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When looking at a mutual fund, how can you tell if it is a traditional fund or an ETF? | An Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) is a special type of mutual fund that is traded on the stock exchange like a stock. To invest, you buy it through a stock broker, just as you would if you were buying an individual stock. When looking at a mutual fund based in the U.S., the easiest way to tell whether or not it is an ETF ... |
Legal restrictions for EU-foreigners to setup bank account in Czech republic | It depends on what exactly do you mean by "seat of residence". That term has different meanings (legally) in different countries and different contexts. If you're foreigner (even from within the EU), any czech bank will most likely ask you to provide a residence permit. Here are some details: http://www.mvcr.cz/mvcren/... |
Why do cash back credit cards give a higher rate for dining and gasoline purchases? | Don't really know but I can guess. Firstly, everyone thinks the price of gas is too high. You drive to work every day, and gas is basically the only product who's price is advertised from the street! From that perspective. So mentally, I argue, we overvalue an extra 1 percent discount on gas. It's only worth maybe 60 c... |
Can paying down a mortgage be considered an “investment”? | Let's start from the premise that the mortgage is something you will have anyway because you need it to live (as opposed to say getting a bigger mortgage initially in the expectation of paying it down faster than scheduled). In that case I think paying down a mortgage certainly is an investment; one with a well-defined... |
Why are stocks having less institutional investors a “good thing”? | It's not necessarily bad but it can cause the stock price to become a lot more volatile. Depends on which side of the bet you're on ;) Suppose a hedge fund manager thinks a company is poorly run. He may buy a ton of shares so that he can get rid of the current CEO and replace it with his/her own. For the hedge fund and... |
Where can one find intraday prices for mutual funds? | Mutual funds don't have intraday prices. They have net asset values which are calculated periodically (daily or weekly or any other period depending on the fund). |
Mutual fund invests in mostly the same stuff as ETF, but has much higher expense ratio? (biotech sector) | Index funds, like IBB, generally lack active management, which equates to lower expenses. This is simply because the target index, the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index in the case of IBB, is composed of known quantities. This means there won't be stock pickers or analysts constantly swapping holdings, increasing the turnover... |
Is there any flaw in this investment scheme? | You didn't win in case B. Borrowing shares and then selling them is known as "selling short". You received $2000 when you sold short 100 shares at $20. You spent $1000 to buy them back at $10, so you come out $1000 ahead on that deal. But at the same time, the 100 shares you already owned have declined in value from... |
Will I be paid dividends if I own shares? | gnasher729, was able to see my problem here. It was a silly oversight. It's not 50p a share, its 0.5p a share. @Bezzzo: The dividend is not 50p per share, it is 0.50p per share - half a penny per share. Thanks! |
Taxation of shares | If you sell your shares for more than their value at the time you received them (i.e. you make a profit) then you will be liable for capital gains tax - but only if the profit exceeds your annual allowance (£11,100, in tax year 2015-16). This is unrelated to how you came by the shares in the first place. (Note that the... |
Higher auto insurance costs: keep car or switch to public transit? | So you will be saving $450 + price of commuting gas - cost of transportation + cost of commuting maintenance - the cost of recreational car rentals if decide to go without a car. For some people that cost is not enough to forego the convenience of owning a car. One factor you have not alluded too is your current finan... |
Do stock prices drop due to dividends? | Yes, the stock price drops on official listing. But what gonna happen on first trade after the dividend date, is up to the market. The market is the market, the rules are the rules. I saw prices going up more than once just after the dividend date, exactly because people think will be cheaper. Market doesn't always fol... |
Why do stores and manufacturers use mail in rebates? A scam, or is there a way to use them effectively? | Unfortunately too many companies view a Mail in rebate as an unwelcome cost instead of as a customer interaction issue, and it gives the company a bad reputation when someone gets stiffed on the mail in rebate, and it also has basically ruined the concept to a large degree. Many people will simply regard the rebate as ... |
Is investing in housing considered an adequate hedge against inflation? | Yes, in 2 ways: As you mention, the price of a home generally grows with inflation - along with other factors (supply and demand in local markets, etc.). Through financing. If you finance 80% of your purchase today, in 2014 dollars, you will pay back in future dollars. Those future dollars are worth less, because of in... |
Why do employer contributions count against HSA limits? | It's going to be quite a challenge to give a definitive answer to any "Why" question about law, and especially so for a question about tax law. One would need to try to dig up statements made by the legislators (and/or their aides) crafting and debating the law. As it is, tax law is already inconsistent in many ways. (... |
How to deal with the credit card debt from family member that has passed away? | You also might want to see what sort of documentation the credit card company has. Companies can get pretty lazy sometimes about recordkeeping; there have been cases where banks tried to foreclose on a property but weren't able to produce documents establishing the mortgage. With your father dead, is there anything oth... |
Unmarried couple buying home, what are the options in our case? | You've laid out several workable options. You might try going to mortgage broker and looking at what offers you get each way. I can say that it sounds like your partner will have a difficult time qualifying for a mortgage. That puts you on the first and third options. Forget about "building equity." You cannot rely... |
Who should pay taxes in my typical case? | Once you turn 18 you should open an account in your own name and transfer the assets there. Currently your mom is the one responsible as far as the IRS cares with respect to taxes as it is her name on the account. The taxes due will be based on your mom's tax rate. As a good child you can reimburse your mom for the tax... |
When will the U.K. convert to the Euro as an official currency? | I read an account of why the U.K. didn't end up with the euro as its currency in David M. Smick's great book The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy. Chapter 6 of the book is titled "Nothing Stays the Same: The 1992 Sterling Crisis." Here's a very brief excerpt; emphasis mine: [...] As this story sho... |
When is Cash Value Life Insurance a good or bad idea? | Here's what I'd consider: |
Will the ex-homeowner still owe money after a foreclosure? | Generally, yes, although not in all states. According to this article in Time: But in non-recourse states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Washington — the bank has no recourse beyond the repossession of the property. As for the quest... |
Purchase same stock twice | Investors purchase additional shares all the time. Every investor that adds money to their investments does this every paycheck or every month. Investors do this every time they reinvest dividends, interest or capital gains. They also buy and sell shares when they decide to rebalance their portfolio. Whether you are i... |
Shareholders meetings — the announcement of significant news | SE:Personal Finance user Ray K says in a comment on this question that his or her broker said: a company cannot release any significant news in a share-holder meeting that is not publicly accessible / open, similar to how earnings releases are available to the entire public at the same time, not just to a few attending... |
If I have 10,000 stocks to sell with 23 B market cap | First a quick terminology correction: I believe you're proposing selling 10,000 shares of the stock of a company, not "10,000 stocks". When you sell, you need to decide whether you're selling for a specific minimum price or just selling for whatever price you can get. If you set a specific lower limit on asking price, ... |
Ghana scam and direct deposit scam? | The reason this sort of question gets asked over and over again is because it's initially difficult to comprehend how you can possibly be scammed if you have no money in your bank account. Perhaps this would make it easier to understand: Someone approaches you in the parking lot of a mall and says, Excuse me, complete ... |
Where to borrow money between college graduation and employment? | You have a few options, none of which are trade off free: Apply for a credit card, and live off of that. Here, of course, you will go into debt, and there are minimums to pay. But, it will tide you over. In any case, you are getting unsecured credit, so your rates will probably be very, very high. You don't want t... |
Why is economic growth so important? | One of the best answers to this question that I've ever read is in a paper published by Robert Lucas in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. That journal is meant to a be a place for experts to write about their area of expertise (in economics) for a general but still technically-minded audience. They recently opened ... |
Is there a term for the risk of investing in an asset with a positive but inferior return? | Opportunity cost is the term you're looking for. I.e. (quoting from link) Definition of 'Opportunity Cost' 1. The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action. |
How to withdraw money from currency account without having to lose so much to currency conversion? | In answer to the "how I can perform withdrawal with the lower rate (having GBP)?" part of your question, as Joe stated you need to use another bank or currency exchange company to convert the GBP to PLN. Most of the UK banks charge similar amounts, and it's usually not possible to transfer the GBP to a foreign bank un... |
Is sales tax for online purchases based on billing- or shipping address? | From my understanding as a seller, and having read through Amazon's 8 page calculation methodology document, the default is the ship to address, however the seller still has the option to charge the tax or not, only charge the state rate and local (city, county, district, etc.) rate(s), or even set their own self-deter... |
Pay off car loan entirely or leave $1 until the end of the loan period? | As an FYI, working for a lending company, I can tell you many have a dollar amount limit that they'll just write off at the end of the month/quarter/etc just to get the loan off the books. It's a little goofy, but I actually bothered to plan ahead and save $9.99 on my student loans since the lender would close out all... |
Cashing a cheque on behalf of someone else | It's possible to cash cheques by post. When I did this, it involved filling out a "paying-in slip" (I had a book of these provided by the bank) and posting the cheque together with the slip to an address provided by the bank. You could also bring the paying-in slip and the cheque to a branch and deposit them there, and... |
Do my 401k/Roth accounts benefit from compounding? | During the course of the year, the S&P individual stocks will have some dividends. Not every last stock but a good number of them. Enough that the average dividend for the S&P has been about 2% recently. So if the S&P index goes up, say 10%, an S&P fund should go up closer to 12%. For a fund holder, you'd normally see... |
How to plan in a budget for those less frequent but mid-range expensive buys? | I use a "sinking" fund. If you want to buy a $1000 bicycle, you put $100 per month into a savings account. 10 months from now, you can buy your $1000 bicycle. If you get a $500 windfall, you can either put it in the sinking fund and buy the item earlier. If you lose some income, you can put $50 per month in the fun... |
What's the fuss about Credit Score / History? | Use credit and pay your bills on time. That's really about it. If you do that, you don't need to think about credit score. It's really a big distraction that is dwelled on too much. |
GBP savings, what to do with them if leaving the U.K. in about 2 years time? | Key point here is to remember that GBP isnt falling a lot, it has fallen a lot already. If you havent liquidated your position in pounds by now at a higher rate I would personally not bother switching to another currency right now. The pound is near its 10 year low(nearing 2008 capital 'C' Crisis levels) and despite ... |
Please explain the relationship between dividend amount, stock price, and option value? | 4) Finally, do all companies reduce their stock price when they pay a dividend? Are they required to? There seems to be confusion behind this question. A company does not set the price for their stock, so they can't "reduce" it either. In fact, nobody sets "the price" for a stock. The price you see reported is simply... |
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 ... |
Do companies that get taken-over have to honour the old gift card/certificate? | It depends completely on the nature of the takeover. When a business is bought, the new owner takes on the obligations of the prior owner, the debts don't just go away. When a business files for bankruptcy, its debts may get discharged, and gift card holders can easily be the first ones to get nothing back. A case in p... |
What are some good ways to control costs for groceries? | Also make a menu and make a shopping list from that. It will help you control how much you buy, and help to enforce only buying what you need. You don't need to limit your menu, but buying what you need in appropriate quantities will help. Don't forget to add snacking and desserts to your menu. |
Multi-year profit/tax question | This is called "Net Operating Loss", and it is in fact applicable for individuals as well. You can, under certain circumstances, have NOL even as an individual. But it is far more common in the corporate world. What happens is that you can carry it back or forward, and get refund on taxes paid or adjust income for taxe... |
Advice on low-risk long-term strategy for extra cash? | You can buy dividend stocks, just buy and hold. you will get cash or extra stock every quarter. You can also sell covered calls on your dividend stocks, this will give you even more cash. you can also... actually this rabbit hole goes very deep. just stick with my first sentence. |
How can I find a report of dividend earned in a FY? | I know this question is old. I also have a kotak trading account. There is no way to get the dividend report from the trading account. The dividend is directly credited to your bank account by the companies through registrar. There is no involvement of trading account in there. So the best possible way will be to get t... |
Which technical indicators are suitable for medium-term strategies? | If I knew a surefire way to make money in FOREX (or any market for that matter) I would not be sharing it with you. If you find an indicator that makes sense to you and you think you can make money, use it. For what it's worth, I think technical analysis is nonsense. If you're just now wading in to the FOREX markets ... |
Should I set a stop loss for long term investments? | This is the exactly wrong thing to do especially in the age of algorithmic trading. Consider this event from 2010: Chart Source Another similar event occurred in 2015 and there was also a currency flash crash in that year. As you can see the S&P 500 (and basically the entire market) dropped nearly 7% in a matter of ... |
Is there a candlestick pattern that guarantees any kind of future profit? | A good poker player lowers the bet on the downside and increases it on the up, by 3 to 10 times. They'll win, and then when the mood swings, generally 3 -5 consecutive downs, it`s time to reduce the bet back to 1. I gambled for a year fulltime - a guest of the house you might say, and I managed to make a living using t... |
My ex sold our car that still had money owed | It is a legal issue for two reasons. In the United States if both names were on the title both people would have had to sign the paperwork in order to transfer the title. If the car was collateral for the loan, then the bank would have had to be involved in the transaction. The portion of the check need to repay the lo... |
Why index funds have different prices? | Price, whether related to a stock or ETF, has little to do with anything. The fund or company has a total value and the value is distributed among the number of units or shares. Vanguard's S&P ETF has a unit price of $196 and Schwab's S&P mutual fund has a unit price of $35, it's essentially just a matter of the fun... |
Opening American credit cards while residing in the UK | Go to the states on vacation. Get a virtual (or friend's) address. Get an ITIN from the IRS. Open a bank account. Get a secured credit card on your next trip from Capital One – add as much money as you can afford. One year later, you should have a decent credit score. |
Issuing bonds at discount - computing effective interest rate | Yes, the "effective" and "market" rates are interchangeable. The present value formula will help make it possible to determine the effective interest rate. Since the bond's par value, duration, and par interest rate is known, the coupon payment can be extracted. Now, knowing the price the bond sold in the market, the d... |
Is it really possible to get rich in only a few years by investing? | You are probably right that using a traditional buy and hold strategy on common equities or funds is very unlikely to generate the types of returns that would make you a millionaire in short order. However, that doesn't mean it isn't possible. You just have to accept a more risk to become eligible for such incredible r... |
Making higher payments on primary residence mortgage or rental? | One advantage of paying down your primary residence is that you can refinance it later for 10-15 years when the balance is low. Refinancing a rental is much harder and interest rates are often higher for investors. This also assumes that you can refinance for a lower rate in the nearest future. The question is really w... |
Where can I find a good online fundamental data provider for Hong Kong stocks? | If you check out China Stock Markets Web provides details on all things that trade on there. It covers the Hang Seng Index, SSE Index, and SSE Component Index. There is also tons of information for investors on the exchange website here. |
What's the difference, if any, between stock appreciation and compound interest? | If you mean, If I invest, say, $1000 in a stock that is growing at 5% per year, versus investing $1000 in an account that pays compound interest of 5% per year, how does the amount I have after 5 years compare? Then the answer is, They would be exactly the same. As Kent Anderson says, "compound interest" simply means ... |
What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? | There are several things that are missing from your estimate: The terms for the mortgage for a rental property will be different. You may be required to have a larger down payment. When approving you for the mortgage they will not count all the rental income as income, they will assume periodic vacancies. This differen... |
How smart is it really to take out a loan right now? | so this is a loan for a house? a loan on a house? a new mortgage? you shouldn't just get a loan for the hell of it any time. interests rates are low because the yields on US treasuries have been pushed closer to zero, and thats pretty much that. the risk is on the bank that approves the loan, and not you. (your ability... |
What risks are there acting as a broker between PayPal and electronic bank transfers? | There are several red flags here. can they get my bank account info in any way from me transferring money to them? Probably yes. Almost all bank transactions are auditable, and intentionally cause a money track. This track can be followed from both sides. If they can use your bank account as if they were you, that is a... |
Are there any credit cards with a statement period longer than 1 month? | If the billing cycle is 2 to 3 months, it would mean Banks have to give credit for a longer period and it makes the entire business less profitable as well as more risky compared to the Monthly billing cycle. For example the current monthly billing cycle with a date say of 14th, means if you swipe your card on 1st day,... |
Should I replace bonds in a passive investment strategy | No. That's the point of a passive strategy: you maintain a more or less constant mix of assets and don't try to figure out what's going to move where. |
Am I “cheating the system” by opening up a tiny account with a credit union and then immediately applying for a huge loan? | Credit unions require you to open an account because of their history. A credit union is just that: a union. Only instead of a union of workers collectively bargaining for better pay or worker's comp, they are lending each other money. They are chartered to offer their services to members of the union, rather than the ... |
Why does short selling require borrowing? | In order to compare the two, you need to compare your entire portfolio, which is not just how much money you have, but how much stock. In both scenarios, you start with (at least, but let's assume) £20 and 0 stock. In your scenario, you buy 10 shares, leaving you with £0 and 10 shares. You then sell it at £1.50/share t... |
Why is it not a requirement for companies to pay dividends? | Cash flow is needed for expansion, either to increase manufacturing capacity or to expand the workforce. Other times companies use it to purchase other companies. Microsoft and Google have both used their cash or stocks to purchase companies. Examples by Google include YouTube, Keyhole (Google Earth), and now part of M... |
Why don't share prices of a company rise every other Friday when the company buys shares for its own employees? | Let's take an example: IBM has about 430,000 employees worldwide. Assume the average yearly salary is $80K (it's probably less, since a lot of jobs are offshore). If every employee took 10% of their pay as stock, that's $132 million every two weeks. But IBM's market capitalization is about $153 billion, so stock pur... |
What is the best credit card for someone with no credit history | You have a lack of credit history. Lending is still tight since the recession and companies aren't as willing to take a gamble on people with no history. The secured credit card is the most direct route to building credit right now. I don't think you're going to be applicable for a department store card (pointless any... |
Should I sell my stocks when the stock hits a 52-week high in order to “Buy Low, Sell High”? | I bought 1000 shares of Apple, when it was $5. And yet, while the purchase was smart, the sales were the dumbest of my life. "You can't go wrong taking a profit" "When a stock doubles sell half and let it ride", etc. It doubled, I sold half, a $5000 gain. Then it split, and kept going up. Long story short, I took gai... |
Any reason to be cautious of giving personal info to corporate fraud departments? | I can't address the psychology of trust involved in your question, but here are some common sense guidelines for dealing with your issue. Make sure you know who you are talking to. Call the company you need to speak to via a publicly available phone number. An email or something you got in a letter might be from a dif... |
GAAP for items that you both sell and make? | First, please allow me to recommend that you do not try gimmickry when financials do give expected results. It's a sure path to disaster and illegality. The best route is to first check if accounts are being properly booked. If they are then there is most likely a problem with the business. Anything out of bounds y... |
How to invest in the Russian oil market? | The Russian ETFs may be broad, but a quick glance at ERUS and RBL's sector breakdown shows they're 45% and 47% energy sector, and their top holding is Gazprom comprising 9% and 14% of each ETF respectively, with plenty more oil and gas companies in their top 10 too. A harder question would be how to invest in Russia a... |
Does dollar cost averaging really work? | Here is a deliberately simple example of Dollar Cost averaging: Day 1: Buy 100 shares at $10. Total value = $1,000. Average cost per share = $10.00/share (easy). Day 2: Buy 100 more shares at $9. Total value = $1,900. Average cost per share = $9.50/share (1,900/200). Notice how your average cost per share went from $10... |
Is there a difference between buying few shares of an expensive stock vs many shares of an inexpensive one? | Before the prevalence of electronic trading, trading stocks was very costly, dropping from ~15c in the late 1970s to less than a nickel per share today. Exchange fees for liquidity takers are ~0.3c per share, currently. When orders were negotiated exclusively by humans, stocks used to be quoted in fractions rather tha... |
I paid a contractor to make roof repairs to a house in my LLC. How can I deduct this cost? | This new roof should go on the 2016 LLC business return, but you probably won't be able to expense the entire roof as a repair. A new roof is most likely a capital improvement, which means that it would need to be depreciated over many years instead of expensed all in 2016. The depreciation period for a residential r... |
How much time should be spent on Penny Stocks Trading a day? | 1) Don't trade individual stocks. You expose yourself to unnecessary risk. 2) Pick a fund with low expenses that pays a dividend. Reinvest the dividend back into the fund. To quote Einstein: The greatest power on earth is compound interest. Something is wrong with the software of the site. It will not allow me to ans... |
CFD market makers: How is the price coupled to the underlying security? | CFD providers typically offer CFDs to investors using either the direct market access (DMA) model or the market maker (MM) model. Direct Market Access The DMA model gives you access to trade the Underlying instrument on the relevant Exchange from which the CFD is then derived. All CFD Transactions under the DMA model h... |
Boyfriend is coowner of a house with his sister, he wants to sell but she doesn't | Dear "benevolent" sister, The mortgage, utilities, and taxes for this home can no longer be paid and the bank will repossess it within the coming months. Thank you for your time |
Can I write off (deduct) expenses in a period where my corporation makes no money? | Your corporation would file a corporate income tax return on an annual basis. One single month of no revenue doesn't mean much in that annual scheme of things. Total annual revenue and total annual expenses are what impact the results. In other words, yes, your corporation can book revenues in (say) 11 of 12 months of ... |
What benefits are there to having a Pension (Retirement Account) In Ireland? | As you point out, the main benefits of a pension/retirement account over a traditional cash/taxable account are the legal and tax benefits. Most Western countries establish a specific legal definition for an account which is often taxed less or not at all relative to taxable accounts and which contains some protection... |
Is there a term that better describes a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) when it is negative? | My experience is in economics, so it may differ from an accounting or personal finance perspective somewhat; that being said, I find it perfectly acceptable to use a term like CAGR when the rate is positive or negative. Economists talk about negative growth rates all the time, and it's universally assumed that growth r... |
Pay off car or use money for down payment | Option 2. Selling the car yourself will give you the best value, especially if you can get its full value. This will cost you time, but will return much better return for your money. Also, I would strongly recommend buying a used car from a private owner (not a dealer), rather than buying a new car. For $14,000 in cash... |
I have more than $250,000 in a US Bank account… mistake? | If you were married the 250K protection can be expanded by the use of joint and individual accounts. A separate limit also exists for IRA accounts. With out those options you will have to put some additional money into another banking institution. This could be a bank or credit union. You have to be careful to make su... |
How is gold shared in worldwide economies? | Money is no longer backed by gold. It's backed by the faith and credit of the issuing government. A new country,say, will first trade goods for dollars or other currency, so its ownership of gold is irrelevant. Its currency will trade at a value based on supply/demand for that currency. If it's an unstable currency, in... |
Why did the price of ASH common stock drop when the market opened on May 15, 2017? | Ashland Global Holdings Inc. (ASH) sold off their ownership in Valvoline Inc. (VVV). Friday, May 12 was the distribution date of the sale; at the end of the day, every stockholder of ASH received 2.745338 shares of VVV stock for each share of ASH held. That is why the value of ASH has dropped significantly on open th... |
What is the best way to stay risk neutral when buying a house with a mortgage? | You can hedge your house price from losing value if you believe that the housing market is correlated with major stock indices. Speak with a commodities broker because they will be able to help you buy puts on stock indices which if correlated with housing prices will offer somewhat of a hedge. Example. House prices dr... |
What evidence is there that rising interest rates causes Canadian condo prices to go down? | In general, prices are inversely proportional to rates; however, accurate interest rate prediction would make one worthy of managing a large credit derivative hedge fund. This is not to say that interest rates cannot go up in Canada since the world is currently undergoing a resource bust, and the United States has begu... |
If Bernie Madoff had invested in Berkshire Hathaway, would the ponzi actually have succeeded? | I could be wrong, but I doubt that Bernie started out with any intention of defrauding anyone, really. I suspect it began the first time he hit a quarter when his returns were lower than everyone else's, or at least not as high as he'd promised his investors they'd be, so he fudged the numbers and lied to get past the... |
How did Bill Gates actually make his money? | Bill was the founder of Microsoft, so he did indeed have a large number of shares as the company was growing exponentially. He has previously donated a large share of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, so his fortune would be even greater were it not for the philanthropy. He is still a large holder... |
Where can I find accurate historical distribution data for mutual funds? | In the case of a specific fund, I'd be tempted to get get an annual report that would disclose distribution data going back up to 5 years. The "View prospectus and reports" would be the link on the site to note and use that to get to the PDF of the report to get the data that was filed with the SEC as that is likely w... |
The difference between Islamic Banks and Western Banks | I'm not sure of the theological basis against usury in sharia law. IIRC, sharia forbids excess compensation, and the modern interpretation of this includes interest. Rules about banking are common in religious faiths. The Catholic church viewed interest as the "selling of time", and since time is a force controlled by... |
Interest charges on balance transfer when purchases are involved | The 'common sense' in it is that they want the maximum money from you while still suggesting to a quick read that you get away free. Their target is not to make you happy, but to make money of you. |
How should I calculate the opportunity cost of using a 401(k) loan? | There is no equation. Only data that would help you come to the decision that's right for you. Assuming the 401(k) is invested in a stock fund of one sort or another, the choice is nearly the same as if you had $5K cash to either invest or pay debt. Since stock returns are not fixed, but are a random distribution tha... |
Do I need multiple credit monitoring services? | Monitoring your credit doesn't do much. There are some vendors that actually have staff to repair your credit/identity. Substantially all of the credit monitoring services do what they say and monitor. If you have a problem they notify you then point you to the place(s) that you can work with to repair the issue. Thi... |
What is the US Fair Tax? | Its a new way of computing sales tax. Wikipedia has a nice article on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax |
Is the best ask price the ask at the “top” of the order book? What is the “top” of the book? | You're confusing a specific visual representation of the top bid & ask orders selected from the order book with the actual "top of the book". "Top" in the sense of the "top of the book" is a ranking (by order of "best", different for bids vs. asks) and not meant to be strictly a visual positioning on a page or screen.... |
Canada discount stock brokers: Interactive Brokers vs. Questrade? | I have had accounts at both IB and Questrade. Whatever you've heard about Questrade, sadly much of it is true pertaining to 2007-2009. I have not had any issues with their service, and making the few trades I do with the QuestraderWEB service has been flawless. In the time that I've had the account, their service has c... |
How does historical data get adjusted for dividends, exactly? | According to Active Equity Management by Zhou and Jain: When a stock pays dividend, the adjusted price in Yahoo makes the following adjustment: Let T be the ex-dividend date (the first date that the buyers of a stock will not receive the dividend) and T-1 be the last trading day before T. All prices before T are adjust... |
Why are credit cards preferred in the US? | For me, it is mostly for the fraud protection. If I have a debit card and someone makes a fraudulent charge the money is removed from my bank account. From my understanding, I can then file a fraud complaint with the bank to recover my money. However, for some period of time, the money is missing from my bank account... |
Why are taxes on actively managed funds higher than those on index funds? | First, consider what causes taxes to apply to a mutual fund, index or actively managed. Dividends and capital gains are generally what will be distributed to shareholders given the nature of a mutual fund since the fund itself doesn't pay taxes. For funds held in IRAs or other tax-advantaged accounts, this isn't a co... |
Can a put option and call option be exercised for the same stock with different strike prices? | What you did is called a "strangle." It's rather unlikely that both will be exercised on the same day. But yes, it can happen. That is if the market is very volatile on a given day, so that the stock hits 13 in the morning, the put gets exercised, and then hits 15 later in the day, so the call gets exercised. Or vice ... |
How can I verify that a broker I found online is legitimate? | (I answered a similar question before.) Essentially, you shouldn't trust a site you find on the Internet merely because it looks professional and real. Before signing up with any new service provider you found online, you should verify the authenticity of both the organization itself and their web site address. Even i... |
Formula that predicts whether one is better off investing or paying down debt | I ended up writing a simulation in R. Here is my code: It produces a plot like this: This code assumes you have a lump sum and either wish to pay down a loan or invest it all immediately. Feedback welcome. |
Does gold's value decrease over time due to the fact that it is being continuously mined? | The previous answers have raised very good points, but I believe one facet of this has been neglected. While it's true that the total accessible supply of gold keeps growing(although rather slowly as was mentioned earlier) the fact remains that gold, like oil, is a non-renewable natural resource. So, at some point, we ... |
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