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Why is gold not a good investment?
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Gold is not really an investment at all, because it doesn't generate an income. It's only worth money because people think it's worth money (it has some industrial uses, but most gold is used as a store of value and not for industrial purposes), not because of its income stream.
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Historical company performance data
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The S&P report (aka STARS report) for each company has 10 years of financial data. These reports are available free at several online brokers (like E-Trade) if you have an account with the brokerage.
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First time homeowner and getting a mortgage?
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I second the suggestions for your local credit union and asking co-workers who might also be in the process of a home purchase. Additionally, you want to educate yourself as much as possible so that you can ask questions about the calculations responsible for the differences. I got different values starting from the various online automatic quotes all the way through to the GFE and it was not obvious to me. You can also sign-up for free workshops for first time home buyers, though most of the material will be a breeze it helps you get worksheets going and lists going for documentation that you need to gather. You might want to start at the HUD site and explore. Especially the Borrower's Rights. The cost booklet was very helpful for me to interpret the GFE, but honestly I didn't appreciate it the first time it was handed to me. Finally, you might meet qualifications to take advantage of FHA programs; the waitlists discourage everyone including the loan brokers, but you want to at least be aware of programs that can help.
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Do post-IPO 'insider' stock lockup periods still apply if you separate from the company
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There are quite a few regulations on "Insider Trading". Blackouts are one of the means companies adopt to comply with "Insider Trading" regulations, mandating employees to refrain from selling/buying during the notified period. Once you leave the employment: So unless there is an urgent need for you to sell/buy the options, wait for some time and then indulge in trade.
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Are lottery tickets ever a wise investment provided the jackpot is large enough?
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Lottery tickets where I live are often for charity. The charity does good things with your money. So you can buy a ticket and feel good whether you win or not, so that makes it an investment in your own well-being. For some of us, who maybe buy a lottery ticket once a year, it's the fun you are paying for. You know you are not really going to win, but you spend a few hours being excited waiting for the draw. Cheaper than the cinema. And you never know, you might win after all... The odds may be ridiculous, but somebody's going to get it...
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Should I buy a home or rent in my situation?
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I think the consensus is that you can't afford a home now and need to build more of a down payment (20% is benchmark, you may also need to pay mortgage insurance if you are below that) and all considered, it takes up too much of your monthly budget. You didn't do anything wrong but as mentioned by Ben, you are missing some monthly and yearly costs with home ownership. I suggest visiting a bank or somewhere like coldwell banker to discuss accurate costs and regulations in your area. I know the feeling of considering paying more now for the very attractive thought of owning a home... in 30 years. After interest, you need to consider that you are paying almost double the initial principle so don't rush for something you can do a year or two down the line as a major commitment. One major point that isn't emphasized in the current answers. You have a large family: Two children, a dog, and a cat. I don't know the kid's ages but given you are in your early twenties and your estimated monthly costs, they are probably very young before the point they really put any stress financially but you need to budget them in exponentially. Some quick figures from experience. Closing costs including inspections, mortgage origination fee, lawyer fees, checking the history of the home for liens, etc, which will set you back minimum 5% depending on the type of purchase (short sales, foreclosures are more expensive because they take longer) Insurance (home and flood) will depend on your zoning but you can expect anywhere between $100-300 a month. For many zones it is mandatory. Also depending on if it's a coop ($800+), condo($500+) or a townhouse-type you will need to pay different levels of monthly maintenance for the groundskeeping as a cooperative fee. at an estimate of a 250K home, all your savings will not be able to cover your closing costs and all 250k will need to be part of your base mortgage. so your base monthly mortgage payment at around 4% will be $1,200 a month. it's too tight. If it was a friend, I would highly suggest against buying in this case to preserve financial flexibility and sanity at such a young age.
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Can you explain why it's better to invest now rather than waiting for the market to dip?
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With a long enough time horizon, no matter when you buy, equities almost always outperform cash and bonds. There's an article here with some info: http://www.fool.co.uk/investing-basics/how-when-and-where-to-invest/ Holding period where shares have beaten cash There was a similar study done which showed if you picked any day in the last 100 years, no matter if the market was at a high or low, after 1 year your probability of being in profit was only 0.5, but after 10-20 years it was almost certainly 1.0. Equities compound dividends too, and the best place to invest is in diversified stock indices such as the S&P500, FTSE100, DOW30 or indices/funds which pay dividends. The best way to capture returns is to dollar cost average (e.g. place a lump sum, then add $x every month), to re-invest dividends, and oh, to forget about it in an IRA or SIPP (Self invested pension) or other vehicle which discourages tampering with your investment. Yes, values rise and fall but we humans are so short sighted, if we had bought the S&P in 2007 and sold in 2009 in fear, we would have missed out on the 25% gain (excluding dividends) from 2007-2014. That's about 3% a year gain even if you bought the 2007 high -beating cash or bonds even after the financial crisis. Now imagine had you dollar cost averaged the entire period from 2007-2014 where your gain would be. Your equity curve would have the same shape as the S&P (with its drastic dip in 2009) but an accelerated growth after. There are studies if you dig that demonstrate the above. From experience I can tell you timing the market is nigh impossible and most fund managers are unable to beat the indices. Far better to DCA and re-invest dividends and not care about market gyrations! ..
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Can two companies own stock in each other?
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Yes, this happens a lot. And in many cases companies don't even know this is happening. Collateralized Debt Obligations frequently contain pieces of the same financial products, where it is not obvious what the underlying asset is. It gets complicated to explain, but I can make an analogy to a portfolio of stocks you might create. Your portfolio contains companies and those companies also own some of the other companies in your same portfolio. The value of all the companies in your portfolio are very interrelated even though you thought you made diversified investments, under the idea that they can't all do poorly at the exact same time. Except they can, if the value of the company's shares are solely based on the value of other company's shares, but nobody noticed that none of them have an actual robust operations. This was a key factor of the financial disaster around 2008, but this problem was solved with the addition of additional disclaimers that all investors agree to, so they know what they are buying
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Is buying a lottery ticket considered an investment?
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From a mathematical expected-value standpoint, there is no difference between gambling (e.g. buying a lottery ticket) and investing (e.g. buying a share of stock). The former probably has negative expected value while the latter probably has positive expected value, but that is not a distinction to include in a definition (else every company that gives a bad quarterly earnings report suddenly changes categories). However, investment professionals have a vested interest in claiming there is a difference; that justifies them charging fees to steer you into the right investment. Consequently, hair-splitting ideas like the motive behind a purchase are introduced. The classification of an item to be purchased should not depend on the mental state of its purchaser. Depending on the situation, it may be right to engage in negative EV behavior. For example, if you have $1000 and need $2000 by next week or else you can't have an operation and you will die (and you can't find anyone to give you a loan). Your optimal strategy is to gamble your $1000, at the best odds you can get, with a possible outcome of $2000. So even if you only have a 1/3 chance of winning and getting that operation, it's still the right bet if you can't find a better one.
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Can you buy gift cards at grocery store to receive a higher reward rate?
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(I agree with the answers above; would just like to make a couple of additional points.) It's a good and simple strategy to try it out with a small amount as suggested by @JoeTaxpayer♦. It's also generally safe to assert that card issuers currently don't receive or actively look at itemized transaction details. But that does not mean they cannot in the future. Some stores utilize level 3 data processing, which tells the card issuers exactly what you bought in a transaction. An example of level 3 data being utilized to reject rewards is with Discover, which announced a 10% cashback reward for any transactions made with Apple Pay last year. It later introduced an additional term to exclude gift card purchases. And this has been verified to be effective - no more reward on gift card purchases; clawback of cashback on existing gift card transactions. As far as I know, Amex does receive and look at some level 3 data retrospectively. That does not necessarily mean they will claw back your cashback after initially rewarding the 6%. But it might show up if you ever trigger an account review, and be used as evidence of your "abuse" of the program (which BTW is defined rather subjectively). There has been many cases of account shutdowns because of this. Card issuers are also trying to do a better job preventing "abuses" by proactively setting caps on rewards (as opposed to closing those accounts afterwards and taking the rewards away altogether). Given the trend in recent years, I have to speculate that at some point the card issuers would put clear language in the terms against gift card purchase and enforce it effectively (if they haven't already). This reward game is constantly changing. It's good while it lasts. Just be prepared and don't get surprised when things go south.
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For very high-net worth individuals, does it make sense to not have insurance?
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There is an economic, a social and a psychological side to the decision whether to buy insurance or not, and if yes, which one. Economically, as you say already in your question, an insurance is on average a net loss for the insured. The key word here is "average". If you know that there are many cancer cases in your family buy health insurance by all means; it's a sound investment. If you are a reckless driver make sure you have extensive coverage on your liability insurance. But absent such extra risks: Independently of somebody's wealth insurance should be limited to covering catastrophic events. What is often overlooked is that the insurance by all means should really cover those catastrophic events. For example the car liability minimums in many states are not sufficient. The typical upper middle class person could probably pay the 15k/30k/10k required in Arizona with a loan on their house; but a really catastrophic accident is simply not covered and would totally ruin that person and their family. Insuring petty damage is a common mistake: economically speaking, all insurances should have deductibles which are as high as one could afford to pay without feeling too much pain. That "pain" qualification has an economical and a social aspect. Of course any risk which materialized is an economical damage of some kind; perhaps now I can't buy the PS4, or the diamond ring, or the car, or the house, or the island which had caught my eye. I could probably do all these things, just perhaps without some extras, even if I had paid for insurance; so if I don't want to live with the risk to lose that possibility I better buy insurance. Another economical aspect is that the money may not be available without selling assets, possibly on short notice and hence not for the best price. Then an insurance fee takes the role of paying for a permanent backup credit line (and should not be more expensive than that). The social aspect is that even events which wouldn't strictly ruin a person might still force them to, say, sell their Manhattan penthouse (no more parties!) or cancel their country club membership. That is a social pain which is probably to be avoided. Another socioeconomic aspect is that you may have a relationship to the person selling you the insurance. Perhaps he buys his car at your dealership? Perhaps he is your golf buddy? Then the insurance may be a good investment. It is only borderline bad to begin with; any benefits move the line into the profit zone. The psychological aspect is that an insurance buys peace of mind, and that often seems to be the most important benefit. A dart hits the flat screen? Hey, it was insured. Junior totals the Ferrari? Hey, it was insured. Even if the house burns down having fire insurance will be a consolation.
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Google Finance Cash Flow Statement
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I'm a big believer in pulling the quarterly and or annual statements and deriving your own analysis. The automated parsing systems at Google, Yahoo, and others are a good starting point and they'll let you generally compare various metrics of different companies or market segments. With that in mind, there are any number of reasons Google's scripts could have broken out or combined a couple of cash flow line items. If you're digging this deep in the weeds on this company you should pull the SEC filings and build out your own data.
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What is the difference between “good debt” vs. “bad debt”?
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I think people are conflating two orthogonal sets of terms. Unsecured/secured and good/bad are not synonyms. Debt may be secured or unsecured. If I take a loan against a car or house it is typically secured, so the object is collateral against the loan. Bad debt in financial terms is a loan that is not expected to be recovered. A bank might write off a loan or a portion of a loan as bad debt if the borrower goes bankrupt or into administration for example. Both secured and unsecured loans may be considered bad debt. I think the context in which the question is being asked is how to distinguish between sensible and inadvisable borrowing. An extreme example of inadvisable borrowing would be to buy a PC on a store card. PCs devalue very quickly and a store card may charge 30% APR, so paying the minimum off each month would mean paying more than twice the sticker price for a product that is now worth less than half the original borrowed amount. On the other hand, a 3% mortgage when borrowing less than 60% of the value of a property is a good bet from a lender's perspective, and would be a good debt to have (not as good as no debt, but better thhan a high APR one).
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What are the pros and cons of buying a house just to rent it out?
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Lets consider what would happen if you invested $1500/mo plus $10k down in a property, or did the same in a low-cost index fund over the 30 year term that most mortgages take. The returns of either scenarios cannot be guaranteed, but there are long term analyses that shows the stock market can be expected to return about 7%, compounded yearly. This doesn't mean each year will return 7%, some years will be negative, and some will be much higher, but that over a long span, the average will reach 7%. Using a Time-Value-of-Money calculator, that down payment, monthly additions of $1,500, and a 7% annual return would be worth about $1.8M in 30 years. If 1.8M were invested, you could safely withdraw $6000/mo for the rest of your life. Do consider 30years of inflation makes this less than today's dollar. There are long term analyses that show real estate more-or-less keeps track with inflation at 2-4% annual returns. This doesn't consider real estate taxes, maintenance, insurance and the very individual and localized issues with your market and your particular house. Is land limited where you are, increasing your price? Will new development drive down your price? In 30 years, you'll own the house outright. You'll still need to pay property tax and insurance on it, and you'll be getting rental income. Over those 30 years, you can expect to replace a roof, 2-3 hot water heaters, concrete work, several trees, decades of snow shoveling, mowing grass and weeding, your HVAC system, windows and doors, and probably a kitchen and bathroom overhauls. You will have paid about 1.5x the initial price of the mortgage in interest along the way. So you'll have whatever the rental price for your house, monthly (probably almost impossible to predict for a single-family home) plus the market price of your house. (again, very difficult to predict, but could safely say it keeps pace with inflation) minus your expenses. There are scenarios where you could beat the stock market. There are ways to reduce the lifestyle burden of being a landlord. Along the way, should you want to purchase a house for yourself to live in, you'll have to prove the rental income is steady, to qualify for a loan. Having equity in a mortgage gives you something to borrow against, in a HELOC. Of course, you could easily end up owing more than your house is worth in that situation. Personally, I'd stick to investing that money in low-fee index funds.
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Can i short securities in a normal(non-margin) account
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The broker will charge borrowing fees and sometimes a charge called "hard-to-borrow fee". Other than that you will earn interest on the cash you get from selling the stocks, but you will have to pay dividends. This is because someone else (the party you sold the stocks off to) will now get the dividends and the party who lent you the stocks will miss out on these, that's why you have to remunerate them. The type of account you need is entirely up to your broker (and besides, it depends on what a 'normal' account for you is, you should at least mention your country or your broker).
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Why do consultants or contractors make more money than employees?
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The "more money" aspect is only true if you ignore the lack of symmetry between employment and contracting. Consulting is another story altogether. Companies are willing to pay consultants for a number of reasons but the most important is deniability. If a decision is recommended and goes wrong then the consultants can be sued. Liability cover is expensive. Cynicism aside, it often isn't cost-effective to keep specialists permanently on the payroll for tasks that are performed once a year. Recently I've noticed that the nature of consulting is changing. Companies are starting to assemble brains-trusts of internal consultants who can create and manage projects while outsourcing only the labour-intensive data-collection roles. Expect this to have a big impact on the management consulting industry.
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What financial data are analysed (and how) to come up with a stock recommendation?
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Let me start with a somewhat sarcastic statement: There are probably as many things done to analyze a stock as there are people doing the analysis! That said, at a general level an analyst researches the historical performance of the company at a fairly detailed level (operations within divisions of the company, product development cycles within divisions, expenses vs income trends for each division and product, marketing costs, customer acquisition costs, etc); gathers information about what the company is doing now AND planning to do in the future -- often by a discussion with principles at the company; establishes a view on related macro-economic trends, sector and industry trends, demographic trends, etc.; and combines it all to forecast a change in revenues, margins, free cash flow, dividends, etc. over a period of time. They then apply statistics that relate those numbers to stock price in order to imply stock prices and price ranges over those same periods. Finally, depending on how those stock prices compare to the current stock price, they'll classify the stock as Buy, Sell, Hold, etc. This sounds like alot of work. And it generally is if you get detailed about it, which is what professionals or significant money managers are doing. However, there are also lots of arm-chair analysts posting their output on any number of financial sites (Seeking Alpha, Motley Fool, etc.) if you'd like to really explore the range of detail some people consider as a "stock analysis". That sounds more negative than I intended it to be, so let me clarify that I think some of these write-ups are really quite good IMO.
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Using Euros to buy and sell NASDAQ stocks
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Does the Spanish market, or any other market in euroland, have the equivalent of ETF's? If so there ought to be one that is based on something like the US S&P500 or Russell 3000. Otherwise you might check for local offices of large mutual fund companies such as Vanguard, Schwab etc to see it they have funds for sale there in Spain that invest in the US markets. I know for example Schwab has something for Swiss residents to invest in the US market. Do bear in mind that while the US has a stated policy of a 'strong dollar', that's not really what we've seen in practice. So there is substantial 'currency risk' of the dollar falling vs the euro, which could result in a loss for you. (otoh, if the Euro falls out of bed, you'd be sitting pretty.) Guess it all depends on how good your crystal ball is.
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What ways are there to invest in stocks, options, indexes, etc, and where should one start (what funds)?
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I take the route of the tortoise. I subscribe to the adage that you invest in an excellent index fund like VFINX and forget about day trading and trying to make short term gains. Just like I would do at a casino I do gamble a bit for fun. Using etrade you can purchase some Vanguard or a billion of other things. I purchased some Apple, Google, Verizon, and Ford (when it was at 1.3) and all of those have been good investments. However, I don't invest the majority of my money in to individual stocks. I just do this with some 'play' money. After maxing out 401k, etc. I put away my 6 months of safety net in a money mark and put the rest in Vanguard.
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Is Amazon's offer of a $50 gift card a scam?
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These kinds of credit card offers are incredibly common. More often you will get a certain reward if you spend $X within Y days of getting the card. In many cases you can take advantage of them with very little downside. However, are you responsible enough to have a credit card and be able to pay off the balance every month? If not the interest charges could quickly wipe out the $50 bonus you get. And hard inquiries and new accounts could potentially affect your credit score, particularly if you don't have a well-established credit history. There's also the chance you get denied in which case you add a hard inquiry to your credit report for no gain.
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Which student loans to pay off first: Stafford or private?
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At the current rates, stated in the question, I would push additional funds towards your Stafford loans as their higher interest rates will incur interest charges almost 3 times faster than your private loans. With my loans I have not seen much information regarding private loans jumping the interest rate close to the 6.8% any time in the coming years (if others have insight to this I look forward to the comments). Due to the private loans being variable there is an element of risk to their rates increasing. Another way to look at it may be to prorate your amount of extra payments according to their interest rate. $1,000 x 0.068 /(0.068 + 0.025) = $731.18 Toward your Stafford Loans $1,000 x 0.025 /(0.068 + 0.025) = $268.82 Toward your Private Loans
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How are the best way to make and save money at 22 years old
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Get an education. A bachelor's degree preferably, but AA or even a certificate are fine too. It will increase your earning potential significantly and over your lifetime it will earn you a lot of money. You make around $30,000 a year now, median salary for someone with a bachelors in the humanities is around $45,000. If you degree is in the STEM field, that goes up to $55,000 - $65,000 range. Second best option is to start a small business of some kind that does not require substantial investment. Handyman comes to mind as an example or some sort of billing service maybe? I would not recommend self directed investment in the stock market - most people lose money and since you don't have a lot of money to invest, commissions and fees will eat up a significant portion of it. I would usually recommend a CD but interest rates it's not really worth it.
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Why are estimated taxes due “early” for the 2nd and 3rd quarters only?
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I suspect that the payments were originally due near the end of each quarter (March 15, June 15, September 15, and December 15) but then the December payment was extended to January 15 to allow for end-of-year totals to be calculated, and then the March payment was extended to April 15 to coincide with Income Tax Return filing.
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Is engaging in stocks without researching unwise?
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I don't see balance sheet in what you're looking at, and I'd definitely suggest learning how to read a balance sheet and looking at it, if you're going to buy stock in a company, unless you know that the recommendations you're buying on are already doing that and you're willing to take that risk. Also, reading past balance sheets and statements can give you an idea about how accurate the company is with their predictions, or if they have a history of financial integrity. Now, if you're going the model portfolio route, which has become popular, the assumption that many of these stock buyers are making is that someone else is doing that for them. I am not saying that this assumption is valid, just one that I've seen; you will definitely find a lot of skeptics, and rightly so, about model portfolios. Likewise, people who trade based on what [Person X] does (like Warren Buffett or David Einhorn) are assuming that they're doing the research. The downside to this is if you follow someone like this. Yeah, oops. I should also point out that technical analysis, especially high probability TA, generally only looks at history. Most would define it as high risk and there are many underlying assumptions with reading the price movements by high probability TA types.
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How do I factor dividends and yield into the performance of a security?
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Instead of a price chart can use a performance chart, which is usually expressed as a percentage increase from the original purchase price. To factor in the dividends, you can either add in all of your dividends to the final price, or subtract the accumulated dividends from your cost basis (the initial price).
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Calculating the profit earned from a leveraged futures contract
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I'm not entirely sure about some of the details in your question, since I think you meant to use $10,000 as the value of the futures contract and $3 as the value of the underlying stock. Those numbers would make more sense. That being said, I can give you a simple example of how to calculate the profit and loss from a leveraged futures contract. For the sake of simplicity, I'll use a well-known futures contract: the E-mini S&P500 contract. Each E-mini is worth $50 times the value of the S&P 500 index and has a tick size of 0.25, so the minimum price change is 0.25 * $50 = $12.50. Here's an example. Say the current value of the S&P500 is 1,600; the value of each contract is therefore $50 * 1,600 = $80,000. You purchase one contract on margin, with an initial margin requirement1 of 5%, or $4,000. If the S&P 500 index rises to 1,610, the value of your futures contract increases to $50 * 1,610 = $80,500. Once you return the 80,000 - 4,000 = $76,000 that you borrowed as leverage, your profit is 80,500 - 76,000 = $4,500. Since you used $4,000 of your own funds as an initial margin, your profit, excluding commissions is 4,500 - 4,000 = $500, which is a 500/4000 = 12.5% return. If the index dropped to 1,580, the value of your futures contract decreases to $50 * 1,580 = $79,000. After you return the $76,000 in leverage, you're left with $3,000, or a net loss of (3,000 - 4000)/(4000) = -25%. The math illustrates why using leverage increases your risk, but also increases your potential for return. Consider the first scenario, in which the index increases to 1,610. If you had forgone using margin and spent $80,000 of your own funds, your profit would be (80,500 - 80,000) / 80000 = .625%. This is smaller than your leveraged profit by a factor of 20, the inverse of the margin requirement (.625% / .05 = 12.5%). In this case, the use of leverage dramatically increased your rate of return. However, in the case of a decrease, you spent $80,000, but gained $79,000, for a loss of only 1.25%. This is 20 times smaller in magnitude than your negative return when using leverage. By forgoing leverage, you've decreased your opportunity for upside, but also decreased your downside risk. 1) For futures contracts, the margin requirements are set by the exchange, which is CME group, in the case of the E-mini. The 5% in my example is higher than the actual margin requirement, which is currently $3,850 USD per contract, but it keeps the numbers simple. Also note that CME group refers to the initial margin as the performance bond instead.
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Question about ex-dividend date timing
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Here is the definition of Ex-dividend date from the SEC: Once the company sets the record date, the stock exchanges or the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. fix the ex-dividend date. The ex-dividend date is normally set for stocks two business days before the record date. If you purchase a stock on its ex-dividend date or after, you will not receive the next dividend payment. Instead, the seller gets the dividend. If you purchase before the ex-dividend date, you get the dividend. The linked document discusses weekend, and holidays involved in the calculation. The difference between the record date and the ex-dividend is to allow for the three days of settlement.
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Online resource to get expense ratios for mutual funds, index funds & ETFs?
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If you want the answer from the horse's mouth, go to the website of the ETF or mutual find, and the expense ratio will be listed there, both on the "Important Information" part of the front page, as well as in the .pdf file that you click on to download the Prospectus. Oh wait, you don't want to go the fund's website at all, just to a query site where you type in something like VFINX. hit SEARCH, and out pops the expense ratio for the Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund? Well, have you considered MorningStar?
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I cosigned for a friend who is not paying the payment
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I am not sure how anyone is answering this unless they know what the loan was for. For instance if it is for a house you can put a lien on the house. If it is for the car in most states you can take over ownership of it. Point being is that you need to go after the asset. If there is no asset you need to go after you "friend". Again we need more specifics to determine the best course of action which could range from you suing and garnishing wages from your friend to going to small claims court. Part of this process is also getting a hold of the lending institution. By letting them know what is going on they may be able to help you - they are good at tracking people down for free. Also the lender may be able to give you options. For example if it is for a car a bank may help you clear this out if you get the car back plus penalty. If a car is not in the red on the loan and it is in good condition the bank turns a profit on the default. If they can recover it for free they will be willing to work with you. I worked in repo when younger and on more than a few occasions we had the cosigner helping. It went down like this... Co-signer gets pissed like you and calls bank, bank works out a plan and tells cosigner to default, cosigner defaults, banks gives cosigner rights to repo vehicle, cosigner helps or actually repos vehicle, bank gets car back, bank inspects car, bank asks cosigner for X amount (sometimes nothing but not usually), cosigner pays X, bank does not hit cosigners credit, bank releases loan and sells car. I am writing this like it is easy but it really requires that asset is still in good condition, that cosigner can get to the asset, and that the "friend" still is around and trusts cosigner. I have seen more than a few cosigners promise to deliver and come up short and couple conspiring with the "friend". I basically think most of the advice you have gotten so far is crap and you haven't provided enough info to give perfect advice. Seeking a lawyer is a joke. Going after a fleeing party could eat up 40-50 billable hours. It isn't like you are suing a business or something. The lawyer could cost as much as repaying the loan - and most lawyers will act like it is a snap of their fingers until they have bled you dry - just really unsound advice. For the most part I would suggest talking to the bank and defaulting but again need 100% of the details. The other part is cosigning the loan. Why the hell would you cosign a loan for a friend? Most parents won't cosign a loan for their own kids. And if you are cosigning a loan, you write up a simple contract and make the non-payment penalties extremely costly for your friend. I have seen simple contracts that include 30% interests rates that were upheld by courts.
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Repaying Debt and Saving - Difficult Situation
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Given the listed expenses, this problem will not have a nice solutions. So lets quickly go through them and see when the most pressing ones can be dealt with: Solved within 1 year: 900 Solved within a few years: 1300: 900+400 You may be able to save a couple of hundred on the rest, but just take a minute to look at the above. Within 1 year she will be able to 'break even' and within a few years she will be able to live fairly comfortably. She will eat through her funds in about 10 months, which should coincide with the end of the tuition costs. If you could just sponsor her a little bit, or just be there for her in case of unexpected expenses, she should make it till the end of the year after which things are looking up and she will have a healthy surplus each month. Soon you and your sister can probably help her build up a nice buffer quickly, after which her worries should be over.
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How should I file my taxes as a contractor?
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For tax purposes you will need to file as an employee (T4 slips and tax withheld automatically), but also as an entrepreneur. I had the same situation myself last year. Employee and self-employed is a publication from Revenue Canada that will help you. You need to fill out the statement of business activity form and keep detailed records of all your deductible expenses. Make photocopies and keep them 7 years. May I suggest you take an accountant to file your income tax form. More expensive but makes you less susceptible to receive Revenue Canada inspectors for a check-in. If you can read french, you can use this simple spreadsheet for your expenses. Your accountant will be happy.
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While working overseas my retirement has not gone into a retirement account. Is it going to kill me on the FAFSA?
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According to the FAFSA info here, they will count your nonretirement assets when figuring the EFC. The old Motley Fool forum question I mentioned in my comment suggests asking the school for a "special circumstances adjustment to your FAFSA". I don't know much about it, but googling finds many pages about it at different colleges. This would seem to be something you need to do individually with whatever school(s) your son winds up considering. Also, it is up to the school whether to have mercy on you and accept your request. Other than that, you should establish whatever retirement accounts you can and immediately begin contributing as much as possible. Given that the decision is likely to be complicated by your foreign income, you should seek professional advice from an accountant versed in such matters.
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Where or how can I model historical market purchases
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Robert Shiller has an on-line page with links to download some historical data that may be what you want here. Center for the Research in Security Prices would be my suggestion for another resource here.
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Pros/Cons of Buying Discounted Company Stock
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I see another way of looking at this that hasn't been addressed yet. By offering the discount, the company is attempting to change your behavior into doing something irrational, that benefits them at your expense. The company hopes for one (or more) of the following psychological effects to happen to you: The proper thing to do, if you have enough capital to prevent margin calls, it to short-sell the stock at the same instant the price is set, thus locking in the profit. Eventually you can take possession of the shares and deliver them to offset the short -- hopefully before you get a margin call from the stock dropping.
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An online casino owes me money and wants to pay with a wire transfer. Is this safe?
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Keep in mind that in order to fund your online casino account, you either had to provide credit/debit card info, or you had to give them your bank account number band routing number already. Now, assuming you've seen no fraudulent activity on your account(s) since then, and it was you who initiated the contact with them, what they're asking for is not totally unreasonable, nor is it all that unusual. MANY companies require you to provide account/routing info to do financial business with them, which doesn't automatically equate to nefarious purposes, so don't let yourself go down that rabbit hole unless there's some other serious red flag to the situation which you haven't shared with us. It is a bit odd they'd send you a check for a portion of the winnings, but maybe that's to demonstrate good faith on their part as to why they need you to provide them information to send the remainder of your winnings. That being said, the suggestion to open a bank account solely for purposes of receiving your winnings is a good one. I would go a step further and, once the transfer is made, go to the bank in person and withdraw it in cash. Then you can deposit it into your regular bank account without there being any possible connection between the two, just in case you decide to indulge your fears about this. Good luck!
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Why REIT prices are not going down while bonds are being hammered?
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There are five main drivers to real estate returns: Income (cash flow from rental payments); Depreciation (as an expense that can be used to reduce taxes); Equity (the gradual paydown of the mortgage the increases underlying equity in the property); Appreciation (any increase in the overall value of the property); Leverage (the impact of debt financing on the deal, increasing the effective "cash-on-cash" return). (Asset Rover has a detailed walk-through of the components, and a useful comparison to stocks) So interest rates are certainly a component (as they increase the expenses), but they are just one factor. Depending on a particular market's conditions, appreciation or rent increases could offset or (exceed) any increase in the interest expense. My own experience is mostly with non-listed REITs (including Reg A+ investments like the ones from Fundrise) and commercial syndicates, and for right now in both cases there's plenty of capital chasing yield to go around (and in fact competition among new funding sources like Reg D and Reg A+ platforms seems to be driving down borrowing rates as platforms compete both for borrowers and for investors). Personally I pay more attention to where each local market (and the broader national market) is along the ~18-year real estate cycle (spoiler: the last trough was 2008...). Dividend Capital puts out a quarterly report that's super useful.
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Debt collector has wrong person and is contacting my employer
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From a page on consumerfinance.gov A debt collector generally may not contact your employer or other third-parties about the debt. Debt collectors may ask your employer to verify your employment, or ask for your address or telephone number. Note - they aren't even allowed to tell the employer that they are trying to collect a debt. So - even if you were the guilty party, this isn't allowed. They've already broken very clear laws and thus are probably not trustworthy, so (echoing what others have said) don't give them your own personal information. If they've done one day's research on the law governing their industry they know this is illegal. If they've actually gotten any money from your employer, it's theft. If they haven't then it's just attempted theft. Contact the police regardless. Also - contact a lawyer. You may well have the right to sue them. They've broken Federal laws in a way that causes you injury. Odds are they've broken state laws as well. One last point - do you even have proof that these are debt collectors collecting a real debt, rather than people trying to get you to give them your SSN? Perhaps their business plan is to look at company webpages and send bogus requests to the employers for some random employee and then see what information they get back (I'm not him, here's my personal information). Be very careful to not give any personally identifiable information (date of birth, address, SSN, mother's maiden name, etc). Anything they ask about you don't provide.
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Who can truly afford luxury cars?
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I don't think you're missing anything on the math side as far as the payments. Likewise, it may seem everyone's driving a nicer car, but I'm going to predict that's based on area and a few other factors (for instance, my used car feels like riches in a college town). The behavior of why people would pay money, especially with high interest debt, for something is a little different. To explain the behavior behind people who purchase luxury cars: for some people, a car is a purchase that they value, similar to a person valuing the clothes they wear, the house they live in, or the equipment they buy and either borrowing or paying full price on an expensive car is worth it to them. We can call it a status symbol dismissively and criticize the financial waste without realizing, "Wait, this is something they value" like a rare book collector likes rare books (would a rare book collector pass on borrowing money if it meant a once-in-a-lifetime rare book purchase opportunity?). Have you ever felt, "Wow this is cool/awesome/amazing" with something? Basically, that's how many of them feel toward these cars. As much as I'd love to say they're only doing it for status (because I'm not a car person), that's actually somewhat de-humanizing and the more I've met people like this, the more I've realized this is their "thing" and to them it's totally worth it (even with all the debt). I have no doubt that there's a percentage of them who truly may be misled - maybe they don't realize the full cost of borrowing money or leasing. Still, for those who don't care the full cost, that's because it's their thing. We can all agree that it's still not wise to do financially (borrow on a luxury vehicle), and it won't change that some people will do it.
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Could an ex-employee of a company find themself stranded with shares they cannot sell (and a tax bill)?
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they are entirely free to do whatever they want with the shares. In particular, they can sell them to whomever they choose No. Restrictions on who can sell when and to whom are a common thing with startups. "Publicly traded" companies are regulated in a much stricter way than private companies, so until the IPO the sales are limited to the OTC markets. But even that can be restricted by bylaws - for example ownership can only be limited to a group of investors approved by the board. As an employee - your grant was approved by the board, but when you come to sell, the buyer was not and the company may not agree to vet them. Bottom line is that it is not illegal to impose all kinds of restrictions on what the employees can do with their shares, as long as the shares are not listed on a public stock exchange (even after the company goes IPO with one class, other classes may remain restricted).
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2 401k's and a SEP-IRA
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question #2 - yes, 25% of your 1099 income. Good idea. It adds up quickly and is a good way to reduce taxable income.
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In USA, what circumstances (if any) make it illegal for a homeless person to “rent” an address?
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It depends on the rules in the specific places you stay. Specific places being countries or states. Some states may consider pension payments to be taxable income, others may not. Some may consider presence for X days to constitute residency, X days may be 60 days in a calendar year whether or not those days are continuous. It doesn't matter so much where your mailbox or mail handling service is located, it matters: You may owe taxes in more than one place. Some states will allow you to offset other states' taxes against theirs. Some states in the US are really harsh on income taxes. It's my understanding that if you own real estate in New York, all of your income, no matter the source, is taxable income in New York whether or not you were ever in the state that year. Ultimately, you can't just put up your hand and say, "that's my tax domicile so I'm exempt from all your taxes." There is no umbrella US regulation on this topic, the states determine who they consider to be residents and how those residents are to be taxed. While it's possible you may be considered a resident of multiple states and owe income taxes in multiple states, it's equally possible that you won't meet the residency criteria for any state regardless of whether or not that state has an income tax. The issue you face, as addressed in @Jay's answer, Oklahoma will consider you a resident of OK until you have established residency somewhere else.
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I file 83(b) election, but did't include a copy of it in that year’s tax return
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This may be relevant: it suggests that IRS is lenient with the attachment of the form with 1040. To paraphrase: "The ruling involved a taxpayer who timely filed the election with the IRS within 30 days of the property transfer but who did not attach a copy of the election to his or her Form 1040 for the year of the transfer. Fortunately for the taxpayer in question, the ruling indicated that the submission of the election to the IRS within 30 days of the property transfer fulfilled the requirements for a valid election, and the failure to attach the copy to the tax return did not affect the validity of the election. The IRS requested that the taxpayer forward a copy of the election to the IRS to be associated with the processing of the tax return. - See more at: http://www.bnncpa.com/services/employee_benefit_plans/blog/irs_rules_that_failure_to_attach_83b_election_to_form_1040_did_not_invalida#sthash.0c3h2nJY.dpuf" If someone wants to grok the IRS ruling: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/1405008.pdf And this is the article where I saw the above referenced. www.bnncpa.com/services/employee_benefit_plans/blog/irs_rules_that_failure_to_attach_83b_election_to_form_1040_did_not_invalida
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Possible to use balance transfers to avoid interest with major credit cards?
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In theory, yes. In practice: So it can be gamed, but the odds are not on your side :)
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Calculating Future Value: Initial deposit and recurring deposits of a fixed but different Value
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Illustrating with a shorter example: Suppose I deposit 1,000 USD. Every year I deposit another 100 USD. I want to know how much money will be on that savings account in 4 years. The long-hand calculation is Expressed with a summation And using the formula derived from the summation (as shown by DJohnM) So for 20 years Note in year 20 (or year 4 in the shorter example) the final $100 deposit does not have any time to accrue interest before the valuation of the account.
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For a car, would you pay cash, finance for 0.9% or lease for 0.9%?
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If you want the new car, pay cash for it. Here's why: By paying cash for the car, you immediately save $2,500 off the price of the car. That is not insignificant, it's 8.3% off. By paying cash, you'll never be upside down on the car, and you can sell the car anytime you want. You said that all you need to do is beat the 0.9% interest rate with your investment to come out ahead. That doesn't take into account the discount you would have gotten by paying cash. $30,000 invested for 5 years at 1.6% (rough estimate) would get you $2,500 (the discount), so the rate you need to beat to come out ahead is actually 2.5%. Still doable, but it is much less of a sure thing on a 5 year investment, and much less worth the trouble. New cars are an expensive luxury. If you are wealthy enough, a new car certainly can be appropriate for you. However, if you don't like the idea of paying $30k in cash all at once, that is a strong indication that perhaps the new car is a luxury you aren't in a position to buy at this time. Borrowing the money and paying for it over time makes it psychologically easier to over spend on transportation.
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Market Making vs Market Taking (Quotes vs Orders)
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Quote driven markets are the predecessors to the modern securities market. Before electronic trading and HFTs specifically, trading was thin and onerous. Today, the average investor can open up a web page, type in a security, and buy at the narrowest spread permitted by regulators with anyone else who wants to take the other side. Before the lines between market maker and speculator became blurred to indistinction, a market maker was one who was contractually obligated to an exchange to provide a bid and ask for a given security on said exchange even though at heart a market maker is still simply a trader despite the obligation. A market maker would simultaneously buy a large amount of securities privately and short the same amount to have no directional bias, exposure to the direction of the security, and commence to making the market. The market maker would estimate its cost basis for the security based upon those initial trades and provide a bid and ask appropriate for the given level of volume. If volumes were high, the spread would be low and vice versa. Market makers who survived crashes and spikes would forgo the potential profit in always providing a steady price and spread, ie increased volume otherwise known as revenue, to maintain no directional bias. In other words, if there were suddenly many buyers and no sellers, hitting the market maker's ask, the MM would raise the ask rapidly in proportion to the increased exposure while leaving the bid somewhere below the cost basis. Eventually, a seller would arise and hit the MM's bid, bringing the market maker's inventory back into balance, and narrowing the spread that particular MM could provide since a responsible MM's ask could rise very high very quickly if a lack of its volume relative to its inventory made inventory too costly. This was temporarily extremely costly to the trader if there were few market makers on the security the trader was trading or already exposed to. Market makers prefer to profit from the spread, bidding below some predetermined price, based upon the cost basis of the market maker's inventory, while asking above that same predetermined cost basis. Traders profit from taking exposure to a security's direction or lack thereof in the case of some options traders. Because of electronic trading, liquidity rebates offered by exchanges not only to contractually obligated official market makers but also to any trader who posts a limit order that another trader hits, and algorithms that become better by the day, market making HFTs have supplanted the traditional market maker, and there are many HFTs where there previously were few official market makers. This speed and diversification of risk across many many algorithmically market making HFTs have kept spreads to the minimum on large equities and have reduced the same for the smallest equities on major exchanges. Orders and quotes are essentially identical. Both are double sided auction markets with impermenant bids and asks. The difference lies in that non-market makers, specialists, etc. orders are not shown to the rest of the market, providing an informational advantage to MMs and an informational disadvantage to the trader. Before electronic trading, this construct was of no consequence since trader orders were infrequent. With the prevalence of HFTs, the informational disadvantage has become more costly, so order driven markets now prevail with much lower spreads and accelerated volumes even though market share for the major exchanges has dropped rapidly and hyperaccelerated number of trades even though the size of individual trades have fallen. The worst aspect of the quote driven market was that traders could not directly trade with each other, so all trades had to go between a market maker, specialist, etc. While this may seem to have increased cost to a trader who could only trade with another trader by being arbitraged by a MM et al, paying more than what another trader was willing to sell, these costs were dwarfed by the potential absence of those market makers. Without a bid or ask at any given time, there could be no trade, so the costs were momentarily infinite. In essence, a quote driven market protects market makers from the competition of traders. While necessary in the days where paper receipts were carted from brokerage to brokerage, and the trader did not dedicate itself to round the clock trading, it has no place in a computerized market. It is more costly to the trader to use such a market, explaining quote driven markets' rapid exit.
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I'm an American in my mid 20's. Is there something I should be doing to secure myself financially?
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First of all, make sure you have an emergency fund. Ideally this should be at least 6 months of living expenses in an easily accessible place. Do you have any credit card debt, school debt, or other debt? Work towards becoming debt free, especially of higher interest debt and debt on things that are only depreciating (cars, for example). If you have extra income, consider putting it towards debt. If you currently have access to a 403b, you should begin investing immediately. If not, look into a Roth IRA. The community has provided suggestions for good places to get one. With a Roth IRA you take post-tax income money and invest it into this retirement account and when you reach retirement age you get it and all the interest as tax-free income. You can't withdraw the principal until retirement age. You should put up to the legal limit into a retirement account - if you can't do this at first work towards this goal. After an emergency fund, becoming debt free, and fully funding your retirement, save for goals such as a house or other things you are working towards. The exact order of doing these things might vary, but in general you need the emergency fund first.
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Retirement Savings vs. Student Loan payments
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You can play with the numbers all you like (and that's good), however, here is a different way to look at it. The debt you have is risk. It limits your choices and eats your cash flow. Without the debt, you can invest at a much greater rate. It frees up you cash flow for all the things you might want to do, or decide in the future you might want to do. Right now is the easiest time for you to focus on debt repayment. It sounds like you are not married and have no children. It is much easier now to cut back your lifestyle and concentrate on paying off this $50k of student debt. This will get harder as your responsibility increases. Build up a small amount of cash for emergencies and put the rest at the debt. You can keep contributing to your 401k to the match if you want. This will give you 2 benefits: Patience. When you actually DO start investing, you will have a new appreciation for the money you are using. If you sacrifice to pay off $50k now, you wont look at money the same for the rest of your life. Drive. If you see the debt as a barrier to achieving your goals, you will work harder to get out of debt. These are all things I would tell my 23 year-old self if i could go back in time. Good luck!
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Is there a standard check format in the USA?
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Nope, anything is that has the required information is fine. At a minimum you need to have the routing number, account number, amount, "pay to" line and a signature. The only laws are that it can't be written on anything illegal, like human skin, and it has to be portable, not carved on the side of a building ( for example) https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-20434,00.html http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/12/people-actually-cash-big-novelty-checks-even-possible/ That said, the MICR line and standard sizes will make things eaiser for they bank, but are hardly required. You could write your check on notebook paper so long as it had the right information, and the bank would have to "cash it". Keep in mind that a check is an order to the bank to give your money to a person and nothing more. You could write it out in sentence form. "Give Bill $2 from account 12344221 routing number 123121133111 signed _________" and it would be valid. In practice though, it would be a fight. Mostly the bank would try to urge you to use a standard check, or could hold the funds because it looks odd, till they received the ok from "the other bank". But.... If you rant to fight that fight....
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What prevents interest rates from rising?
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There do not appear to be any specific legal measures to prevent bankruptcies. In fact, they seems to be part of the means for which rates are raised, for the consequent aim of lowering inflation. See: The Budgetary Implications of Higher Federal Reserve Board Interest Rates by Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research. The Federal Reserve Board (Fed) is widely expected to start raising interest rates some time in 2015. The purpose of higher interest rates is to slow the economy and prevent inflation. This is done by reducing the rate of job creation and thereby reducing the ability of workers to achieve wage gains.
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First 401K portfolio with high expense ratios - which funds to pick? (24yo)
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Yours two funds are redundant. Both are designed to have a mix of bonds and stocks and allow you to put all your money in them. Pick the one that has the lowest fees and stick with that (I didn't look at the funds you didn't select...they didn't look great either). Although all your funds have high fees, some are higher than others, so don't ignore fees. When you have decided on your portfolio weights, prioritize your money thus: Contribute enough to your 401(k) to get the full match from your employer Put everything else toward paying off that credit card until you have 0 balance. It's ok to use the card, but let it be little enough that you pay your statement balance off each month so you pay no interest. Then set aside some savings and invest any retirement money into a Roth IRA. At your income level your taxes are low so Roth is better than traditional IRA or 401(k). If you max out your Roth, put any other retirement savings in your 401(k).
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Stock Option Value correlated to net worth of company
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There could also be some degree of dilution at play here. If they are rapidly expanding and hiring, or if they took on another round of funding each share may have a lower amount of value though the company might be worth more than they were previously. The newly issued options may also be of a different class.
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Why would I vote for an increase in the number of authorized shares?
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Why would I want to approve an increase in the number of authorized shares? Because you trust management to use those shares wisely. What it comes down to is, management is asking for money. While it may not be cash they're asking for, it has the same effect. Before you approve this, you have to evaluate the request (similarly to how a bank would evaluate a loan request), and ask if you approve of their reasons for needing the money, and if you think that it will be used to increase the value of the company (making your shares more valuable in the process).
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Is it practical to take actual delivery on a futures contract, and what is the process?
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Here's a good link that can answer your question: How to take delivery of a futures contract The relevant part states: Prior to delivery day, they inform customers who have open long positions that they must either close out the position or prepare to take delivery and pay the full value of the underlying contract. By the same token traders with short positions are informed that they must close out their trades or prepare to deliver the underlying commodity. In this case, they must have the required quantity and quality of the deliverable commodity on hand. On the few occasions that a buyer accepts delivery against his futures contract, he is usually not given the underlying commodity itself (except in the case of financials), but rather a receipt entitling him to fetch the hogs, wheat, or corn from warehouses or distribution points. I hope this helps. Good luck!
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Does the sale of personal items need to be declared as income on my income taxes?
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Books would be considered Personal-Use Property according to Canada's income tax laws. The most detailed IT I was able to find is IT-332R, which says: GAINS AND LOSSES 3. A gain on the disposition of personal-use property is normally a capital gain within the meaning of paragraph 39(1)(a). Where the property is a principal residence, the gain > is computed under paragraph 40(2)(b) or (c). 4. Under subparagraph 40(2)(g)(iii), a loss on a disposition of personal-use property, other than listed personal property, is deemed to be nil. [...] This part of the bulletin indicates that a gain might be considered a capital gain - not income. However, you don't get to book a loss as a capital loss. This is the first hint that your book sale - which is actually an exempt capital loss - shouldn't go on your tax return unless it's one of the "listed" items: LISTED PERSONAL PROPERTY 7. Listed personal property is defined in paragraph 54(e) to mean personal-use property that is all or any portion of, or any interest in or right to, any (a) print, etching, drawing, painting, sculpture, or other similar work of art, (b) jewellery, (c) rare folio, rare manuscript, or rare book, (d) stamp, or (e) coin. So unless you're selling rare books, the disposition (sale) of them is essentially exempt as income, regardless of whether you sold it at a profit or at a loss. If it is rare, then you might be able to consider it a capital loss, which doesn't help you much unless you had other capital gains, but you can carry over capital losses to future years. There's also a newer IT related to hobbies and "collecting" items, IT-334R2. This one says: 11. In order for any activity or pursuit to be regarded as a source of income, there must be a reasonable expectation of profit. Where such an expectation does not exist (as is the case with most hobbies), neither amounts received nor expenses incurred are included in the income computation for tax purposes and any excess of expenses over receipts is a personal or living expense, the deduction of which is denied by paragraph 18(1)(h). On the other hand, if the hobby or pastime results in receipts of revenue in excess of expenses, that fact is a strong indication that the hobby is a venture with an expectation of profit; if so, the net income may be taxable as income from a business. The current version of IT-504, Visual Artists and Writers, discusses the concept of "a reasonable expectation of profit" in greater detail. Where a hobby consists of collecting personal-use property or listed personal property, dispositions should be accounted for as described in the current version of IT-332, Personal-Use Property. (emphasis mine) In other words, if it's not the type of thing where you'd make a tax deduction when you bought it in the first place, then you clearly don't need to report it as income when you sell it. Just to be absolutely clear here: The fact that you are selling them at a loss is not actually what's important here. What's important is that, if the books aren't collectibles, then you would have had no expectation of profit. If you did have that expectation then you could have made a tax deduction when you first purchased them. So in this case, it is probably not necessary for you to report the income; however, for the benefit of other readers, in some cases you might need to report it under "other income" or book it as a capital gain/loss, depending on what those personal items are and whether or not you made a net profit.
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Analyst estimates for an insurance company
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Something to consider is how broad is Yahoo! Finance taking in their data for making some comparisons. For example, did you look at the other companies in the same industry? On the Industry page, the Top Life Insurance Companies by Market Cap are mostly British companies which could make things a bit different than you'd think. Another point is how this is just for one quarter which may be an anomaly as the data could get a bit awkward if some companies are just coming back to being profitable and could have what appears to be great growth but this is because their earnings grow from $.01/share to $1/share which is a growth of $10,000 percent as this is an increase of 100 times but really this may just be from various accounting charges the company had that hit its reserves and caused its earnings to dip temporarily.
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Does it make sense to talk about an ETF or index in terms of technical indicators?
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Yes, it makes sense. Like Lagerbaer says, the usefulness of technical indicators can not be answered with a simple yes or no. Some people gain something from it, others do not. Aside from this, applying technical indicators (or any other form of technical analysis - like order flow) to instruments which are composed of other instruments, such as indexes (more accurately, a derivative of it), does make sense. There are many theories why this is the case, but personally i believe it is a mixture of self fulfilling prophecy, that the instruments the index is composed of (like the stocks in the S&P500) are traded in similar ways as the index (or rather a trade-able derivative of it like ETFs and futures), and the idea that TA just represents human emotion and interaction in trading. This is a very subjective topic, so take this with a grain of salt, but in contrast to JoeTaxpayer i believe that yields are not necessary in order to use TA successfully. As long as the given instrument is liquid enough, TA can be applied and used to gain an edge. On the other hand, to answer your second question, not all stocks in an index correlate all the time, and not all of them will move in sync with the index.
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What could cause a stock to trade below book value?
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all of these examples are great if you actually believe in fundamentals, but who believes in fundamentals alone any more? Stock prices are driven by earnings, news, and public perception. For instance, a pharma company named Eyetech has their new macular degeneration drug approved by the FDA, and yet their stock price plummeted. Typically when a small pharma company gets a drug approved, it's off to the races. But, Genetech came out said their macular degeneration drug was going to be far more effective, and that they were well on track for approval.
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Got a large cash sum, wanna buy stocks. Should I buy all at once, or spread it over time?
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When you hear advice to buy index funds, that usually comes with two additional pieces of investment discipline advice that are important: These two elements are important to give you relative predictability in your outcome 20 years from now. In this old blog post of mine I linked to Warren Buffett talking about this, also mentioned it in a comment on another answer: http://blog.ometer.com/2008/03/27/index-funds/ It's perfectly plausible to do poorly over 20 years if you buy 100% stocks at once, without dollar-cost averaging or rebalancing. It's very very very plausible to do poorly over 10 years, such as the last 10 in fact. Can you really say you know your financial situation in 20-30 years, and for sure won't need that money? Because predictability is important, I like buying a balanced fund and not "pure stocks": http://blog.ometer.com/2010/11/10/take-risks-in-life-for-savings-choose-a-balanced-fund/ (feel a little bad linking to my blog, but retyping all that into this answer seems dumb!) Here's another tip. You can go one step past dollar cost averaging and try value averaging: http://www.amazon.com/Value-Averaging-Strategy-Investment-Classics/dp/0470049774 However, chances are you aren't even going to be good about rebalancing if it's done "by hand," so personally I would not do value averaging unless you can find either a fund or a financial advisor to do it for you automatically. (Finance Buff blog makes a case for a financial advisor, in case you like that more than my balanced fund suggestion: http://thefinancebuff.com/the-average-investor-should-use-an-investment-advisor-how-to-find-one.html) Like rebalancing, value averaging makes you buy more when you're depressed about the market and less when it's exciting. It's hard. (Dollar cost averaging is easily done by setting up automatic investment, of course, so you don't have to do it manually in the way you would with value averaging.) If you read the usual canonical books on index funds and efficient markets it's easy to remember the takeaway that nobody knows whether the market will go up or down, and yes you won't successfully time the market. But what you can do successfully is use an investment discipline with risk control: assume that the market will fluctuate, that both up and down are likely and possible, and optimize for predictability in light of that. Most importantly, optimize to take your emotions and behavior out of the picture. Some disciplines for example are: there are dozens out there, many of them snake oil, I think these I mentioned are valid. Anyway, you need some form of risk control, and putting all your money in stocks at once doesn't give you a lot of risk control. There's no real need to get creative. A balanced fund that uses index funds for equity and bond portions is a great choice.
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Why do I see multiple trades of very small quantities?
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It looks more like someone is trying to pocket the spread. The trades are going off at the bid then the ask (from what I can tell without any L1 and L2 data, but the spread could be bigger than what the prices show, since the stock looks pretty volatile given the difference between current price and VWAP...). Looking through the JSE rule books I didn't find any special provisions on how they handle odd lots in their Central Order Book, but the usual practice in other markets is to display only round lot orders. So these 4 share orders would remain hidden from book participants and could be set there to trigger executions from those who are probing for limit orders. Or to make a market with very limited risk.
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At Vanguard, can I transfer shares from regular investment account to a Roth IRA?
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Since you are paying taxes on the distributions from your mutual funds anyway, instead of reinvesting the distributions back into the mutual funds, you could receive them as cash, then contribute them to your Roth IRA once you are able to open one.
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Once stock prices are down, where to look for good stock market deals?
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Indexes are down during the summer time, and I don't think it has something to do with specific stocks. If you look at the index history you'll see that there's a price drop during the summer time. Google "Sell in May and go away". The BP was cheap at the time for a very particular reason. As another example of a similar speculation you can look at Citibank, which was less than $1 at its lowest, and within less than a year went to over $4 ( more than 400%). But, when it was less than $1 - it was very likely for C to go bankrupt, and it required a certain amount of willingness to loose to invest in it. Looking back, as with BP, it paid off well. But - that is looking back. So to address your question - there's no place where people tell you what will go up, because people who know (or think they know) will invest themselves, or buy lottery tickets. There's research, analysts, and "frinds' suggestions" which sometimes pay off (as in your example with BP), and sometimes don't. How much of it is noise - I personally don't think I can tell, until I can look back and say "Damn, that dude was right about shorts on Google, it did go down 90% in 2012!"
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Economics of buy-to-let (investment) flats
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Seems like a bad deal to me. But before I get to that, a couple of points on your expenses: Onward. You value a property by calculating its CAP rate. This is what you're calculating, except it does NOT include interest like you did -- that's a loan to you, and has no bearing on whether the unit itself is a good investment. It also includes estimations of variable expenses like maintenance and lack of income from vacancies. People argue vociferously on exactly how much to calculate for those. Maintenance will vary by age of the building and how damaging your tenets are. Vacancies vary based on how desirable the location is, how well you've done the maintenance, and how low the rent is. Doing the math based on your numbers, with just the fixed expenses: 8400 rent - 2400 management fee - 100 insurance = 5900/year income. 5900/150000 = 0.0393 = 3.9% CAP rate. And that's not even counting the variable expenses yet! So, what's a good CAP rate? Generally, 10% CAP rate is a good deal, and higher is a great deal. Below that you have to start to get cautious. Some places are worth a lower rate, for instance when the property is new and in a good location. You can do 8% on these. Below 6% CAP rate is usually a really bad investment. So, unless you're confident you can at least double the rent right off the bat, this is a terrible deal. Another way to think about it You're looking to buy with your finances in just about the best position possible -- a huge down payment and really low interest. Plus you haven't accounted for maintenance, taxes (if any), and vacancies. And still you'd make only a measly 1.2% profit? Would you buy a bond that only pays out 1.2%? No? What about a bond that only pays 1.2%, but also from time to time can force YOU to pay into IT a much larger amount every month?
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Investment strategy for a 20 year old with about 30k in bank account
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Thanks for your service. I would avoid personal investment opportunities at this point. Reason being that you can't personally oversee them if you are deployed overseas. This would rule out rentals and small businesses. Revisit those possibilities if you get married or leave the service. If you have a definite time when you would like to purchase a car, you could buy a six or twelve month CD with the funds that you need for that. That will slightly bump up your returns without taking much risk. If you don't really need to buy the car, you could invest that money in stocks. Then if the stock market tanks, you wait until it recovers (note that that can be five to ten years) or until you build up your savings again. That increases your reward at a significant increase in your risk. The risk being that you might not be able to buy a car for several more years. Build an emergency fund. I would recommend six months of income. Reason being that your current circumstances are likely to change in an emergency. If you leave the service, your expenses increase a lot. If nothing else, the army stops providing room for you. That takes your expenses from trivial to a third of your income. So basing your emergency fund on expenses is likely to leave you short of what you need if your emergency leaves you out of the service. Army pay seems like a lot because room (and board when deployed) are provided. Without that, it's actually not that much. It's your low expenses that make you feel flush, not your income. If you made the same pay in civilian life, you'd likely feel rather poor. $30,000 sounds like a lot of money, but it really isn't. The median household income is a little over $50,000, so the median emergency fund should be something like $25,000 on the income standard. On the expenses standard, the emergency fund should be at least $15,000. The $15,000 remainder would buy a cheap new car or a good used car. The $5000 remainder from the income standard would give you a decent used car. I wouldn't recommend taking out a loan because you don't want to get stuck paying a loan on a car you can't drive because you deployed. Note that if you are out of contact, in the hospital, or captured, you may not be able to respond if there is a problem with the car or the loan. If you pay cash, you can leave the car with family and let them take care of things in case of a deployment. If you invested in a Roth IRA in January of 2016, you could have invested in either 2015 or 2016. If 2015, you can invest again for 2016. If not, you can invest for 2017 in three months. You may already know all that, but it seemed worth making explicit. The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) allows you to invest up to $18,000 a year. If you're investing less than that, you could simply boost it to the limit. You apparently have an extra $10,000 that you could contribute. A 60% or 70% contribution is quite possible while in the army. If you max out your retirement savings now, it will give you more options when you leave the service. Or even if you just move out of base housing. If your TSP is maxed out, I would suggest automatically investing a portion of your income in a regular taxable mutual fund account. Most other investment opportunities require help to make work automatically. You essentially have to turn the money over to some individual you trust. Securities can be automated so that your investment grows automatically even when you are out of touch.
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What is the best asset allocation for a retirement portfolio, and why?
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Take the easy approach - as suggested by John Bogle (founder of Vanguard - and a man worthy of tremendous respect). Two portfolios consisting of 1 index fund each. Invest your age% in the Fixed Income index fund. Invest (1-age)% in the stock index fund. Examples of these funds are the Total Market Index Fund (VTSMX) and the Total Bond Market Index (VBMFX). If you wish to be slightly more adventurous, blend (1-age-10)% as the Total Market Index Fund and a fixed 10% as Total International Stock Index (VGTSX). You will sleep well at night for most of your life.
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Are solar cell panels and wind mills worth the money?
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To answer the investment aspect takes a bit of math. First, solar insolation numbers: This represents the average sun-hours per day for a given area. You can see the range from 4 to 6, or 1460 hrs to about 2190 hrs of sun per year depending on location. I believe electricity also has a range of cost, but 15 cents per KWH is a good average. So, a 1KW panel will produce as much as $328 per year of electricity in a high sun-hrs area, but only $219 in a lower sun-hrs area. If we agree to ignore the government subsidies and look for the stable price unaffected by outside influence, an installed price of even $2500 would produce a return of 13% and a reasonable full payback over an 8 year period. I call this installed price a tipping point, the price where this purchase provides a decent return. Some would accept a lower return, and therefore a higher price. As duff points out, this should be treated as the post rebate/tax credit price. Those help to push the price below this point. At the price point where the energy cost per panel is below, the government intervention may be unnecessary. The power companies may find consumer owned panels are the cheapest way to clip the peak consumption which tends to be the most expensive power demand.) One can take the insolation numbers and cost of local power to produce a grid showing the return for a 1KW panel in $$/year. (At this point the cost of money kick in. The present value of $100/yr is far higher today than if short term rates were say, 8%) Once panels drop to where they are compelling for the higher return areas, I'd expect volume to drive continued improvements in cost and better economies of scale. Initially, the need for storage isn't there, as the infrastructure is in place to drive your meter backwards if you produce more than you use. The peek sun coincides with peek demand and the electric companies are happy to have your demand go negative during those times. Update - the conversation with Duff led me to research 'demand charge' a bit more. You see, the utility company has to have equipment to generate the peak demand, usually occurring in the early afternoon, say 12N-2PM as the sun is brightest and AC use in particular, highest. I found that Austin energy has a PDF describing the fee for this. Simply put, the last kW of demand will cost you $14.03 in summer months and $12.65 in winter. This adds to $160/yr that a 1kW panel might save the owner. Even if one does capture the full power at peak every month, $100 is still non-trivial. This factor alone justifies $1000 worth of panel cost, and as Duff points out, the government may find it cheaper to use this method to clip peak demand than by funding bigger power generators. To summarize, the question isn't so much "are they worth it" as "what is a xKW panel worth?" (A function of annual savings and time value of money.) The ever decreasing installed cost for a given system makes solar an inevitable part of the future power technology. I am not a green tree hugging guy, but I do like to breathe fresh air as much as anyone. I'm happy with whatever role solar plays in cutting down pollution.
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Should I charge my children interest when they borrow money?
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This is not really the focus of your question, but it's worth noting that if you live in the United States (which your profile says you do), there are tax implications for you (but not for your children), depending on whether or not you charge your children (enough) interest. If you charge less interest than the appropriate Applicable Federal Rate (for May 2016, at least 0.67%), you must pay taxes on the interest payments you would have received from the debtor if you had charged the AFR, provided that the loan is for $10,001 or more (p. 7). This is referred to as "imputed" income.
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How Often Should I Chase a Credit Card Signup Bonus?
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Your credit score is definitely affected by the age of your credit accounts, so if you frequently close one card and open another new one, you're adversely affecting the overall average age of accounts. This is something to consider and whether it is worth what you're trying to achieve. Sometimes, if you're a good customer and are insistent enough, you can simply call your credit card company and use the threat of closing your account in favor of another card that offers something attractive to get your current bank to sweeten its incentives to keep your business. I know many people who've done this with real success, and they spare themselves the hassle of obtaining a new card and suffering the short term consequences on their credit report. This might be an avenue worth trying before you just close the account and move on. I hope this helps. Good luck!
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Short Selling Specific to India
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In India the Short is what is called in other markets call as "Naked Short" [I think I got the right term]. It means that you can only short sell intra day and by the end of the day you have to buy back the shares [at whatever price, if you don't; the exchange will do it by force the next day]. In other markets the Intra day shorts are not allowed and one can short for several days by borrowing shares from someone else [arranged by broker] India has a futures market, so you can sell/buy something today with the execution date of one month. This is typically a fixed day of the month [I think last Thursday]
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Are non-residents or foreigners permitted to buy or own shares of UK companies?
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It's easy to own many of the larger UK stocks. Companies like British Petroleum, Glaxo, and Royal Dutch Shell, list what they call ADRs (American Depositary Receipts) on the U.S. stock exchanges. That is, they will deposit local shares with Bank of NY Mellon, JP Morgan Chase, or Citicorp (the three banks that do this type of business), and the banks will turn around and issue ADRs equivalent to the number of shares on deposit. This is not true with "small cap" companies. In those cases, a broker like Schwab may occasionally help you, usually not. But you might have difficulty trading U.S. small cap companies as well.
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How are investment funding valued when invested in a company before it goes public?
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This is a question of how does someone value a business. Typically, it is some function of how much the company owns, how much the company owes, how risky is the company's business, and how much the company makes in profit. For example if a company (or investment) make $100/year, every year no matter what, how much would you pay for that? If you pay $1,000 you'll make 10% each year on your investment. Is that a good enough return? If you think the risk of the company requires a 20% payoff, you shouldn't pay more than $500 for the company.
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Why won't my retirement account let me write a “covered put”?
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You're correct in your implied point: Selling a cash secured put has less risk (in terms of both volatility and maximum loss) than buying the security outright. However, many brokerages don't allow cash-secured put writing in IRA accounts. There are three reasons this tends to be the case:
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Returning to the UK after working in Switzerland, What to do with my Swiss Francs?
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A general principle in finance is that you shouldn't stick with an investment or situation just because it's how you're currently invested. You can ask yourself the following question to help you think it through: If, instead, I had enough GBP to buy 20000 CHF, would I think it was a good idea to do so? (I'm guessing the answer is probably "no.") This way of thinking assumes you can actually make the exchange without giving someone too big of a cut. With that much money on the line, be sure to shop around for a good exchange rate.
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What are some examples of unsecured loans
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Unsecured loan is any loan that you don't provide an asset as a collateral for. Auto loans are usually secured - by the auto. If you don't pay off the car, it will be repossessed. Credit cards are a good example, personal/business loans are also usually unsecured, and you've pretty much covered it. Majority of loans, especially for large amounts, are usually given for a specific purpose (usually purchase of a large asset) and are secured.
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Over how much time should I dollar-cost-average my bonus from cash into mutual funds?
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The OP invests a large amount of money each year (30-40k), and has significant amount already invested. Some in the United States that face this situation may want to look at using the bonus to fund two years worth of IRA or Roth IRA. During the period between January 1st and tax day they can put money into a IRA or Roth IRA for the previous year, and for the current year. The two deposits might have to be made separately, because the tax year for each deposit must be specified. If the individual is married, they can also fund their spouses IRA or Roth IRA. If this bonus is this large every year, the double deposit can only be done the first time, but if the windfall was unexpected getting the previous years deposit done before tax day could be useful. The deposits for the current year could still be spread out over the next 12 months. EDIT: Having thought about the issue a little more I have realized there are other timing issues that need to be considered.
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Do I owe taxes if my deductions are higher than my income?
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No, it's not possible. Even if you had no deduction or credits, your federal tax on $16,604 would be: $9075 @ 10% = $907.50 + $7529 @ 15% = $1129.35 = $2036.85 That assumes you are filing as single. There must be more to the story. Typo in your income numbers? Also, what do you mean by a self-employment tax deduction? Maybe update your question to include a breakdown of everything you entered? Edit: As noted in Loren's answer, it seems that it is indeed possible in at least one case (self-employment taxes).
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How an ETF reinvests dividends
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SPY does not reinvest dividends. From the SPY prospectus: No Dividend Reinvestment Service No dividend reinvestment service is provided by the Trust. Broker-dealers, at their own discretion, may offer a dividend reinvestment service under which additional Units are purchased in the secondary market at current market prices. SPY pays out quarterly the dividends it receives (after deducting fees and expenses). This is typical of ETFs. The SPY prospectus goes on to say: Distributions in cash that are reinvested in additional Units through a dividend reinvestment service, if offered by an investor’s broker-dealer, will be taxable dividends to the same extent as if such dividends had been received in cash.
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How does the debt:GDP ratio affect the country's economy?
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Is it not that bad? Depends how bad is bad. The problems causes by a government having large debt are similar to those caused by an individual having large debt. The big issue is: More and more of your income goes to paying interest on the debt, and is thus not available for spending on goods and services. If it gets bad enough, you find you cannot make payments, you start defaulting on loans, and then you have to make serious sacrifices, like selling your property to pay the debt. Nations have an advantage over individuals in that they can sometimes repudiate debt, i.e. simply declare that they are not going to pay. Lenders can then refuse to give them more money, but that doesn't get their original loans paid back. In theory other nations could send in troops to seize property to pay the loan, but this is a very extreme solution. Totally aside from any moral considerations, modern warfare is very expensive, it's likely the war would cost you more than you'd recover on the debt. How much debt is too much? It's hard to give a number, any more than one could give a "maximum acceptable debt" for an individual. American banks have a rule of thumb that they won't normally loan you money if your total debt payments would be more than 1/3 of your income. I've never come close to that, that seems awfully high to me. But, say, a young person just starting out so he's not making a lot of money, and he lives someplace with high housing prices, might find this painful but acceptable. Etc.
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Is this legal: going long on call options and artificially increasing the price of the underlying asset seconds before expiration?
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Despite the fact that I think there is a litany of inaccuracies and misunderstandings related to quoted price and transaction price and the way prices move and assets transact; if you were able to, under these extremely narrow and very unlikely conditions, affect the prices of these assets that would be market manipulation in the eyes of the SEC. Link to the SEC page about market manipulation.
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Is there a difference between buying few shares of an expensive stock vs many shares of an inexpensive one?
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One difference is the bid/ask spread will cost you more in a lower cost stock than a higher cost one. Say you have two highly liquid stocks with tiny spreads: If you wanted to buy say $2,000 of stock: Now imagine these are almost identical ETFs tracking the S&P 500 index and extrapolate this to a trade of $2,000,000 and you can see there's some cost savings in the higher priced stock. As a practical example, recently a popular S&P 500 ETF (Vanguard's VOO) did a reverse split to help investors minimize this oft-missed cost.
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How profitable is selling your customer base?
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Yes, some companies sell personal data on their customers, but it almost always means a bad business due to reputation cost. The Financial Times even made a calculator to demonstrate how much personal information is worth: The sellers get pennies for the info, so that any decent business would earn more staying away from such dubious operations.
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Mortgage loan and move money to US
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Let me restate question for clarity. Facts: Question: Are there any taxes for this transaction? Answer: (Added improvements provided by Eric) Generally No. Generally, it is not considered income until you sell and the sale price is greater than the purchase price. But with currency differences, there is an additional complication, section 988 rules apply. It could result in ordinary income or loss.
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Creating a personal company
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You're confusing so many things at once here...... First thing first: we cannot suggest you what to do business-wise since we have no idea about your business. How on Earth can anyone know if you should sell the software to someone or try to distribute to customers yourself? How would we know if you should hire employees or not? If you say you don't need employees - why would you consider hiring them? If you say you want to sell several copies and have your own customers - why would you ask if you should sell your code to someone else? Doesn't make sense. Now to some more specific issues: I heard sole proprietary companies doesn't earn more than 250k and it's better to switch to corporation or LLC etc. because of benefits. I heard it was snowing today in Honolulu. So you heard things. It doesn't make them true, or relevant to you. There's no earning limit above which you should incorporate. You can be sole proprietor and make millions, and you can incorporate for a $10K/year revenue business. Sole proprietorship, incorporation (can be C-Corp or S-Corp), or LLC - these are four different types of legal entity to conduct business. Each has its own set of benefits and drawbacks, and you must understand which one suits you in your particular situation. For that you should talk to a lawyer who could help you understand what liability protection you might need, and to a tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your state) who can help you understand the tax-related costs and benefits of each choice. On the other hand I heard that if I create LLC company, in case of failure, they can get EVERYTHING from me, what's this all about? No. This is not true. Who are "they", how do you define "failure", and why would they get anything from you at all? Even without knowing all that, your understanding is wrong, because the "LL" in LLC stands for LIMITED liability. The whole point of forming LLC or Corporation is to limit your own personal liability. But mere incorporation or forming LLC doesn't necessarily mean your liability is limited. Your State law defines what you must do for that limited liability protection, and that includes proper ways to run your business. Again - talk to your lawyer and your tax adviser about what it means to you. I'm totally unfamiliar with everything related to taxes/companies/LLC/corporation etc Familiarize yourself. No-one is going to do it for you. Start reading, ask specific questions on specific issues, and get a proper legal and tax advice from licensed professionals.
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In today's low interest environment, is it generally more economical to buy or lease a new car in the US?
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It's my understand that leasing is never the better overall deal, with the possible exception of a person who would otherwise buy a brand new car every 2 or 3 years, and does not drive a lot of miles. Note: in the case of a company car, Canadian taxes let you deduct the entire lease payment (which clearly has some principal in it) if you lease, while if you buy you can only deduct the interest, and must depreciate the car according to their schedule. This can make leasing more attractive to those buying a car through a corporation. I don't know if this applies in the US. The numbers you ran through in class presumably involved calculating the interest paid over the term of the loan. Can you not just redo the calculation using actual interest and lease numbers from a randomly chosen current car ad? I suspect if you do, you will discover leasing is still not the right choice.
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Using a FOREX platform to actually change money
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FX trading platforms are not used for exchanging money, they are used for trading currencies. "I know there are cheaper services like transferwise, charging about 0.5 %, but there is little/no control over the exchange rate, you just get the rate at the time of execution." With FX trading you don't have control of the exchange rate either, just like the share market, FX markets are determined by supply and demand of one currency over an other. So an individual does not have control over the exchange rate but will just get the rate at the time of the trade being executed.
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ETF vs Mutual Fund: How to decide which to use for investing in a popular index?
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If you just want to track an index, then ETFs are, generally speaking, the better way.
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Can PE ratio of stocks be compared to other investments?
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In the long run (how long?) a shares price always reverts to being its proportional amount of the company's residual equity plus the net present value of its expected future cash flows. Or at least that's the theory. In practice PE ratio is used not as a way of measuring what the stock price itself will do but what the fundamental value of holding that share is compared to its price. It is a way of measuring what a company is worth compared to its price and comparing it against other companies to find companies where the underlying value of the company is underrepresented by the price. Comparing PE ratios within the same industry or sector is the most valid use for this (other than comparing previous years of the same company) and the validity of the comparison drops as the structure of the firm you are comparing with gets more different to that of the company. Each industry has its own "typical" average PE ratio and these differ wildly between industries so in a great many cases even comparing PE ratios between similar stocks in different industries isn't valid. Any weird pseudo PE ratio that you create for other instruments will be meaningless. In general the best way to compare investments across multiple instruments is by comparing returns. when comparing stocks to other instruments you may want to use the return on stock price or the return on capital employed (ROCE) depending on whether you want to compare the trading performance or the fundamental performance.
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Isn't the subtraction of deprecation and amortization redundant in the calculation of Owner's Earnings?
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This formula is not calculating "Earnings". Instead, it is calculating "Free Cash Flow from Operations". As the original poster notes, the "Earnings" calculation subtracted out depreciation and amortization. The "Free Cash Flow from Operations" adds these values back, but for two different reasons:
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Smart to buy a house in college?
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Of course, I know nothing about real estate or owning a home. I would love to hear people's thoughts on why this would or would not be a good idea. Are there any costs I am neglecting? I want the house to be primarily an investment. Is there any reason that it would be a poor investment? I live and work in a college town, but not your college town. You, like many students convinced to buy, are missing a great many costs. There are benefits of course. There's a healthy supply of renters, and you get to live right next to campus. But the stuff next to campus tends to be the oldest, and therefore most repair prone, property around, which is where the 'bad neighborhood' vibe comes from. Futhermore, a lot of the value of your property would be riding on government policy. Defunding unis could involve drastic cuts to their size in the near future, and student loan reform could backfire and become even less available. Even city politics comes into play: when property developers lobby city council to rezone your neighborhood for apartments, you could end up either surrounded with cheaper units or possibly eminent domain'd. I've seen both happen in my college town. If you refuse to sell you could find yourself facing an oddly high number of rental inspections, for example. So on to the general advice: Firstly, real estate in general doesn't reliably increase in value, at best it tends to track inflation. Most of the 'flipping' and such you saw over the past decade was a prolonged bubble, which is slowly and reliably tanking. Beyond that, property taxes, insurance, PMI and repairs need to be factored in, as well as income tax from your renters. And, if you leave the home and continue to rent it out, it's not a owner-occupied property anymore, which is part of the agreement you sign and determines your interest rate. There's also risks. If one of your buddies loses their job, wrecks their car, or loses financial aid, you may find yourself having to eat the loss or evict a good friend. Or if they injure themselves (just for an example: alcohol poisoning), it could land on your homeowners insurance. Or maybe the plumbing breaks and you're out an expensive repair. Finally, there are significant costs to transacting in real estate. You can expect to pay like 5-6 percent of the price of the home to the agents, and various fees to inspections. It will be exceedingly difficult to recoup the cost of that transaction before you graduate. You'll also be anchored into managing this asset when you could be pursuing career opportunities elsewhere in the nation. Take a quick look at three houses you would consider buying and see how long they've been on the market. That's months of your life dealing with this house in a bad neighborhood.
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How long to wait before refinancing a high interest car loan, after improving credit history?
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Between half a year and a year should be enough to improve your interest rates drastically on car loan refinance. Make sure that your new credit card has already been reported to the agencies, and that the credit/debt ratio is lower than 30% on your revolving (credit card) accounts. That also means that you shouldn't carry too much balance, even if the APR is 0%.
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What's the difference between TaxAct and TurboTax?
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I have used TurboTax for years with no problems. I clicked on the TaxAct link in an ad and decided to see if there was much different. Using the free version of Taxact, and inputting the exact same information, my federal taxes came out with a $1500 difference while my state taxes (NJ) came out almost identically. I rechecked my inputs twice and could find no typos in either program. While I would make out better with the TaxAct program in my wallet, I find the detailed questioning and directions in TurboTax to be superior. Somehow I am thinking that TaxAct has missed something but I can't figure out what. And the only way to actually print out your forms with TaxAct is to get the paid version, so comparing the final forms side bybside isn't a free option.
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Any reason to keep IRAs separate?
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Can't see why would you need to track the sources of the original funds. Can't think of a reason not to consolidate, if at all it will only make the management of your IRA more convenient, and may be even cheaper (if the fees depend on the account value...).
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Can I withdraw from my Roth IRA retirement account to fund a startup?
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Chris's answer is a great start. Keep in mind that when you withdraw from a Roth IRA, you "shrink" the size of the IRA (i.e. if the start up flourishes, you can't put the $10k you withdrew back, as you're limited to ~$5k in contributions per year). You may want to consider funding your startup with a credit card (ideally a balance transfer of $10k at 0% interest). If you need to, you can always pay your card off with your Roth balance, but if the startup takes off, your IRA is unharmed. (On a side note, I wouldn't feel comfortable quitting my job to do a startup with only $10k in savings, but to each his own!)
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Why do people take out life insurance on their children? Should I take out a policy on my child?
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My parents and I were suckered into buying this kind of thing when I was in high school. The sales people literally told us that it could be used to pay off student loans - they left out the "in the event of your death" part. We knew it was a life insurance policy, but were told that it would "mature" 6 months after graduation from college, and that it would then be disbursed to pay off loans, even if I didn't die. That seemed strange to us, so we explicitly asked several different ways whether it would pay off the loans after graduation, even if I lived, and they just straight up told us, "Yes." I'm guessing this ploy is still being used. Also, last I checked, student loans are non-transferable in the unfortunate event that your child dies - which means the loan is forgiven anyway - so this whole thing seems like garbage to me, at least in the student loan sense. I would steer clear from this stuff - it's pure snake oil in my experience.
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What's a good free checking account?
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Check with a small local bank or credit union, they might offer better terms. That said, my local credit union still charges $6/month for a checking account if you don't have a direct deposit into it.
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How to invest 100k
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How to spend the money is up to you. That includes spending money on your house. (This is a safer way to look at it than an "investment". Not that it can't ever be treated as such, but that doing so often makes it easy to justify bad decisions and overspending on the house.) So with regards to the mortgage: So if it's not a monstrously huge deal, you might prefer to avoid default. Now, how to invest the rest while waiting to spend it, now...
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What is the opposite of Economic Bubble?
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A financial panic is in my mind would be the opposite of a bubble. A bubble is irrational exuberance -- uncontrolled exhilaration. People will ignore anything negative and exclusively focus on the positive. People are focused on investments that offer huge returns in a short timeframe. If you recall 1999, there were books published about the Dow being at 30,000 by 2010. A panic is the direct opposite -- people are irrationally fearful. Any negative news is focused on exclusively, and positive things ignored. People are focused on preserving wealth and by pursing "safety". Today, you turn on the radio and people are advertising canned food and gold coins.
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Is there legal reason for restricting someone under 59-1/2 from an in-service rollover from a 401K to an IRA?
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Yes, this is restricted by law. In plain language, you can find it on the IRS website (under the heading "When Can a Retirement Plan Distribute Benefits?"): 401(k), profit-sharing, and stock bonus plans Employee elective deferrals (and earnings, except in a hardship distribution) -- the plan may permit a distribution when you: •terminate employment (by death, disability, retirement or other severance from employment); •reach age 59½; or •suffer a hardship. Employer profit-sharing or matching contributions -- the plan may permit a distribution of your vested accrued benefit when you: •terminate employment (by death, disability, retirement or other severance from employment); •reach the age specified in the plan (any age); or •suffer a hardship or experience another event specified in the plan. Form of benefit - the plan may pay benefits in a single lump-sum payment as well as offer other options, including payments over a set period of time (such as 5 or 10 years) or a purchased annuity with monthly lifetime payments. Source: https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant-employee/when-can-a-retirement-plan-distribute-benefits If you want to actually see it in the law, check out 26 USC 401(k)(2)(B)(i), which lists the circumstances under which a distribution can be made. You can get the full text, for example, here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/401 I'm not sure what to say about the practice of the company that you mentioned in your question. Maybe the law was different then?
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What is a subsidy?
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It means a government giving out money to encourage a particular product (or service) to be bought or sold. Some people will use the word more loosely to refer to any financial incentive, even if it's not coming from the government. Wikipedia has a list of examples that may be helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidy A commonly-mentioned one is farm subsidies, where farmers are paid to produce certain crops.
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Are there statistics showing percentage of online brokerage customers that are actually making a profit trading forex/futures/options?
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Finding statistics is exceedingly hard, because the majority of traders lose money. That is, not only they don't "beat the markets", not only they don't "beat the benchmark" (S&P 500 being used a lot as reference): they just lose money. Finding exact numbers, quality statistics and so on is very difficult. Finding recent ones, is almost impossible. With enormous effort I have found two references that might help make an idea. One is very recent, Forex "centered" and has been prepared by a large finance group for the the Europen Central Bank (ECB). It's available on their website, at an obscure download location. The document is stated to be confidential, but its download location has been disclosed to the public by CNBC. I can't post CNBC's link because I have just joined this Stack Exchange portal so I don't have enough reputation. You can find it by looking for their article about FXCM Forex broker debacle due to the Swiss Central Bank removing the EUR/CHF peg at 1.20. The second is a 2009-ish paper about Taiwanese retail traders profitability statistics published by Oxford University Press and talks about stocks. Both documents focus on retail traders. I strongly suggest you to immediately save those documents because they tend to disappear after a while. We had a fantastic and complete statistics report made by a group of German Banks in 2011... they pulled it off in 2012.
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