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Is it a good idea to rebalance without withdrawing money?
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Rebalancing has been studied empirically quite a bit, but not particularly carefully and actually turns out to be very hard to study well. The main problem is that you don't know until afterward if your target weights were optimal so a bad rebalancing program might give better performance if it strayed closer to optimal weights even if it didn't do an efficient job of keeping near the target weights. In your particular case either method might be preferred depending on a number of things: You can see why there isn't a generally correct answer to your question and the results of empirical studies might very wildly depending on the mix of assets and risk tolerance. Still if your portfolio is not too complicated you can estimate the costs of the two methods without too much trouble and figure out if it is worthwhile to you. EDIT In Response to Comment Below: Your example gets at what makes rebalancing so hard empirically but also generally pretty easy in practice. If you were to target 75% Equity (25% bonds?) and look at returns only for 30 years the "best" rebalancing method would be to never rebalance and just let 75% equity go to near 100% as equity has better long term returns. This happens when you look only at returns as the final number and don't take into account the change in risk in your portfolio. In practice, most people that are still adding (or subtracting in retirement) to a retirement portfolio are adding (removing) a significant amount compared to the total amount in their portfolio. In the case you discribe, it is cheaper (massively cheaper in the presence of load fees) just to use new capital to trade toward your target, keeping your risk profile. New money should be large enough to keep you near enough your target. If you just estimate the trading costs/fees in both cases I think you'll see just how large the difference is between the two methods this will dwarf any small differences in return over the long run even if you can't trade back all the way to your target.
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Covered Call Writing - What affects the price of the options?
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All else being equal, you should look for more volatile (riskier) stocks. Technically, it was all time value - the entire value of an "out of the money" option is time value. What's confusing is that time value is affected by numerous variables, only one of which is time. The reason volatility is the one to look at is that all the rest are likely already intuitive to you, or are too minor an influence to worry about: Current risk-free interest rates and a stock's dividend payout during the life of the option affect the value of the call, but are usually minor infulences. (Higher interest rates makes call values higher, and higher dividend yield makes call values lower.) Longer time to expiration will increase the value of the call, but you're pretty likely already focused on that. The strike price's proximity to the current price affects the call's value - agreeing to sell a stock 5% above current levels will pay more than agreeing to sell it 10% above current levels - but again, this is likely obvious to you. Volatility, or the percent by which the stock is likely to move up or down on a given day, is almost certainly the variable that's not already obvious. Stocks that jump all over the place have higher volatility than those that move more predictably. The reason that options (calls and puts) cost more on higher volatility names is that options' payout is asymmetrical. In the case of calls, the option holder gets all the upside, but none of the downside, other than what they paid for the opotion. If one stock goes up or down $5 every day, and another goes up or down $20 every day and you could pay some fixed amount to get that stock's upside, but not have any exposure to its downside, other than that fixed amount, you'd pay more for the one that pays you $20 or $0 than you would for the one that pays you $5 or $0. That's why higher volatility (meaning larger daily moves) makes optimum prices higher.
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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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Does home equity grow with the investment put into the house?
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The bank I work with would be more inclined to expand an existing HELOC rather than write a new one. I think that would be your best bet if you decide to continue borrowing against your home. Consider that your own income would have to support the repayment of these larger homes. If it is, why didn't you buy a larger home to begin with? As far as increasing the appraisal, you don't usually get one dollar of increased appraisal for each dollar you spend on improvements unless you have a rundown house in a nice neighborhood; part of the appraisal comes from a comparison with the appraisals of the other homes nearby. Eventually you get close enough to par with the other houses that anyone looking for something more expensive will often choose a different neighborhood entirely. Update: To your edit that mentions the original lender will cap the amount you can borrow, you can take additional secondary mortgages/HELOCs, but the interest rate is usually higher because it is not the first mortgage. I don't generally recommend it, but the option is there.
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Can preventive health checkup be claimed as a separate expense from medical expenses?
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Deduction for Health Checkup is allowed under Section 80D and is allowed to everyone whether Salaried or Business/Professional. However, Exemption for Medical Reimbursement of Rs. 15000 is allowed under a different section. A salaried employee can take benefit of both Medical Reimbursement of Rs. 15,000 as well as Preventive Health Check-up of Rs. 5,000. Source: Tax Deduction for Health Check-up
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Will a credit card company close my account if I stop using it?
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Assuming the question is "will they close it for inactivity (alone)".. the answer is "Nope" ... unequivocally. Update: < My answer is geared to credit Cards issues by companies that deal in credit, not merchandise (i.e. store cards, retailer cards, etc). Retailers (like Amazon, etc), want to sell goods and are in the credit card business to generate sales. Banks and credit companies (about whom I am referring) make their money primarily on interest and secondarily on service charges (either point of use charged to the vendor that accepts payment, or fees charged to the user).> The only major issuer I will say that it might be possible is Discover, because I never kept a Discover card. I also don't keep department store cards, which might possibly do this; but I do doubt it in either of those cases too. My answer is based on Having 2 AMEX cards (Optima and Blue) and multiple other Visa/MC's that I NEVER use... and most of these I have not for over 10+ years. Since I am also presuming that you are also not talking about an account that charges a yearly or other maintenance fee.. Why would they keep the account open with the overhead (statements and other mailings,etc)? Because you MIGHT use it. You MIGHT not be able to pay it off each month. Because you MIGHT end up paying thousands in interest over many years. The pennies they pay for maintaining your account and sending you new cards with chip technology, etc.. are all worth the gamble of getting recouped from you! This is why sales people waste their time with lots of people who will not buy their product, even though it costs them time and money to prospect.. because they MIGHT buy. Naturally, there are a multitude of reasons for canceling a card; but inactivity is not one. I have no less than 10+ "inactive" cards, one that has a balance, and two I use "infrequently". I really would not mind if they closed all those accounts.. but they won't ;) So enjoy your AMEX knowing that your Visa will be there when you need/want it.. The bank that issues your Visa is banking on it! (presuming you don't foul up financially) Cheers!
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Website for managing personal cash inflow and outflow, applicable to India?
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There are sites in India that offer this, http://www.intuit.in/ is one such site. Apart from this some banks like ICICI offer this to limited extent.
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Transfer from credit to debit
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I've called both BofA and Amex Customer Support, and they couldn't help. That's because you cannot. Debit card is tied to your checking account, so you can do a cash advance from your AMEX and deposit it to your BOA checking account. It will then be available to use with your debit card.
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How should one refuse to father in law (Chinese) when he wants to borrow money?
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In these situations, one solution is to use the "I was just about to ask you the same thing..." response. This is kind of a famous way to deal with people asking you for money, whether it's someone asking to borrow "$10 at lunch time" or "$3000 for a car" or the like. So: Person X asks you for money, say $2000. Your reply: Ah, that's bad luck, I was just about to ask you the same thing... Follow this immediately - just keep talking - by launching in to a really incredibly detailed discussion of why you need to borrow money (pick a slightly larger amount, slet's ay $3500). Just "keep talking" and don't let the other person get a word in. Go in to great detail about just what you need the $3500 for and why. It's a good trick.
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Physical Checks - Mailing
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You can try writing on the back of the check, in the signature area, "For deposit only to account xxxxxxxxx", leaving room for the signature. This may or may not be legally binding, but it states your intnt and is in a form the bank will recognize.
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What is the cheapest way to move money from the United States to Canada? [duplicate]
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No fees: Write a check. Deposit it into the other bank.
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Do my kids need to file a tax return?
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If the gift was stock that they have owned for years there can be one hitch: The basis of the stock doesn't reset when it is gifted. For example if grandparents have owned stock that is currently worth $10,000 today, but they bought it decades ago when it only cost them $1,000; then if the new owner sells it today they will have a gain of $9,000. The clock to determine short term/long term also doesn't reset; which is good. The basis needs to be determined now so that the gain can be accurately calculated in the future. This information should be stored in a safe place. Gains for dividends are investment income and the rules regarding the kiddie tax need to be followed.
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Should I finance a new home theater at 0% even though I have the cash for it?
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I won't repeat what's already been said, but I agree that it's a good move to take advantage of the free financing so long as you read the fine print carefully, keep the money designated to pay off this debt and not use it for anything else, and make sure to pay it off before you get smacked with some bad interest. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that this kind of offer can help build credit. You mentioned that you already have excellent credit, but for someone who has good credit, this could be an account that, if used carefully, could give their credit a boost by adding to their history of on-time payments.
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Deductible expenses paid with credit card: In which tax year would they fall?
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Assuming that it's not inventory that is sold in the following year or a depreciable asset, you can deduct it when you make the purchase. The courts have ruled that credit cards balances are considered debt. It's treated the same way as if you went to the bank, got a loan, and used cash or a check to purchase the items. On your accounting books, you would debit the expense account and credit the credit card liability account. This is only for credit cards, which are considered loans. If you use a store charge card, then you cannot deduct it until you pay. Those are considered accounts payable. I'm an IRS agent and a CPA.
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Accepted indicators for stock market valuation
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There are several camps for stock valuation, and much of it boils down to your investment style. A growth investor will not consider something with a 50x P/E ratio to be overvalued, but a value investor certainly would. I would recommend looking up the Fama-French n-factor model (it was 3-factor, I believe they have released newer papers which introduce other factors), and reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Graham's methodology is practically canon for many investors, and the methodology focuses on value, while outlining quantitative factors for determining if a stock is under or over valued.
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~$75k in savings - Pay off house before new home?
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With an annual income of $120,000 you can be approved for a $2800 monthly payment on your mortgage. The trickier problem is that you will save quite a bit on that mortgage payment if you can avoid PMI, which means that you should be targeting a 20% down-payment on your next purchase. With a $500,000 budget for a new home, that means you should put $100,000 down. You only have $75,000 saved, so you can either wait until you save another $25,000, or you can refinance your current property for $95k+ $25k = $120k which would give you about a $575 monthly payment (at 30 years at 4%) on your current property. Your new property should be a little over $1,900 per month if you finance $400,000 of it. Those figures do not include property tax or home owners insurance escrow payments. Are you prepared to have about $2,500 in mortgage payments should your renters stop paying or you can't find renters? Those numbers also do not include an emergency fund. You may want to wait even longer before making this move so that you can save enough to still have an emergency fund (worth 6 months of your new higher expenses including the higher mortgage payment on the new house.) I don't know enough about the rest of your expenses, but I think it's likely that if you're willing to borrow a little more refinancing your current place that you can probably make the numbers work to purchase a new home now. If I were you, I would not count on rental money when running the numbers to be sure it will work. I would probably also wait until I had saved $100,000 outright for the down-payment on the new place instead of refinancing the current place, but that's just a reflection of my more conservative approach to finances. You may have a larger appetite for risk, and that's fine, then rental income will probably help you pay down any money you borrow in the refinancing to make this all worth it.
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Can my rent to own equity be used as a downpayment?
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I think you need to go to a local bank and ask. The key thing is paper trail. For any mortgage I've gotten on a new purchase, the bank needs to see where the down payment came from and how it got to the seller. In this case, it can go either way. If the value is truly 100% to the 80% you are looking to finance, and the paper trail is legit, this may work just fine. The issue others seem to have is that simply buying at a 20% discount is not a legit way to finance the 80%. Here, it appears to me that the 20% came from you in installments, via the rent.
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ETF's for early retirement strategy
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I think the dividend fund may not be what youre looking for. You mentioned you want growth, not income. But I think of dividend stocks as income stocks, not growth. They pay a dividend because these are established companies that do not need to invest so much in capex anymore, so they return it to shareholders. In other words, they are past their growth phase. These are what you want to hold when you have a large nest egg, you are ready to retire, and just want to make a couple percent a year without having to worry as much about market fluctuations. The Russel ETF you mentioned and other small caps are I think what you are after. I recently made a post here about the difference between index funds and active funds. The difference is very small. That is, in any given year, many active ETFs will beat them, many wont. It depends entirely on the market conditions at the time. Under certain conditions the small caps will outperform the S&P, definitely. However, under other conditioned, such as global growth slowdown, they are typically the first to fall. Based on your comments, like how you mentioned you dont want to sell, I think index funds should make up a decent size portion of your portfolio. They are the safest bet, long term, for someone who just wants to buy and hold. Thats not to say they need be all. Do a mixture. Diversification is good. As time goes on dont be afraid to add bond ETFs either. This will protect you during downturns as bond prices typically rise under slow growth conditions (and sometimes even under normal conditions, like last year when TLT beat the S&P...)
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Borrowing money and then investing it — smart or nart?
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The biggest concern is how you get $250,000 in unsecured credit. It's unlikely that you will be loaned that amount at a percentage lower than what you expect to earn. Unsecured credit lines are rarely lower than 10% and usually approach 20%. On top of that, for a bank to approve you for that credit line, you have to have a high credit score and an income to support the payments on that credit line. But lets suspend disbelief and assume that you can get the money you want on loan. You would then be expected to pay back that 10%, but investments don't go up uniformly. Some years they go up 15-20% and other years they go down 10%. What do you do if you have to sell some of your investments in a down year? That money is no longer invested, and you can't recover it with the following up year because you had to take too much out to cover the loan payments. You'll be out of money long before the loan is repaid because you can expect there will be bad years in the stock market that will eat away at your investment. There were a lot of people who took their money out of the market after the crash of 2008. If they had left their money in through 2009, they would have made all that money back, but if you have a loan to pay you have to pull money out in the bad years as well as the good years. Unless you have a lucky streak of all good years, you're doomed.
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How to withdraw money from currency account without having to lose so much to currency conversion?
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In your position I would use one of the existing Polish currency exchange platforms (you can find a list here: http://jakikantor.pl). A few of them have bank accounts in Britain so the exchange rate will be close to market price.
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Is it ever a good idea to close credit cards?
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Assuming that a person has good financial discipline and is generally responsible with spending, I think that having a few hundred or thousand dollars extra of available credit is usually worth more to that person for the choice/flexibility it provides in unforeseen circumstance, versus the relatively minor hit that could be taken to their credit score.
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How do I export or sync data from TD Ameritrade into Google Finance or another online Finance site?
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Mint is one alternative. If you want the raw data in CSV format, you can use "Export" feature under
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Can I force him to pay?
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Its best to seek a lawyer, but it is unlikely you can force him to pay. You probably know couples, that are in some part of the divorce process, that have trouble obtaining court ordered payments. In your case you have less of a legal standing (exception: if you have children together). As far as the house goes, the two of you entered into some sort of business arrangement and it will be difficult to "force" him to pay. One thing that works for you is that he has excellent credit. If he is interested in keeping a high credit rating he will ensure that no payments are late on the home. Your question suggests that the two of you are not getting along very well right now, and that needs to stop. The best financial decision you can make right now is to get along with him. It seems that the two of you have not officially broken up. If you do decide to depart ways, do so as amicably as possible. You will have to work to get the home in your name only, and him off the deed. This benefits both of you as you will have sole control of the house and this ill advised business decision can end. He will have the home off his credit and will not be responsible if you miss a payment and can also buy a home or whatever of his own. Good luck and do your best to work this out. Seeking peace will cost you a lot less money in the long run. Fighting in court cost a lot of money. Giving in to semi-reasonable demands are far cheaper then fighting. Here is an example. Lets say he normally contributes $500 to the mortgage, and he decides to move out. I would ask him to contribute $200 until you can get his name off the loan, say 6 months at the most. After that you will put the house up for sale if you cannot obtain a mortgage in your own name and will split any profits.
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What Did Benjamin Graham Mean by Earnings Stability in The Intelligent Investor?
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Yes - this is exactly what it means. No losses (negative earnings). With today's accounting methods, you might want to determine whether you view earnings including or excluding extraordinary items. For example, a company might take a once-off charge to its earnings when revising the value of a major asset. This would show in the "including" but not in the "excluding" figure. The book actually has a nice discussion in Chapter 12 "Things to Consider About Per-Share Earnings" which considers several additional variables to consider here too. Note that this earnings metric is different from "Stock Selection for the Defensive Investor" which requires 10 years. PS - My edition (4th edition hardback) doesn't have 386 pages so your reference isn't correct for that edition. I found it on page 209 in Chapter 15 "Stock Selection for the Enterprising Investor".
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Why would a bank need to accept deposits from private clients if it can just borrow from the Federal Reserve?
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They don't need to accept deposits from normal persons, but that's how they make lots of money. Banks make money off the fees they charge retailers when those folks swipe their debit cards at the retailer. It's their bread and butter. In order to facilitate you accruing swipe fees for them, they need to allow you to make deposits, on which they can charge the retailers swipe fees.
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Which graduate student loans are preferable?
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Of course, the situation for each student will vary widely so you'll have to dig deep on your own to know what is the best choice for your situation. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, the best choice would be to use the Unsubsidized Stafford loan to finance graduate school if you need to resort to loans. The major benefits to the Unsubsidized Stafford are the following: You'll be forced to consider other loan types due to the Unsubsidized Stafford loan's established limits on how much you can borrow per year and in aggregate. The borrowing limits are also adjustable down by your institution. The PLUS loan is a fallback loan program designed to be your last resort. The program was created as a way for parents to borrow money for their college attending children when all other forms of financing have been exhausted. As a result you have the following major disadvantages to using the PLUS loan: You do have the bonus of being able to borrow up to 100% of your educational costs without any limits per year or in aggregate. The major benefit of keeping your loans in the Direct Loan program is predictability. Many private student loans are variable interest rate loans which can result in higher payments during the course of the loan. Private loans are also not eligible for government loan forgiveness programs, such as for working in a non-profit for 10 years.
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Are there any disadvantages to DHA Investment Properties?
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I think the strongest reason against DHA purchases (I don't consider them investments) is points 3 and 5 mentioned above. The resale market is only to other investors that are convinced its a good investment.If you can't sell to owner occupiers, you've just removed the MAJORITY of your potential pool of people to resell to - this has a devastating effect on your ability to make any capital gain from your investment - if you're not chasing capital gain...be sure to understand why! (see article below)The marketing people will have you believe that DHA is a great investment from a yield perspective...maybe so, I haven't crunched the numbers. But in my opinion, I would wonder - who cares?Yield is important to ensure you can hold the property, but if there is no capital growth and you can't sell it for a profit or release some equity to buy the next investment, then you've just put a massive road block in your wealth building path.I am at the asset accumulation phase of my investing journey, so my opinion is skewed towards capital growth investments. Unless you have a sizable equity base already, in my opinion $4-5 Million in debt free assets, then you should be looking for capital growth assets...not high yield.This article from Your Investment Property magazine, although now dated, gives a good example to illustrate my point on why capital growth is the sensible strategy during the asset building phase of your wealth creation journey: Why capital growth is still king I think the strongest reason against DHA purchases (I don't consider them investments) is points 3 and 5 mentioned above. The resale market is only to other investors that are convinced its a good investment. If you can't sell to owner occupiers, you've just removed the MAJORITY of your potential pool of people to resell to - this has a devastating effect on your ability to make any capital gain from your investment - if you're not chasing capital gain...be sure to understand why! (see article below) The marketing people will have you believe that DHA is a great investment from a yield perspective...maybe so, I haven't crunched the numbers. But in my opinion, I would wonder - who cares? Yield is important to ensure you can hold the property, but if there is no capital growth and you can't sell it for a profit or release some equity to buy the next investment, then you've just put a massive road block in your wealth building path. I am at the asset accumulation phase of my investing journey, so my opinion is skewed towards capital growth investments. Unless you have a sizable equity base already, in my opinion $4-5 Million in debt free assets, then you should be looking for capital growth assets...not high yield. This article from Your Investment Property magazine, although now dated, gives a good example to illustrate my point on why capital growth is the sensible strategy during the asset building phase of your wealth creation journey: Why capital growth is still king
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Getting started in stock with one special field of activity
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Investing only in one industry may be problematic as it is highly correlated. There are factor outside your (or anyones) knowledge which may affect all the industry: If you are familiar with the industry it may happen that you work in that (ignore rest of paragraph if this is not the case). In such case you are likely to have problems at work (frozen salary, no bonus, position terminated) and you need to liquidate the investments at that point (see many advice regarding ESPP). Depending on your field you may have some inside knowledge so even if you would took a position without it you may need to somehow prove it. On the other hand diversifying the investment might reduce the volatility of investment. Rise in oil will cause problems for air industry but will be a boom for oil industry etc. In this way you smooth the grow of the investments. Investing part of portfolio into specific industry may make more sense. It still possibly worth to avoid it at the beginning investor may have trouble to beat the market (for example according to behavioural economics you are exposed to various biases, or if markets are efficient then prices most likely already take into account any information you may have). (I'm still new to all this so it's mostly based on what I read rather then any personal experience. Also a standard disclaimer that this is not an investment, or any other, advice and I'm not licensed financial advisor in any jurisdiction)
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Should I finance rental property or own outright?
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To answer some parts of the question which are answerable as-is: Yes, mortgage interest is deductible. So is depreciation. See this question and others. It would be a good idea to put some money away for tax season, just as you should save some money to cover unexpected property expenses. But as @JoeTaxpayer says, this is a good problem to have, assuming you own the property, it's low-maintenance, your tenant is good, and your rent is at market levels.
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Are there any disadvantages to DHA Investment Properties?
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Well, I am an investor/ Lessor under DHA properties. Oflate, DHA lost it identity as a Govt agency and try to imitate a worst (not the best) real eastate agent. Every year rental valuation is a drama or waste of time and money to lessor. They pull down the rent by 10 to 22% and ask for a secondary valuation for no reasons. They don't even agree with market evidence and start bullying or black mailing tactics to force you to aceept a below market rent or the threat of third review , a very expensive review shared 50% by lessor and rest the poor tax payers! The thir review also badly influenced by DHA by submitting biased valuations and thereby destroying the independence of valuation. The API appointed valuer neither follow the DHA gudie nor the API guide and also ignore the market reality and take the average rent for the area. You also losse 14 to 18% as management fees paid to DHA. Selling also a problem and its high time the CWG and the Minster in charge of the DHA must institute an independent investigation to expose the potential nexus between the valuers and the DHA and how the lessor (a self funded retiree, pensioners and others). I already lodged a complaint with Ombudsman and waiting for a reply. There are 14 Lessors all in a Private street (Only DHA leased property in that street) near 213 Ray rd Epping 2121 that are leased to DHA for more than 10 years. Please note most of those Lessors almost lost $10000 per year because DHA under cut the rent to them when they paid me the market rent for many years. DHA by mistake send the rent paid to all. We have called for the details of rent paid to all the 14 lessors in that private street from 2008 todate under the Freedom of Information Act and waiting.
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Why does a stock's price fluctuate so often, even when fresh news isn't available?
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In addition to what @George Marian said, a very large portion of trades are from computer programs trained to make trades when certain apparent patterns are observed. Since these programs are not all designed in the same way, much of the supply and demand is a result of different algorithms with different "opinions" on what the stock is doing.
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Is there any reason not to put a 35% down payment on a car?
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It sounds like you're basing your understanding of your options regarding financing (and even if you need a car) on what the car salesman told you. It's important to remember that a car salesman will do anything and say anything to get you to buy a car. Saying something as simple as, "You have a low credit score, but we can still help you." can encourage someone who does not realize that the car salesman is not a financial advisor to make the purchase. In conclusion,
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Why can't house prices be out of tune with salaries
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Your friends are overlooking a couple of problems with house prices and salaries being out of whack: Home 'equity' is a paper gain unless you realize it by selling the house. If you don't, but use the 'home ATM', all you're doing is piling up more debt that's secured on an asset that has downside risk. Ask anybody who's refinanced their house to buy a new boat or SUV in 2006/2007. In other words you're remortgaging the chickens before the eggs hatched. Of course they're also forgetting that all this debt will have to be paid back at some point, and that usually takes income, not equity. In a certain sense the housing market is a pyramid scheme that requires an influx of new buyers to maintain prices. Very simply, if you can't sell your house to buy a bigger one because the first time buyer you're trying to sell it to can't afford the down payment or the payment on the mortgage, then you can't sell your house to buy a bigger/better/nicer one and the next person in the chain can't sell his/hers. Cue the domino effect. House prices are only sustainable if people actually can afford to buy houses and if there's a massive disconnect between house prices and salaries, then house prices will fall eventually. It might just take a little longer depending on the amount of creative financing options that will eventually dry up.
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Understanding SEC Filings
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The most important filings are: Form 10-K, which is the annual report required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Form 10-Q, for the interim quarters.
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Making an offer on a property - go in at market price?
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From then on we've felt he was really pushy and rushing us to make a decision (we need to lock in a good rate, its a sellers market, it'll go fast, snooze loose, etc). This is the first reason for walking away. I understand that all those factors might be true but my question is: How do I know we made a good offer? I'm going to be blunt, here: You don't. You work out ahead of time what you will pay (ignore the agent) and you make the offer on the basis of your own research, research you spent months undertaking. The listed price on the location is $375,000 and according to our agent similar units over the last few years had sold for that amount. So our agent suggested making an offer at market price. According to the agent. I'm going to be blunt here, what do any of the real estate sites out there - that offer a wealth of information for free - indicate? If you don't know, then yet again you don't know if you made the right offer or not. Do some research now by yourself. I would be shocked if your offer was at the right level. Set your emotions aside - there are a gazillion houses out there.
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Can I profit from selling a PUT on BBY?
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The time when you might want to do this is if you think BBY is undervalued already. If you'd be happy buying the stock now, you'd be happy buying it lower (at the strike price of the put option you sold). If the stock doesn't go down, you win. If it does, you still win, because you get the stock at the strike price. If I recall correctly Warren Buffett did this with Coca-Cola. But that's Warren Buffett.
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Financing a vehicle a few months before I expect to apply for a mortgage?
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If your debt will all be less than 25% gross (yes, I see you said take home) you are in great shape. I'd get the car and not worry. The well written mortgage is 20% down, with a housing payment (which of course includes prop tax and insurance, as noted by mhoran, below) under 28% and total debt under 36%. You are well within the limits, not even close. That's great.
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Who can truly afford luxury cars?
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In many (most?) cases, luxury cars are leased rather than purchased, so the payments on even an expensive car might not be as high as you'd expect. For simplicity, take a $100,000 car. If you were to buy that in cash or do a standard five-year auto loan, that would be incredibly expensive for all but the wealthiest of people. But a lease is different. When you lease a car, you are financing the car's depreciation over the lease term. So, let's suppose that you're signing up for a three-year lease. The car manufacturer will make an estimate of what that car will be worth when you bring it back in three years (this is called the residual value). If this number is $80,000, that means the lessee is only financing the $20,000 difference between the car's price and its residual value after three years - rather than the full $100,000 MSRP. At the end of the lease, he or she just turns the car back in. Luxury cars are actually especially amenable to leasing because they have excellent brand power - just because of the name on the hood, there are many people who would be happy to pay a lot for a three-year-old Mercedes or BMW. With a mid- or low-range car, the brand is not as powerful and used cars consequentially have a lower residual value (as a percentage of the MSRP) than luxury cars. So, don't look at an $80,000 luxury car and assume that the owner has paying for the entire $80,000.
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Shares - Query about RSI (Relative Strength Index)
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Well that will depend on the time frame you are looking at it. You can't compare the RSI on a five minute chart to the RSI on a daily chart. The minute chart would represent the momentum of very small trends whilst the daily chart would represent the momentum of much larger trends. On the daily chart the shares might be experiencing a strong uptrend with a rising RSI. During each day the price might move up at the open then come down some, then back up a bit more and repeat this several times during the day before closing higher. During the day the RSI might have moved slightly higher. But during a single day on the 5 minute chart the price may have gone through several up and down trends, with the RSI going into oversold and overbought several times. What you should be looking at to strengthen the signal from the RSI is to watch for when the RSI is in the overbought at the same time the price is reaching a peak, or when the RSI is in the oversold at the same time the price is reaching a trout. These could represent potential turning points in price. The time frame to use would depend on the type of trading you are attempting to undertake. If you prefer day trading (being in and out of a trade in minutes to hours) you might look at time frames of minutes to hours. If you prefer longer term position, trend or swing trading you would probably stick to daily charts. If you prefer longer term active investing you might stick to a combination of daily, weekly and monthly charts.
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How does the value of an asset (valued in two different currencies) change when the exchange rate changes?
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If there is a very sudden and large collapse in the exchange rate then because algorithmic trades will operate very fast it is possible to determine “x” immediately after the change in exchange rate. All you need to know is the order book. You also need to assume that the algorithmic bot operates faster than all other market participants so that the order book doesn’t change except for those trades executed by the bot. The temporarily cheaper price in the weakened currency market will rise and the temporarily dearer price in the strengthened currency market will fall until the prices are related by the new exchange rate. This price is determined by the condition that the total volume of buys in the cheaper market is equal to the total volume of sells in the dearer market. Suppose initially gold is worth $1200 on NYSE or £720 on LSE. Then suppose the exchange rate falls from r=0.6 £/$ to s=0.4 £/$. To illustrate the answer lets assume that before the currency collapse the order book for gold on the LSE and NYSE looks like: GOLD-NYSE Sell (100 @ $1310) Sell (100 @ $1300) <——— Sell (100 @ $1280) Sell (200 @ $1260) Sell (300 @ $1220) Sell (100 @ $1200) ————————— buy (100 @ $1190) buy (100 @ $1180) GOLD-LSE Sell (100 @ £750) Sell (100 @ £740) ————————— buy (200 @ £720) buy (200 @ £700) buy (100 @ £600) buy (100 @ £550) buy (100 @ £530) buy (100 @ £520) <——— buy (100 @ £500) From this hypothetical example, the automatic traders will buy up the NYSE gold and sell the LSE gold in equal volume until the price ratio "s" is attained. By summing up the sell volumes on the NYSE and the buy volumes on the LSE, we see that the conditions are met when the price is $1300 and £520. Note 800 units were bought and sold. So “x” depends on the available orders in the order book. Immediately after this, however, the price of the asset will be subject to the new changes of preference by the market participants. However, the price calculated above must be the initial price, since otherwise an arbitrage opportunity would exist.
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How should I deal with my long term gain this year?
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I don't believe in letting the tax tail wag the investing dog. You have a stock you no longer wish to hold for whatever reason? Sell it. But to sell a loser, hoping it doesn't rise by the time you wish to re-buy it in 30 days is folly. This effort may gain you $50 if done right. No, it's not worth it either way.
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Section 179 vs depreciation of laptop
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I'm not a tax expert, but I think you mean Form 4562, right? If you acquire the laptop in the year for which you're filing taxes, then it is just that simple. (At least according to my reading of 4562 instructions, and my history of accepted tax returns where I've done this for my own business.) If, however, you acquired the laptop in a previous year and have already depreciated it previously (with the plan to spread over several years), there is more complexity I believe -- you may limited in how you could accelerate the remaining depreciation.
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If I own x% of company A, and A buys company B, do I own x% of B?
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No, thanks to the principle of corporate personhood. The legal entity (company C) is the owner and parent of the private company (sub S). You and C are separate legal entities, as are C and S. This principle helps to legally insulate the parties for purposes such as liability, torts, taxes, and so forth. If company C is sued, you may be financially at stake (i.e. your investment in C is devalued or made worthless) but you are not personally being sued. However, the litigant may attach you as an additional litigant if the facts of the suit merit it. But without legal separateness of corporations, then potentially all owners and maybe a number of the employees would be sued any time somebody sued the business - which is messy for companies and messy for litigants. It's also far cleaner for lenders to lend to unified business entities rather than a variety of thousands of ever-shifting shareholders. Note that this is a separate analysis that assumes the companies are not treated as partnerships or disregarded entities (tax nothings) for tax purposes, in which case an owner may for some purposes be imputed to own the assets of C. I've also ignored the consolidated tax return, which would allow C and S to file a type of corporate joint return that for some purposes treats them similarly to common entity. For the simplest variation of your question, the answer is no. You do not own the assets of a corporation by virtue of owning a few of its shares. Edit: In light of your edit to include FB and Whatsapp, and the wrinkle about corporate books. If sub S is 100% owned by company C, then you do not have any inspection rights to S because you are not a shareholder. You also do not have virtual corporation inspection rights through company C. However, if a person has inspection rights to company C, and sub S appears on the books and financial records of C, then your C rights will do the job of seeing S information. However, Facebook is a public company, so they will make regular public filings and disclosures that should at least partly cover Whatsapp. So I hedge and clear my throat by averring that my securities training is limited, but I believe that the SEC filings of a public company will as a practical matter (maybe a matter of law?) moot the inspection rights. At the very least, I suspect you'd need a proper purpose (under DGCL, for example), to demand the inspection, and they will have already made extensive disclosures that I believe will be presumptively sufficient. I defer to more experienced securities experts on that question, but I don't believe inspection rights are designed for public companies.
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List of Investments from safest to riskiest?
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With every caveat that Rick said plus many many more lets have some fun. One common way to measure risk is volatility of returns roughly how much the value of your asset jumps around. Interestingly, the following ordering is fairly similar for many other common measures of risk. The first three on the list would be mostly interchangeable. Generally, putting your money in "cash" investments has no real day-to-day price variability and the main risk is that the bank won't give you your money back at the end. Money market funds are last as they can "Break the buck". To get a feel for the next few on the list I'm using previous 360 day volatility numbers for representative broad indices (asof 2014-10-27). While these volatility values can move around quite a bit, the order is actually remarkably stable. Hedge funds might seem out of place here, but remember that hedge funds can hold be long and short at the same time and this can cancel out daily variation. However, Hedge funds do have plenty of risks that may not be well accounted for by this measure. For derivatives I'll refer to back to Rick's answer. This is a measure for broad investment in these categories your particular investment in Long-term Capital Management or Argentine Bonds may vary. It is important to note that your return on your investment generally grows as you go toward more risky investments down this list as people generally expect to be rewarded in the long term for risky investments.
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Advice for a college student interested in investment opportunities.
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Put it in a Vanguard fund with 80% VTI and 20% VXUS. That's what you'll let set for 10-15 years. For somebody that is totally new to investing, use "play money" in the stock market. It's easy for young people to get dreams of glory and blow it all on some stock tip they've seen on Twitter.
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Why does a ETN that is supposed to track Crude Oil like UWTI show constant decline every year? And am I an idiot for investing in it?
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This security looks like it will require patience for it to pay off. The 200 day moving average looks as if it will soon cross over the 20 day moving average. When that happens the security can be said to be in a bull run. http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=UWTI&p=D&yr=1&mn=6&dy=0&id=p10888728027 However, this is just speculation... trying to make money via 'buy low, sell high' as I have stated previously, you have about a 25% chance of buying at the low and selling at the high. Better to buy into a fund that pays dividends and reinvest those dividends. Such as: http://www.dividend.com/dividend-stocks/uncategorized/other/pgf-invesco-powershares-financial-preferred-portfolio/ http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=PGF&p=D&yr=1&mn=6&dy=0&id=p59773821284
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Why is property investment good if properties de-valuate over time?
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When you buy a property the house or the building goes down in value every year (it gets depreciated) similar to when you drive a new car out of the lot. However, it is the land that increases in value over time. As land becomes scarcer the value of land in that area will increase in value, as does land in sought after areas. If more people want to live in a particular suburb the land value will keep on increasing year after year. Sometimes established areas with houses built in the 1980s or even earlier can be worth much more than newly built areas. It comes down to the supply and demand of land and houses in a particular area. You might even get a situation where a run-down dilapidated house in a very sought after suburb sells for more than a brand new house in a less sought-after suburb nearby. Properties can be a very good investment and they can be a very poor investment. It can largely depend on the decisions you make in buying your investment property. The first thing you need to make a decision on is the location of the property. If you buy a property in a good area that is well sought after you can make good capital and rental returns over the long run. If you buy poorly in an area no one wants to live in then you might have problems renting it out or only be able to rent it out to bad tenants who cause damage, and you may not get any capital gains over many years. The second thing you need to decide on is when in the property cycle you buy the property. If you buy at the right time you can get higher rents and make some quick capital gains over a relatively short time. I can provide a personal example of this situation. I had bought a house (in Australia) in 2007 for $240,000 at a time when interests where at their highest (9%), no one was buying property and rents were on the increase (with low vacancy rates). Today, eight years after, we are getting $410 per week rent and the house next door (in worse condition than ours) has been put on the market asking for between $500,000 to $550,000 (most houses in the area had been selling during this year for over $500,000). So you can say that our house has more than doubled in 8 years. However, up to a few months ago houses were selling within 2 weeks of being listed. The house next door however, has been listed for over a month and has not had very much interest. So from this you can conclude that in 2007 we had bought near the bottom of the market, whilst now we are near the top of the market. What you also need to remember is that different areas of a country can have different cycles, so there is not just one property cycle but many property cycles in the same country.
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How to rescue my money from negative interest?
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The problem is that every option comes with risk - as you note, if you put money in stocks, you could lose (and many stocks are overpriced). If you put money in bonds, you could lose (many bonds are overpriced). If you buy precious metals, they could fall further currently. If you hold cash, central banks might try to ban cash (we'll hear the typical "This will never happen" from financial advisers - and they'll be wrong). Cryptocurrencies are an option, but boy do they fluctuate, so there's risk here too. Those are options and all come with risks, and here's my preferred approach to handling negative interest rates:
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Zero volatility stocks in intraday trading in India
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you need to use easy programming language to imply onto a scan where you enter Scan all stocks display if volume < (less than) 100
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Are there common stock price trends related to employee option plans?
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Whenever a large number of shares to be sold hit the market at the same time the expectation is that the price for each share will drop. The employees in a normal market would be expected to sell some of their shares at the first opportunity. Because during the dot com boom some companies employees were able to become millionaires, every employee at a tech IPO hopes to be richly rewarded. If the long term prospects of the stock price are viewed by the employees as a continuous path up, then the percentage of shares that will hit the market is low. They do want some instant cash, but want the bulk of the shares to capture future growth. The more dismal the long term price lookout is, the greater the percentage of shares that will hit the market. The general consensus is that as each of the Lock Ups expires a significant percentage of shares will be sold, and the price will suffer a short term drop.
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Difference between a mortgage and buy-to-let in UK
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In my experience buy-to-let mortgages charge a higher rate of interest than an personal residential mortgage. They are regarded as a business enterprise and presumably the banks calculate that they carry a higher risk. A bank would probably take action if the property on an ordinary mortgage was rented out, as you would be breaking their terms. Policies could be rendered void. The terms on an ordinary mortgage disallow renting out the property.
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I need a car for 2 years. Buy or lease (or something else)?
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Your short-term time frame makes buying used the best option, but it seems you already are aware of that. Look into a certified pre-owned model if you are concerned about lemons. You will usually get some sort of warranty. However, be aware that any car can be a headache with repairs. I would not recommend a lease because basically you are still paying for the depreciation on the car plus interest. Generally, this is the most expensive way to drive a car. You may find the numbers look good for a lease but beware of the 'gotchas' in the terms that can put you way over budget (over mileage, wear and tear, etc.). My best recommendation is to buy gently used with cash. This gives you the most flexibility and best resale value. If you finance a late-model vehicle, be aware that depreciation can leave you upside-down on your loan. That would put you in the position of having to shell out cash just to get rid of the car.
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Legal right to ask for someone bank records UK
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You might want to head on over to https://law.stackexchange.com/ and ask the same question. However from a personal finance perspective this kind of drama is somewhat common when someone is deceased and financial expectations are not met by the heirs. It sounds like the daughter was expecting a lot more in inheritance than was actually received. There was probably an overestimation of dad's net worth and an underestimation of the cost of his care toward the end of his life. Its best not to participate in this drama, and I feel that you are correct that the daughter does not have a right to see the bank account statements prior to dad's passage. The question is also if she has a right to see it now. Here in the US a joint account can be setup so the ownership transfers to other account holder(s) up death of an owner. So in this case your mother would own the account. If the account is setup as such, then the estate has no right to that money. You may want to check with the bank for some free advice. What is the classification of the account now that dad has passed? When a person grants someone else the power of attorney they have the ability to act as if they were that person. Most of the time POAs are limited in scope so If I give a person the POA to register a car in my name, they cannot apply for a credit card in my name (legally). In this case, however, the POA was probably general so pretty much your mom could do whatever she pleased. So if your mom took good care of the dad and bought herself some nice jewelry that is perfectly allowable with a general POA. I strongly doubt this daughter has any rights to the past records and may not even have the rights to the joint bank account currently.
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23 and on my own, what should I be doing?
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You are asking all the right questions. I predict a bright future! In addition to the excellent advice from Phil, I would add that NOW is the time to think about investing. If you have not yet started a retirement account, open up a Roth IRA and max it out ($5.5k in 2014) every year. The time value of money is strong and you will be thanking yourself in 40 years for starting now. Yes, paying down debt is important, and you should do that, too. It's a balance. If you get converted to a full-time employee, take part in any retirement plan they offer, and max out any matching because it's free money.
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Simple income and expense report in gnucash
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The official guide can be found here, but that can be a little in depth as well. To make good use of you need at least a little knowledge of double-entry bookkeeping. Double-entry bookkeeping, in accounting, is a system of bookkeeping so named because every entry to an account requires a corresponding and opposite entry to a different account. From Wikipedia Another way to think of it is that everything is an account. You'll need to set up accounts for lots of things that aren't accounts at your bank to make the double-entry system work. For example you'll need to set up various expense accounts like "office supplies" even though you'll never have a bank account by that name. Generally an imbalanced transfer is when you have a from or to account specified, but not both. If I have imbalanced transactions I usually work them from the imbalance "account", and work each transaction to have its appropriate tying account, at which point it will no longer be listed under imbalance.
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Should I re-allocate my portfolio now or let it balance out over time?
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Personally I'm not a huge fan of rebalancing within an asset class. I would vote for leaving the HD shares alone and buying other assets until you get to the portfolio you want. Frequent buying and selling incurs costs and possible tax consequences that can really hurt your returns.
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How to calculate my estimated taxes. 1099 MISC + Self Employment
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This is wrong. It should be or Now, to get back to self-employment tax. Self-employment tax is weird. It's a business tax. From the IRS perspective, any self-employed person is a business. So, take your income X and divide by 1.0765 (6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare). This gives your personal income. Now, to calculate the tax that you have to pay, multiply that by .153 (since you have to pay both the worker and employer shares of the tax). So new calculation or they actually let you do which is better for you (smaller). And your other calculations change apace. And like I said, you can simplify Q1se to and your payment would be Now, to get to the second quarter. Like I said, I'd calculate the income through the second quarter. So recalculate A based on your new numbers and use that to calculate Q2i. or Note that this includes income from both the first and second quarters. We'll reduce to just the second quarter later. This also has you paying for all of June even though you may not have been paid when you make the withholding payment. That's what they want you to do. But we aren't done yet. Your actual payment should be or Because Q2ft and Q2se are what you owe for the year so far. Q1ft + Q1se is what you've already paid. So you subtract those from what you need to pay in the second quarter. In future quarters, this would be All that said, don't stress about it. As a practical matter, so long as you don't owe $1000 or more when you file your actual tax return, they aren't going to care. So just make sure that your total payments match by the payment you make January 15th. I'm not going to try to calculate for the state. For one thing, I don't know if your state uses Q1i or Q1pi as its base. Different states may have different rules on that. If you can't figure it out, just use Q1i, as that's the bigger one. Fix it when you file your annual return. The difference in withholding is going to be relatively small anyway, less than 1% of your income.
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Digital envelope system: a modern take
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I definitely get where you're coming from. The envelope system sounds good, but doesn't appeal to most people under 50 for many of these reasons (physical cash in my hand is just a hassle - it has no appeal or reduced spending affect on me). There are various options for prepaid debit cards such as https://www.netspend.com/ or you could use gift cards for things like gas and groceries (though that likely won't get you duplicate cards or automatic payments). As far as automatic payments, just set that up through your bank. So it's still not a perfect solution. I wish there was a better, more straightforward way, but this is the best as far as I know. Update: Ramsey solutions has since launched EveryDollar. This is Dave's preferred solution for an online "digital envelope system".
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How to measure systematic risk of a stock?
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Beta is the correct answer. It is THE measure of the risk relationship of a stock with the broad market. R squared is incorrect unless you mean something very odd by "co-efficiency." A stock that goes up each time the market goes down has very low co-efficiency (negative risk as you have defined it) but very high R squared. A stock that goes the same direction as the market but twice as far (with a lot of noise) has a very low R squared but contains a lot of market risk. A stock that always goes in the same direction as the market but only a 100th as far is very safe but has a very high R squared. You can calculate beta using "slope" in excel or doing a regression, but the easiest thing is just to look up the beta in yahoo finance or elsewhere. You don't need to calculate it for yourself normally.
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What should I do with my $25k to invest as a 20 years old?
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I don't like your strategy. Don't wait. Open an investment account today with a low cost providers and put those funds into a low cost investment that represents as much of the market as you can find. I am going to start by assuming you are a really smart person. With that assumption I am going to assume you can see details and trends and read into the lines. As a computer programmer I am going to assume you are pretty task oriented, and that you look for optimal solutions. Now I am going to ask you to step back. You are clearly very good at managing your money, but I believe you are over-thinking your opportunity. Reading your question, you need a starting place (and some managed expectations), so here is your plan: Now that you have a personal retirement account (IRA, Roth IRA, MyRA?) and perhaps a 401(k) (or equivalent) at work, you can start to select which investments go into that account. I know that was your question, but things you said in your question made me wonder if you had all of that clear in your head. The key point here is don't wait. You won't be able to time the market; certainly not consistently. Get in NOW and stay in. You adjust your investments based on your risk tolerance as you age, and you adjust your investments based on your wealth and needs. But get in NOW. Over the course of 40 years you are likely to be working, sometimes the market will be up, and sometimes the market will be down; but keep buying in. Because every day you are in, you money can grow; and over 40 years the chances that you will grow substantially is pretty high. No need to wait, start growing today. Things I didn't discuss but are important to you:
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Does an owner of a bond etf get an income even if he sells before the day of distribution?
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There are two 'dates' relevant to your question: Ex-Dividend and Record. To find out these dates for a specific security visit Dividend.Com. You have to purchase the security prior to the Ex-Dividend date, hold it at least until the Record Date. After the Record Date you can sell the security and still receive the dividend for that quarter. ---- edit - - - - I was wrong. If you sell the security after the Ex-div date but before the date of record you still get the dividend. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/02/110802.asp
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How to get started with savings, paying off debt, and retirement?
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Communicate. I would recommend taking a course together on effective communications, and I would also suggest taking a course on budgeting and family financial planning. You need to be able to effectively communicate your financial plans and goals, your financial actions, and learn to both be honest and open with your partner. You also need to be certain that you come to an agreement. The first step is to draft a budget that you both agree to follow. The following is a rough outline that you could use to begin. There are online budgeting tools, and a spreadsheet where you can track planned versus actuals may better inform your decisions. Depending upon your agreed priorities, you may adjust the following percentages, Essentials (<50% of net income) Financial (>20%) Lifestyle (<30%) - this is your discretionary income, where you spend on the things you want Certain expense categories are large and deserve special advice. Try to limit your housing costs to 25% of your income, unless you live in a high-cost/rent area (where you might budget as high as 35%). Limit your expenses for vehicles below 10% of income. And expensive vehicle might be budgeted (partly) from Lifestyle. Limiting your auto payment to 5% of your income may be a wise choice (when possible). Some families spend $200-300/month on cable TV, and $200-300/month on cellphones. These are Lifestyle decisions, and those on constrained budgets might examine the value from those expenses against the benefit. Dining out can be a budget buster, and those on constrained budgets might consider paying less for convenience, and preparing more meals at home. An average family might spend 8-10% of their income on food. Once you have a budget, you want to handle the following steps, Many of the steps are choices based upon your specific priorities.
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how does one start an investing club (as a company)?
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Taxes are the least of your concerns. Your friends need licenses. Although this COULD be avoided entirely with certain craftily worded disclaimers and exemptions and the WAY that money is given to them.
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When investing, is the risk/reward tradeoff linear?
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The risk-reward relation depends on what you are changing. In the most cases people ask about, it is not linear but I will give examples of both. Nonlinear case 1: As you diversify your portfolio, the firm-specific risks of various stocks cancel each other out without necessarily affecting the expected return of the portfolio. Reduction in risk without any loss in returns--very nonlinear. Nonlinear case 2: If you are changing the weights in your portfolio to move along the efficient frontier, then you the risk-reward relation is a hyperbola, which is nonlinear. Nonlinear case 3: If you are changing the weights in your portfolio to move away from the efficient frontier, then you increase risk without adding a fully compensatory amount of return. There could be many paths along the risk-reward plane, but generally it will not be linear in the sense that it will not be on the same line as your initial, efficient, portfolio and your savings account. Linear case 1: The most common sense in which we think of the risk-reward relation being linear is when the thing you are changing is the size of your investment. If you take money out of savings to put in your fully diversified portfolio without changing the relative weights, your expected returns will increase linearly. Linear case 2: If you believe the CAPM, then the expected return of an asset stock is linearly proportional to the market risk of the firm. If you could change the market risk of a single asset without changing anything else, then you would linearly change its expected return. The general rule about the risk/reward relation is this: If you are changing the size of your investment, the relation is linear. If you are changing its composition, the relation is nonlinear
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Will a credit card issuer cancel an account if it never incurs interest?
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Technically, yes but, in practice, no. I use a card for everything and pay it off every month. Sometimes, several times a month depending on how the month is going. In the last 10 years, I've paid a total of $8 in interest because I legitimately forgot to pay my balance before the statement came out when I was out of town. I wasn't late, I just didn't beat the statement and had a small interest charge that I couldn't successfully argue off. In the same time period, I've had one card cancelled at the banks request. The reason was that I hadn't used it in two years so they cancelled me. I never pay annual fees, I get cards with great rewards programs and I (almost) never pay interest. If your bank cancels your card because you're too responsible, find a better bank.
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How to deduct operational loss from my personal income tax?
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I'm not an accountant, and you should probably get the advice of one to be sure about what to do. However, if the business is a sole-proprietorship, you'd complete a Schedule C for the business, and you'd end up with a loss at the end. If the investment you made in the business is considered to be entirely or partially "at risk" per the IRS definition, you'd get to claim all or part of the loss as a reduction in your income. If the business was an LLC, then you're beyond my already limited knowledge. There may be some other considerations based on whether this was really a business vs a hobby, and whether or not you're going to try to continue with the business, or whether you've shut it down. I'm not sure about those parts, but they'd be worth exploring with an accountant.
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How does a brokerage firm work?
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Real target of commisions is providing "risk shelter". It is kind of "insurance", which is actually last step for external risks to delete all your money. In part it cuts some of risks which you provide, brokers track history of all your actions for you (nobody else does). When brokerage firm fails, all your money is zero. It depends from case to case if whole account goes zero, but I wouldn't count on that.
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What are the disadvantages to borrowing money for energy conservation measures / solar panels?
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If you sell the property before the ten years are up, the panels might have declined in value more than the amount you owe declined. In the original post's situation, this is a negligible risk. Suppose (for the sake of argument) that each year's panels are 10% better than the previous year's panels. Even if the panels lasted forever, and even if the price you could sell the power for stayed the same, then the value of your panels should decline 9% per year. If the panels are financed at a 4.5% APR for 10 years, your principal should decline by 8.1% in the first year. A second risk is that the solar panels might be ugly, or might go out of fashion. When selling a home, "curb appeal" matters. If potential buyers do not like how your home looks with the solar panels, you might not be able to get as much money for the house if you have to sell it. A third risk is that the loan might harm your credit rating, or otherwise restrict your ability to borrow. Even though this deal does not impinge on your disposable income, a bank might think that it raises your debt-service-to-income (DTI) ratio. This could theoretically prevent you from refinancing your home, or raise the interest rates on potential loans you might want to take out. A fourth risk is that the installation process might damage your home in a way that causes expensive damage. Water leakage and electrical fires can potentially destroy homes. You need to have the solar system competently installed. A fifth risk is that the solar power system might make it harder to maintain or replace your roof. Will your roof need to be replaced during the life of the solar power system? If so, consider options that do not force you to throw away the solar power system prematurely.
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Why doesn't Japan just divide the Yen by 100?
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A Yen is like a penny. Buy a chocolate bar 100¥ or £1.00. Should the UK get rid of pennies and only price things to the pound?
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Is it possible as a non-Indian citizen to create an Indian bank account (denominated in rupees) that can exchange & repatriate its funds?
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No, in your situation it is not possible. Mostly, only three types of accounts are available to individuals: So, a complete foreigner can open account in India, only if he is working in India, a type of Savings account, and that account too will be linked to his resident status. If he leaves work, he needs to close this account. Edit: There are business accounts, and current accounts, but those are available only to businesses. Further read at SBI gives a good snapshot
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Can I contribute to an IRA from investment income?
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Traditional IRA contributions can be made if you have compensation and the amount of the contribution is limited to the smaller of your compensation and $5500 ($6000 if age 50 or more). Note that compensation (which generally means earnings form working) is not just what appears on a W-2 form as salary or wages; it can be earnings from self-employment too, as well as commissions, alimony etc (but not earnings from property, pensions and annuities, certain types of partnership income) You must also not have attained age 70.5 in the year for which the contribution is made. Even if you don't have any compensation of your own, you can nonetheless make a Traditional IRA contribution if your spouse has compensation as long as you are filing a joint tax return with your spouse. For spouses filing a joint return, the limits are still the same $5500/$6000 for each spouse, and the sum total of Traditional IRA contributions for both spouses also must not exceed the sum total of earned income of both spouses. The age limits etc are all still applicable. Note that none of this says anything about whether the contributions are deductible. Everyone meeting the above requirements is eligible to make contributions to a Traditional IRA; whether the contributions can be deducted from current income depends on the income: those with high enough incomes cannot deduct the contribution. This is different from Roth IRAs to which people with high incomes are not permitted to make a contribution at all. Finally, the source of the cash you contribute to the IRA can be the proceeds of the stock sale if you like; you are not required to prove that the cash received from compensation is what you sent to the IRA custodian. Read Publication 590 (available on the IRS website www.irs.gov) if you need an authoritative reference.
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How can I predict which way mortgage rates are moving?
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If economic conditions are weakening, i.e. unemployment rising, business and consummer confidence dropping, etc., you can expect interest rates and thus mortgage rates to drop. If economic conditions are strengthening you can expect interest rates and thus mortgage rates to start rising. As you are in the US, and with official interest rates there at 0.25% there is not much room for these rates to fall further. I am in Australia, with official interest rates at 3.75%, and with the economic weakness in the US and Europe and with China slowing down, we can expect our rates to fall further over the next year. Regarding your timeframe of one to two weeks, unless there is a decision on rates in the US in the next week I don't think there would be much change, especially with rates there at record lows. You are probably best to shop around for the best rates now and refinance once you have found one you are happy with.
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If I have 10,000 stocks to sell with 23 B market cap
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First a quick terminology correction: I believe you're proposing selling 10,000 shares of the stock of a company, not "10,000 stocks". When you sell, you need to decide whether you're selling for a specific minimum price or just selling for whatever price you can get. If you set a specific lower limit on asking price, then if people aren't interested at that price it doesn't sell. Which may mean you sell only a few shares, or none if your asking price isn't considered reasonable. If you want to sell independent of price, then as you begin to flood the market with your shares, the price you get per additional share may decline until it finds a buyer. What that lower limit is will depend on what people think the stock is currently worth. This is one of the many complications I don't want to deal with, which is why I stick with index funds.
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What happens to public shareholders when a public stock goes private?
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I can see two possibilities. Either a deal is struck that someone (the company itself, or a large owner) buys out the remaining shares. This is the scenario @mbhunter is talking about, so I won't go too deeply into it, but it simply means that you get money in your bank account for the shares in question the same as if you were to sell them for that price (in turn possibly triggering tax effects, etc.). I imagine that this is by far the most common approach. The other possibility is that the stock is simply de-listed from a public stock exchange, and not re-listed elsewhere. In this case, you will still have the stock, and it will represent the same thing (a portion of the company), but you will lose out on most of the "market" part of "stock market". That is, the shares will still represent a monetary value, you will have the same right to a portion of the company's profits as you do now, etc., but you will not have the benefit of the market setting a price per share so current valuation will be harder. Should you wish to buy or sell stock, you will have to find someone yourself who is interested in striking a deal with you at a price point that you feel comfortable with.
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What is the meaning of realization in finance?
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Realization is, literally, when something is made real. For example, let's say that you own some stock. You bought the stock for $1000, and after many years the stock is worth $10,000. Your investment has gained $9,000. However, you don't actually have this $10,000; you just own stock that is supposedly worth $10,000 on paper. Tomorrow, the value of the stock could plummet and only be worth $8,000. But if you sell your stock today and obtain this $10,000, the gain has now become real. You have realized a $9,000 gain. In investing, realization of a gain or loss occurs when an asset that you own has been sold for more or less than what you purchased it for. Before the asset is sold, you only have a theoretical gain or loss based on what you might receive if you sold the asset today. And tomorrow, that theoretical gain or loss could change.
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What does a CFP do?
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CFP stands for "Certified Financial Planner", and is a certification administered by the CFP board (a non-government non-profit entity). This has nothing to do with insurance, and CFP are not insurance agents. Many States require insurance agents to be explicitly licensed by the State as such, and only licensed insurance agents can advise on insurance products. When you're looking for an insurance policy as an investment vehicle, a financial adviser (CFP, or whatever else acronym on the business card - doesn't matter) may be helpful. But in any case, when dealing with insurance - talk to a licensed insurance agent. If your financial adviser is not a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) - talk to a licensed tax adviser about your options before making any decisions.
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Limiting Fees for Monthly Contributions
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First off, I think you are on the right path not paying 3% to a broker; that sort of fee reduces the money you earn significantly in the long term. For your fund investing approach, 10 funds seems like a lot; one of the point of funds is that they are diversified, so I would expect that the 10th fund would give relatively little diversification over the other 9. I would think about targeting only 5 funds. To invest in the funds, rather than trying to invest in all funds every month, put all of the money into a single fund, and rotate the fund month to month. That reduces your transaction costs significantly.
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How can a 529 plan help me save for my child's college education?
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You get to put money away with special tax incentives (ie - no or less taxes to pay) They are state sponsored and therefore pretty reliable, but some states are better than others. Like with many of these tax incentive type accounts (FSA, Dependent Care Spending Accounts) they are use it or lose it. (In a 529, use it or transfer it). So the money put away is a sunk cost towards education and cannot be repurposed for something else should your kid not want to attend school. http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/financial-planning/529.htm
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What is the incentive for a bank to refinance a mortgage at a lower rate?
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Banks make money on load origination fees. The "points" you pay or closing costs are the primary benefit to the banks. A vast majority of the time risks associated with the mortgage are sold to another party. FYI, the same is true with investment banks. In general, the transaction costs (which are ignored by modern finance theory) are the main thing running the incentives for the industry.
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Co-signer deceased
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People act like lawsuits are the end of the world, her suing shouldn't be considered a threat, it should be considered the accurate course of action to resolve contractual obligations. Of course, it would be convenient if she did nothing at all! If you believe her real goal is to "get it off her credit", then have her come refinance with you. This will give you the opportunity to not have her on it and you to get different terms. Of course, if your credit still is poor then this option also exacerbates the inconvenience. None of the options sounds like they will ruin your credit (unless you are scrounging for cash through credit facilities to pay her off). You have several completely benign options available.
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What's the point of a benchmark?
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One reason it matters whether or not you're beating the S&P 500 (or the Wilshire 5000, or whatever benchmark you choose to use) is to determine whether or not you'd be better off investing in an index fund (or some other investment vehicle) instead of pursuing whatever your current investment strategy happens to be. Even if your investment strategy makes money, earning what the S&P 500 has averaged over multiple decades (around 10%) with an index fund means a lot more money than a 5% return with an actively managed portfolio (especially when you consider factors like compound interest and inflation). I use the S&P 500 as one of my criteria for judging how well (or poorly) my financial adviser is doing for me. If his recommendations (or trading activity on my behalf, if authorized) are inferior to the S&P 500, for too long, then I have a basis to discontinue the relationship. Check out this Wikipedia entry on stock market indices. There are legitimate criticisms, but on the whole I think they are useful. As an aside, the reason I point to index funds specifically is that they are the one of the lowest-cost, fire-and-forget investment strategies around. If you compare the return of the S&P 500 index over multiple decades with most actively managed mutual funds, the S&P 500 index comes out ahead.
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Is there a term for the risk of investing in an asset with a positive but inferior return?
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I'd question whether a guaranteed savings instrument underperforming the stock market really is a risk, or not? Rather, you reap what you sow. There's a trade-off, and one makes a choice. If one chooses to invest in a highly conservative, low-risk asset class, then one should expect lower returns from it. That doesn't necessarily mean the return will be lower — stock markets could tank and a CD could look brilliant in hindsight — but one should expect lower returns. This is what we learn from the risk-return spectrum and Modern Portfolio Theory. You've mentioned and discounted inflation risk already, and that would've been one I'd mention with respect to guaranteed savings. Yet, one still accepts inflation risk in choosing the 3% CD, because inflation isn't known in advance. If inflation happened to be 2% after the fact, that just means the risk didn't materialize. But, inflation could have been, say, 4%. Nevertheless, I'll try and describe the phenomenon of significantly underperforming a portfolio with more higher-risk assets. I'd suggest one of: Perhaps we can sum those up as: the risk of "investing illiteracy"? Alternatively, if one were actually fully aware of the risk-reward spectrum and MPT and still chose an excessive amount of low-risk investments (such that one wouldn't be able to attain reasonable investing goals), then I'd probably file the risk under psychological risk, e.g. overly cautious / excessive risk aversion. Yet, the term "psychological risk", with respect to investing, encompasses other situations as well (e.g. chasing high returns.) FWIW, the risk of underperformance also came to mind, but I think that's mostly used to describe the risk of choosing, say, an actively-managed fund (or individual stocks) over a passive benchmark index investment more likely to match market returns.
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Austrailian tax resident earning salary in the UK - how much tax do I pay on foreign income?
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This page and this page on the ATO website provide some information on tax rates. They're rather lengthy and there's a few exceptions, but essentially, your entire foreign income, even if held overseas, is taxable. Australians are taxed worldwide.
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Frustrated Landlord
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If you're sinking 1k/year into it, and the value is rising by $100k in 15 years, or $6k/year, you have a fine investment. Ignore the wife, she just wants something even better.
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How to get started with savings, paying off debt, and retirement?
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The word you are looking for is "budget" You can't pay off debt if you are spending more than you earn. Therefore, start a budget that you both work on at the same time, and both agree 100% with. Evaluate your progress on that budget on a regular basis. From your question, you understand what your obligations are and you seem to manage money pretty well. Therefore your key to retirement is just the ticket you need. As newlyweds, you both have to be VERY aware that the main reason a marriage fails in the US is money issues. Starting out with a groundwork where you both agree to your budget and can keep it will help you a lot in your upcoming life. Then, for some details Sprinkle your charitable donations anywhere in the list where you feel it is important.
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Should I take a personal loan for my postgraduate studies?
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If you are eligible for FEE-HELP then this is by far the cheapest way of financing higher education in Australia.
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Expiring 401(k) Stock Option and Liquidation Implications
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Is the parent company's common stock public? If not, then there will be absolutely no pressure from everyone liquidating at the same time. If so, consider the average daily volume of transactions in the parent company's stock. Is it much greater than the volume your 10k co-workers will have to liquidate? If so, I wouldn't expect much of an impact from all liquidating at once. Any other situation, you are probably right to be a bit worried about simultaneous liquidation. If this was my case, I'd probably submit a limit sell order so as to try and pick out a high for the timing of my liquidation, and lower my limit vs fair value as it got closer to the expiration of your ability to hold the parent company stock.
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How can banks afford to offer credit card rewards?
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There are 3 entities in a credit card transaction; Typically when you swipe for 100, the merchant only gets around 97.5. The 2.5 is divided amongst the 3 entities, roughly around 0.5 for the Merchant Bank, around 0.5 for the Card Network and a lions share to Issuing Bank of around 1.5 The reason Issuing Bank gets large share is because they take the risk and provide the credit to customer. Typically the Issuing Bank would pay the Merchant bank via the Card Network the money in couple of days. So the Merchant Bank is not out of funds. The Issuing Bank on the other hand would have given you a credit of say 10 to 50 days depending on when you made the transaction and when the payment is due. On an average 30 days of credit. So roughly the Acquiring Bank is lending money at the rate of 18%. It is from this money the Issuing Bank would give out rewards, which is typically less than 1%. Also in cases where say Merchant Bank and the Issuing Bank are same, Bank would make money on both the legs of transaction and hence launch co-branded cards with better rewards. The above numbers are illustrative and actual practices vary from Bank to Bank to card Network to Country Related question at How do credit card companies make profit?
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Car financed at 24.90% — what can I do?
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You could look into refinancing with a bank or credit union. But to weed out options quickly, use a service like LendingTree, which can vet multiple options for you a whole lot more quickly than you could probably do yourself. (I don't work for, or get any benefit from LendingTree.) Whatever you do, try to do all the applying within a short span of time, as to not negatively affect your credit score (read here) by creating extraneous inquiries. Then again, if your credit sucks, you might not qualify for a re-fi. If you are turned down, make your payments on time for six months or so, and try again.
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How an ETF reinvests dividends
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The shareholders can't all re-invest their dividends -- it's not possible. Paying a dividend doesn't issue any new shares, so unless some of the existing shareholders sell their shares instead of re-investing, there aren't any shares available for the shareholders to re-invest in.
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Selling put and call Loss Scenario Examples
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The question you are asking concerns the exercise of a short option position. The other replies do not appear to address this situation. Suppose that Apple is trading at $96 and you sell a put option with a strike price of $95 for some future delivery date - say August 2016. The option contract is for 100 shares and you sell the contract for a premium of $3.20. When you sell the option your account will be credited with the premium and debited with the broker commission. The premium you receive will be $320 = 100 x $3.20. The commission you pay will depend on you broker. Now suppose that the price of Apple drops to $90 and your option is exercised, either on expiry or prior to expiry. Then you would be obliged to take delivery of 100 Apple shares at the contracted option strike price of $95 costing you $9,500 plus broker commission. If you immediately sell the Apple shares you have purchased under your contract obligations, then assuming you sell the shares at the current market price of $90 you would realise a loss of $500 ( = 100x($95-$90) )plus commission. Since you received a premium of $320 when you sold the put option, your net loss would be $500-$320 = $180 plus any commissions paid to your broker. Now let's look at the case of selling a call option. Again assume that the price of Apple is $96 and you sell a call option for 100 shares with a strike price of $97 for a premium of $3.60. The premium you receive would be $360 = 100 x $3.60. You would also be debited for commission by your broker. Now suppose that the price of Apple shares rises to $101 and your option is exercised. Then you would be obliged to deliver 100 Apple shares to the party exercising the option at the contracted strike price of $97. If you did not own the shares to effect delivery, then you would need to purchase those shares in the market at the current market price of $101, and then sell them to the party exercising the option at the strike price of $97. This would realise an immediate loss of $400 = 100 x ($101-$97) plus any commission payable. If you did own the shares, then you would simply deliver them and possibly pay some commission or a delivery fee to your broker. Since you received $360 when you sold the option, your net loss would be $40 = $400-$360 plus any commission and fees payable to the broker. It is important to understand that in addition to these accounting items, short option positions carry with them a "margin" requirement. You will need to maintain a margin deposit to show "good faith" so long as the short option position is open. If the option you have sold moves against you, then you will be called upon to put up extra margin to cover any potential losses.
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401k vs. real estate for someone who is great at saving?
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With an appropriate selection within a 401K and if operating expenses are low, you get tax deferred savings and possibly a lower tax bracket for now. The returns vary of course with market fluctuations but for almost 3 years it has been double digit growth on average. Some health care sector funds were up over 40% last year. YMMV. With stocks and mutual funds that hold them, you also are in a sense betting that people want their corporations to grow and succeed. Others do most of the work. Real estate should be part of your savings strategy but understand that they are not kidding when they talk about location. It can lose value. Tenants tend to have some problem part of the year such that some owners find it necessary to have a paid property manager to buffer from their complaints. Other owners get hauled into court and sued as slum lords for allegedly not doing basics. Tenants can ruin your property as well. There is maintenance, repair, replacement, insurance against injury not just property damage, and property taxes. While some of it might be deductible, not all is. You may want to consider that there are considerable ongoing costs and significant risks in time and money with real estate as an investment at a level that you do not incur with a 401K. If you buy mainly to flip, then be aware that if there are unforeseen issues with the house or the market sours as it can, you could be stuck with an immovable drain on your income. If you lose your job could you make payments? Many, many people sadly lost their homes or investment properties that way in 2008-2010.
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Do you know of any online monetary systems?
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I recently came across bitcoin, it is what I was really looking for at the time.
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Where can I open a Bank Account in Canadian dollars in the US?
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Give Harris Bank a call; they might be able to help you As of August 21, 2015, Harris bank does NOT offer Canadian dollar accounts in the U.S.
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Effect of Quantitative Easing on Price of Bonds
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QE is artificial demand for bonds, but as always when there are more buyers than sellers the price of anything goes up. When QE ends the price of bonds will fall because everyone will know that the biggest buyer in the market is no longer there. So price of bonds will fall. And therefore the interest rate on new bonds must increase to match the total return available to buyers in the secondary market.
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Options vs Stocks which is more profitable
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First, to mention one thing - better analysis calls for analyzing a range of outcomes, not just one; assigning a probability on each, and comparing the expected values. Then moderating the choice based on risk tolerance. But now, just look at the outcome or scenario of 3% and time frame of 2 days. Let's assume your investable capital is exactly $1000 (multiply everything by 5 for $5,000, etc.). A. Buy stock: the value goes to 103; your investment goes to $1030; net return is $30, minus let's say $20 commission (you should compare these between brokers; I use one that charges 9.99 plus a trivial government fee). B. Buy an call option at 100 for $0.40 per share, with an expiration 30 days away (December 23). This is a more complicated. To evaluate this, you need to estimate the movement of the value of a 100 call, $0 in and out of the money, 30 days remaining, to the value of a 100 call, $3 in the money, 28 days remaining. That movement will vary based on the volatility of the underlying stock, an advanced topic; but there are techniques to estimate that, which become simple to use after you get the hang of it. At any rate, let's say that the expected movement of the option price in this scenario is from $0.40 to $3.20. Since you bought 2500 share options for $1000, the gain would be 2500 times 2.8 = 7000. C. Buy an call option at 102 for $0.125 per share, with an expiration 30 days away (December 23). To evaluate this, you need to estimate the movement of the value of a 102 call, $2 out of the money, 30 days remaining, to the value of a 102 call, $1 in the money, 28 days remaining. That movement will vary based on the volatility of the underlying stock, an advanced topic; but there are techniques to estimate that, which become simple to use after you get the hang of it. At any rate, let's say that the expected movement of the option price in this scenario is from $0.125 to $ 1.50. Since you bought 8000 share options for $1000, the gain would be 8000 times 1.375 = 11000. D. Same thing but starting with a 98 call. E. Same thing but starting with a 101 call expiring 60 days out. F., ... Etc. - other option choices. Again, getting the numbers right for the above is an advanced topic, one reason why brokerages warn you that options are risky (if you do your math wrong, you can lose. Even doing that math right, with a bad outcome, loses). Anyway you need to "score" as many options as needed to find the optimal point. But back to the first paragraph, you should then run the whole analysis on a 2% gain. Or 5%. Or 5% in 4 days instead of 2 days. Do as many as are fruitful. Assess likelihoods. Then pull the trigger and buy it. Try these techniques in simulation before diving in! Please! One last point, you don't HAVE to understand how to evaluate projected option price movements if you have software that does that for you. I'll punt on that process, except to mention it. Get the general idea? Edit P.S. I forgot to mention that brokers need love for handling Options too. Check those commission rates in your analysis as well.
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Limited Liability Partnership capital calculation
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Retained earnings is different from partner capital accounts. You can draw the money however the partners agree. Unless money is specifically transferred to the capital funds, earnings will not show up there.
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Economics of buy-to-let (investment) flats
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Surely the yield should be Yield = (Rent - Costs) / Downpayment ? As you want the yield relative to your capital not to the property value. As for the opportunity cost part you could look at the risk free rate of return you could obtain, either through government bonds or bank accounts with some sort of government guarantee (not sure what practical terms are for this in Finland). The management fee is almost 30% of your rent, what does this cover? Is it possible to manage the property yourself, as this would give you a much larger cushion between rent and expenses.
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Where can I find the nominal price of a stock prior a split into multiple companies?
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When Hewlett Packard split they changed their name to HP Inc. and spun off Hewlett Packard Enterprise as a new corporation. This means HP Inc. has the same stock history and ticker (HPQ) as Hewlett Packard did so that's the one you want to search for. As you noticed this also means it's impossible to search for old Hewlett Packard's stock performance alone. One free service that seems to show the unadjusted historical stock price of HPQ is Google finance: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AHPQ
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Can I trade more than 4 stocks per week equally split between two brokers without “pattern day trading” problems?
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Yes, this is a way to avoid the pattern day trader regulation. The only downside being that your broker will have different commission rates and your capital will be split amongst several places.
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