doing so. 401k's allow you to take a loan out of it, so you can look into that as well. |
Why do investors buy stock that had appreciated? | People buy stocks with the intention of making money. They either expect the price to continue to rise or that they will get dividends and the price will not drop (enough) to wipe out their dividend earnings. |
Why is OkPay not allowed in the United States? | The U.S. requires money transfer services to be licensed under 31 USC 5330 in addition to any applicable laws at the state level. According to multiple sources online, including the thread referenced by MD-Tech's answer, OkPay either cannot or will not get a license, so they are out. I dug on this a bit more because I thought it was interesting, and OkPay has other issues with U.S. and other regulators related to its interaction with Bitcoins, which themselves are a hot potato for regulation right now and may explain the licensing problem. It seems to also be facing regulatory pressure in other countries, by the way, so it's not strictly a problem they face in the U.S. Just for whatever reason, the problem is greater here. Some interesting summary points: With mounting pressure on online money exchanges from US regulators, payments processor OKPay has announced that it is suspending processing for all Bitcoin exchanges, including industry leader Mt. Gox. ... Earlier this month, the US Department of Homeland Security seized Mt. Gox's account with mobile payment processor Dwolla, on allegations that the account was in violation of US Code 18 USC § 1960 by operating an "unlicensed money transmitting business." Just where the Bitcoin market falls under US law is unclear, because the legality of Bitcoin transactions has yet to be tried in court and law enforcement has refused to comment on ongoing investigations, such as the Dwolla case. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/29/okpay_suspends_bitcoin_processing/ In March, the US Treasury said any firms dealing in the virtual currency would be considered "money services businesses" just like any other, which means they must hand over transaction information to the government and work to prevent money laundering. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/15/mt_gox_us_court/ In the UK, it apparently has also had trouble with banking partners (quoting a OkPay official regarding changing bank providers): The UK bank that we used before did not make a final decision on whether to handle transactions in favour of crypto-currencies or not. Therefore the compliance department of the bank asked us to restrict such transfers. This apparently allowed them to reverse a policy in the UK: OKPAY's policy shift comes just months after it stipulated that GBP users check a box, verifying that their funds would not be spent on cryptocurrency, a feature that further incited users. http://www.coindesk.com/okpay-gbp-bitcoin-transactions/ I hadn't heard of this company prior to your question, but having done some research, I tend to think that at least the part of this quote about language, attributed to a user, is true: OKPAY are quite paranoid about AML and another problem is that their support people seem to be very bad at English, so their replies are often hard to understand. Their support are also slow [sic]. However in my experience they are an honest company. I found at least one case where rumors that the entire company were going to shut down were traced back to a poorly translated message issued by the company. Again, I know only what I read just now about this company, but it looked like there were a few red flags - the problems with the US probably not being the most important. This type of service is probably part of the future, but I'm not sure that I'd send money through it now in its current state or organization and regulation. |
Employer 401K thru Fidelity - Investment options | The best predictor of mutual fund performance is low expense ratio, as reported by Morningstar despite the fact that it produces the star ratings you cite. Most of the funds you list are actively managed and thus have high expense ratios. Even if you believe there are mutual fund managers out there that can pick investments intelligently enough to offset the costs versus a passive index fund, do you trust that you will be able to select such a manager? Most people that aren't trying to sell you something will advise that your best bet is to stick with low-cost, passive index funds. I only see one of these in your options, which is FUSVX (Fidelity Spartan 500 Index Fund Fidelity Advantage Class) with an exceptionally low expense ratio of 0.05%. Do you have other investment accounts with more choices, like an IRA? If so you might consider putting a major chunk of your 401(k) money into FUSVX, and use your IRA to balance your overall porfolio with small- and medium-cap domestic stock, international stock, and bond funds. As an aside, I remember seeing a funny comment on this site once that is applicable here, something along the lines of "don't take investment advice from coworkers unless they're Warren Buffett or Bill Gross". |
Is it possible for all the owners of a stock to gain or lose money at the same time? | Take the case where a stock has just two owners, A and B, both at $10. One of them sells his shares to C, at $11. Now B has made $1 in profit but is no longer an owner of the stock. A hasn't sold anything but his shares are worth 10% more due to the last traded price printed. C has bought shares at $11 and the price is $11, so technically he hasn't lost any money. In a larger market, there are winners and losers every day on a single stock, but they may not remain owners of a stock. There could be days in which those that remain owners are all winners - say when a stock goes up to an all time high and all those that are currently owners have an average buy price lower than the last traded price. And the reverse applies too. It is of course more complicated. Say you own a stock and let someone else "borrow" it for a short-selling opportunity (he sells it in the market). For each uptick in price, you win, the short seller loses, and the guy he sold it to also wins. A person that has a covered call on a stock is not a winner beyond a point. And so on. |
Oversimplify it for me: the correct order of investing | All of the provided advice is great, but a slightly different viewpoint on debt is worth mentioning. Here are the areas that you should concentrate your efforts and the (rough) order you should proceed. Much of the following is predicated upon your having a situation where you need to get out of debt, and learn to better budget and control your spending. You may already have accomplished some of these steps, or you may prioritize differently. Many people advise prioritizing contributing to a 401(k) savings plan. But with the assumption that you need advise because you have debt trouble, you are probably paying absurd interest rates, and any savings you might have will be earning much lower rates than you are paying on consumer debt. If you are already contributing, continue the plan. But remember, you are looking for advice because your financial situation is in trouble, so you need to put out the fire (your present problem), and learn how to manage your money and plan for the future. Compose a budget, comprised of the following three areas (the exact percentages are fungible, fit them to your circumstances). Here is where planning can get fun, when you have freed yourself from debt, and you can make choices that resonate with your individual goals. Once you have "put out the fire" of debt, then you should do two things at the same time. As you pay off debt (and avoid further debt), you will find that saving for both independence and retirement become easier. The average American household may have $8000+ credit card debt, and at 20-30%, the interest payments are $150-200/month, and the average car payment is nearly $500/month. Eliminate debt and you will have $500-800/month that you can comfortably allocate towards retirement. But you also need to learn (educate yourself) how to invest your money to grow your money, and earn income from your savings. This is an area where many struggle, because we are taught to save, but we are not taught how to invest, choose investments wisely and carefully, and how to decide our goals. Investing needs to be addressed separately, but you need to learn how. Live in an affordable house, and pay off your mortgage. Consider that the payment on a mortgage on even a modest $200K house is over $1000/month. Combine saving the money you would have paid towards a mortgage payment with the money you would have paid towards credit card debt or a car loan. Saving becomes easy when you are freed from these large debts. |
Should I negotiate a lower salary to be placed in a lower tax bracket? | No, absolutely not. Income tax rates are marginal. The tax bracket's higher tax rate only applies to extra dollars over the threshold, not to dollars below it. The normal income tax does not have any cliffs where one extra dollar of income will cost more than one dollar in extra taxes. Moreover, you are ignoring the personal exemption and standard deduction. A gross salary of $72,000 is not the same as taxable income of $72,000. The deduction will generally be $12,200 and the exemptions will be $3,900 for you, your spouse, and any kids. So married-filing-jointly with the standard deduction will get an automatic $20,000 off of adjusted gross income when counting taxable income. So the appropriate taxable income is actually going to be more like $52,000. Note that getting your compensation package reshuffled may result in different tax treatment. But simply taking a smaller salary (rather than taking some compensation as stock options, health insurance, or fringe benefits), is not a money-saving move. Never do it. |
Do I owe taxes if my deductions are higher than my income? | In your case, I believe the answer is that you don't owe any taxes, if your deductions exceed your income. There is something called the Alternate Minimum Tax to catch "rich" people, who claim "too many" deductions. Basically, it taxes their "gross" income at a lower rate, but allows them no deductions if they make $175,000 or more. You are not in that tax "bracket." |
Why does financial investor bother to buy derivatives and then hedge the position? | I don't know why a financial investor or a retail trader would do this. But I can guess why a market maker in options would do this. Let us say you buy an option from an option market maker and the market maker sold the option to you. He made a small profit in the bid-ask spread but now he is holding a short position in the option with unlimited risk exposure. So to protect himself, he will take an offsetting position in the underlying and become delta neutral, so that his position is not affected by the moves in the underlying. In the end, he can do this because he is not in the market to make money by betting on direction, unlike the rest of us poor mortals. He is making money from the bid-ask spread. So to ensure that his profits are not eroded by an adverse move in the underlying, he will continuously seek to be delta neutral. But once again, this is for a market maker. For market takers like us, I still don't understand why we would need to delta hedge. |
Buying a small amount (e.g. $50) of stock via eToro “Social Trading Network” using a “CFD”? | Is eToro legitimate? If you have any doubts about eToro or other CFD providers (or even Forex providers, which are kind of similar), just type eToro scam in Google and see the results. |
Tax Allocation - Business Asset Transfer | And my CPA is saying no way, it will cost me many thousands in taxes and doesn't make any sense. I'd think so too. It looks like it converts from capitol gains at 14% to something else at about 35% Can be, if your gain under the Sec.1231 rules is classified as depreciation recapture. But, perhaps the buyers will be saving this way? Not your problem even if they were, which they aren't. I would not do something my CPA says "no-way" about. I sometimes prefer not doing some things my CPA says "it may fly" because I'm defensive when it comes to taxes, but if your CPA is not willing to sign something off - don't do it. Ever. |
How do I choose 401k investment funds? | I disagree strongly with chasing expenses. Don't chase pennies until your are comfortable with an allocation that makes sense to you. Focus on building a diversified portfolio. Look at all of the funds, and put them in a portfolio in a tool like Google finance. Screen out funds with 1-3 stars. Search around on this site for questions about portfolios -- there's good advice there. If you're still not comfortable, look for a fee-based advisor. |
Any specific examples of company valuations according to Value Investing philosophy? | I highly recommend http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ Professor Damodaran. He's written some of the best valuation books in existence (my favorite, simply "Investment Valuation"). On his website you'll find a big pile of spreadsheets, that are models for working the various approaches to valuing a company. Also, he teaches an MBA-level valuation course at Stern School of Business in NYC. And he videotapes it and you can watch it for free. Very smart, kind, generous man. |
Why can't a US state default, but a EU state can? | But do you know about a US state risking to go default now or in the past? In 1847 four states - Mississippi, Arkansas, Michigan, and Florida - failed to pay all or some of their debts. All of these states had issued debt to invest in banks. From the detailed source listed below: "...it should be remembered that all cases of state debt repudiation, as contrasted with mere default, involved banks." Jackson had killed the federal central bank 10 years earlier and the states were trying to create their own inflationary central banks. Six other states delayed debt payments from three to six years (source, page 103, this source has more details). This is the only case I know of where US states defaulted. US cities default more frequently. I'm very confused do US single states like IOWA have debt and emits obligations on their own like Italy does in EU? Yes. Individual states can issue their own bonds. Oh, and just another little thing I would like to know, is Dollar a fiat currency too like the Euro? Yes, the US dollar is a fiat currency. I think the better question is: "Is there any currency that is not a fiat currency?" |
Analyze stock value | It seems like you want to compare the company's values not necessarily the stock price. Why not get the total outstanding shares and the stock price, generate the market cap. Then you could compare changes to market cap rather than just share price. |
How can I buy shares of oil? I'm told it's done through ETFs. How's that related to oil prices per barrel? | The papers you would need to buy are called 'futures', and they give you the right to buy (or sell) a certain amount of oil at a certain location (some large harbor typically), for a certain price, on a certain day. You can typically sell these futures anytime (if you find someone that buys them), and depending on the direction you bought, you will make or lose money according to oil rice changes - if you have the future to get oil for 50 $, and the market price is 60, this paper is obviously worth 10 $. Note that you will have to sell the future at some day before it runs out, or you get real oil in some harbor somewhere for it, which might not be very useful to you. As most traders don't want really any oil, that might happen automatically or by default, but you need to make sure of that. Note also that worst case you could lose a lot more money than you put in - if you buy a future to deliver oil for 50 $, and the oil price runs, you will have to procure the oil for new price, meaning pay the current price for it. There is no theoretical limit, so depending on what you trade, you could lose ten times or a thousand times what you invested. [I worded that without technical lingo so it is clear for beginners - this is the concept, not the full technical explanation] |
Should I pay off investment property mortgage | I would not recommend using your own money to pay off something that is not a strong asset. Use the savings where it will have the maximum return. Why not put (some of) the savings into another investment mortgage? Thanks to the leverage your return would be much higher than 5.5%, plus you would have more income. |
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