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Stock Trade Transaction Fee - at what point is it worth it | I'm going to assume that you want to be invested all the time and each trade consists in selling a security and buying another one (similar to your example). How much commissions you are willing to pay depends on several factors, but one way to think about it is as follows. You have a position in stock A and you want to switch to stock B because you think it will perform better. If you think there's a good chance (>50%) that B will outperform A by more than x% then you can happily pay up to x/2% commissions and still make money over a long time horizon. If you like formulae, one way to express it is: Where: Example: if you tend to be right 51% of the time (hit rate), and gain 110% more than you lose on average (win loss ratio), you can see that your expected profit is: 5.1% - commissions, so you could pay 2.5% commissions on entering and closing the position and still make money*. Unfortunately, common sense, statistics and numerous studies tell us a sad truth: on average, people have a hit rate of 50% and a win/loss ratio of 100%. Which means that their expected profit per trade is 0% - commission. Based on that crude observation - unless you can prove to yourself that you are better than average - you should aim at reducing commissions paid to your broker as much as possible through: * 51% and 110% are not random numbers, they correspond to the results of the top 15% (professional) managers in a research paper using a sample of 215 funds managing $150bn. |
Why are Rausch Coleman houses so cheap? Is it because they don't have gas? | In northwest Arkansas, most of the houses this company offers do cost about 90 - 110 dollars per square foot. The exceptions use the Whitney plan, which has the following design features (and/or problems) which happen to save the builder a lot of money: One very nice feature is the U-shaped stairway in the center of the house. It is easy to find, and has an angled landing. It might be a bit narrow, though. Does the builder bother to put rebar in the brickwork? Arkansas is in earthquake country. What are the floors like? Is the first floor a slab concrete floor with vinyl flooring (and/or carpet on thin pad) immediately above the concrete? Is the second floor bouncy, due to using long-span joists of code-minimum size? Does the builder bother to make the rear windows look as nice as the front windows? As mentioned earlier, the builder only bothers to have one side window. Where to learn more: Fernando Pagés Ruiz is a Nebraska homebuilder who wrote a book on Building the Affordable House: Trade Secrets for High-Value, Low-Cost Construction (The Taunton Press, 2005). He has also written many articles in Fine Homebuilding, including "Building Affordable Houses". True North Consulting specializes in helping builders eliminate waste and "value-engineer" their designs. True North often works with Tim Garrison, the self-proclaimed "builder's engineer". |
question about short selling stocks | My take on this is that with any short-selling contract you are engaging in, at a specified time in the future you will need to transfer ownership of the item(s) you sold to the buyer. Whether you own the item(s) or in your case you will buy your friend's used car in the meantime (or dig enough gold out of the ground - in the case of hedging a commodity exposure) is a matter of "trust". Hence there is normally some form of margin or credit-line involved to cover for you failing to deliver on expiry. |
When Employees are “Granted” Stock Options, is the Company encouraging Long-Term investments from them? | There are two things to consider: taxes - beneficial treatment for long-term holding, and for ESPP's you can get lower taxes on higher earnings. Also, depending on local laws, some share schemes allow one to avoid some or all on the income tax. For example, in the UK £2000 in shares is treated differently to 2000 in cash vesting - restricted stocks or options can only be sold/exercised years after being granted, as long as the employee keeps his part of the contract (usually - staying at the same place of works through the vesting period). This means job retention for the employees, that's why they don't really care if you exercise the same day or not, they care that you actually keep working until the day when you can exercise arrives. By then you'll get more grants you'll want to wait to vest, and so on. This would keep you at the same place of work for a long time because by quitting you'd be forfeiting the grants. |
What happens if my order exceeds the bid or ask sizes? | Sure. Depending on how you configure your order, it will either be fulfilled partially or wait until it can be fulfilled. You can set a time limit on your order (usually its either 1 day or 60 days, but may vary between brokerages), and allow or disallow partial fulfilment. |
What can I replace Microsoft Money with, now that MS has abandoned it? | If you would like to use linux I suggest you to use KMyMoney http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/ It is based on gnucash but it is easier to use IMO |
Who can I get to help me roll my 401(k) into an IRA when I live overseas? | It is typically very easy to roll a 401(k) into an IRA. Companies that provide IRA's are very experienced with it, and I would expect that they will take your calls from overseas. You will likely be able to do it over the internet without using a phone at all. Just open an IRA with any brokerage company (Scottrade, Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, Ameritrade, etc.) and follow instructions to roll your 401(k) into it. Most likely they will need your signature, but usually a scan of a form you have filled out will do. Be sure to have information on your 401(k) provider, including your account number there, on hand. These companies are all very reputable and this is not a difficult transaction. There's really no downside to rolling into an IRA. 401(k) plans usually have more limited options and/or worse fee structures and are frequently harder to work with, as you have observed. |
Which credit card is friendliest to merchants? | Back when they started, Discover undercut Visa and Amex fees by about a point. This was also true when I worked for a mail-order computer retailer in the '90s: if a customer asked us which credit cards we took, we were told to list Discover first (and AmEx last) because Discover had the lowest merchant charges. Possibly this is no longer true today, but for quite a while it was a significant selling point of the Discover card to merchants, and a reason why many did sign on. (A reason some stores did not sign on was that Discover was owned by Sears, and many businesses that competed with Sears didn't like the idea of sending any of their profits to the competition.) Today, Discover also owns Diners Club and the fees for those cards are higher. |
Why can't the Fed lower interest rates below zero? | Keep in mind that the Federal Reserve Chairman needs to be very careful with his use of words. Here's what he said: It is arguable that interest rates are too high, that they are being constrained by the fact that interest rates can't go below zero. We have an economy where demand falls far short of the capacity of the economy to produce. We have an economy where the amount of investment in durable goods spending is far less than the capacity of the economy to produce. That suggests that interest rates in some sense should be lower rather than higher. We can't make interest rates lower, of course. (They) only can go down to zero. And again I would argue that a healthy economy with good returns is the best way to get returns to savers. So what does that mean? When he says that "we can't make interest rates lower", that doesn't mean that it isn't possible. He's saying that our demand for goods is lower than our ability to produce them. Negative interest would actually make that problem worse -- if I know that things will cost less in a month, I'm not going to buy anything. The Fed is incentivizing spending by lowering the cost of capital to zero. By continuing this policy, they are eventually going to bring on inflation, which will reduce the value of the currency -- which gives people and companies that are sitting on money an dis-incentive to continue hoarding it. |
If I were to get audited, what would I need? | While IANAL (tax or otherwise), I have always found that keeping original receipts is the only way to go. While anything can, at some level, be forged or faked, a photo is one more step removed from the original. A mere listing on a web site isn't much proof of anything. Keep your originals for a suggested seven years; while the IRS is trying to audit much faster than that, and any inkling of fraud can be investigated at any time, you should be well and clear with originals kept that long. |
I have an extra 1000€ per month, what should I do with it? | As many before me said but will say again for the sake of completeness of an answer: First off provision to have an emergency fund of 6 months living expenses to cover loss of employment, unforeseen medical issues etc. When that is done you re free to start investing. Do remember that putting all your eggs in one basket enable risks, so diversify your portfolio and diversify even within each investment vehicle. Stocks: I would personally stay away from stocks as it's for the most part a bear market right now (and I assume you re not interested day-trading to make any short term return) and most importantly you dont mention any trading experience which means you can get shafted. Mutual Funds: Long story short most of these work; mainly for the benefit for their management and people selling them. Bonds Instead, I would go for corporate bonds where you essentially buy the seller(aka the issuing company) and unlike gambling on stocks of the same company, you dont rely on speculation and stock gains to make a profit. As long as the company is standing when the bond matures you get your payment. This allows you to invest with less effort spent on a daily basis to monitor your investments and much better returns(especially if you find opportunities where you can buy bonds from structurally sound companies that have for reasons you deem irrelevant, purchase prices in the secondary market for cents in the dollar) than your other long term "stable options" like German issued bonds or saving accounts that are low in general and more so like in the current situation for German banks. Cryptocurrency I would also look into cryptocurrency for the long term as that seems to be past its childhood diseases and its also a good period of time to invest in as even the blue chips of that market are down party due to correction from all time highs and partly due to speculation. As Im more knowledgeable on this than German-locale bonds, a few coins I suggest you look into and decide for yourself would be the obvious ETH & BTC, then a slew of newer ones including but not limited to OmiseGO, Tenx(Pay), Augur and IOTA. Beware though, make sure to understand the basics of security and good practices on this field, as there's no central bank in this sector and if you leave funds in an exchange or your wallet's private key is compromised the money are as good as gone. |
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. |
Will a Barclaycard Visa help me in building up credit score? | Payment history is probably the most significant contributor to your credit score. Having a solid history of making, at least the minimum, payments on time will have a positive impact on your credit score. Whether or not this specific transaction means anything to that equation is up for debate. If you have no credit lines now and 0% for 18 months on a computer makes sense to you, then yes, making this purchase this way and paying on time will have a positive impact on your credit score. Paying interest doesn't help your credit score. Repay this computer before the 18 month period ends, then be sure to pay your balance in full every month thereafter. |
can the government or debt collectors garnish money from any bank account to which the debtor has access? | There is a difference between an owner and a signer. An owner is the legal owner of the funds. A signer has access to withdraw the funds. In most cases, when a new personal account is opened the name is added as an owner&signer. However, that is not always the case. A person could be an owner, but not a signer, in a custodial arrangement. For example, a minor child may be an owner only on their account with a custodial parent listed as a signer. The minor could not withdraw from the account. A person could be a signer, but not an owner, in a business or estate/trust account. The business or estate would be the owner with individuals listed as signers only. The business employees do not own the funds, they are only allowed to withdraw and disburse the funds on behalf of the company. The creditor can only garnish/withhold funds that are owned by the indebted. If the second person on the account is only a signer, those funds cannot be withheld as part of a judgment against the second person (they don't own those funds). However, simply titling the second person as a signer only is not sufficient. If you share access with the second person and allow them to spend the money for their own benefit, they are no longer just a signer. They have become an owner because you are sharing your funds with them. Think of the business relationship as an example. The employee is a signer so they can withdraw funds and pay business expenses, like the electric bill. If the employee withdrew funds and bought herself a new dress, she is stealing because she does not own those funds. If the second person on the account buys things for themselves, or transfers some of the money into their own account, they are demonstrating that more than a signer-only relationship exists. A true signer-only relationship is where the individual can only withdraw funds on the owner's behalf. For example, the owner is out of town and needs a bill paid, the signer can write a check and pay the bill for the owner. A limited power of attorney may be worth looking into. With a limited POA, the owner can define the scope and expiration of the power of attorney. With this arrangement, the second person becomes an executor of the owner under certain circumstances. For example, you could write a power of attorney that states something like: John Smith is hereby granted the limited power to withdraw funds from account 1234, on deposit at Anytown Bank, for the purpose of paying debts and obligations and otherwise maintain my estate in the event of my incapacitation or inability to attend to my own affairs. This Power of Attorney shall expire on it's fifth anniversary unless renewed. If the person you have granted the power of attorney abuses their access, you could sue them and you would only have to demonstrate that they overstepped the scope of their power. |
401K - shift from agressive investment to Money Market | If you look at history, it shows that the more people predict corrections the less was the chance they came. That doesn't prove it stays so, though. 2017 is not any different than other years in the future: Independent of this, with less than ten years remaining until you need to draw from your money, it is a good idea to move away from high risk (and high gain); you will not have enough time to recover if it goes awry. There are different approaches, but you should slowly and continuously migrate your capital to less risky investments. Pick some good days and move 10% or 20% each time to low-risk, so that towards the end of the remaining time 90 or 100% are low or zero risk investments. Many investment banks and retirement funds offer dedicated funds for that, they are called 'Retirement 2020' or 'Retirement 2030'; they do exactly this 'slow and continuous moving over' for you; just pick the right one. |
How to find out if a company is legit? | If you are trying to weed out companies that are fronts for scams, one way is to look for a physical address that checks out with the phone book and a phone number posted on the site that connects you to an actual person. By itself this isn't a guarantee that the company is legit, but it will weed out a large number of fraudulent companies hiding behind PO boxes. That is, companies that defraud a lot of people don't usually make it very easy to track them down or contact them to complain or sue them. |
Trading on exchanges or via brokerage companies? | Yes when I place an order with my broker they send it out to the exchange. - For individual investors, what are some cons and pros of trading on the exchanges directly versus indirectly via brokers? I may be mistaken(I highly doubt it), but from my understanding you cannot trade directly through an exchange as a retail investor. BATS allows membership but it is only for Your firm must be a registered broker-dealer, registered with a Self Regulatory Organization (SRO) and connected with a clearing firm. No apple (aapl) is listed on the NASDAQ so trades go through the NASDAQ for aapl. Caterpillar Inc (CAT) is listed on the NYSE so trades go through the NYSE. The exchange you trade on is dependent on the security, if it is listed on the NYSE then you trade on the NYSE. As a regular investor you will be going through a broker. When looking to purchase a security it is more important to know about the company and less important to know what exchange it is listed on. Since there are rules a company must comply with for it to be listed on certain exchanges, it does make a difference but that is more the case when speaking about a stock listed Over the Counter(OTC) or NYSE. It is not important when asking NYSE or NASDAQ? Selecting a broker is something that's dependent on your needs. You should ask your self, "whats important to me?", "Do I want apps(IE: iPhone, android)?" "Do I need fancy trading tools?". Generally all the brokers you listed will most likely do the trick for you. Some review sites: Brokerage Review Online Broker Review 2012 Barron's 2012 Online Broker Review |
Why would you ever turn down a raise in salary? | In the UK, the government has recently announced that Child Benefit will no longer be paid to those who earn over £44k. This means that if you currently earn £43,999, and your employer offers you a raise of £10 per annum to £44,009, then you could be over £1k worse off as a result. |
How to Explain “efficient frontier” to child? | I would let them get their hands dirty, learn by practicing. Below you can find a simple program to generate your own efficient frontier, just 29 lines' python. Depending on the age, adult could help in the activity but I would not make it too lecturing. With child-parent relationship, I would make it a challenge, no easy money anymore -- let-your-money work-for-you -attitude, create the efficient portfolio! If there are many children, I would do a competition over years' time-span or make many small competitions. Winner is the one whose portfolio is closest to some efficient portfolio such as lowest-variance-portfolio, I have the code to calculate things like that but it is trivial so build on the code below. Because the efficient frontier is a good way to let participants to investigate different returns and risk between assets classes like stocks, bonds and money, I would make the thing more serious. The winner could get his/her designed portfolio (to keep it fair in your budget, you could limit choices to index funds starting with 1EUR investment or to ask bottle-price-participation-fee, bring me a bottle and you are in. No money issue.). Since they probably don't have much money, I would choose free software. Have fun! Step-by-step instructions for your own Efficient Frontier Copy and run the Python script with $ python simple.py > .datSimple Plot the data with $ gnuplot -e "set ylabel 'Return'; set xlabel 'Risk'; set terminal png; set output 'yourEffFrontier.png'; plot '.datSimple'" or any spreadsheet program. Your first "assets" could well be low-risk candies and some easy-to-stale products like bananas -- but beware, notice the PS. Simple Efficient-frontier generator P.s. do not stagnate with collectibles, such as candies and toys, and retailer products, such as mangos, because they are not really good "investments" per se, a bit more like speculation. The retailer gets a huge percentage, for further information consult Bogleheads.org like here about collectible items. |
Saving money in college while paying for college | I wouldn't recommend trying to chase a good return on this money. I'd just put it into a savings account of some sort. If you can get a better interest rate with an online account, then feel free to do that. I'd recommend using this money to pay for as much of college out of pocket as you can. The more student loans you can avoid, the better. As @John Bensin said, trying to make money in the stock market in such a short time is too risky. For this money, you want to preserve the principal to pay for school, or to pay down your loans when you get out. If you find you have more money than you need to finish paying for school, then I'd suggest setting some aside for an emergency fund, setting aside enough to pay your loans off when you're out of school, saving for future purchases (house, car, etc), and then start investing (maybe for retirement in a Roth IRA or something like that). |
Choosing the limit when making a limit order? | Never. Isn't that the whole idea of the limit order. You want a bargain, not the price the seller wants. And when the market opens it is volatile at the most, just an observation mayn't be correct. Let it stabilize a bit. The other thing is you might miss the opportunity. But as an investor you should stick to your guns and say I wouldn't buy any higher than this or sell any lower than this. As you are going long, buying at the right price is essential. You aren't going to run away tomorrow, so be smart. Probably this is what Warren Buffet said, it is important to buy a good stock at the right price rather than buying a good stock at the wrong price. There is no fixed answer to your question. It can be anything. You can check what analysts, someone with reputation of predicting correctly(not always), say would be the increase/decrease in the price of a stock in the projected future. They do quite a lot of data crunching to reach a price. Don't take their values as sacrosanct but collate from a number of sources and take an average or some sorts of it. You can then take an educated guess of how much you would be willing to pay depending the gain or loss predicted. Else if you don't believe the analysts(almost all don't have a stellar reputation) you can do all the data crunching yourself if you have the time and right tools. |
Benefits of Purchasing Company Stock at a Discount | If your purchases are done at year end, but the money withheld over that 12 month period, the 17% return is for an average time of 6 months, and the return annualizes to 38% or so. All due respect to Alex B, the return would be 100/85 as he states, if the investment were funded in January and sold in December. But this isn't the case on ESPP, the average time you are out that money is 6 months. I will warn you. Don't let the tax tail wag your investing dog. It's easy to wait for long term gains to kick in and then ignore the stock. You then find yourself overloaded on one stock and risk some bad losses. I enjoyed my 15% discount all the way to the stock crashing by 60%+. If you must wait and hold some, be religious about selling the long term shares like clockwork. The 15% is virtually risk free (unless the shares crash between purchase and hitting your account.) |
What should I be aware of as a young investor? | If you're tending toward stocks because you have a long time horizon, you're looking at them for the right reasons. I'm twice your age. I have a mortgage -- two of them, actually! -- a wife, and a six-year-old. I can't really justify being terribly risky with my money because I have others depending on my income. You're nineteen. Unless you've gotten a really early start on life and already have a family, you can take on a lot more risk than stocks. You have time to try things (income things) that I wish I would have tried at that age, like starting a business. The only thing that would push me to do that now would be losing my job, and that wouldn't be the rush I'd like. That's not to say that you can't make a lot of money with stocks, but if that's what you're looking to do, really dig in and research them. You have the time. Whether the tide makes all boats rise or sink is a matter of timing the economy, but some of the companies will ride the waves. It takes time to find those more often than not. Which blue chips are likely to ride the waves? I have no clue. But I'm not invested in them at the moment, so it doesn't matter. :) |
Can a company charge you for services never requested or received? | Here's another example of such a practice and the problem it caused. My brother, who lived alone, was missing from work for several days so a co-worker went to his home to search for him and called the local Sheriff's Office for assistance. The local fire department which runs the EMS ambulance was also dispatched in the event there was a medical emergency. They discovered my brother had passed away inside his home and had obviously been dead for days. As our family worked on probate matters to settle his estate following this death, it was learned that the local fire department had levied a bill against my brother's estate for $800 for responding with their ambulance to his home that day. I tried to talk to their commander about this, insisting my brother had not called them, nor had they transported him or even checked his pulse. The commander insisted theirs was common practice - that someone was always billed for their medical response. He would not withdraw his bill for "services". I hate to say, but the family paid the bill in order to prevent delay of his probate issues and from receiving monies that paid for his final expenses. |
Can I donate short-stock to charity? | With a short position you make your money (profit) when you buy the stocks back to close the position at a lower price than what you bought them at. As short selling is classed as speculation and not investing and you at no time own any actual assets, you cannot donate any short possition to charity. If you did want to avoid paying tax on the profits you could donate the proceeds of the profits after closing the position and thus get a tax deduction equal to the profits you made. But that raises a new and more important question, why are you trading in the first place if you are afraid to make profits in case you have to pay tax on those profits? |
When are stock trade fees deducted? | As others have said, it depends on the brokerage firm. My broker is Scottrade. With Scottrade the commission is assessed and applied the moment the order is filled. If I buy 100 shares of XYZ at $10 a share then Scottrade will immediately deduct $1007.02 out of my account. They add the commission and fees to the buy transaction. On a sale transaction they subtract the commission and fees from the resulting money. So if I sell 100 shares of XYZ at $11 a share I will get 1,092.98 put into my account, which I can use three business days later. |
Mutual Funds Definition and Role | Mutual funds buy (and sell) shares in companies in accordance with the policies set forth in their prospectus, not according to the individual needs of an investor, that is, when you invest money in (or withdraw money from) a mutual fund, the manager buys or sells whatever shares that, in the manager's judgement, will be the most appropriate ones (consistent with the investment policies). Thus, a large-cap mutual fund manager will not buy the latest hot small-cap stock that will likely be hugely profitable; he/she must choose only between various large capitalization companies. Some exchange-traded funds are fixed baskets of stocks. Suppose you will not invest in a company X as a matter of principle. Unless a mutual fund prospectus says that it will not invest in X, you may well end up having an investment in X at some time because the fund manager bought shares in X. With such an ETF, you know what is in the basket, and if the basket does not include stock in X now, it will not own stock in X at a later date. Some exchange-traded funds are constructed based on some index and track the index as a matter of policy. Thus, you will not be investing in X unless X becomes part of the index because Standard or Poor or Russell or somebody changed their minds, and the ETF buys X in order to track the index. Finally, some ETFs are exactly like general mutual funds except that you can buy or sell ETF shares at any time at the price at the instant that your order is executed whereas with mutual funds, the price of the mutual fund shares that you have bought or sold is the NAV of the mutual fund shares for that day, which is established based on the closing prices at the end of the trading day of the stocks, bonds etc that the fund owns. So, you might end up owning stock in X at any time based on what the fund manager thinks about X. |
Moving savings to Canada? | Yes, you can put assets in Canadian banks. Will it protect your wealth to a greater extent than the FDIC protection provided by the US Government? Probably not. If you do business or spend significant time in Canada, then having at least some money in Canada makes sense. Otherwise, you're trying to protect yourself against some outlying risk of a US banking collapse, while subjecting yourself to a very real currency exchange risk. |
Why do consultants or contractors make more money than employees? | The benefits and taxes thing, in my opinion is the biggie. Most people don't realize that the cost to the company for a full-time employee with benefits can be 2x or even 3x the amount they see in their paycheck. Health plans are extremely expensive. Even if you are having money taken from your check for health insurance, it is often just a fraction of the total cost, and the employer is subsidizing the rest. More expensive benefits that contractors don't typically get are 401K matches and paid vacation days. When contractors call in sick or don't work because it is a national holiday, they don't get paid for that day. Also, see that line on your paycheck deducting for Social security and Medicare? That is only half of the tax. The employer pays an equal amount that is not shown on that statement. Also, they pay taxes that go towards unemployment benefits , and may be required to pay higher taxes if they churn through a lot of full-time employees. You can usually let contractors go with relative impunity . For the unemployment tax reasons, not paying for people's days off or benefits, a lot less paperwork, and less risk to the business associated with committing to full-time employees all provide value to the company. Thus companies are willing to pay more because they are getting more. Think of it like a cell phone-contract. If you commit to a three year contract it can be a pain/expensive to get out of the deal early, but you will probably get a better rate in exchange for the risk being shifted to your end of the deal. |
What options do I have at 26 years old, with 1.2 million USD? | Since the question asked for options, rather than advice, I’ll offer a few. And you can ignore the gratuitous advice that may sneak in. There are countries that will happily give you citizenship for a fee. And others where an investment of far less than your million will get you well on your way. Having citizenship and a passport from another country can be handy if your current one is or becomes unpopular or unstable. From data at numbeo.com, I estimate that my lifestyle would cost me $3300 (US) in Geneva, Switzerland, and that everywhere else on the planet would be less. I haven’t been to Geneva, but I have spent only $2500 (average) per month in eleven countries over three years, and could have been comfortable on far less. $2500/month will go through 1.2 million in only forty years, but if you use it to generate income, and are less wasteful than me, ... With the first few dollars you get, you might take steps to hedge the possibility of not actually getting it all. Appeals can take a long time, and if the defendant runs out of money or figures out how to hide, the size of the judgment is irrelevant. Believe strongly enough in something to donate money for/to it? I’ll leave the investment options to others. |
Would it be considered appropriate to use a market order for my very first stock trade? | A few of the answers are spot on but here's another thing to consider: the type of trade. For example, I sometimes day trade stocks with momentum where the stock price is spiking relatively fast. A limit order in this situation may never get filled and you will miss out on the trade. A market order will get you filled but you mostly likely pay more than your limit order. However you are now catching the wave up. Overall, using a limit or market is relative to your trading style and the type of trade. I always prefer to use a limit buy order. |
Opening 5 credit cards at once with no history to ruin, is it a good idea? | Yes, this is definitely possible. You can optimize your credit worthiness within 18 months, you would first start with a secured credit card just to establish a little bit of credit history and then use that as a jumping point 6 months later to do several unsecured credit card applications. As a student, your primary limiting factor will be your truthful income when you apply for the cards, resulting in low limits, where using less than 30% of those limits is not a useful amount of money. Your credit scores can be looked at as a spendable balance. New inquiries spend some of that balance, low utilization earns you more of the balance. They will trend upwards with the right approach, and you can use the balance at their highs to time more inquiries. Note: My answers typically differ in that I narrowly tailor my answers to the question asked, and don't masquerade or acknowledge the idea of advice. Impulsive spenders with credit have bad credit, I can live with that. |
Are my parents ripping me off with this deal that doesn't allow me to build my equity in my home? | It's a little unusual, but I don't think the financial terms are completely unreasonable on their face. What you describe is similar to an interest-only loan, where you make payments that only cover the interest due each month, and the entire principal is due as a single "balloon payment" on a specified date (in this case, the date on which the condo is sold). Your monthly payment of $500 on a principal of $115K is equivalent to an annual interest rate of 5.22%, which at least is not completely usurious. With a traditional mortgage you might pay a rate as low as 3%, if you had sufficient income and excellent credit - but I don't know, from what you've said, whether that's the case. Did you make the current arrangement because you were unable to get a loan from a bank? The main difference here is that instead of the balloon payment being a fixed $115K, it's "75% of the gross proceeds of the sale". If the condo eventually sells for $155K, that would be $116,250, so that's slightly advantageous to them (assuming that "gross proceeds" means "before deducting commissions for either the buyers' or sellers' realtors or any other costs of the sale"), and thus slightly disadvantageous to you. If the condo appreciates in value, that's more of a win for them and more of a relative loss for you. But it's also possible that the value of the condo goes down, in which case this arrangement is better for you than a fixed balloon payment. So this deal does prevent you from getting a larger share of any gains in the value of the property, but it also helps insulate you from any losses. That's important to keep in mind. There's also the issue of needing their consent to sell. That's potentially problematic - usually in a joint ownership scheme, either owner has the right to demand to be bought out or to force a sale. I guess it depends on whether you think your parents would be likely to consent under reasonable circumstances, or to insist on holding the property against your best interests. It's true that you aren't building equity with this arrangement, and if you thought you were, you are mistaken or misled. But let's compare it with other options. If you would qualify for a traditional 30-year fixed mortgage at 3%, your monthly payment would be slightly lower ($484), and you would be building some equity because your payments would reduce the principal as well as paying the interest. But a 30-year loan builds equity very slowly at first - after 7 years you'd have only about $20,000 in principal paid down. If we assume that 5.2% represents the interest rate you'd otherwise pay based on your creditworthiness, then your monthly payment would be $631. So compared to that, you have an extra $130 per month that you can save or invest in whatever you want - you're not forced to invest it in your house. Note that in either case you'd still be paying the condo fees, property taxes, insurance, and maintenance yourself. So we might as well eliminate those from consideration. It might be a good idea to find out what other options you would have - perhaps try to get an interest rate quote on a traditional mortgage from a bank, based on your income and credit history. Then you can decide what to do, taking into account: your financial situation; how much of a monthly payment could you afford? your relationship with your parents; are they likely to be reasonable about renegotiating? Do they in general tend to respect your wishes? Would it harm your relationship if you tried to get out of the deal, and how important is that to you? To what extent do you actually want to pay for equity in this property? Do you really believe it's a good investment, and have evidence to support that? Your options include: Try to renegotiate the terms of the loan from your parents Try to "refinance" the loan, by getting a loan from a bank and paying off some agreed-upon amount of principal to your parents Try to force the sale of the condo and move to another house, financing it some other way Consult a lawyer as to whether your agreement with your parents is legally enforceable. For instance, do they have a lien on the property? |
What is a “Junk Bond”? | A "junk bond" is one that pays a high yield UP FRONT because there is a good chance that it could default. So the higher interest rate is necessary to try to compensate for the default Junk bonds are used in leveraged buyouts (LBOs) because such deals are INHERENTLY risky. "Normal" companies may have 20%-30% debt and the rest equity, so that the company will have to lose 70%-80% of its value before the debtholders start losing money on "normal" bonds. But in an LBO, the company may have only 10%-20% equity and the rest debt. Meaning that if it loses that small equity cushion, the value of the "junk" bonds will be impaired. |
AVS Address Verification System of BOTH Credit and Debit Cards - WHERE, HOW? | Parts of what you want are possible, but taken as a whole, you're out of luck. First of all, there is no master database of every cardholder in the country. The only way to check if information is correct is to ask the issuing bank. The AVS system is a way to automate doing so, but it's possible to call the bank directly and verbally verify the address. That means you're subject to the whims of what the issuing bank chooses to support. Banks that are part of the Visa and MasterCard networks generally only verify the numeric parts (address, apartment number, zipcode). AmEx can also verify the cardholder name. But if the bank doesn't have support for validating something, you can't validate it. Separately, there is a "verify-only" transaction which some processors support, which will do exactly what you want: Return AVS values without ever charging the card. However, processors require you to have the "approved merchant account" you don't want to have to have. Without being a merchant, you shouldn't have access to other people's credit cards anyway. Would you really want anyone in the country to be able to verify anyone else's address whenever they want? In short, whatever purpose you have for wanting this probably falls into one of three categories: |
Execute or trade an options contract? | Your math shows that you bought an 'at the money' option for .35 and when the stock is $1 above the strike, your $35 (options trade as a contract for 100 shares) is now worth $100. You knew this, just spelling it out for future readers. 1 - Yes 2 - An execute/sell may not be nesesary, the ooption will have time value right until expiration, and most ofter the bid/ask will favor selling the option. You should ask the broker what the margin requirement is for an execute/sell. Keep in mind this usually cannot be done on line, if I recall, when I wanted to execute, it was a (n expensive) manual order. 3 - I think I answered in (2), but in general they are not identical, the bid/ask on options can get crazy. Just look at some thinly traded strikes and you'll see what I mean. |
Why is short-selling considered more “advanced” than a simple buy? | In addition to the higher risk as pointed out by @JamesRoth, you also need to consider that there are regulations against 'naked shorting' so you generally need to either own the security, or have someone that is willing to 'loan' the security to you in order to sell short. If you own a stock you are shorting, the IRS could view the transaction as a Sell followed by a buy taking place in a less than 30 day period and you could be subject to wash-sale rules. This added complexity (most often the finding of someone to loan you the security you are shorting) is another reason such trades are considered more advanced. You should also be aware that there are currently a number of proposals to re-instate the 'uptick rule' or some circuit-breaker variant. Designed to prevent short-sellers from driving down the price of a stock (and conducting 'bear raids etc) the first requires that a stock trade at the same or higher price as prior trades before you can submit a short. In the latter shorting would be prohibited after a stock price had fallen a given percentage in a given amount of time. In either case, should such a rule be (re)established then you could face limitations attempting to execute a short which you would not need to worry about doing simple buys or sells. As to vehicles that would do this kind of thing (if you are convinced we are in a bear market and willing to take the risk) there are a number of ETF's classified as 'Inverse Exchange Traded Funds (ETF's) for a variety of markets that via various means seek to deliver a return similar to that of 'shorting the market' in question. One such example for a common broad market is ticker SH the ProShares Short S&P500 ETF, which seeks to deliver a return that is the inverse of the S&P500 (and as would be predicted based on the roughly +15% performance of the S&P500 over the last 12 months, SH is down roughly -15% over the same period). The Wikipedia article on inverse ETF's lists a number of other such funds covering various markets. I think it should be noted that using such a vehicle is a pretty 'aggressive bet' to take in reaction to the belief that a bear market is imminent. A more conservative approach would be to simply take money out of the market and place it in something like CD's or Treasury instruments. In that case, you preserve your capital, regardless of what happens in the market. Using an inverse ETF OTOH means that if the market went bull instead of bear, you would lose money instead of merely holding your position. |
Plan/education for someone desiring to achieve financial independence primarily through investing? | The basic problem here is that you need to have money to invest before you can make a profit from it. Now if you have say $500K or more, you can put that in mutual funds and live modestly off the profits. If you don't have that $500K to start out with, you're either looking at a long time frame to accumulate it - say by working a job for 30+ years, and contributing the max to your 401k - or are playing the market trying to get it. The last is essentially gambling (though with somewhat better odds than casinos or horse racing), and puts you up against the Gambler's Ruin problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_ruin You also, I think, have a very mistaken idea about the a typical investor's lifestyle. Take for instance the best known one, Warren Buffet. No offence to him, but from everything I've read he lives a pretty boring life. Spends all day reading financial reports, and what sort of life is that? As for flying places being exciting, ever tried it? I have (with scientific conferences, but I expect boardrooms are much the same), and it is boring. Flying at 30,000 ft is boring, and if it's a commercial flight, unpleasant as well. A conference room in London, Paris, or Milan is EXACTLY the same as a conference room in Podunk, Iowa. Even the cities outside the conference rooms are much of a muchness these days: you can eat at McDonalds in Paris or Shanghai. Only way to find interest is to take time from your work to get outside the conference rooms & commercial districts, and then you're losing money. |
What Did Benjamin Graham Mean by Earnings Stability in The Intelligent Investor? | Yes - this is exactly what it means. No losses (negative earnings). With today's accounting methods, you might want to determine whether you view earnings including or excluding extraordinary items. For example, a company might take a once-off charge to its earnings when revising the value of a major asset. This would show in the "including" but not in the "excluding" figure. The book actually has a nice discussion in Chapter 12 "Things to Consider About Per-Share Earnings" which considers several additional variables to consider here too. Note that this earnings metric is different from "Stock Selection for the Defensive Investor" which requires 10 years. PS - My edition (4th edition hardback) doesn't have 386 pages so your reference isn't correct for that edition. I found it on page 209 in Chapter 15 "Stock Selection for the Enterprising Investor". |
How do you find reasonably priced, quality, long lasting clothing? | The best way to find good quality is to check the garment tag: What kind of material is it made of? Jersey 100% cotton or any 100% cotton is one of the best quality material for most casual clothing. Then, you should touch it (designer step/touching). You will get better along the way. If you think you will like it, it may be a good quality. You should try it. and look for similar material when shopping. It does not matter the store where you shop, you should check the garment quality because even at the expensive stores you can find bad quality. Quality in Stitch: you should check the the garment stitch, look at the top and underneath stitches, watch for good and consist stitching pattern. especially the sides and armholes underneath of the garment. Style is something personal. Everybody has different style, but stores are classified by age targeting. If you can find a store that usually made your style, good quality material at reasonable price. you should consider shop there. Most of the time, it will cost a little bit more or much more. BUT CHEAP IS EXPENSIVE!! you end up spending more money at the end of the year. Reasonable means a fair price for both parties, You and the seller. Neither cheap or expensive. |
Why would someone want to buy an option on the day of expiry | Market makers are required to buy options contracts as a condition of being a market maker. It is what keeps the markets functioning and liquid. As to whether or not your trade can be closed at a profit depends on many variables - how much you paid, what the underlying security is, etc CBOE Options expiration FAQs |
How can I invest in an index fund but screen out (remove) certain categories of socially irresponsible investments? | Hmm, this would seem to be impossible by definition. The definition of an "index fund" is that it includes exactly the stocks that make up the index. Once you say "... except for ..." then what you want is not an index fund but something else. It's like asking, "Can I be a vegetarian but still eat beef?" Umm, no. There might be someone offering a mutual fund that has the particular combination of stocks that you want, resembling the stocks making up the index except with these exclusions. That wouldn't be an index fund at that point, but, etc. There are lots of funds out there with various ideological criteria. I don't know of one that matches your criteria. I'd say, search for the closest approximation you can find. You could always buy individual stocks yourself and create your own pseudo-index fund. Depending on how many stock are in the index you are trying to match and how much money you have to invest, it may not be possible to exactly match it mathematically, if you would have to buy fractions of shares. If the number of shares you had to buy was very small you might get killed on broker fees. And I'll upvote @user662852's answer for being a pretty close approximation to what you want. |
1040 or 1040NR this time? | 1040 or 1040NR depends on whether you are a resident alien or nonresident alien -- 1040/1040A/1040EZ for resident aliens, and 1040NR/1040NR-EZ for nonresident aliens. Determining whether you are a resident is somewhat complex, and there is not enough information in your question to determine it. Publication 519 is the guide for taxes for aliens. (It hasn't been updated for 2014 yet, so mentally shift all the years in the publication up by one year when you read it.) Since you don't have a green card, whether you are a resident is determined by the Substantial Presence Test. The test says that if (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2014) + 1/3 of (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2013) + 1/6 of (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2012) >= 183 days (half a year), then you are a resident alien for 2014. However, there are exceptions to the test. Days that you are an "exempt individual" are not counted toward the Substantial Presence Test. And "exempt individuals" include international students, trainees, teachers, etc. However, there are exceptions to the exceptions. Students are not "exempt individuals" for a year if they have been exempt individuals for any part of 5 previous calendar years. (Different exceptions apply for teachers and trainees.) So whether you are an "exempt individual" for one year inductively depends on whether you have been an "exempt individual" in previous years. Long story short, if before you came to the U.S. as an F-1 student, you haven't been in the U.S. on F-1 or J-1 status, then you will be a nonresident alien for the first 5 calendar years (calendar year = year with a number, not 365 days) that you've been on F-1. We will assume this is the case below. So if you started your F-1 in 2009 (any time during that year) or before, then you would have already been an exempt individual for 5 calendar years (e.g. if you came in 2009, then 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 are your 5 years), so you would not be an exempt individual for any part of 2014. Since you were present in the U.S. for most of 2014, you meet the Substantial Presence Test for 2014, and you are a resident alien for all of 2014. If, on the other hand, you started your F-1 in 2010 (any time during that year) or after, then you would still be an exempt individual for the part of 2014 that you were on F-1 status (i.e. prior to October 2014. OPT is F-1.). Days in 2014 in H1b status (3 months) are not enough for you to satisfy the Substantial Presence Test for 2014, so you would be a nonresident alien for all of 2014. If you fall into the latter case (nonresident alien), there are some alternative choices you have. If you were in the U.S. for most of those last 3 months, then you are eligible to choose to use the "First-Year Choice". I will not go into the steps to use this choice, but the result is that it makes you dual-status for 2014 -- nonresident until October, and resident since October. If you are single, then making this choice pretty much gives you no benefit. However, if you are married, then making this choice allows you to subsequently make another choice to become a resident for all of 2014. Being resident gives you some benefits, like being able to file as Married Filing Jointly (nonresidents can only file separately), being able to use the Standard Deduction, being able to use many other deductions and credits, etc. Though, depending on what country you're from, it may affect your treaty benefits, so check that before you consider it. |
Is it impossible to get a home loan with a poor credit history after a divorce? | No, it is never impossible to get credit so long as there are no price controls or quotas. In most of the United States, the impetus for housing is so strong that it's one sector of credit that has nearly no price regulation, price in this case being interest rates. Corporate banks will not touch you now because Dodd-Frank now makes them liable to you and investors if you default on the mortgage. Also, Fannie & Freddie, who ultimately finance most mortgages in the US now require banks to buy back loans if they fail, so banks are only financing the most creditworthy. All is not lost because markets are like rivers if not fully dammed: they find a way through. In your case, you can get a fully-financed mortgage if you're willing to pay interest rates probably double what you could otherwise get in the market with good credit. If the foreclosure process is quick and benefits the lender more in your state, the interest rate will be even lower. Your creditors will most likely be individuals you find at mortgage investment clubs and religious institutions. If you shop around, you'll be surprised at how low a rate you might get. Also, since the cost of your prospective home is so low, it's very easy for an investor flush with cash and few investments to take a flier on a mother committed to her children who only needs $50,000. The FHA has been vastly expanded, and since your individual credit is clean, there may be a chance to get financing through it, but be prepared for red tape. |
Short Term Capital Gains tax vs. IRA Withdrawal Tax w/o Quarterly Est. Taxes | Bottom line is this: there's no "short term capital gains tax" in the US. There's only long term capital gains tax, which is lower than the regular (aka ordinary) tax rates. Short term capital gains are taxed using the ordinary tax rates, depending on your bracket. So if you're in the 25% bracket - your short term gains are taxed at 25%. You're describing two options: For the case #1 you'll pay 25% tax (your marginal rate) + 10% penalty (flat rate), total 35%. For the case #2 you'll pay 25% tax (your marginal rate) + 0% penalty. Total 25%. Thus, by withdrawing from IRA you'll be 10% worse than by realizing capital gains. In addition, if you need $10K - taking it from IRA will make the whole amount taxable. While realizing capital gains from a taxable account will make only the gains taxable, the original investment amount is yours and had been taxed before. So not only there's a 10% difference in the tax rate, there's also a significant difference in the amount being taxed. Thus, withdrawing from IRA is generally not a good idea, and you will never be better off with withdrawing from IRA than with cashing out taxable investments (from tax perspective). That's by design. |
Meaning of “readily transferable”? | Securities or quite a few negotiable instruments can change title of ownership without any issue. Many at times the owner ship in implicit if you are holding a certain instrument. So for example in Stock its a fractional ownership in a company, this ownership transfers to the buyer from the seller without requiring any permission from the company. In case of say Loans, One cannot transfer the loan to some one else without the Banks permission. |
Shorting Stocks And Margin Account Minimum | The margin money you put up to fund a short position ($6000 in the example given) is simply a "good faith" deposit that is required by the broker in order to show that you are acting in good faith and fully intend to meet any potential losses that may occur. This margin is normally called initial margin. It is not an accounting item, meaning it is not debited from you cash account. Rather, the broker simply segregates these funds so that you may not use them to fund other trading. When you settle your position these funds are released from segregation. In addition, there is a second type of margin, called variation margin, which must be maintained while holding a short position. The variation margin is simply the running profit or loss being incurred on the short position. In you example, if you sold 200 shares at $20 and the price went to $21, then your variation margin would be a debit of $200, while if the price went to $19, the variation margin would be a credit of $200. The variation margin will be netted with the initial margin to give the total margin requirement ($6000 in this example). Margin requirements are computed at the close of business on each trading day. If you are showing a loss of $200 on the variation margin, then you will be required to put up an additional $200 of margin money in order to maintain the $6000 margin requirement - ($6000 - $200 = $5800, so you must add $200 to maintain $6000). If you are showing a profit of $200, then $200 will be released from segregation - ($6000 + $200 = $6200, so $200 will be release from segregation leaving $6000 as required). When you settle your short position by buying back the shares, the margin monies will be release from segregation and the ledger postings to you cash account will be made according to whether you have made a profit or a loss. So if you made a loss of $200 on the trade, then your account will be debited for $200 plus any applicable commissions. If you made a profit of $200 on the trade then your account will be credited with $200 and debited with any applicable commissions. |
Sales Tax Licence/Permit - When is it required and how can I make a use of it as a non-US resident selling in USA? | Disclaimer: I am not a tax specialist You probably need a sales tax permit if you're going to sell goods, since just about every state taxes goods, though some states have exemptions for various types of goods. For services, it gets tricker. There is a database here that lists what services are taxed in what states; in Wyoming, for example, cellphone services and diaper services are taxed, while insurance services and barber services are not. For selling over the internet, it gets even dicier. There's a guide on nolo.com that claims to be comprehensive; it states that the default rule of thumb is that if you have a physical presence in a state, such as a warehouse or a retail shop or an office, you must collect tax on sales in that state. Given your situation, you probably only need to collect sales tax on customers in Wyoming. Probably. In any event, I'd advice having a chat with an accountant in Wyoming who can help walk you through what permits may or may not be needed. |
Are Credit Cards a service to banks? | Credit cards are a golden goose for banks, as they get to issue high-interest loans and simultaneously generate alot of fee income. Debit cards aren't quite as good, but they still generate substantial fee income -- ~2% of every credit/non-PIN debit transaction goes to the bank and credit card network. Credit histories exist because they are the most effective tool available to predict whether you will pay back your loans or not. You don't need a credit history to buy most things, you need a credit history to get a large loan. Think of it from perspective of a lender: Credit scoring is the bank's way screening out people who are expensive to do business with. It's objective, doesn't discriminate on the basis of race, sex or other factors, and you have recourse if the rating agencies have incorrect information. |
How big of a mortgage can I realistically afford? | If you are not planning on living in your condo for at least 10 years don't do it. For about 5 years your mortgage will be more then rent, after 5 years you start to break even and may start paying less. On the other hand, if you plan to be there for 10 years or more it might be a great savings tool, |
Found an old un-cashed paycheck. How long is it good for? What to do if it's expired? | The two banks involved may have different policies about honoring the check. It might not be written on the check. Your bank may decide that the stale check has to be treated differently and will withhold funds for a longer period of time before giving you access to the money. They will give time for the first bank to refuse to honor the check. They may be concerned about insufficient funds, the age of the check, and the fact that the original account could have been closed. If you are concerned about the age of the check. You could go to your bank in person, instead of using deposit by ATM, scanner, or smart phone. This allows you to talk to a knowledgeable person. And if they are going to treat the check differently or reject the check, they can let you know right away. The audit may not have been concerned about the fact that the check hadn't been cashed because when they did the audit the check was still considered fresh. Some companies will contact you eventually to reissue the check so you they can get the liability off their books. If the bank does refuse the check contact the company to see how you can get a replacement check issued. They may want proof the check can't be cashed so they don't have to worry about paying you twice. |
Why would you ever turn down a raise in salary? | In Australia there are cases for the argument. 1) We have laws against unfair dismissal that do not apply above certain thresholds. Your position is more secure with the lower salary. 2) Tax benefits for families are unfairly structured such that take home pay may actually be less, again due to a threshold. This tends to benefit charities as people need to shed the taxable income if a repayment of benefits would otherwise be triggered. 3) You do not want to "just cross" a tax bracket in a year where levies are being raised for natural disasters or budget shortfall. In this case a raise could be deferred ? |
As an investor what are side effects of Quantitative Easing in US and in EU? | Quantitative Easing Explained: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/07/130408926/quantitative-easing-explained The short of it is that you're right; the Fed (or another country's Central Bank) is basically creating a large amount of new money, which it then injects into the economy by buying government and institutional debt. This is, in fact, one of the main jobs of the central bank for a currency; to manage the money supply, which in most fiat systems involves slowly increasing the amount of money to keep the economy growing (if there isn't enough money moving around in the economy it's reflected in a slowdown in GDP growth), while controlling inflation (the devaluation of a unit of currency with respect to most or all things that unit will buy including other currencies). Inflation's primary cause is defined quite simply as "too many dollars chasing too few goods". When demand is low for cash (because you have a lot of it) while demand for goods is high, the suppliers of those goods will increase their price for the goods (because people are willing to pay that higher price) and will also produce more. With quantitative easing, the central bank is increasing the money supply by several percentage points of GDP, much higher than is normally needed. This normally would cause the two things you mentioned: Inflation - inflation's primary cause is "too many dollars chasing too few goods"; when money is easy to get and various types of goods and services are not, people "bid up" the price on these things to get them (this usually happens when sellers see high demand for a product and increase the price to take advantage and to prevent a shortage). This often happens across the board in a situation like this, but there are certain key drivers that can cause other prices to increase (things like the price of oil, which affects transportation costs and thus the price to have anything shipped anywhere, whether it be the raw materials you need or the finished product you're selling). With the injection of so much money into the economy, rampant inflation would normally be the result. However, there are other variables at play in this particular situation. Chief among them is that no matter how much cash is in the economy, most of it is being sat on, in the form of cash or other "safe havens" like durable commodities (gold) and T-debt. So, most of the money the Fed is injecting into the economy is not chasing goods; it's repaying debt, replenishing savings and generally being hoarded by consumers and institutions as a hedge against the poor economy. In addition, despite how many dollars are in the economy right now, those dollars are in high demand all around the world to buy Treasury debt (one of the biggest safe havens in the global market right now, so much so that buying T-debt is considered "saving"). This is why the yields on Treasury bonds and notes are at historic lows; it's bad everywhere, and U.S. Government debt is one of the surest things in the world market, especially now that Euro-bonds have become suspect. Currency Devaluation - This is basically specialized inflation; when there are more dollars in the market than people want to have in order to use to buy our goods and services, demand for our currency (the medium of trade for our goods and services) drops, and it takes fewer Euros, Yen or Yuan to buy a dollar. This can happen even if demand for our dollars inside our own borders is high, and is generally a function of our trade situation; if we're buying more from other countries than they are from us, then our dollars are flooding the currency exchange markets and thus become cheaper because they're easy to get. Again, there are other variables at play here that keep our currency strong. First off, again, it's bad everywhere; nobody's buying anything from anyone (relatively speaking) and so the relative trade deficits aren't moving much. In addition, devaluation without inflation is self-stablizing; if currency devalues but inflation is low, the cheaper currency makes the things that currency can buy cheaper, which encourages people to buy them. At the same time, the more expensive foreign currency increases the cost in dollars of foreign-made goods. All of this can be beneficial from a money policy standpoint; devaluation makes American goods cheaper to Americans and to foreign consumers alike than foreign goods, and so a policy that puts downward pressure on the dollar but doesn't make inflation a risk can help American manufacturing and other producer businesses. China knows this just as well as we do, and for decades has been artificially fixing the exchange rate of the Renmin B (Yuan) lower than its true value against the dollar, meaning that no matter how cheap American goods get on the world market, Chinese goods are still cheaper, because by definition the Yuan has greater purchasing power for the same cost in dollars. In addition, dollars aren't only used to buy American-made goods and services. The U.S. has positioned its currency over the years to be an international medium of trade for several key commodities (like oil), and the primary currency for global lenders like the IMF and the World Bank. That means that dollars become necessary to buy these things, and are received from and must be repaid to these institutions, and thus the dollar has a built-in demand pretty much regardless of our trade deficits. On top of all that, a lot of countries base their own currencies on our dollar, by basically buying dollars (using other valuable media like gold or oil) and then holding that cash in their own central banks as the store of value backing their own paper money. This is called a "dollar board". Their money becomes worth a particular fraction of a dollar by definition, and that relationship is very precisely controllable; with 10 billion dollars in the vault, and 20 billion Kabukis issued from Kabukistan's central bank, a Kabuki is worth $.50. Print an additional 20 billion Kabuki and the value of one Kabuki decreases to $.25; buy an additional 10 billion dollars and the Kabuki's value increases again to $.50. Quite a few countries do this, mostly in South America, again creating a built-in demand for U.S. dollars and also tying the U.S. dollar to the value of the exports of that country. If Kabukistan's goods become highly demanded by Europe, and its currency increases relative to the dollar, then the U.S. dollar gets a boost because by definition it is worth an exact, fixed number of Kabukis (and also because a country with a dollar board typically has no problem accepting dollars as payment and then printing Kabukis to maintain the exchange rate) |
What exactly can a financial advisor do for me, and is it worth the money? | If you don't have the time or interest to manage investments, you need a financial advisor. Generally speaking, you're better served by an advisor who collects an annual fee based on a percentage of your account value. Advisors who are compensated based on transactions have a vested interest to churn your account, which is often not in your best interest. You also need to be wary of advisors who peddle expensive mutual funds with sales loads (aka kick-backs to the advisor) or annuities. Your advisor's compensation structure should be transparent as well. |
Do banks give us interest even for the money that we only had briefly in our account? | The other answers demonstrate that you'll receive a paltry amount of money in two days, by comparing to things like wages, the cost of electricity, etc. But the real point is you're incurring risk by paying late, in particular, the realistic risk of the post office messing up. That's not worth it, and it's this kind of overhead that people usually mess up when trying to optimize their finances. (More commonly, it's "I can save 5 cents by doing this, but there's about a 400% chance I'm going to mess everything else up since I don't have infinite mental bandwidth). You asked a good and important question, but for your actual situation I must emphasize it's terrible personal finance to risk dropping your books for a superficial optimization. |
Am I considered in debt if I pay a mortgage? | If you owe money to someone else then you are in debt, at least in the common meaning of the word. What you happen to own, or what you spent that money on doesn't alter that fact. Are people considered in debt if their only 'debt' is the mortgage/loan for their house, or are these people excluded from the statistic? The only way to answer that for sure is to look at who compiled the statistic and exactly what methodology they used. |
How do I estimate my taxes when I have only 1099 income? | So there are a lot of people that get into trouble in your type of self employment situation. This is what I do, and I use google drive so there are no cost for tools. However, having an accounting system is better. Getting in trouble with the IRS really sucks bad. |
What assets would be valuable in a post-apocalyptic scenario? | Assuming that the financial system broke down, not enough supply of essential commodities or food but there is political and administrative stability and no such chaos that threatens your life by physical attacks. The best investment would then be some paddy fields, land, some cows, chickens and enough clothing , a safe house to stay and a healthy life style that enables you to work for food and some virtue at heart and management skills to get people work for you on your resources so that they can survive with you (may be you earn some profit -that is up to your moral standards to decide, how much). It all begins to start again; a new Financial System has to be in place….! |
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). Sometimes they will ask questions and your answer would be "None of the above." This is done to prevent fraudsters from applying for a loan under your identity. If you see no signs of unauthorized accounts or activities on your credit reports, and you initiated the car loan application, then you should be fine. |
Better to rent condo to daughter or put her on title? | @Pete B.'s answer is good, but there's an important note to consider for tax purposes. It's too large for a comment, so I'm adding it as an answer. And that is: you cannot claim the property as a rental property under certain conditions. This affects things like claiming mortgage interest (which you don't have), and depreciation in value (which a rental is allowed). See IRS topic 415 for details, but I've included an important excerpt below with emphasis added: If you rent a dwelling unit to others that you also use as a residence, limitations may apply to the rental expenses you can deduct. You're considered to use a dwelling unit as a residence if you use it for personal purposes during the tax year for more than the greater of: ... A day of personal use of a dwelling unit is any day that it's used by: Talk to a tax accountant to better understand the ramifications of this, but it's worth noting that you can't just rent it to her for a paltry sum and be able to take tax advantages from this arrangement. |
Do large market players using HFT make it unsafe for individual investors to be in the stock market? | There's a lot of hype about HFT. It involves computers doing things that people don't really understand and making a bunch of rich guys a bunch of money, and there was a crisis and so we hate rich wall street guys this year, and so it's a hot-button issue. Meh. There's some reason for concern about the safety of the markets, but I think there's also a lot more of people trying to sell you a newspaper. Remember that while HFT may mean there are a lot of trades, the buying and the selling add up to the same thing. Meanwhile, people who buy stock to hold on to it for significant periods of time will still affect the quantity of stock out there on the market, applying pressure to the price, buying and selling at the prices that they think the security is worth. As a result, it's unlikely that high-frequency trading moves the stock price very far from the price that the rest of the market would determine for very long; if it did, the lower-frequency traders could take advantage of it, buying if it's too low and selling if it's too high. How long do you plan to hold a stock? If you're trying to do day-trading, you might have some trouble; these people are competing with you to do the same thing, and have significant resources at their disposal. If you're holding onto your stock for years on end (like you probably should be doing with most stock) then a trivial premium or discount on the price probably isn't going to be a big deal for you. |
I don't live in America. How can I buy IPO stock of newly listed companies in the United States? | First thing to consider is that getting your hands on an IPO is very difficult unless you have some serious clout. This might help a bit in that department (http://www.sec.gov/answers/ipoelig.htm) However, assuming you accept all that risk and requirements, YES - you can buy stocks of any kind in the US even if you are a foreigner. There are no laws prohibiting investment/buying in the US stock market. What you need is to get an online trading account from a registered brokerage house in the US. Once you are registered, you can buy whatever that is offered. |
Is there a simple strategy of selling stock over a period of time? | Yes, there is an analogous strategy for selling: it's to sell a fixed number of shares per period of time. |
As a total beginner, how do I begin to understand finance & stocks? | I think you've got basics, but you may have the order / emphasis a bit wrong. I've changed the order of the things you've learned in to what I think is the most important to understand: Owning a stock is like owning a tiny chunk of the business Owning stock is owning a tiny chunk of the business, it's not just "like" it. The "tiny chunks" are called shares, because that is literally what they are, a share of the business. Sometimes shares are also called stocks. The words stock and share are mostly interchangeable, but a single stock normally means your holding of many shares in a business, so if you have 100 shares in 1 company, that's a stock in that company, if you then buy 100 shares in another company, you now own 2 stocks. An investor seeks to buy stocks at a low price, and sell when the price is high. Not necessarily. An investor will buy shares in a company that they believe will make them a profit. In general, a company will make a profit and distribute some or all of it to shareholders in the form of dividends. They will also keep back a portion of the profit to invest in growing the company. If the company does grow, it will grow in value and your shares will get more valuable. Price (of a stock) is affected by supply/demand, volume, and possibly company profits The price of a share that you see on a stock ticker is the price that people on the market have exchanged the share for recently, not the price you or I can buy a share for, although usually if people on the market are buying and selling at that price, someone will buy or sell from you at a similar sort of price. In theory, the price will be the companies total value, if you were to own the whole thing (it's market capitalisation) divided by the total number of shares that exist in that company. The problem is that it's very difficult to work out the total value of a company. You can start by counting the different things that it owns (including things like intellectual property and the knowledge and experience of people who work there), subtract all the money it owes in loans etc., and then make an allowance for how much profit you expect the company to make in the future. The problem is that these numbers are all going to be estimates, and different peoples estimates will disagree. Some people don't bother to estimate at all. The market makers will just follow supply and demand. They will hold a few shares in each of many companies that they are interested in. They will advertise a lower price that they are willing to buy at and a higher price that they will sell at all the time. When they hold a lot of a share, they will price it lower so that people buy it from them. When they start to run out, they will price it higher. You will never need to spend more than the market makers price to buy a share, or get less than the market makers price when you come to sell it (unless you want to buy or sell more shares than they are willing to). This is why stock price depends on supply and demand. The other category of people who don't care about the companies they are trading are the high speed traders. They just look at information like the past price, the volume (total amount of shares being exchanged on the market) and many other statistics both from the market and elsewhere and look for patterns. You cannot compete with these people - they do things like physically locate their servers nearer to the stock exchanges buildings to get a few milliseconds time advantage over their competitors to buy shares quicker than them. |
What should I do with my money? | Edit: I a in the United States, seek advice from someone who is also in Australia. I am getting about 5.5% per year by investing in a fund (ticker:PGF) that, in turn, buys preferred stock in banks. Preferred stock acts a bit like a bond and a bit like a stock. The price is very stable. However, a bank account is FDIC insured (in the USA) and an investment is not. I use the Reinvestment program at Scottrade so that the monthly dividends are automatically reinvested with no commission. However I do not know if this is available outside of the United States. Investing yealds greater returns but exposes you to greater risk. You have to know your risk tolerance. |
I spend too much money. How can I get on the path to a frugal lifestyle? | Gail Vaz-Oxlade from the television show Til Debt Do Us Part has a great interactive budget worksheet that helps you set up a "jar" or envelope system for each month based on your income and fixed expenses. We have used this successfully in the past. What we found most useful was, as others have said, writing everything down, keeping receipts, and thus being accountable and aware of our spending. |
What does investment bank risk during IPO? | Investment banks don't have to buy anything. If they don't think the stock is worth buying - they won't. If they think it is - others on the secondary market will probably think so too. Initial public offering is offering to the public - i.e.: theoretically anyone can participate and purchase stocks. The major investment firms are not buying the stocks for themselves - but for their clients who are participating in this IPO. I, for example, receive email notifications from my brokerage firm each time there's another IPO that they have access to, and I can ask the brokerage to buy stocks from the IPO on my behalf. When that happens - they don't buy the stocks themselves and then sell to me. No, what happens is that I buy a stock, through them, and they charge me a commission for the service. Usually IPO participation commissions are higher than regular trading commissions. Most of the time those who purchase stocks at IPO are institutional investors - i.e.: mutual funds, pension plans, investment banks for their managed accounts, etc. Retail investors would probably not participate in the IPO because of the costs, limited access (not all the brokerage firms have access to all the IPOs), and the uncertainty, and rather purchase the stocks later on a secondary market. |
Will I be paid dividends if I own shares? | Yes, as long as you own the shares before the ex-dividend date you will get the dividends. Depending on your instructions to your broker, you can receive cash dividends or you can have the dividends reinvested in more shares of the company. There are specific Dividend ReInvestment Plans (or DRIPs) if you are after stock growth rather than income from dividend payments. |
Get the maximum interest rate from a bank on short term holdings | You can open Savings Bank Account with some Banks that offer better interest rate. Note there would be restriction on number of withdrawals in quarter. There are better interest rates if you lock in for 90+ days. The other option to explore is to open a Demat / Brokrage account and invest in liquid funds. Note depending on various factors it may or may not suite your requirements. |
How does a defined contribution plan work | The end result is basically the same, it's just a choice of whether you want to base the final amount you receive on your salary, or on the stock market. You pay in a set proportion of your salary, and receive a set proportion of your salary in return. The pension (both contributions and benefit) are based on your career earnings. You get x% of your salary every year from retirement until death. These are just a private investment, basically: you pay a set amount in, and whatever is there is what you get at the end. Normally you would buy an annuity with the final sum, which pays you a set amount per year from retirement until death, as with the above. The amount you receive depends on how much you pay in, and the performance of the investment. If the stock market does well, you'll get more. If it does badly, you could actually end up with less. In general (in as much as anything relating to the stock market and investment can be generalised), a Defined Benefit plan is usually considered better for "security" - or at least, public sector ones, and a majority of people in my experience would prefer one, but it entirely depends on your personal attitude to risk. I'm on a defined benefit plan and like the fact that I basically get a benefit based on a proportion of my salary and that the amount is guaranteed, no matter what happens to the stock market in the meantime. I pay in 9% of my salary get 2% of my salary as pension, for each year I pay into the pension: no questions, no if's or buts, no performance indicators. Others prefer a defined contribution scheme because they know that it is based on the amount they pay in, not the amount they earn (although to an extent it is still based on earnings, as that's what defines how much you pay in), and because it has the potential to grow significantly based on the stock market. Unfortunately, nobody can give you a "which is best" answer - if I knew how pension funds were going to perform over the next 10-50 years, I wouldn't be on StackExchange, I'd be out there making a (rather large) fortune on the stock market. |
How do you write a check with cents? | In the US, Section 3.114 of the Uniform Commercial Code sets the rules for how any confusion in checks or other business transactions is handled: “If an instrument contains contradictory terms, typewritten terms prevail over printed terms, handwritten terms prevail over both, and words prevail over numbers.” If there was any ambiguity in the way you wrote out the amount, the institution will compare the two fields (the written words and the courtesy box (digits)) to see if the ambiguity can be resolved. The reality is that the busy tellers and ATM operators typically are going to look at the numeric digits first. So even if they happen to notice the traditional "and..." missing, it seems highly unlikely that such an omission would cause enough ambiguity between these the two fields to reject the payment. Common sense dictates here. I wouldn't worry about it. |
Can another tax loss be used to offset capital gains taxes? How does it work? | Capital losses do mirror capital gains within their holding periods. An asset or investment this is certainly held for a year into the day or less, and sold at a loss, will create a short-term capital loss. A sale of any asset held for over a year to your day, and sold at a loss, will create a loss that is long-term. When capital gains and losses are reported from the tax return, the taxpayer must first categorize all gains and losses between long and short term, and then aggregate the sum total amounts for every single regarding the four categories. Then the gains that are long-term losses are netted against each other, therefore the same is done for short-term gains and losses. Then your net gain that is long-term loss is netted against the net short-term gain or loss. This final net number is then reported on Form 1040. Example Frank has the following gains and losses from his stock trading for the year: Short-term gains - $6,000 Long-term gains - $4,000 Short-term losses - $2,000 Long-term losses - $5,000 Net short-term gain/loss - $4,000 ST gain ($6,000 ST gain - $2,000 ST loss) Net long-term gain/loss - $1,000 LT loss ($4,000 LT gain - $5,000 LT loss) Final net gain/loss - $3,000 short-term gain ($4,000 ST gain - $1,000 LT loss) Again, Frank can only deduct $3,000 of final net short- or long-term losses against other types of income for that year and must carry forward any remaining balance. |
Looking into investment bonds for the first time- what do I need to be aware of? | First off, I do not recommend buying individual bonds yourself. Instead buy a bond fund (ETF or mutual fund). That way you get some diversification. The risk-reward ratio will be evident in what you find to invest in. Junk bond funds pay the highest rates. Treasury bond funds pay the lowest. So you have to ask yourself how comfortable are you with risk? Buy the funds that pay the highest rate but still let you sleep at night. |
How long should I keep my bills? | In general, you don't need to keep bills around for more than a few months. The exceptions are: anything that was itemized on your federal or state income taxes. You want to keep these around for seven years in case of an audit by the IRS brokerage statements buying/selling stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc. You need to know how much you bought a stock for when you sell it, to calculate capital gains. information relating to major renovations to your house. This can be used to reduce the gain when you sell. anything relating to a business, again for tax and valuation purposes. When selling a house, the last years worth of utility bills might be useful, to show potential buyers. However, I get almost all of my recurring bills electronically now. They get saved and backed up. In that case, its easier to just keep everything than to selectively delete stuff. It takes very little space, is easier to find things than in paper files, and is much less hassle when moving than boxes full of paper. |
How to get a credit card as a minor? | I have a job and would like to buy equipment for producing music at home and it would be easier for me to pay for the equipment monthly I just want to address your contention that it would be easier to pay monthly, with an interest calculation. Lets say you get a credit card with a very reasonable rate of 12% and you buy $2,500 of equipment. A typical credit card minimum payment is interest charges + 1% of the principle. You can see how this is going. You've paid nearly $200 to clear about $100 off your principle. Obviously paying the minimum payment will take forever to wipe out this debt. So you pay more, or maybe you get 0% interest for a while and take advantage of that. Paying $100 per month against $2,500 at 12% per year will take 29 months and cost about $390 in interest. At $200 per month it'll take 14 months and cost $184 in interest. Also note, you'll probably get an interest rate closer to 16 or 17%. It's always easier to pay small amounts frequently than it is to pay a lot of money all at once, that ease has a cost. If you're buying the gear to start a little business, or you already have a little business going and want to upgrade some gear, great; disciplined debt handling is a wonderful skill to have in business. If you want to start yourself in to a new hobby, you should not do that with debt. If interest rates are low enough financing something can make sense. 0.9% apr on a car, sure; 15% apr on a mixing board, no. Credit card interest rates are significant and really should not be trifled with. |
Value investing | As an aside, why does it seem to be difficult to get a conclusive answer to this question? I'm going to start by trying to answer this question and I think the answer here will help answer the other questions. Here is a incomplete list of the challenges involved: So my question is, is there any evidence that value investing actually beats the market? Yes there is a lot of evidence that it works and there is a lot of evidence that it does not. timday's has a great link on this. Some rules/methods work over some periods some work during others. The most famous evidence for value investing probably comes from Fama and French who were very careful and clever in solving many of the above problems and had a large persistent data set, but their idea is very different from Damodaran's, for instance, and hard to implement though getting easier. Is the whole field a waste of time? Because of the above problems this is a hard question. Some people like Warren Buffet have clearly made a lot of money doing this. Though it is worth remembering a good amount of the money these famous investors make is off of fees for investing other peoples' money. If you understand fundamental analysis well you can get a job making a lot of money doing it for a company investing other peoples' money. The markets are very random that it is very hard for people to tell if you are good at it and since markets generally go up it is easy to claim you are making money for people, but clearly banks and hedge funds see significant value in good analysts so it is likely not entirely random. Especially if you are a good writer you can make a more money here than most other jobs. Is it worth it for the average investor saving for retirement? Very, very hard to say. Your time might be better spent on your day job if you have one. Remember because of the fees and added risk involved over say index investing more "Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth." |
What kind of trade is this? | A limit order is simply an order to buy at a maximum price or sell at a minimum price. For example, if the price is $100 and you want to sell if the price rises to $110, then you can simply put a limit order to sell at $110. The order will be placed in the market and when the price reaches $110 your order will be executed. If the price gaps at the open to $111, then you would end up selling for $111. In other words you will get a minimum of $110 per share. A stop limit order is where you put a stop loss order, which when it gets triggered, will place a limit order in the market for you. For example, you want to limit your losses by placing a stop loss order if the price drops to $90. If you chose a market order with your stop loss as soon as the price hits $90 your stop loss would be triggered and the shares would sell at the next available price, usually at $90, but could be less if the market gaps down past $90. If on the other hand you placed a limit order at $89.50 with your stop loss, when the stop loss order gets triggered at $90 your limit order will be placed into the market to sell at $89.50. So you would get a minimum of $89.50 per share, however, if the market gaps down below $89.50 your order will be placed onto the market but it won't sell, unless the price goes back to or above $89.50. Hope this helps. |
Is it possible to make money off of a private company? | Another way to do this is go to work for that company. Companies in this situation normally offer low pay, long hours, and stock options. Given a sufficient grant, it could be all very lucrative or worthless. Even if you have no electronics background you might be able to work in a different capacity. There were secretaries at various companies that became wealthy off of their stock options. |
Why would a person not want to purchase a Personal Liability (Umbrella) insurance policy? | The two questions inherent in any decision to purchase an insurance plan is, "how likely am I to need it?", and "what's the worst case scenario if I don't have it?". The actuary that works for the insurance company is asking these same questions from the other end (with the second question thus being "what would we be expected to have to pay out for a claim"), using a lot of data about you and people like you to arrive at an answer. It really boils down to little more than a bet between you and the insurance company, and like any casino, the insurer has a house edge. The question is whether you think you'll beat that edge; if you're more likely than the insurer thinks you are to have to file a claim, then additional insurance is a good bet. So, the reasons you might decide against getting umbrella insurance include: Your everyday liability is low - Most people don't live in an environment where the "normal" insurance they carry won't pay for their occasional mistakes or acts of God. The scariest one for most is a car accident, but when you think of all the mistakes that have to be made by both sides in order for you to burn through the average policy's liability limits and still be ruined for life, you start feeling better. For instance, in Texas, minimum insurance coverage levels are 50/100/50; assuming neither party is hurt but the car is a total loss, your insurer will pay the fair market value of the car up to $50,000. That's a really nice car, to have a curbside value of 50 grand; remember that most cars take an initial hit of up to 25% of their sticker value and a first year depreciation of up to 50%. That 50 grand would cover an $80k Porsche 911 or top-end Lexus ES, and the owner of that car, in the U.S. at least, cannot sue to recover replacement value; his damages are only the fair market value of the car (plus medical, lost wages, etc, which are covered under your two personal injury liability buckets). If that's a problem, it's the other guy's job to buy his own supplemental insurance, such as gap insurance which covers the remaining payoff balance of a loan or lease above total loss value. Beyond that level, up into the supercars like the Bentleys, Ferraris, A-Ms, Rollses, Bugattis etc, the drivers of these cars know full well that they will never get the blue book value of the car from you or your insurer, and take steps to protect their investment. The guys who sell these cars also know this, and so they don't sell these cars outright; they require buyers to sign "ownership contracts", and one of the stipulations of such a contract is that the buyer must maintain a gold-plated insurance policy on the car. That's usually not the only stipulation; The total yearly cost to own a Bugatti Veyron, according to some estimates, is around $300,000, of which insurance is only 10%; the other 90% is obligatory routine maintenance including a $50,000 tire replacement every 10,000 miles, obligatory yearly detailing at $10k, fuel costs (that's a 16.4-liter engine under that hood; the car requires high-octane and only gets 3 mpg city, 8 highway), and secure parking and storage (the moguls in Lower Manhattan who own one of these could expect to pay almost as much just for the parking space as for the car, with a monthly service contract payment to boot). You don't have a lot to lose - You can't get blood from a turnip. Bankruptcy laws typically prevent creditors from taking things you need to live or do your job, including your home, your car, wardrobe, etc. For someone just starting out, that may be all you have. It could still be bad for you, but comparing that to, say, a small business owner with a net worth in the millions who's found liable for a slip and fall in his store, there's a lot more to be lost in the latter case, and in a hurry. For the same reason, litigious people and their legal representation look for deep pockets who can pay big sums quickly instead of $100 a month for the rest of their life, and so very few lawyers will target you as an individual unless you're the only one to blame (rare) or their client insists on making it personal. Most of your liability is already covered, one way or the other - When something happens to someone else in your home, your homeowner's policy includes a personal liability rider. The first two "buckets" of state-mandated auto liability insurance are for personal injury liability; the third is for property (car/house/signpost/mailbox). Health insurance covers your own emergency care, no matter who sent you to the ER, and life and AD&D insurance covers your own death or permanent disability no matter who caused it (depending on who's offering it; sometimes the AD&D rider is for your employer's benefit and only applies on the job). 99 times out of 100, people just want to be made whole when it's another Average Joe on the other side who caused them harm, and that's what "normal" insurance is designed to cover. It's fashionable to go after big business for big money when they do wrong (and big business knows this and spends a lot of money insuring against it), but when it's another little guy on the short end of the stick, rabidly pursuing them for everything they're worth is frowned on by society, and the lawyer virtually always walks away with the lion's share, so this strategy is self-defeating for those who choose it; no money and no friends. Now, if you are the deep pockets that people look for when they get out of the hospital, then a PLP or other supplemental liability insurance is definitely in order. You now think (as you should) that you're more likely to be sued for more than your normal insurance will cover, and even if the insurance company thinks the same as you and will only offer a rather expensive policy, it becomes a rather easy decision of "lose a little every month" or "lose it all at once". |
Fund equalisation / dividend | Do all/most unit trusts have equalisation policy? It is really that some value of the fund is given to the investor, so the fund value goes down by that much per unit. It depends on the type of mutual funds. For example, there are growth type mutual funds that do not give any dividend and the total value of the fund is reflected in its price. Do the companies whose stocks we owned directly apply equalisation policy on their dividends as well? Why not? As far a stock price is concerned, it usually decrease by the same amount of the dividend payout at ex-date, so in effect, the market in a way does the equalization, the company directly does not do it. |
Am I doing the math for this covered call/long put strategy correctly? What risks do I run with this strategy? | You own the stock at $29.42 At $40, the stocks is called at $26. You can't add the call premium, as it's already accounted for. The trade is biased towards being bearish on the stock. (I edited and added the graph the evening I answered) Not the pretiest graph, but you get the idea. With that $29.42 cost, you are in the money till about $30, then go negative until the most you lose is $3.42. |
Insurance company sent me huge check instead of pharmacy. Now what? | Deposit check and send a personal check (resulting in tax and IRS reporting issues) That's a bad idea, unless maybe the check you're receiving is a certified bank draft. Suppose the insurance company are crooks and the check is fraudulent. It could take weeks or months for some investigation to catch up to that, long after your own personal check was cashed by the pharmacy. The bank will then put you on hook for the 20 grand by reversing the check, even though the funds had been deposited into your account. Do not put yourself into the position of a money handler; you don't have the cash base, insurance, government protection and whatever else that a bank has. And, of course, you're being a free money handler if you do that. (You're not even compensated for postage, time and whatnot). If you're handling money between two parties, you should collect a percentage, or else refuse. That percentage has to be in proportion to the risk, since cashing a check for someone carries a risk similar to (and is effectively a form of) making a loan. |
What does it mean that stocks are “memoryless”? | @jidugger mostly got it right. It basically mean that past performance of a stock, or a basket of stocks, are not at all useful when trying to predict its future. There is no proven correlation between past and future performance. If there was such a correlation, that was "proven" or known, then investors would quickly exploit this correlation by buying or selling this stock, thus nullifying the prediction. It doesn't mean the specific individuals cannot predict the future stock market - hell, if I set up 2^100 different robots, where every robots gives a different series of answers to the 100 questions "how will stock X do Y days from now" (for 1<=Y<=100), then one of those robots would be perfectly correct. The problem is that an outside observer has no way of knowing which of the predictor robots is right. To say that stock is memoryless strikes me as not quite right -- to the extent that stocks are valued based on earnings, much of what we infer about future earnings relies on past and present earnings. To put it another way - you have $1000 now, and need to decide whether to invest in a particular stock, or a stock index. The "memoryless" property means that no matter how many earning reports you view ... by the time you see them, the stock price already accounts for them, so they're not useful to you. If the earning reports are positive, the stock is already "too high" because people bought it before you did. So on average, you can't use this information to predict the stock's future performance, and are better off investing in an index fund (unless you desire extra risk that doesn't come with more profitability). |
What is the difference between fund and portfolio? | Oddly enough, in the USA, there are enough cost and tax savings between buy-and-hold of a static portfolio and buying into a fund that a few brokerages have sprung up around the concept, such as FolioFN, to make it easier for small investors to manage numerous small holdings via fractional shares and no commission window trades. A static buy-and-hold portfolio of stocks can be had for a few dollars per trade. Buying into a fund involves various annual and one time fees that are quoted as percentages of the investment. Even 1-2% can be a lot, especially if it is every year. Typically, a US mutual fund must send out a 1099 tax form to each investor, stating that investors share of the dividends and capital gains for each year. The true impact of this is not obvious until you get a tax bill for gains that you did not enjoy, which can happen when you buy into a fund late in the year that has realized capital gains. What fund investors sometimes fail to appreciate is that they are taxed both on their own holding period of fund shares and the fund's capital gains distributions determined by the fund's holding period of its investments. For example, if ABC tech fund bought Google stock several years ago for $100/share, and sold it for $500/share in the same year you bought into the ABC fund, then you will receive a "capital gains distribution" on your 1099 that will include some dollar amount, which is considered your share of that long-term profit for tax purposes. The amount is not customized for your holding period, capital gains are distributed pro-rata among all current fund shareholders as of the ex-distribution date. Morningstar tracks this as Potential Capital Gains Exposure and so there is a way to check this possibility before investing. Funds who have unsold losers in their portfolio are also affected by these same rules, have been called "free rides" because those funds, if they find some winners, will have losers that they can sell simultaneously with the winners to remain tax neutral. See "On the Lookout for Tax Traps and Free Riders", Morningstar, pdf In contrast, buying-and-holding a portfolio does not attract any capital gains taxes until the stocks in the portfolio are sold at a profit. A fund often is actively managed. That is, experts will alter the portfolio from time to time or advise the fund to buy or sell particular investments. Note however, that even the experts are required to tell you that "past performance is no guarantee of future results." |
What's the benefit of opening a Certificate of Deposit (CD) Account? | If you've already got emergency savings sufficient for your needs, I agree that you'd be better served by sending that $500 to your student loan(s). I, personally, house the bulk of my emergency savings in CDs because I'm not planning to touch it and it yields a little better than a vanilla savings account. To address the comment about liquidity. In addition to my emergency savings I keep plain vanilla savings accounts for miscellaenous sudden expenses. To me "emergency" means lost job, not new water pump for my car; I have other budgeted savings for that but would spend it on a credit card and reimburse myself anyway so liquidity there isn't even that important. The 18 month CDs I use are barely less liquid than vanilla savings and the penalty is just a couple months of the accrued interest. When you compare a possible early distribution penalty against the years of increased yield you're likely to come out ahead after years of never touching your emergency savings, unless you're budgeted such that a car insurance deductible is an emergency expense. Emergency funds should be guaranteed and non-volatile. If I lose my job, 90 days of accrued interest isn't a hindrance to breaking open some of my CDs, and the process isn't so daunting that I'd meaningfully harm my finances. Liquidity in 2017 and liquidity in whatever year a text book was initially written are two totally different animals. My "very illiquid" brokerage account funds are only one transaction and 3 settlement days less liquid than my "very liquid" savings account. There's no call the bank, sell the security, wait for it to clear, my brokerage cuts a check, mail the check, cash the check, etc. I can go from Apple stock on Monday to cash in my hand on like Thursday. On the web portal for the bank that holds my CDs I can instantly transfer the funds from a CD to my checking account there net of a negligible penalty for early distribution. To call CDs illiquid in 2017 is silly. |
Do people tend to spend less when using cash than credit cards? | I don't think that there is any good way a study can average this and bring a useful result: The core problem is that there are people that will spend more money than they should, if they become technically able to, and the credit card is just one of the tools they abuse for that (similar to re-financing with cash-outs, zero percent loans, etc.). On the other side, there are people who control and understand their spending, and again, the mechanism of payment is irrelevant for them. Studies measure some mix between the groups, and come up with irrelevant correlations that have no causality. If you think any tool or mechanics got you in financial trouble, think again: your spending habits and lack of understanding or care get you in financial trouble - nothing else. In a world where it is considered cool to 'don't understand math', it is no surprise that so many people can't control their finances. |
What are the ins/outs of writing-off part of one's rent for working at home? | Tax regulations vary from country to country - some permitting more deductions, some less - but here are a few guidelines. As regards the home-office: As regards the deductions: Think of it like this: in order to have space for a home-office you needed a bigger home. That leads to increased rates, heating, insurance and so on. Many tax regulators recognise that these are genuine expenses. The alternative is to rent a separate office and incur greater expenses, leading to increased deductions and less overall tax paid (which won't finance the deficit). The usual test for deductions is: was the expense legitimately incurred in the pursuit of revenue? The flexibility permitted will vary by tax authority but you can frequently deduct more than you expected. |
How to trade large number of shares? | I think if you are only trading stocks with average volume greater than 1M you should not have any trouble entering a 10,000 size trade. If you are you can try a couple of things: Change your order from a market order to a limit order, however this may potentially reduce the number of shares that are actually traded on that day, and you may miss out on some or all of your order. Limit your trading to more liquid stocks, say average daily volumes above 10M or 100M. Apart from that you might have to just put up with some extra slippage and incorporate it into your trading plan. That is you can reduce your R multiple to allow some slippage. |
What's a Letter of Credit? Are funds held in my bank for the amount in question? | In a domestic setting, Letters of Credit are often used to build public works needed to support a development. So if you're bulldozing a few 3 story buildings to build a 50 story tower, the municipality will build appropriate water/sewer/gas/road infrastructure, and draw from the developer's letter of credit to fund it. The 'catch' to the developer is that these things usually aren't revokable -- once the city/town/etc starts work, the developer cannot cut-off the funding, even if the project is cancelled. A letter of credit definitely isn't a consumer financing vehicle. The closest equivalent is a "line of credit" tied to an asset like a home. |
Relation between inflation rates and interest rates | Possibly but not necessarily, though that can happen if one looks at the US interest rates in the late 1970s which did end with really high rates in the early 1980s. Generally interest rates are raised when inflation picks up as a way to bring down inflation. |
Is insurance worth it if you can afford to replace the item? If not, when is it? | As many other posters have pointed out, unless you know (and your insurer doesn't) that because of any reason you are more likely than the average to damage your computer, insuring it doesn't really make a lot of sense if you can comfortably replace it should the worst happen. In this particular case of a laptop, insurance is especially unattractive because computers depreciate fairly quickly. If you break it... ...and you're insured, you will get the very same laptop you bought more than a year ago. ...and you're not insured, you can choose to either find the same laptop at a substantially lower price (Apple does not really lower prices that much but you can probably get a refurbished unit, just like you could get with AppleCare) or spend the original amount in a newer and more powerful laptop. |
Why trade futures if you have options | Yes, from the point-of-view to the end speculator/investor in stocks, it is ludicrous to take on liabilities when you don't have to. That's why single-stock options are far more liquid than single-stock futures. However, if you are a farmer with a huge mortgage depending upon the chaos of agricultural markets which are extremely volatile, a different structure might appeal to you. You could long your inputs while shorting your outputs, locking in a profit. That profit is probably lower than what one could expect over the long run without hedging, but it will surely be less volatile. Here's where the advantage of futures come in for that kind of structure: the margin on the longs and shorts can offset each other, forcing the farmer to have to put up much less of one's own money to hedge. With options, this is not the case. Also, the gross margin between the inputs rarely fluctuate to an unmanageable degree, so if your shorts rise faster than your longs, you'll only have to post margin in the amount of the change in the net of the longs and shorts. This is why while options on commodities exist to satisfy speculators, futures are the most liquid. |
Why would you ever turn down a raise in salary? | I once turned down a raise because I didn't agree with the employee review that supposedly substantiated the raise. I felt the review to be superficial and incomplete. Then I refused to sign it, or take the accompanying raise, due to that fact. |
Which Benjamin Graham book should I read first: Security Analysis or Intelligent Investor? | If you're looking to learn more about investing for personal use (as opposed to academic interest), I'd recommend something like The Ages of the Investor instead. |
What ETF best tracks the price of gasoline, or else crude oil? | There is no ETF that closely tracks oil or gasoline. This is because all existing oil and gasoline ETFs hold futures contracts or other derivatives. Storing the oil and gasoline would be prohibitively costly. Futures contracts are prone to contango and backwardation, sometimes resulting in large deviations from the price of the physical commodity. Contrast oil ETFs with metal ETFs, which track nicely. EDIT: See this article about contango. The UNG chart is particularly ugly. |
Options for dummies. Can you explain how puts & calls work, simply? | An Xbox currently sells for $200 but you don't have the money right now to buy it. You think the price of the xbox is going up to $250 next month. Your friend works at BestBuy and says he has a "raincheck" that allows you to buy the Xbox for $200 but the raincheck expires next month. He offers to sell you the "raincheck" for $5. When you buy his raincheck for $5 you are locking in the right to buy the Xbox for $200. It is like an option because it locks in the purchase price, it has an expiration date, it locks in a purchase price, and it is not mandatory that you redeem it. That's an explanation for a call option in kids terms. For more easy answers to the question what is a call option click now. A put can be answered in a similar way. Suppose you bought the Xbox for $250 and then the price drops back to $200. If you keep your receipt, you have the right to return (sell the Xbox back) for $250 even though the current price is only $200. Bestbuy has a 30 day return policy so your receipt is like a put option in that you can sell the Xbox back for a price higher than the current market price. That's a simple example of a put option in kids terms. For more easy answers to the question what is a put click now. |
Buying a multi-family home to rent part and live in the rest | You are a "strategic" investor, which is to say that you are in the best position to evaluate the deal because you already live there. Others don't have this advantage going in, which is why they might not be inclined to do what you're doing. Your biggest advantage is that you know at least one tenant. In essence, you are your own "tenant" for the top floor You also presumably have a pretty good idea of the neighborhood. These are arguments for owning your own home, although it does get a bit trickier with a second tenant, whom you may not know. Do check credit and references, etc. You might ask the landlord why he wants to sell. Presumably it's because he wants to retire or move, and not a problem with the property. But it does no harm to ask. |
PayPal wants me to “add a bank account”, another funding source. Credit card isn't working. Why? | I'm pretty sure it's merchant-dependent. If a credit card transaction doesn't go through, PayPal will automatically charge your bank account. Some merchants may want that extra insurance. |
How to calculate my estimated taxes. 1099 MISC + Self Employment | There is a shortcut you can use when calculating federal estimated taxes. Some states may allow the same type of estimation, but I know at least one (my own--Illinois) that does not. The shortcut: you can completely base your estimated taxes for this year on last year's tax return and avoid any underpayment penalty. A quick summary can be found here (emphasis mine): If your prior year Adjusted Gross Income was $150,000 or less, then you can avoid a penalty if you pay either 90 percent of this year's income tax liability or 100 percent of your income tax liability from last year (dividing what you paid last year into four quarterly payments). This rule helps if you have a big spike in income one year, say, because you sell an investment for a huge gain or win the lottery. If wage withholding for the year equals the amount of tax you owed in the previous year, then you wouldn't need to pay estimated taxes, no matter how much extra tax you owe on your windfall. Note that this does not mean you will not owe money when you file your return next April; this shortcut ensures that you pay at least the minimum allowed to avoid penalty. You can see this for yourself by filling out the worksheet on form 1040ES. Line 14a is what your expected tax this year will be, based on your estimated income. Line 14b is your total tax from last year, possibly with some other modifications. Line 14c then asks you to take the lesser of the two numbers. So even if your expected tax this year is one million dollars, you can still base your estimated payments on last year's tax. |
What legal action can Paypal take against me if I don't pay them and I have a negative balance? | Paypal can take exactly the same legal actions against you as any creditor could -- take you to court for wilful nonpayment of debt, sell your debt to a collections agency, or anything else a business would do with a deadbeat customer. But this is a legal question, and as such off topic here. |
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