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Why are stocks having less institutional investors a “good thing”?
Let’s turn this round. Now what if the only people willing to own part of company are doing it due to the expectation that they will make money in the short term form the company….
Return of value to shareholders in an ISA
You will receive a combination of Verizon shares and cash whether you chose option B or C. Option B means that your "Return of Value" will be treated as capital - ie: as a capital gain. Option C means that your "Return of Value" will be treated as income - ie: as a dividend. As your ISA has favourable tax status, you d...
Tax question about selling a car
I don't think there's much you can do. Losses from the sale of personal-use automobiles (used for pleasure, commuting, etc) are not deductible as capital losses. See IRS Tax Topic 409, end of the first paragraph. The expenses you incurred in owning and operating the car (insurance, fuel, maintenance, service plans, e...
Will my current employer find out if I have a sole proprietarship/corporation?
Tell your employer during your initial contract Terms of Service discussions. Ordinarily, this is boilerplate but you should ask for a rider in your contract which says - in some form - I already have IP, I will continue to work on this IP in my own time, and any benefit or opportunity derived from this IP will contin...
How to continuously plot futures data
Note that the series you are showing is the historical spot index (what you would pay to be long the index today), not the history of the futures quotes. It's like looking at the current price of a stock or commodity (like oil) versus the futures price. The prompt futures quote will be different that the spot quote. I...
Missing opportunity cost of mortgage prepayment
You seem to really have your financial act together. Your combination of assets, and ongoing savings makes you the ideal candidate for paying it off. One way to look at it is that your mortgage offers you a place to 'invest' at a fixed 2-7/8% rate. "I'd really like to not have a house payment" is all I need to hear. ...
Identity theft?
Assuming you live in the US, it is quite normal when you are applying for a loan that the application will ask you to confirm your identity. One of these methods is to ask you which of the following addresses you have lived at, with some of them being very similar (i.e. same city, or maybe even the same street). Someti...
What are the alternatives to compound interest for a Muslim?
Invest in growth stocks which do not pay any dividends (Note that some part of the dividends issued by a corporation might be from interest received by the company and passed on to you as a dividend); Buy a house from a bank that practices Islamic Banking. See this question which you yourself answered a few weeks ago t...
Paying off a loan with a loan to get a better interest rate
If it's possible in your case to get such a loan, then sure, providing the loan fees aren't in excess of the interest rate difference. Auto loans don't have the fees mortgages do, but check the specific loan you're looking at - it may have some fees, and they'd need to be lower than the interest rate savings. Car loan...
Why can't the Fed lower interest rates below zero?
If the Federal Reserve were to pay banks to hold money, they would need to get the money from somewhere to do so. They would have three options: Go to Congress, and request and authorization of funds. As an quasi-independent entity, however, it would be both highly unorthodox for an institution to diminish its own aut...
Are the stocks of competitor companies negatively correlated?
Not especially. It depends on why sales have changed. If it's just consumer demand, that affects everyone in parallel rather than pushing in opposite direactions. If it's changes other than sales, that may have no effect on other companies. If it's because someone introduced the next must-have-it device and they're sel...
401k vs. real estate for someone who is great at saving?
With an appropriate selection within a 401K and if operating expenses are low, you get tax deferred savings and possibly a lower tax bracket for now. The returns vary of course with market fluctuations but for almost 3 years it has been double digit growth on average. Some health care sector funds were up over 40% la...
What options do I have at 26 years old, with 1.2 million USD?
Wow, everyone tells you different investment strategies. You have all your life ahead of you. Your main focus should not be getting the best return rate, but ensuring your existence. Who cares if you get 7% if you'll lose all in the next market crash and stand on the street with no education, no job and nothing to fall...
Tools to evaluate REITs
REIT's are a different beast than your normal corporate stock (such as $AAPL). Here is a good article to get you started. From there you can do some more research into what you think you will need to truly evaluate an REIT. How To Assess A Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Excerpt: When evaluating REITs, you will ...
How much should a new graduate with new job put towards a car?
I have a slightly different take on this, compared to the other answers. In general, I think your emergency fund should always be at least 3K, especially if you own a used car that is out of warranty. Any number of unlucky auto repairs could easily cost over 2K. So, if you have 7K in savings, I would personally buy a c...
I have $12k in a Chase checking account, but want to start earning interest/saving/investing/etc to make more money. What should I do?
Lets make some assumptions. You are not close to retirement. You have no other debts. You have a job. You have no big need for the money. You should invest that. Do not invest with a bank, they are not as competitive on fees as a brokerage account. You can get specific answers that are different from every person...
What is the best approach to save money for College for three kids?
I'm not a 'rule of thumb' guy, but here, I'd suggest that if you can set aside 10% of your income each year for college, that would be great. That turns out to be $900/mo. In 15 years, if you saw an 8% CAGR, you'd have $311K which happens to be in your range of expenses. And you'd still have time to go as the baby won...
What would be the signs of a bubble in silver?
The problem with commodities is that they don't produce income. With a stock or bond, even if you never sold it to anyone or it wasn't publicly traded, you know you can collect the money the company makes or collect interest. That's a quantifiable income from the security. By computing the present value of that income ...
Clarification on options jargon regarding spreads
Yes. It seems to me you got it right. On my site, Stock Options Cafe, my last post was an illustration of a bullish call spread. In this case, I bought a 50 call, and sold the 60 call. This is a debit order as I was paying money, not collecting a new premium.
Is selling put options an advisable strategy for a retiree to generate stable income?
There is only one way to create "stable" income using options: write COVERED calls. This means you must own some stocks which offer an active and liquid option market (FB would be good; T would be useless.) In other words, you need to own some "unstable" stocks, tickers that have sometimes scary volatility, and of co...
Market Making vs Market Taking (Quotes vs Orders)
This is too lengthy for a comment. The following quoted passages are excerpted from this Money SE post. Before electronic trading and HFTs specifically, trading was thin and onerous. No. The NYSE and AMEX were deep, liquid and transparent for nearly 75 years prior to high frequency trading (HFT), in 2000 or so. The s...
Online Foreign Exchange Brokerages: Which ones are good & reputable for smaller trades?
There are many good brokers available in the market and many spammers too. Personally I have been associated with FXCM since 2001 and have never faced any problem. But everyone has their own personal choice and I recommend you to make your own. But the question is how to find out which broker is a good broker and would...
Appropriate model for deferred costs as a line-of-credit
There's no standard formula. You can compare the going rates on the market for unsecured LOCs and take that as the starting anchor. Unsecured lines of credit run in the US at about 8-18%. Your risk should be reflected in the rate, and I see no reason why the rate would change throughout the loan. As to the amount of pr...
Why do 10 year-old luxury cars lose so much value?
+1 They are over priced to begin with - More specifically they are expensive to create exclusivity, which raises their value to people who value that kind of thing. Perhaps folks who buy those cars aren't buying them for value or quality or performance, but are buying them for the badge and the intangible factors. I f...
Do real nappies (reusable / cloth diapers) really save money?
I just remembered a blog post at CashMoneyLife - Cloth Diapers vs. Disposable Diapers. I had come across it a little while after posting my answer to a question at moms4mom.com - What can I expect to spend monthly on disposable diapers? And what do/did you spend? and I had linked to it from there, too, since it contai...
What does bank do with “Repaid Principal”?
Does it add to their lending reserves or is it utilized in other ways? It depends on how the economy and the bank in particular are doing. To simplify things greatly, banks get deposits and lend (or otherwise invest) the majority of those deposits. They must keep some percentage in reserve in case depositors want to ma...
How best to grow my small amount of money starting at a young age? [duplicate]
(Congrats on earning/saving $3K and not wanting to blow it all on immediate gratification!) I currently have it invested in sector mutual funds but with the rise and fall of the stock market, is this really the best way to prepare long-term? Long-term? Yes! However... four years is not long term. It is, in fact, bord...
Options liquidity and trading positions larger than the daily volume?
You definitely cannot be guaranteed to get the bid or ask if you are selling more than are available/desired at those prices. What prices you do get depends on who is watching that contract and how willing they are to trade with you. This question is not much different from the question of whether you can easily get in...
How do I know when I am financially stable/ready to move out on my own?
It all depends on what your financial goals are when you are ready. You sound like you could be ready today if you wanted to be. The steps that I would take are. Create a monthly draft budget. This doesn't have to be something hard and fast, just a gague of what your living expenses would be compared to your after-t...
What is the difference between a scrip dividend and a stock split?
Most corporations have a limit on the number of shares that they can issue, which is written into their corporate charter. They usually sell a number that is fewer than the maximum authorized number so that they have a reserve for secondary offerings, employee incentives, etc. In a scrip dividend, the company is distr...
Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do?
I don't want to repeat things that have already been said as I agree with most of them. There's just one little thing I'd like to add: If things go the way we're all expecting, this guy will eventually be in desperate need of a friend as he is extremely likely to lose most of his friends sooner or later. Perhaps all yo...
Historic prices for currencies, commodities,
My guess it's a legal agreement between Yahoo and data provider on what data can be stored, displayed and for how long. Check out this list of data providers
One of my stocks dropped 40% in 2 days, how should I mentally approach this?
You shouldn't be picking stocks in the first place. From New York Magazine, tweeted by Ezra Klein: New evidence for that reality comes from Goldman Sachs, via Bloomberg News. The investment bank analyzed the holdings of 854 funds with $2.1 trillion in equity positions. It found, first of all, that all those “sophistica...
What is the different between one company's two OTCMKTS symbols?
I have not looked in details but apparently the company has (at least) a dual listing in Hong Kong (its main listing, ticker 700) and in the US (ticker TCTZF). It also has an ADR (TCEHY), the underlying of which is the HK line. The two US listings essentially trade at the same price and will provide very similar return...
I carelessly invested in a stock on a spike near the peak price. How can I salvage my investment?
If the company is stable. I like to recoup losses by buying in the valley and selling it all at the plateau and then learning as all beginners do, don't buy stocks because there's a feeding frenzy...or because Joe told me too. Pick your strategy in stocks and learn to stick with that. If you have no strategy, buy land...
~$75k in savings - Pay off house before new home?
As others have said, congratulations on saving up 75K in cash while seemingly not neglecting other areas of personal finance. Considering that only 15% of Americans have more than 10K saved this is quite a feat. source If you sell your old house, and buy the new one you will still be in really good financial shape. ...
Can everyday people profit from unexpected world events?
The NYSE is not the only exchange in the world (or even the only one in the USA). Amazingly, the London stock exchange works on London time, the Shanghai exchange works on Shanghai time and the Australian stock exchange works on Sydney time. In addition futures exchanges work overnight.
Why do people always talk about stocks that pay high dividends?
There are strategies based on yields. Dogs of the Dow being a specific example while Miller Howard has a few studies around dividends that may be of use if you additional material. Selling off a portion of the holding can run into problems as how could one hold 10 shares, selling a non-zero whole number every year for ...
Non Resident Alien(Working full time on F1-OPT) new car sales tax deduction
A non-resident alien is only allowed for deductions connected to producing a US-sourced income (See IRC Sec. 873). Thus you can only deduct things that qualify as business expenses, and State taxes on your wages. In addition you can deduct a bunch of stuff explicitly allowed (like tax preparation, charitable contributi...
Why would anyone want to pay off their debts in a way other than “highest interest” first?
It is true that all else being equal, you will pay a lower amount of total interest by paying down your highest interest rate debts first. However, all else is not always equal. I'm going to try to come up with some reasons why it might be better in some circumstances to pay your debts in a different order. And I'll...
Ballpark salary equivalent today of “healthcare benefits” in the US?
There is some magic involved in that calculation, because what health insurance is worth to you is not necessarily the same it is worth for the employer. Two examples that illustrate the extreme ends of the spectrum: let's say you or a family member have a chronic or a serious illness, especially if it is a preexisting...
It's possible to short a stock without paying interest?
As others have said: unless you can find someone willing to make a zero-interest loan, the answer is no. If you can figure out how to turn a "0% for first N months" credit card offer onto a leveraged investment or something of that sort -- seems unlikely -- maybe.
What pension options are there for a 22 year old graduate in the UK?
I wouldn't go into a stock market related investment if you plan on buying a house in 4-5 years, you really need to tie money up in stocks for 10 years plus to be confident of a good return. Of course, you might do well in stocks over 4-5 years but historically it's unlikely. I'd look for a safe place to save some mon...
Would it be considered appropriate to use a market order for my very first stock trade?
Difference between a limit and market order is largely a trade-off between price certainty and timing certainty. If you think the security is already well priced, the downside of a limit order is the price may never hit your limit and keep trading away from you. You'll either spend a lot of time amending your order or ...
How can an Indian citizen get exposure to global markets?
You can invest upto $200K per year abroad, and yes, you can buy Google as a stock. Consider opening an international account with a broker like interactive brokers (www.interactivebrokers.co.in) which allows you to fund the account from your local Indian account, and then on, buy shares of companies listed abroad.
Abundance of Cash - What should I do?
There's a few different types of investments you could do. As poolie mentioned, you could split your money between the Vanguard All World ex-US and Vanguard Total Stock Market index. A similar approach would be to invest in the Vanguard Total World Stock ETF. You wouldn't have to track separate fund performances, at th...
What does inflation mean to me?
Everyone buys different kinds of goods. For example I don't smoke tobacco so I'm not affected by increased tobacco prices. I also don't have a car so I'm not affected by the reduced oil prices either. But my landlord increased the monthly fee of the apartment so my cost of living per month suddenly increased more than ...
Why is it good to borrow money to buy a house?
In most cases of purchases the general advice is to save the money and then make the purchase. Paying cash for a car is recommended over paying credit for example. For a house, getting a mortgage is recommended. Says who? These rules of thumb hide the actual equations behind them; they should be understood as heu...
Is 401k as good as it sounds given the way it is taxed?
When you are investing for 40 years, you will have taxable events before retirement. You'll need to pay tax along the way, which will eat away at your gains. For example, in your taxable account, any dividends and capital gain distributions will need taxes paid each year. In your 401(k) or IRA, these are not taxable ...
In a buy order with a trigger, will I pay the current ask or the buy price in the order?
I think that if the price does not go very far up, then your order will open on 101, because you are setting a limit order, if suddenly the price goes up very quickly or with a gep even, then you may not be given a position. But this is with a limit order and it is better to check with the broker. There are also warran...
How does high frequency trading work if money isn't available for 2-3 days after selling?
Purchases and sales from the same trade date will both settle on the same settlement date. They don't have to pay for their purchases until later either. Because HFT typically make many offsetting trades -- buying, selling, buying, selling, buying, selling, etc -- when the purchases and sales settle, the amount they pa...
Ordering from Canada, charged in CAD or USD?
Typically, businesses always charge their 'home' currency, so if the shop is in Canada, you will pay Canadian Dollars. Normally you don't have any choices either. Your credit card company will convert it to your currency, using the current international currency exchange rate (pretty good), plus a potential fee between...
Evidence for timing market in the short run?
This is the S&P a bit over 20 years. If you've discovered a way to sell at 1400 in 2000, buy at 800 or so in 2003, sell again, well, you get the idea. There's strong evidence the typical investor hears the S&P is making new highs and rushes in. It's this influx that may send stocks higher from here, until the smart mo...
What happens to people without any retirement savings?
Social security was created with just such people in mind. It's a meager living, but it is an income stream that can be supplemented by Walmart greeter income. It probably isn't so dire that it leads to homelessness, but it might mean not having some of the other comforts that we take for granted.
Options revisited: Gold fever
gold is incredibly volatile, I tried spreadbetting on it. During the month of its highest gain, month beginning to month end, I was betting it would go up - and I still managed to lose money. It went down so much, that my stop loss margin would kick in. Don't do things with gold in the short term its a very small an...
Why do car rental companies prefer/require credit over debit cards?
A few reasons make sense: They have a defined process for rentals, risk assessment, and customer credit. Especially for a large corporation, making changes to that process is not trivial, adds risk/uncertainty, and will be costly. Such changes for a relatively small customer base might not makes sense. Many rental comp...
What is the difference between “good debt” vs. “bad debt”?
First of all debt is a technology that allows borrower to bring forward their spending; it's a financial time machine. From borrowers point of view debt is good when it increases overall economic utility. A young person wants to bring up a family but cannot afford the house. Had they waited for 30 years they would hav...
Why would someone buy a way out-of-the-money call option that's expiring soon?
It could be that the contracts were bought at cheaper prices such as $.01 earlier in the day. What you see there with the bid and ask is the CURRENT bid and CURRENT ask. The high ask price means there is no current liquidity, as someone is quoting a very high ask price just in case someone really wants to trade that pr...
which types of investments should be choosen for 401k at early 20's?
Split your contributions evenly across the funds on that list with the word "core" or "S&P" in the name. Maybe add "International Large Cap Index". Leave it & rebalance occasionally. Read a book on Modern Portfolio Theory sometime in the next 5 years.
Stock market transaction cost calculation
An order is your command to the broker to, say, "sell 100 shares of AAPL". An executed order (or partially executed order) is when all (or some) of that command is successfully completed. A transaction is an actual exchange of shares for money, and there may be one or more transactions per executed order. For example,...
What are some time tested passive income streams?
You could buy debt/notes or other instruments that pay out periodically. Some examples are If there is an income stream you can discount the present value and then buy it/own the rights to income stream. Typically you pay a discounted price for the face value and then receive the income stream over time.
Should I pay myself a dividend or a salary?
In cases like this you should be aware that tax treaties may exist and that countries are generally willing to enter into them. Their purpose is to help prevent double taxation. Tax treaties often times give you a better tax rate than even being a resident of the countries in question! (For instance, the Italy to US ta...
Is it worth buying real estate just to safely invest money?
Investment is very uncertain, so I believe that unless you have loads of money, you should not play around with houses for the sole purpose of investing. Here are the questions which I would consider to judge the situation. Note that this is based on the current situation in The Netherlands Income: Your income is 1800 ...
Indie Software Developers - How do I handle taxes?
First of all, consult an accountant who is familiar with tax laws and online businesses. While most accountants know tax laws, fewer know how to handle online income like you describe although the number is growing. Right now, since you're a minor, this complicates things a bit. That's why you'll need a tax accountant ...
What should I do with my paper financial documents?
I won't add to the timelines, as I agree or don't care but my two cents are
Should I invest in real estate to rent, real estate to live in, or just stocks and bonds to earn 10-15%?
That your asking is a good first step towards taking control of your future. But truly, you must seek the advice of a personal consultant that is much more in tune with your finances that anyone out here in the public will be. You can get this type of advice locally, or if you want something online, I suggest oDesk or...
Job Offer - Explain Stock Options [US]
An option is a financial instrument instrument that gives you the right, but not the obligation, to do some transaction in the future at a given price. An employee stock option is a kind of "call option" -- it gives you the right, but not the obligation, to buy the stock at a certain price (the "exercise price", usuall...
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. (...
Paying restaurants in cash instead of credit card - how signficant is this?
Credit cards charge about 2% fee from merchants. This is already priced into the restaurant menu. Generally, dealing with cash will not cost the merchant significantly less since he needs to make more trips to the bank, pay fees for frequent cash deposits (banks charge per operation), and maintain a safe location for s...
I got my bank account closed abruptly how do I get money out?
First, if your account has been closed you should not be able to use your debit card in any format. As you mentioned that you are able to use that so your back account is active. So this indicates it is a scam In case account is closed, bank confirms your address and will send you a cheque for the amount in your accou...
TD Webbroker.ca did not execute my limit sell order even though my stock went .02 over limit
TD will only sell the stock for you if there's a buyer. There was a buyer, for at least one transaction of at least one stock at 96.66. But who said there were more? Obviously, the stocks later fell, i.e.: there were not that many buyers as there were sellers. What I'm saying is that once the stock passed/reached the l...
Why would you elect to apply a refund to next year's tax bill?
If you expect your taxes to be higher next year, it saves you the trouble of sending estimates or changing the withholding levels. But yes, its basically a free loan you're giving to the government.
Are there any banks with a command-line style user interface?
Some banks would allow you to export your transactions as CSV (they call it Excel export, but in many cases it's actually just CSV). However, I would not expect any bank to bother with creating anything like command-line access - return on such investment would be too low. There are other ways to get information out o...
Does gold's value decrease over time due to the fact that it is being continuously mined?
There is another aspect too for the high prices of GOLD. After the current economical crisis people are no more investing in property and a big chunk of investment has been diverted to GOLD.
I'm about to be offered equity by my employer. What should I expect?
Yes, what they said. You don't mention where you are on the totem pole. Are you reporting to the top dog, or are you 3 levels down? Not to be a downer, but until you know your cut, I'd not get too excited either way. 1000 shares/options of a LinkedIn turned to nearly $100K. Nothing to sneeze at, to be sure, but not eno...
Should I overpay to end a fixed-rate mortgage early? [duplicate]
I would strongly encourage you to either find specifically where in your written contract the handling of early/over payments are defined and post it for us to help you, or that you go and visit a licensed real estate attorney. Even at a ridiculously high price of 850 pounds per hour for a top UK law firm (and I suspec...
How can I lookup the business associated with a FEIN?
If the organization is a non-profit. You can search by EIN on Charity Navigator's website FOR FREE. https://www.charitynavigator.org/
Does the bid price of a stock change depending on which brokerage I am using?
They could have different quotes as there are more than a few pieces here. Are you talking a Real Time Level II quote or just a delayed quote? Delayed quotes could vary as different companies would be using different time points in their data. You aren't specifying exactly what kind of quote from which system are yo...
Is paying off your mortage a #1 personal finance priority?
Paying off your mortgage early being good is a myth. It is great for the chronic overspenders to have their mortgage paid off so when they rack up credit card bills and get behind, well they still hae a place to stay. But for those who are more logical with their money paying off your mortgage early in current conditi...
What ways are there for us to earn a little extra side money?
Have you considered doing some small freelance programming jobs? One site I like for this type of thing is eLance.com, but I am sure there are others. Heck, you are soon going to be up all night anyway, why not earn some cash during those hours the rest of us foolishly waste on sleep?
Do I have to explain the source of *all* income on my taxes?
Nah. Fill it in on the line that says "Other Income" with type of "5th Amendment". There's lots of reasons why you might want to do this, and it's the government's job to find out which one, and they're not allowed to use the bare fact that you put 5th Amendment there to open an investigation.
Settling before T+3?
It is possible but unlikely. Securities firms would prefer never to settle externally; rather, they prefer to wait until the liabilities can be netted. They are forced to make and take payment in three business days. The reason why is because settlement is costly in the same way as any other business would prefer to b...
Deductions greater than Income : Traditional IRA to Roth Conversion?
Yes. A most emphatic yes. I suggest you look at your 2014 return and project what 2015 will look like. I'd convert enough to "top off" the 15% bracket. Note, if you overshoot it, and in April 2016, see that you are say $5K into the 25% rate, you can just recharacterize the amount you went over and nail the bracket to ...
Is there a free, online stock screener for UK stocks?
I use and recommend barchart.com. Again you have to register but it's free. Although it's a US system it has a full listing of UK stocks and ETFs under International > London. The big advantage of barchart.com is that you can do advanced technical screening with Stochastics and RS, new highs and lows, moving averages e...
Insurance broker - Online vs. physical location?
Traditional insurance agent guy here. There is no right answer in my opinion because your individual needs cannot be generalized. There are a variety of factors that influence the price charged to you including but not limited to your past claims history, geographic location, credit profile, and the carrier's book...
Net money invested in Stock indexes ended up in red
Not sure where you got the 296 crores figure. The data on the sheet shows activity by category of investors. In the end NET of all BUY and SELL across all categories will always be Zero. It has no bearing on whether the stock market goes up or goes down. If you compare only activity by certain category, say FII then th...
Is engaging in stocks without researching unwise?
If you don't want to do the deep research on each individual company, you might want to look at index funds and similar "whole market" investments.
Online brokers with a minimum stock purchase lower than $500
The $500 minimum is a policy of the ASX. As such any broker that offered a different policy would not be offering direct purchase of exchange traded shares. Note however that this policy applies only to the initial purchase. From the CMC FAQs: The ASX requires a minimum parcel of $500 to be traded if you don’t currentl...
Asset allocation when retirement is already secure
he general advice I get is that the younger you are the more higher risk investments you should include in your portfolio. I will be frank. This is a rule of thumb given out by many lay people and low-level financial advisors, but not by true experts in finance. It is little more than an old wive's tale and does not c...
Should I sell and rebuy stocks before the end of the year to trigger a gain and offset capital losses?
You have multiple issues buried within this question. First, we don't know your tax bracket. For my answer, I'll assume 25%. This simply means that in 2016, you'll have a taxable $37,650 or higher. The interesting thing is that losses and gains are treated differently. A 25%er's long term gain is taxed at 15%, yet los...
Is my wash sale being calculated incorrectly?
According to Wikipedia this is still a wash sale: In the USA wash sale rules are codified in "26 USC § 1091 - Loss from wash sales of stock or securities." Under Section 1091, a wash sale occurs when a taxpayer sells or trades stock or securities at a loss, and within 30 days before or after the sale:
US Banks offering Security Tokens in 2012
Charles Schwab and HSBC offer security tokens.
I cosigned for a friend who is not paying the payment
The point of co-signing for a friend is that they're your friend. You signed for them in the belief that your friendship would ensure they didn't burn you. If your friend has hung you out to dry, basically they aren't your friend any more. Before you lawyer up, how's about talking to your friend as a friend? Sure he...
Ongoing things to do and read to improve knowledge of finance?
Before you can truly learn, you must unlearn first. I recommend the book "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Taleb.
Why do people use mortgages, when they could just pay for the house in full?
Condensed to the essence: if you can reliably get more income from investing the cost of the house than the mortgage is costing you, this is the safest leveraged investment you'll ever make. There's some risk, of course, but there is risk in any financial decision. Taking the mortgage also leaves you with far greater f...
Who can truly afford luxury cars?
In addition to those who are wealthy (not the same as high income), there are also a certain number of people whose professional livelihood is enhanced by projecting wealth/income they may or may not have. For example, some consultants, lawyers, financial advisors or other salespeople. The same is true of luxury homes ...
Does the P/E ratio not apply to bond ETFs?
How would you compute the earnings for governments that are some of the main issuers of bonds and debt? When governments run deficits they would have a negative earnings ratio that makes the calculation quite hard to evaluate.
How to calculate how much a large stock position is really worth?
I don't have a formula for anything like this, but it is important to note that the "current value" of any asset is really theoretical until you actually sell it. For example, let's consider a house. You can get an appraisal done on your house, where your home is inspected, and the sales of similar houses in your area...
Shorting: What if you can't find lenders?
Your question has 6 questions marks along with comments on what you'd like to know. Yes, there are stocks that are tough to short, a combination of low float, high current short positions, etc. Interest charged on the position rises in a supply/demand fashion. To unwind the position, there's always going to be stock ...
How does a bank make money on an interest free secured loan?
A "true" 0% loan is a losing proposition for the bank, that's true. However when you look at actual "0%" loans they usually have some catches: There might also be late payment fees, prepayment penalties, and other clauses that make it a good deal on average to the bank. Individual borrowers might be able to get away ...