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No transaction fee ETF trades - what's the catch? | what is the mechanism by which they make money on the funds that I have in my account? Risk drives TD Ameritrade to look for profits, Turukawa's storytelling about 100,000$ and 500$ is trivial. The risk consists of credit risk, asset-liability risk and profit risk. The third, based on Pareto Principle, explains the loss-harvesting. The pareto distribution is used in all kind of decentralized systems such as Web, business and -- if I am not totally wrong -- the profit risk is a thing that some authorities require firms to investigate, hopefully someone could explain you more about it. You can visualize the distribution with rpareto(n, shape, scale) in R Statistics -program (free). Wikipedia's a bit populist description: In the financial services industry, this concept is known as profit risk, where 20% or fewer of a company's customers are generating positive income while 80% or more are costing the company money. Read more about it here and about the risk here. |
Are cashiers required to check a credit card for a signature in the U.S.? | Per their merchant agreements, Visa and MasterCard say that the signature on the back of the card is the proper way to identify the card holder. If a card is not signed, the merchant is supposed to check your ID and make you sign the card before accepting it for payment. Merchants are not allowed the require an ID for paying with a signed card. Of course, store employees rarely know all these things. Some will gladly accept an unsigned card. Some will try to make you show your ID. |
How to properly report income without 1099-MISC | You are right that even if you do not receive a 1099-MISC, you still need to report all income to the IRS. Report the $40 on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ. Since your net profit was less than $400, you do not need to file Schedule SE. From the IRS web site: Self-Employment Income It is a common misconception that if a taxpayer does not receive a Form 1099-MISC or if the income is under $600 per payer, the income is not taxable. There is no minimum amount that a taxpayer may exclude from gross income. All income earned through the taxpayer’s business, as an independent contractor or from informal side jobs is self-employment income, which is fully taxable and must be reported on Form 1040. Use Form 1040, Schedule C, Profit or Loss from Business, or Form 1040, Schedule C-EZ, Net Profit from Business (Sole Proprietorship) to report income and expenses. Taxpayers will also need to prepare Form 1040 Schedule SE for self-employment taxes if the net profit exceeds $400 for a year. Do not report this income on Form 1040 Line 21 as Other Income. Independent contractors must report all income as taxable, even if it is less than $600. Even if the client does not issue a Form 1099-MISC, the income, whatever the amount, is still reportable by the taxpayer. |
Are lottery tickets ever a wise investment provided the jackpot is large enough? | You can have a positive expected return on a lottery ticket purchase, but only if the lottery requires all players to pick their own numbers and doesn't have an option to buy a ticket with a randomly generated set of numbers. This is because people are very bad at picking random numbers, and will tend to pick numbers that are fairly evenly spaced or based on dates rather than genuinely random numbers. For example in January 1995 the UK national lottery happened to have fairly well-spaced numbers (7, 17, 23, 32, 38 & 42), and there were 133 winners with all six numbers. So they way to win is to wait for a draw where a rollover jackpot is high enough that your expected winnings are positive if you are the only winner, and pick a set of numbers that looks stupidly non-random, but is not so very non-random that people will have picked it anyway, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. For a "pick 6 in the range from 1-49" lottery you might pick something like 3, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49. But it doesn't work if there's a random option, since a significant number of players will use it and get genuinely random numbers, and so your chances of being the only winner get much smaller. |
Does U.S. tax code call for small business owners to count business purchases as personal income? | I am going to keep things very simple and explain the common-sense reason why the accountant is right: Also, my sister in law owns a small restaurant, where they claim their accountant informed them of the same thing, where a portion of their business purchases had to be counted as taxable personal income. In this case, they said their actual income for the year (through their paychecks) was around 40-50K, but because of this detail, their taxable income came out to be around 180K, causing them to owe a huge amount of tax (30K ish). Consider them and a similarly situated couple that didn't make these purchases. Your sister in law is better off in that she has the benefit of these purchases (increasing the value of her business and her expected future income), but she's worse off because she got less pay. Presumably, she thought this was a fair trade, otherwise she wouldn't have made those purchases. So why should she pay any less in taxes? There's no reason making fair trades should reduce anyone's tax burden. Now, as the items she purchased lose value, that will be a business loss called "depreciation". That will be deductible. But the purchases themselves are not, and the income that generated the money to make those purchases is taxable. Generally speaking, business gains are taxable, regardless of what you do with the money (whether you pay yourself, invest it, leave it in the business, or whatever). Generally speaking, only business losses or expenses are deductible. A purchase is an even exchange of income for valuable property -- even exchanges are not deductions because the gain of the thing purchased already fairly compensates you for the cost. You don't specify the exact tax status of the business, but there are really only two types of possibilities. It can be separately taxed as a corporation or it can be treated essentially as if it didn't exist. In the former case, corporate income tax would be due on the revenue that was used to pay for the purchases. There would be no personal income tax due. But it's very unlikely this situation applies as it means all profits taken out of the business are taxed twice and so small businesses are rarely organized this way. In the latter case, which is almost certainly the one that applies, business income is treated as self-employment income. In this case, the income that paid for the purchases is taxable, self-employment income. Since a purchase is not a deductible expense, there is no deduction to offset this income. So, again, the key points are: How much she paid herself doesn't matter. Business income is taxable regardless of what you do with it. When a business pays an expense, it has a loss that is deductible against profits. But when a business makes a purchase, it has neither a gain nor a loss. If a restaurant buys a new stove, it trades some money for a stove, presumably a fair trade. It has had no profit and no loss, so this transaction has no immediate effect on the taxes. (There are some exceptions, but presumably the accountant determined that those don't apply.) When the property of a business loses value, that is usually a deductible loss. So over time, a newly-purchased stove will lose value. That is a loss that is deductible. The important thing to understand is that as far as the IRS is concerned, whether you pay yourself the money or not doesn't matter, business income is taxable and only business losses or expenses are deductible. Investments or purchases of capital assets are neither losses nor expenses. There are ways you can opt to have the business taxed separately so only what you pay yourself shows up on your personal taxes. But unless the business is losing money or needs to hold large profits against future expenses, this is generally a worse deal because money you take out of the business is taxed twice -- once as business income and again as personal income. Update: Does the business eventually, over the course of the depreciation schedule, end up getting all of the original $2,000 tax burden back? Possibly. Ultimately, the entire cost of the item is deductible. That won't necessarily translate into getting the taxes back. But that's really not the right way to think about it. The tax burden was on the income earned. Upon immediate replacement, hypothetically with the exact same model, same cost, same 'value', isn't it correct that the "value" of the business only went up by the amount the original item had depreciated? Yes. If you dispose of or sell a capital asset, you will have a gain or loss based on the difference between your remaining basis in the asset and whatever you got for the asset. Wouldn't the tax burden then only be $400? Approximately, yes. The disposal of the original asset would cause a loss of the difference between your remaining basis in the asset and what you got for it (which might be zero). The new asset would then begin depreciating. You are making things a bit more difficult to understand though by focusing on the amount of taxes due rather than the amount of taxable gain or loss you have. They don't always correlate directly (because tax rates can vary). |
Can I prove having savings without giving out the account number? | Have you been rejected from a rental for a specific reason (leading to this question)? Landlords are in the business of exchanging space for regular payments with no drama. Anything they ask in an application should be something to minimize the risk of drama. The "happy path" optimistic goal is that you pay your rent by the due date every month. If your income is not sufficient for this, demonstrating you have assets and would be able to pay for the full term of the lease is part of the decision to enter into the lease with you. In the non-happy-path, say you fall off the face of the earth before ending the lease. The landlord could be owed several months of rent, and could pursue a legal judgment on your assets. With a court order, they can make the bank pay out what is owed; having bank information reduces the landlord's cost and research efforts in the event the story has degenerated to this point (in the jargon of landlording, this means the tenant is "collectable"). While of course you could have zeroed out your accounts or moved money to a bank you didn't tell the landlord in the meantime, if you are not the bad actor in this story, you probably wouldn't have. If you get any kind of "spidey-sense" about a landlord or property at all there is probably a better rental situation in your city. You also want to minimize drama. If the landlord is operating like a business, they're not in this to perform identity theft. If the landlord is sloppy, or has sloppy office workers, that would be different. In the event sharing your asset information truly bothers you, and the money is for rental expense anyway, you could offer to negotiate a 1 year prepaid rental (of course knock another 5%-10% off for time value of money and lower risk to landlord) if you're sure you wouldn't want to leave early. |
Paying Tax on Stocks Trading | The answer to your question doesn't depend on who you trade with but what country you live in. If you live outside of the US, you will have to pay tax on dividends... sometimes. This depends on the tax treaty that your country has with the US. Canada, Australia, UK and a few other countries have favorable tax treaties with the US that allow you to not be double taxed. You must look into the tax treaty that your home country has with the US to answer the question. Each country is different. |
Nasdaq vs Nasdaq Trade Reporting Facility | You can infer some of the answers to your questions from the BATS exchange's market data page and its associated help page. (I'm pretty sure a page like this exists on each stock exchange's website; BATS just happens to be the one I'm used to looking at.) The Matched Volume section refers to all trades on a given date that took place on "lit" exchanges; that is, where a public protected US stock exchange's matching engine helped a buyer and a seller find each other. Because there are exactly 11 such exchanges in existence, it's easy to show 100% of the matched volume broken down into 11 rows. The FINRA & TRF Volume section refers to all trades on a given date that took place on "non-lit" exchanges. These types of trades include dark pool volume and any other trade that is not required to take place in public but is required to be reported (the R in TRF) to FINRA. There are three venues via which these trades may be reported to FINRA -- NASDAQ's, NYSE's, and FINRA's own ADF. They're all operated under the purview of FINRA, so the fact that they're "located at" NASDAQ or NYSE is a red herring. (For example, from the volume data it's clear that the NASDAQ facility does not only handle NASDAQ-listed (Tape C) securities, nor does the NYSE facility only handle NYSE-listed (Tape A) securities or anything like that.) The number of institutions reporting to each of the TRFs is large -- many more than the 11 public exchanges -- so the TRF data is not broken down further. (Also I think the whole point of the TRFs is to report in secret.) I don't know enough details to say why the NASDTRF has always handled more reporting volume than the other two facilities. Of course, since we can't see inside the TRF reporting anyway, it's sort of a moot point. |
What is a mutual fund? | The simple answer is: YES, the JP Morgan emerging markets equity fund is a mutual fund. A mutual fund is a pooling of money from investors to invest in stocks and bonds. Investors in mutual funds arrive there in different ways. Some get there via their company 401K, others by an IRA, still others as a taxable account. The fund can be sold by the company directly or through a broker. You can also have a fund of funds. So the investors are other funds. Some investors are only indirect investors. They are owed a pension by a past or current employer, and the pension fund has invested in a mutual fund. |
Is it unreasonable to double your investment year over year? | I know it may not last longer but i was able to 2.5x my wealth over last 2 years.(2016, 2017 cont) I was successfully able to convert 70k into 452k in 21months. Now at this amount, I am really worried and want to take all the profit. I agree that I have been lucky with these returns but it was not all outright luck. Now my plan is to take 100k of it and try high risk investments while investing 350k in index funds. |
How to file tax for the sale of stocks from form 1099B? | You report each position separately. You do this on form 8949. 7 positions is nothing, it will take you 5 minutes. There's a tip on form 8949 that says this, though: For Part I (short term transactions): Note. You may aggregate all short-term transactions reported on Form(s) 1099-B showing basis was reported to the IRS and for which no adjustments or codes are required. Enter the total directly on Schedule D, line 1a; you are not required to report these transactions on Form 8949 (see instructions). For Part II (long term transactions): Note. You may aggregate all long-term transactions reported on Form(s) 1099-B showing basis was reported to the IRS and for which no adjustments or codes are required. Enter the total directly on Schedule D, line 8a; you are not required to report these transactions on Form 8949 (see instructions). If the 1099B in your case shows basis for each transaction as reported to the IRS - you're in luck, and don't have to type them all in separately. |
How to see a portfolio's overall profit or loss on Yahoo Finance? | The steps that I could imagine following: |
Companies that use their cash to buy back stock, issue dividends, etc. — how does this this typically affect share price? | So far buying of own by own companies like Apple, is concerned it will surely raise the price of the script. At some level, the share prices are a factor of supply and demand at a given price. Apple being a very demanded script, its supply in the market goes down with the buy back. After a while, this will surely make the script price rise. It also depends at what price the buy back is affected. If the buy back is done at a right price, it will help the existing shareholder. If a very high price is paid, it will erode shareholders wealth. Hence each buy back needs to be studies separately. There are several and at times complex variables which determines if the buy back is good for continuing shareholders or not. |
Calculate investment's interest rate to break-even insurance cost [duplicate] | I wouldn't call it apples and oranges. This is literally an opportunity cost calculation. You can safely assume S&P500 will perform at least 11% over any 10 year period. Since failing companies are delisted and replaced with new growing companies, the market should continue to grow. No, it's not guaranteed. Lets use an aggressive number for inflation, 4%, leaving a 7% ROR estimate for S&P500. I assume OP has better credit than me, assume a rate around 3.5%. So it looks like net 3.5% ROR. The PMI erases that. You have to continue paying it until you pay off the loan. Put 20% down, get a 15 year fixed at lowest rate. Pay it off quicker. |
How can I find out which ETFs has holdings in a particular stock? | This ETFchannel.com page shows which ETFs hold Wells Fargo and you can search other stocks the get the same information on that site. This the same information for Google This even tells you what percentage of an ETF is a particular stock. Be warned that this site is not entirely free. You will be limited to 6 pages in 6 hours unless you pay for a subscription. Additionally ETFdb.com offers a similar tool. |
When should I walk away from my mortgage? | To put a different spin on it, suppose you loaned someone $100K, expecting that they would pay it back, and then a little later they decided not too. They are perfectly capable of paying back the money, but just decided they didn't want to, and it seems the laws of your state said you couldn't make them. How would you feel about that? Since this is supposed to be an answer to the question, the answer is: "only if you can't afford to repay it". That's what foreclosure is supposed to be about, not you deciding you would rather not pay your debts. Let's not forget who pays that bill for you - every one of your bank's other customers. EDIT:For the people decrying the moral aspect and saying "it's perfectly alright because the law says that's the punishment and I'm willing to pay it", the law also says "if you kill someone, you go to prison for life". Does that mean that someone who decides they are going to kill someone has a perfect right to do it as long as they are prepared to take the consequences? |
Why is day trading considered riskier than long-term trading? | I think, the top three answers by Joe, Anthony and Bigh are giving you all the detail that you need on a technical sense. Although I would like to add a simple picture that underlines, that you can not really compare day trading to long-term trading and that the addictive and psychologic aspect that you mentioned can not be taken out of consideration. The long term investor is like someone buying a house for investment. You carefully look at all offers on the market. You choose by many factors, price, location, quality, environment, neighborhood and extras. After a long research, you pick your favorites and give them a closer look until you finally choose the object of desire, which will pay off in 10 years and will be a wise investment in your future. Now this sounds like a careful but smart person, who knows what he wants and has enough patience to have his earnings in the future. The short term investor is like someone running into the casino for a game of black-jack, roulette or poker. He is a person that thinks he has found the one and only formula, the philosopher's stone, the money-press and is seeking immense profits in just one night. And if it does not work, he is sure, that this was just bad coincidence and that his "formula" is correct and will work the next night. This person is a pure gambler and running the risk of becoming addicted. He is seeking quick and massive profits and does not give up, even though he knows, that the chances of becoming a millionaire in a casino are quite unrealistic and not better than playing in a lottery. So if you are a gamer, and the profit is less important than the "fun", then short term is the thing for you. If you are not necessarily seeking tons of millions, but just want to keep your risk of loss to a minimum, then long term is your way to go. So it is a question of personality, expectations and priorities. The answer why losses are bigger on high frequency signals is answered elsewhere. But I am convinced in reality it is a question of what you want and therefore very subjective. I have worked for both. I have worked for a portfolio company that has gone through periods of ups and downs, but on the long term has made a very tempting profit, which made me regret, that I did not ask for shares instead of money as payment. These people are very calm and intelligent people. They spend all their time investigating and searching for interesting objects for their portfolio and replace losers with winners. They are working for your money and investors just relax and wait. This has a very serious taste to it and I for my part would always prefer this form of investment. I have worked for an investment broker selling futures. I programmed the account management for their customers and in all those years I have only seen one customer that made the million. But tons of customers that had made huge losses. And this company was very emotional, harsh, unpersonal - employees changing day by day, top sellers coming in corvettes. All the people working there where gamblers, just like their customers. Well, it ended one day, when the police came and confiscated all computers from them, because customers have complained about their huge losses. I am glad, that I worked as a remote developer for them and got paid in money and not in options. So both worlds are so different from each other. The chances for bigger profits are higher on day trading, but so are the chances for bigger losses - so it is pure gambling. If you like gambling, split your investment: half in long term and other half in short term, that is fun and wise in one. But one thing is for sure: in over ten years, I have seen many customers loosing loads of money in options in the future markets or currencies. But I have never seen anyone making a loss in long term portfolio investment. There have been hard years, where the value dropped almost 30%, but that was caught up by the following years, so that the only risk was minimizing the profit. |
Should I keep most of my banking, credit, and investment accounts at the same bank? | http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/index.html FDIC currently insures up to $250,000. (I would have put that as a comment to Jeffery but it says it was locked.) You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. If you shop around, and keep shopping all the time you can keep your accounts in a single place so long as that single place provides the best deal. Don't have any loyalty to your banking institutions because they don't have any loyalty to you. Also, having lots of accounts means you are familiar with lots of institutions, so you are likely better at shopping around. Things I consider. For fewer institutions: For more institutions: |
What actions should I be taking to establish good credit scores for my children? | Until they're old enough to be legally responsible for their own credit, the only thing you can really do is show them by example how to manage money and credit in your own finances. Teach them budgeting, immerse them in understanding how credit and financing work, and teach them smart ways to make their money work for them. When they're teenagers, you could potentially approach small banks or credit unions about ways to perhaps co-sign loans for them and let them make payments to learn good habits for managing their responsibilities, but that's not always easy either. It won't do anything for their credit, but having the responsibility of coming in to make payments might instill good habits and help their self-esteem at the same time. You have great intentions, but as has been pointed out here already, from a legal standpoint there's not much you can do. All you can do is prepare them for the day when they are on their own and can enter into credit agreements. Kids going to college get into real trouble with credit because cards are handed out like candy to them by the banks, so teaching them money management skills is invaluable and something you can do now. |
Best return on investment for new home purchase | I encourage you to think of this home purchase decision as a chance to buy into a community that you want your children to grow up in. Try to find a place where you will be happy for the next 20 years, not just the next 2 or 7 years. In your situation, option 1 seems like a bad idea. It will create an obstacle to having children, instead of establishing a place for them to grow up in. Option 2 is close to "buying a house on a layaway plan". It offers the most financial flexibility. It also could result in the best long-term outcome, because you will buy in an established area, and you will know exactly what quality house you will have. But you and your fiancé need to ask yourselves some hard questions: Are you willing to put up with the mess and hassles of remodelling? Are you good at designing such projects? Can you afford to pay for the projects as they occur? Or if you need to finance them, can you get a HELOC to cover them? Especially if you and your fiancé do much of the work yourselves, break down the projects into small enough pieces that you can quickly finish off whatever you are working on at the time, and be happy living in the resulting space. You do not want to be nagging your husband about an unfinished project "forever" -- or silently resenting that a project never got wrapped up. I posted some suggestions for incrementally finishing a basement on the Home Improvement Stack Exchange. If you are up to the job of option 2, it is less risky than option 3. Option 3 has several risks: You don't know what sort of people will live in the neighborhood 5 - 20 years from now. Will the homes be owner-occupied? Or rentals? Will your neighbors care about raising children well? Or will lots of kids grow up in broken homes? Will the schools be good? Disappointing? Or dangerous? Whereas in an established neighborhood, you can see what the neighborhood is currently like, and how it has been changing. Unless you custom-build (or remodel), you don't control the quality of the construction. Some neighborhoods built by Pulte in the last 10 years were riddled with construction defects. You will be paying up-front for features you don't need yet. You might never need some of them. And some of them might interfere with what you realize later on might be better. In stable markets, new homes (especially ones with lots of "upgrades") often decline in value during the first few years. This is because part of the value is in the "newness" and being "up-to-date" with the latest fads. This part of the value wears off over time. Are the homes "at the edge of town" already within reasonable walking distance of parks, schools, church, grocery stores, et cetera? Might the commute from the "edge of town" to work get worse over the next 5 - 20 years? |
When the Reserve Bank determines the interest rates, do they take the house prices into account? | The setting of interest rates (or "repurchase rates") varies from country to country, as well as with the independence of the central bank. There are a number of measurements and indices that central bankers can take into account: This is a limited overview but should give an indication of just how complex tracking inflation is, let alone attempting to control it. House prices are in the mix but which house or which price? The choice of what to measure faces the difficulty of attempting to find a symmetrical basket which really affects the majority regularly (and not everyone is buying several new houses a year so the majority are ring-fenced from fluctuations in prices at the capital end, but not from the interest-rate end). And this is only when the various agencies (Statistics, Central Bank, Labour, etc.) are independent. In countries like Venezuela or Argentina, government has taken over release of such data and it is frequently at odds with individual experience. Links for the US: And, for Australia: |
JCI headache part 2: How to calculate cost basis / tax consequences of JCI -> ADNT spinoff? | Your 1099-B report for ADNT on the fractional shares of cash should answer this question for you. The one I am looking at shows ADNT .8 shares were sold for $36.16 which would equal a sale price of $45.20 per share, and a cost basis of $37.27 for the .8 shares or $46.59 per share. |
Foolish to place orders before the market opens? | Depending on your strategy, it could be though there is also something to be said for what kind of order are you placing: Market, limit or otherwise? Something else to consider is whether or not there is some major news that could cause the stock/ETF to gap at the open. For example, if a company announces strong earnings then it is possible for the stock to open higher than it did the previous day and so a market order may not to take into account that the stock may jump a bit compared to the previous close. Limit orders can be useful to put a cap on how much you'll pay for a stock though the key would be to factor this into your strategy of when do you buy. |
How to avoid getting back into debt? | With your windfall, you've been given a second chance. You've become debt free again, and get to start over. Here is what I would recommend from this point on: Decide that you want to remain debt free. It sounds like you've already done this, since you are asking this question. Commit to never borrowing money again. It sounds overly simplistic, but if you stop using your credit cards to spend money you don't have and you don't take out any loans, you won't be in debt. Learn to budget. Here is what is going to make being debt free possible. At the beginning of each month, you are going to write down your income for the month. Then write down your expenses for the month. Make sure you include everything. You'll have fixed monthly expenses, like rent, and variable monthly expenses, like electricity and phone. You'll also have ongoing expenses, like food, transportation, and entertainment. You'll have some expenses, like tuition, which doesn't come up every month, but is predictable and needs to be paid. (For these, you'll can set aside part of the money for the expense each month, and when the bill comes, you'll have the funds to pay it ready to go.) Using budgeting software, such as YNAB (which I recommend) will make this whole process much easier. You are allowed to change your plan if you need to at any time, but do not allow yourself to spend any money that is not in the plan. Take action to address any issues that become apparent from your budget. As you do your budget, you will probably struggle, at first. You will find that you don't have enough income to cover your expenses. Fortunately, you are now armed with data to be able to tackle this problem. There are two causes: either your expenses are too high, or your income is too low. Cut your expenses, if necessary. Before you had a written budget, it was hard to know where your money went each month. Now that you have a budget, it might be apparent that you are spending too much on food, or that you are spending too much on entertainment, or even that a roommate is stealing money. Do what you need to do to cut back the expenses that need cutting. Increase your income, if necessary. You might find from your budget that your expenses aren't out of line. You live in as cheap a place as possible, you eat inexpensively, you don't go out to eat, etc. In this case, the problem isn't your spending, it is your income. In order to stay out of debt, you'll need to increase your income (get a job). I know that you said that this will slow your studies, but because you are now budgeting, you have an advantage you didn't have before: you now know how short you are each month. You can take a part time job that will earn you just enough income to remain debt free while maximizing your study time. Build up a small emergency fund. Emergencies that you didn't plan for in your budget happen. To remain debt free, you should have some money set aside to cover something like this, so you don't have to borrow when it comes up. The general rule of thumb is 3 to 6 months of expenses, but as a college kid with low expenses and no family to take care of, you won't need a huge fund. $500 to $1000 extra in the bank to cover an unexpected emergency expense could be all it takes to keep you debt free. |
Who can I get to help me roll my 401(k) into an IRA when I live overseas? | It is typically very easy to roll a 401(k) into an IRA. Companies that provide IRA's are very experienced with it, and I would expect that they will take your calls from overseas. You will likely be able to do it over the internet without using a phone at all. Just open an IRA with any brokerage company (Scottrade, Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, Ameritrade, etc.) and follow instructions to roll your 401(k) into it. Most likely they will need your signature, but usually a scan of a form you have filled out will do. Be sure to have information on your 401(k) provider, including your account number there, on hand. These companies are all very reputable and this is not a difficult transaction. There's really no downside to rolling into an IRA. 401(k) plans usually have more limited options and/or worse fee structures and are frequently harder to work with, as you have observed. |
Can the IRS freeze a business Bank account? | If the business is legally separated and not commingled - they probably cannot. What they can do is put a lien on it (so that you cannot sell the business) and garnish your income. If the corporate veil is pierced (and its not that hard to have it pierced if you're not careful) - then they can treat it as if it is your personal asset. Verify this with a lawyer licensed in your state, I'm not a lawyer or a tax professional. |
How U.S. Depreciation works Explain in brief? | If a business tool has a limited lifespan, it's value decreases (depreciates) from year to year. The business can capture that loss of value on some things that it couldn't otherwise write off as expenses. A few tools can be either expenses or depreciated, but only one of those can be chosen for that particular object. This is generally not relevant for individual taxpayers, unless you can show that the item is being used for income-producing purposes. |
Should I give to charity by check or credit card? | In the US, if it's a large donation to a tax-exempt organization (401c3 or equivalent), you may want to consider giving appreciated equities (stocks, bonds, mutual fund shares which are now worth more than you paid for them). You get to claim the deduction's value at the time you transfer it to their account, and you avoid capital gains tax. They would pay the capital-gains tax when they redeem it for cash... but if exempt, they get the full value and the tax is completely avoided. Effectively, your donation costs you less for the same impact. It does take a bit of work to coordinate this with the receiving organization, and there may be brokerage fees, so it probably isn't worth doing for small sums.)Transfers within the same brokerage house may avoid those feee.) So again, you should talk to the charity about what's best. But for larger donations, where larger probably starts at a few thou, it can save you a nice chunk of change. |
Events that cause major movement in forex? | Sometimes the market has to be left alone. Too much interference of the policy makers to stabilize the falling market can actually result in a major crisis. Every change stabilises after sometime and it is also applicable in the Forex trading market. So, the eager investors should learn to have some patience and wait for the market to stabilise itself rather than make random predictions on the policies released by policy makers |
What is a call spread and how does it work? | A bullish (or 'long') call spread is actually two separate option trades. The A/B notation is, respectively, the strike price of each trade. The first 'leg' of the strategy, corresponding to B, is the sale of a call option at a strike price of B (in this case $165). The proceeds from this sale, after transaction costs, are generally used to offset the cost of the second 'leg'. The second 'leg' of the strategy, corresponding to A, is the purchase of a call option at a strike price of A (in this case $145). Now, the important part: the payoff. You can visualize it as so. This is where it gets a teeny bit math-y. Below, P is the profit of the strategy, K1 is the strike price of the long call, K2 is the strike price of the short call, T1 is the premium paid for the long call option at the time of purchase, T2 is the premium received for the short call at the time of sale, and S is the current price of the stock. For simplicity's sake, we will assume that your position quantity is a single option contract and transaction costs are zero (which they are not). P = (T2 - max(0, S - K2)) + (max(0, S - K1) - T1) Concretely, let's plug in the strikes of the strategy Nathan proposes, and current prices (which I pulled from the screen). You have: P = (1.85 - max(0, 142.50 - 165)) - (max(0, 142.50 - 145)) = -$7.80 If the stock goes to $150, the payoff is -$2.80, which isn't quite break even -- but it may have been at the time he was speaking on TV. If the stock goes to $165, the payoff is $12.20. Please do not neglect the cost of the trades! Trading options can be pretty expensive depending on the broker. Had I done this trade (quantity 1) at many popular brokers, I still would've been net negative PnL even if NFLX went to >= $165. |
2 houses 450k each or one 800k? | Because it appears you have in the neighborhood of 30 years remianing on your mortgage for the first house, If you can sell it you will likely be better off in the end. While renting has the potential for greater income it is a business. And like any business there are risks, expenses, and work required to make it successful. There will be times where you can not find a renter immediately and will be responsible for making both payments, maintaining both houses, the insurance(which for an owner is higher for a rental property than a domicile), and paying the applicable taxes. You need to look at your best and worst case numbers. If your best case numbers leave you in the hole 300/month then that is not the sort of business you want to run. Your investment should build your savings and retirement funds not deplete them. Further you are more likely to fall between your best and worst case scenerios. So you need to be able to thrive at that level. If something in the middle is going to take you into bankruptcy then sell the property. If you are not willing to put the time into your business that it will need (My rental home took about 10-30 hours a month despite renters being responsible for basic upkeep and maintenance. Finally your plan B: A home with 800k value will have higher costs and higer expenses and maintenance. If the 800k home is the home you and your family needs then by all means go for it. But if it can do just as well in the 450k Home then go there. Pay the home off early by making the payments you would be making for the 800k home. In this way you pay less in total cost of the home and set your self up for the greatest chance of success. Once that home is paid off the break even point for renting goes way down as well. So the rental option could be in the future. I would just aviod it now if possible. |
Are there disadvantages to day trading ETFs? | ETFs are well suited to day trading, but you should be mindful of the bid-ask spread. See article: Commission-free ETFs are a great way to save money, but watch the bid-ask spread too. Bid-ask spread is largely a function of liquidity, or the volume of buyers and sellers for an asset during a particular moment in time. ... It may be more difficult to trade certain assets that are less liquid, where bid-ask spreads can be higher. Think some penny stocks. If you have the choice, compare the spreads of the ETF and the target stock. Longer-term "keep & hold" trading on ETFs tracking futures can be somewhat disadvantageous. Futures contracts roll-over every month. Exchange traders have to sell and buy in on the next contract. ETFs don't reflect the price differential between the futures contract. See here for more detail on that: Positioning For An Oil ETF Rebound? Watch For Contango Contango occurs when the price on a futures contract is higher than the expected future spot price, which creates the upward sloping curve on future commodity prices over time. Essentially, the phenomenon reflects a current spot price that is lower than the futures price. ... While this phenomena is a normal occurrence in the futures market, contango can have a negative effect on ETFs. |
Does the Black-Scholes Model apply to American Style options? | Black-Scholes is "close enough" for American options since there aren't usually reasons to exercise early, so the ability to do so doesn't matter. Which is good since it's tough to model mathematically, I've read. Early exercise would usually be caused by a weird mispricing for some technical / market-action reason where the theoretical option valuations are messed up. If you sell a call that's far in the money and don't get any time value (after the spread), for example, you probably sold the call to an arbitrageur who's just going to exercise it. But unusual stuff like this doesn't change the big picture much. |
On what dates do the U.S. and Canada release their respective federal budgets? | In the US there is no set date. If all goes well there are multiple dates of importance. If it doesn't go well the budget process also may include continuing resolutions, shutdowns, and sequestrations. |
How does the process of “assignment” work for in-the-money Options? | When the strike price ($25 in this case) is in-the-money, even by $0.01, your shares will be sold the day after expiration if you take no action. If you want to let your shares go,. allow assignment rather than close the short position and sell the long position...it will be cheaper that way. If you want to keep your shares you must buy back the option prior to 4Pm EST on expiration Friday. First ask yourself why you want to keep the shares. Is it to write another option? Is it to hold for a longer term strategy? Assuming this is a covered call writing account, you should consider "rolling" the option. This involves buying back the near-term option and selling the later date option of a similar or higher strike. Make sure to check to see if there is an upcoming earnings report in the latter month because you may want to avoid writing a call in that situation. I never write a call when there's an upcoming ER prior to expiration. Good luck. Alan |
Why would a company issue a scrip dividend and how will this issue affect me? | Yes. Instead of paying a cash dividend to shareholders, the company grants existing shareholders new shares at a previously determined price. I'm sorry, but scrip issues are free (for all ordinary shareholders) and are in proportion to existing share holding. No payment is required from shareholders. So instead of having 10 $1 shares, the shareholder (if accepts) now could have 20 50p shares, if it was a one-for-one scrip issue. |
How to motivate young people to save money | I posted a comment in another answer and it seems to be approved by others, so I have converted this into an answer. If you're talking about young adults who just graduated college and worked through it. I would recommend you tell them to keep the same budget as what they were living on before they got a full-time job. This way, as far as their spending habits go, nothing changes since they only have a $500 budget (random figure) and everything else goes into savings and investments. If as a student you made $500/month and you suddenly get $2000/month, that's a lot of money you get to blow on drinks. Now, if you put $500 in savings (until 6-12 month of living expenses), $500 in investments for the long run and $500 in vacation funds or "big expenses" funds (Ideally with a cap and dump the extra in investments). That's $18,000/yr you are saving. At this stage in your life, you have not gotten used to spending that extra $18,000/yr. Don't touch the side money except for the vacation fund when you want to treat yourself. Your friends will call you cheap, but that's not your problem. Take that head start and build that down payment on your dream house. The way I set it up, is (in this case) I have automatics every day after my paychecks come in for the set amounts. I never see it, but I need to make sure I have the money in there. Note: Numbers are there for the sake of simplicity. Adjust accordingly. PS: This is anecdotal evidence that has worked for me. Parents taught me this philosophy and it has worked wonders for me. This is the extent of my financial wisdom. |
How to value employee benefits? | To fairly compare a comp-only job to a job that offers insurance, get a quote for health insurance. Call your local insurance broker and find out what it would cost. Because if you aren't getting insurance from your employer, you'll have to get it elsewhere. If you get a quote on an HSA, don't forget to add in the annual deductible as part of the cost. On the ESPP, I'd count it as zero. The rationale being that so much of your financial status is tied to your employer that you don't really want to tie up too much more in company stock. (I.e. Company hits hard times, stock tanks, and then they lay you off. Double whammy -- both your assets and income.) But given that I've only been employed by companies that no longer exist in their original form, my perspective may be warped. |
How can I pay for school to finish my degree when I can't get a student loan and have bad credit? | a) Talk to the financial aid counselors at your school. There's a very good chance they have at least a partial solution for you. Let them know your dependency status has changed (if it has). I declared myself to be financially independent from my parents (I really was) and qualified for more aide. b) How much austerity are you willing to endure? I once spent two years eating beans & rice twice a day (lots of protein and other nutrients) while I worked full-time and went back to school to pursue a second degree part-time. I also shunned all forms of recreation (not even a movie) to save money (and so I could focus on staying current with assignments). During another period in my life, I gave up cable, cell-phone, land-line (and used Skype only), and avoided unnecessary use of my car, so I could clear a debt. You'd be amazed at how much you can squeeze from a budget if you're willing to endure austerity temporarily. c) Consider going to school part-time, taking as few as one course at a time if allowed. It's a lot easier to pay for one or two courses than to pay for 4 or 5. It may take longer, but at least you won't lose your credits and it won't take forever. |
Highstreet bank fund, custom ETF or Nutmeg? | And it's only as cheap as 1.78% if you stay with them 10 years! They'd love that. You can kind of tell they really want to lock you in for over 4 years. I also think it's daylight robbery, but as a self execution investor I tend to have to talk myself out of that belief by default to be fair. One can wonder too, why are there even 2 fixed (percentage wise) fees? They are desperate not to have one number that is too big sounding, either the advisor fee is a rip off because they have to do all the same analysis regardless, or you could take the view that it's the only valid fee as you're paying for a slice of something, where as the other fee is what? A share of the fixed costs? Well, isn't advising as essential as anything else? I actually think Nutmeg is OK, I've not used them or dealt with them in any way but they are, to a greater or lesser degree, what I've wished for to recommend to friends who don't want to DIY, which is a cheaper next generation online investment facility, and their fees drop significantly over 100K. Going by their claimed past performance and fee structure, whilst I'd like them to be cheaper, I personally think they are not a bad choice in the market. |
What are the disadvantages to borrowing money for energy conservation measures / solar panels? | Depending on the details of your solar panel setup, the monthly savings may change depending on changes in the law or utility company policy. This could change how long it will take for the solar panels to "pay for themselves". So your bullet point about the "payback period"/"break even point" is not fixed at the moment you buy the solar panels; it depends on costs you will incur over many years, and those costs could turn out to be different from what you originally thought. At least in the US, home solar installations typically work by selling excess power back to the power company. The power company can change the amount that it pays you for that power. There is also typically a minimum charge for being connected to the grid, and the power company can raise that charge. (This article mentions one such possible change.) The power companies want to keep making money, and as more people start adding solar panels, the power companies may change their rate structure to make that less financially feasible. You can avoid many of these issues if your solar panels are not connected to the public electricity grid, and you, for instance, store power with your own battery. However (at least in the US) this is very uncommon because it is more complex and expensive. |
Negative Balance from Automatic Options Exercise. What to do? | Automatic exercisions can be extremely risky, and the closer to the money the options are, the riskier their exercisions are. It is unlikely that the entire account has negative equity since a responsible broker would forcibly close all positions and pursue the holder for the balance of the debt to reduce solvency risk. Since the broker has automatically exercised a near the money option, it's solvency policy is already risky. Regardless of whether there is negative equity or simply a liability, the least risky course of action is to sell enough of the underlying to satisfy the loan by closing all other positions if necessary as soon as possible. If there is a negative equity after trying to satisfy the loan, the account will need to be funded for the balance of the loan to pay for purchases of the underlying to fully satisfy the loan. Since the underlying can move in such a way to cause this loan to increase, the account should also be funded as soon as possible if necessary. Accounts after exercise For deep in the money exercised options, a call turns into a long underlying on margin while a put turns into a short underlying. The next decision should be based upon risk and position selection. First, if the position is no longer attractive, it should be closed. Since it's deep in the money, simply closing out the exposure to the underlying should extinguish the liability as cash is not marginable, so the cash received from the closing out of the position will repay any margin debt. If the position in the underlying is still attractive then the liability should be managed according to one's liability policy and of course to margin limits. In a margin account, closing the underlying positions on the same day as the exercise will only be considered a day trade. If the positions are closed on any business day after the exercision, there will be no penalty or restriction. Cash option accounts While this is possible, many brokers force an upgrade to a margin account, and the ShareBuilder Options Account Agreement seems ambiguous, but their options trading page implies the upgrade. In a cash account, equities are not marginable, so any margin will trigger a margin call. If the margin debt did not trigger a margin call then it is unlikely that it is a cash account as margin for any security in a cash account except for certain options trades is 100%. Equities are convertible to cash presumably at the bid, so during a call exercise, the exercisor or exercisor's broker pays cash for the underlying at the exercise price, and any deficit is financed with debt, thus underlying can be sold to satisfy that debt or be sold for cash as one normally would. To preempt a forced exercise as a call holder, one could short the underlying, but this will be more expensive, and since probably no broker allows shorting against the box because of its intended use to circumvent capital gains taxes by fraud. The least expensive way to trade out of options positions is to close them themselves rather than take delivery. |
How to calculate new price for bond if yield increases | Edited to incorporate the comments elsewhere of @Atkins Assuming, (apparently incorrectly) that duration is time to maturity: First, note that the question does not mention the coupon rate, the size of the regular payments that the bond holder will get each year. So let's calculate that. Consider the cash flow described. You pay out 1015 at the start of Year #1, to buy the bond. At the end of Years #1 to #5, you receive a coupon payment of X. Also at the end of Year #5, you receive the face value of the bond, 1000. And you are told that the pay out equals the money received, using a time value of money of 4.69% So, if we use the date of maturity of the bond as our valuation date, we have the equation: Maturity + Future Value of coupons = Future value of Bond Purchase price 1000 + X *( (1 + .0469)^5-1)/0.0469 = 1015 * 1.0469^5 Solving this for X, we obtain 50.33; the coupon rate is 5.033%. You will receive 50.33 at the end of each of the five years. Now, we can take this fixed schedule of payments, and apply the new yield rate to the same formula above; only now, the unknown is the price paid for the bond, Y. 1000 + 50.33 * ((1 + 0.0487)^5 - 1) / .0487 = Y * 1.0487^5 Solving this equation for Y, we obtain: Y = 1007.08 |
What's the difference between buying bonds and buying bond funds for the long-term? | Yes, bond funds are marked to market, so they will decline as the composition of their holdings will. Households actually have unimpressive relative levels of credit to equity holdings. The reason why is because there is little return on credit, making it irrational to hold any amount greater than to fund future liquidity needs, risk adjusted and time discounted. The vast majority of credit is held by insurance companies. Pension funds have large stakes as well. Banks hold even fewer bonds since they try to sell them as soon as they've made them. Insurance companies are forced to hold a large percentage of their floats in credit then preferred equity. While this dulls their returns, it's not a large problem for them because they typically hold bonds until maturity. Only the ones who misprice the risk of insurance will have to sell at unfavorable prices. Being able to predict interest rates thus bond prices accurately would make one the best bond manager in the world. While it does look like inflation will rise again soon just as it has during every other US expansion, can it be assured when commodity prices are high in real terms and look like they may be in a collapse? The banking industry would have to produce credit at a much higher rate to counter the deflation of all physical goods. Households typically shun assets at low prices to pursue others at high prices, so their holdings of bonds ETFs should be expected to decline during a bond collapse. If insurance companies find it less costly to hold ETFs then they will contribute to an increase in bond ETF supply. |
Why are some countries' currencies “weaker”? | You may as well ask why a piece of wood is 25 centimeters long but only 10 inches. Most units of measure are very arbitrary. Somebody decides that this amount of heat or distance or money is a convenient unit, and so that's what they use. Suppose that tomorrow the government issued a whole new currency that had 10 times the value of the old currency. So if you used to make 10,000 foobars a year, now you make 1,000 new foobars. And likewise the price of everything you buy is divided by 10. If a certain model car used to cost 2,000 foobars, now it costs 200 new foobars. Are you better or worse off? Clearly if ALL prices change by the same percentage, then it makes absolutely no difference. (Aside from the hassle of making the switch and getting used to the new numbers.) A currency where 1 unit of money buys more is not necessarily a "stronger currency". Any more than inches are "better" than centimeters because you get more wood for an inch than you get for a centimeter. A currency is said to be "strong" when it's value is stable or increasing relative to other currencies. If yesterday I could trade 10 foobars for 1 plugh, but today I only need 9 foobars to buy 1 plugh, then foobars are stronger than plughs. Even though I still need more foobars than plughs to buy the same item. |
Is there legal reason for restricting someone under 59-1/2 from an in-service rollover from a 401K to an IRA? | You're going to find a lot of conflicting or vague answers on the internet because there are a lot of plan design elements that are set by the plan sponsor (employer). There are laws that mandate certain elements and dictate certain requirements of plan sponsors, many of these laws are related to record keeping and fiduciary duty. There is a lot of latitude for plan sponsors to allow or restrict employee actions even if there is no law against that activity. There are different rules mandated for employee pre-tax contributions, employee post-tax contributions, and employer contributions. You have more flexibility with regard to the employer contributions and any post tax contributions you may have made; your plan may allow an in-service distribution of those two items before you reach age 59.5. While your HR department (like most -all- HR departments) is not staffed with ERISA attorneys and CPAs it is your HR department and applicable plan documents that will lay out what an employee is permitted to do under the plan. |
Recent college grad. Down payment on a house or car? | When I was in that boat a few years ago, I went for the car first. My thoughts: If I get the car first, I'm guaranteed to have a car that runs well. That makes it more convenient to commute to any job, or for social functions. I ended up dropping about $20k into a car (paid cash, I don't like being in debt). I chose to buy a really nice car, knowing it will last for many years to come - I'm expecting to not replace it for about 10 years from the purchase. I would urge you to consider paying in full for the car; dumping $20k+ is a lot, and there are plenty of nice cars out there in the $10-20k range that will work just fine for years to come. One benefit of paying in full is that you don't have a portion of your income tied into the car loan. The main reason I chose not to go for the house first had more to do with the difference in commitment. A home mortgage is a 30-year commitment on a large chunk of your income. With the job market and housing markets both currently working against you, it's better to wait until you have a large safety net to fall into. For example, it's always recommended to have several months worth of living expenses in savings. Compared to renting, having 6 or more months of mortgage payments + utilities + insurance + property taxes + other mandatory expenses (see: food, gas) comes out to a significant amount more that you should have saved (for me, I'm looking at a minimum of about $20k in savings just to feel comfortable; YMMV). Also, owning a house always has more maintenance costs than you will predict. Even if it's just replacing a few light bulbs at first, eventually you'll need something major: an appliance will die, your roof will spring a leak, anything (I had both of those happen in the first year, though it could be bad luck). You should make sure that you can afford the increased monthly payments while still well under your income. Once you're locked in to the house, you can still set aside a smaller chunk of your income for a new car 5-10 years down the road. But if you're current car is getting down to it's last legs, you should get that fixed up before you lock yourself in to an uncomfortable situation. Don't be in too much of a hurry to buy a house. The housing market still has a ways to go before it recovers, and there's not a whole lot to help it along. Interest rates may go up, but that will only hurt the housing market, so I don't expect it to change too much for the next several months. With a little bit of sanity, we won't have another outrageous housing bubble for many years, so houses should remain somewhat affordable (interest rates may vary). Also keep in mind that if you pay less that 20% down on the house, you may end up with some form of mortgage interest, which is just extra interest you'll owe each month. |
How does stock dilution work in relation to share volume? | Let me answer with an extreme example - I own the one single share of a company, and it's worth $1M. I issue 9 more shares, and find 9 people willing to pay $1M for each share. I know find my ownership dropped by 90%, and I am now a 10% owner of a business that was valued at $1M but with an additional $9M in the bank for expansion. (Total value now $10M) Obviously, this is a simplistic view, but no simpler than the suggestion that your company would dilute its shares 90% in one transaction. |
Should I buy a house with a friend? | Unlike others who have answered the question - I have done this. Here is my experience - your mileage and friendship may vary: I bought a condo years ago with a longtime childhood friend. We did it for all the reasons you mentioned - sick of renting and not building equity, were both young, single professionals who had the money. The market crashed we have both since married and moved on to own other properties with our spouses. Now we rent out the condo as selling in the current market is not doable.. It's not an ideal situation but that is because of the real estate market - not who I bought with. You need to discuss very openly all of the following scenarios, as well as others I can't think of right now I am sure: If you aren't both 100% in sync with these questions then do not do it. I never understand why some people would buy with a girlfriend/boyfriend but not a good personal friend. You're more likely to have a falling out with your significant other then a long time close friend. My advice, have honest, open conversations, about all possible scenarios. If you feel necessary put somethings down into some sort of legal agreement - with us it was not, and still isn't necessary. |
Why do stocks go up? Is it due to companies performing well, or what else? [duplicate] | Remember that shares represent votes at the shareholders' meeting. If share price drops too far below the value of that percentage of the company, the company gets bought out and taken over. This tends to set a minimum share price derived from the company's current value. The share price may rise above that baseline if people expect it to be worth more in the future, or drop s bit below if people expect awful news. That's why investment is called speculation. If the price asked is too high to be justified by current guesses, nobody buys. That sets the upper limit at any given time. Since some of this is guesswork, the market is not completely rational. Prices can drop after good news if they'd been inflated by the expectation of better news, for example. In general, businesses which don't crash tend to grow. Hence the market as a whole generally trends upward if viewed on a long timescale. But there's a lot of noise on that curve; short term or single stocks are much harder to predict. |
Shorting: What if you can't find lenders? | You at least have some understanding of the pitfalls of shorting. You might not be able to borrow stock. You might not be able to buy it back when the time comes. You're moves are monitored, so you can't "run away" because the rules are enforced. (You don't want to find out how, personally.) "Shorting" is a tough, risky business. To answer your implicit question, if you have to ask about it on a public forum like this, you're not good enough to do it. |
Mutual fund value went down, shares went up, no action taken by me | It is very likely that the fund paid out a dividend in the form of reinvested shares. This happens with many funds, especially as we come to the end of the year. Here's a simplified example of how it works. Assume you invested $1000 and bought 100 units at $10/unit. Ignoring the daily price fluctuations, if the fund paid out a 20% dividend, you would get $200 and the unit price would drop to $8/unit. Assuming you chose to reinvest your dividends, you would automatically purchase another $200 worth of units at the new price (so 25 more units). You would now have 125 units @ $8/unit = $1000 invested. In your example, notice that you now have more shares than you originally purchased, but that the price dropped significantly. Your market value is above what you originally invested, so there was probably also a bit of a price increase for the day. You should see the dividend transaction listed somewhere in your account. Just to confirm, I did a quick search on ICENX and found that they did indeed pay a dividend yesterday. |
How do I keep an S-Corporation open when it has no revenues | If you have no net income or loss, you can usually get away without filing a tax return. In Illinois, the standard is: Filing Requirements You must file Form IL-1120 if you are a corporation that has net income or loss as defined under the IITA; or is qualified to do business in the state of Illinois and is required to file a federal income tax return (regardless of net income or loss). http://tax.illinois.gov/Businesses/TaxInformation/Income/corporate.htm Just keep your filing fee and any business licenses up to date, paying those fees personally and not out of business money (that would make for a net loss and trigger needing a tax return). Frankly, with how easy it is to register a new corp, especially an LLC which has many simplicity advantages from an S-corp in certain cases, you might still be better off shutting it down until that time. |
Why is volatility in a positive direction clubbed in the same risk category as volatility in a negative direction? | Mostly, when an equity's price rises, its statistical and implied volatilities fall and vice versa. The reason why is a mathematical phenomenon mixed with the reality that a unceasingly falling asset price will soon not exist, skewing the results with survivorship bias. Since volatility is standard deviation of price indexes, a security that changes in price by the same amount every day will have lower volatility, so a rising price will have lower implied volatility because its mostly experiencing positive daily price change while a recently falling price will have higher volatility because factored together with the positive price changes, the negative price changes will widen the standard deviation of the securities price index. Quantitatively, any change, in or out of one's favor, is a risk because change is uncertain, and any uncertainty is a risk. This quantitative interpretation while valid runs almost totally counter to the value opinion, that a lower price relative to value is a lower risk than a higher price relative to value, but both have their place in time. Over long time periods, it's best to use the value interpretation, quantitative for shorter. Using the opposite has hastily destroyed many a fund manager. |
New company doesn't allow 401k deposits for 6 months, what to do with money I used to deposit? | I would open a taxable account with the same custodian that manages your Roth IRA (e.g., Vanguard, Fidelity, etc.). Then within the taxable account I would invest the extra money in low cost, broad market index funds that are tax efficient. Unlike in your 401(k) and Roth IRA, you will now have tax implications if your funds produce dividends or realize a capital gain. That is why tax-efficient funds are important to minimize this as much as possible. The 3-fund portfolio is a popular choice for taxable accounts because of simplicity and the tax efficiency of broad market index funds that are part of the three fund portfolio. The 3-fund portfolio normally consists of Depending on your tax bracket you may want to consider municipal bonds in your taxable instead of taxable bonds if your tax bracket is 25% or higher. Another option is to forgo bonds altogether in the taxable account and just hold bonds in retirement accounts while keeping tax efficient domestic and international tock funds in your taxable account. Then adjust the bond portion upward in your retirement accounts to account for the additional stocks in your taxable accounts. This will maintain the asset allocation that you've already chosen that is appropriate for your age and goals. |
How could USA defaulting on its public debt influence the stock/bond market? | Regarding the Summer of 2011 Crisis: There is NO reason that the United States cannot continue borrowing like it is just based on a particular ratio: Debt to GDP. The Debt to GDP ratio right now is around 100%, or 1:1. This means the US GDP is around $14 Trillion and its debt is also around $14 trillion. Other countries have higher debt:gdp ratios Japan - for instance - has a debt:gdp ratio of 220% Regarding a selloff of stocks, dollars and bonds: you have to realize that selling pressure on the dollar will make THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING increase. So commodities and stocks will skyrocket proportionally. The stockmarket can selloff faster than the dollar though. And both markets have circuit breakers that can attempt to curb quick selloffs. Effectiveness pending. |
Digital envelope system: a modern take | If psychologically there is no difference to you between cash and debit (you should test this over a couple of months on yourself and spouse to make sure), then I suggest two debit cards (one for you and spouse) on your main or separate checking account. If you use Mint you can set budgets for each category (envelope) and when a purchase is made Mint will automatically categorize that transaction and deduct that amount from the correct budget. For example: If you have a "Fast Food" budget set at $100 per month and you use the debit at McDonalds, Mint should automatically categorize it as "Fast Food" and deduct the amount from the "Fast Food" budget that you set. If it can't determine a category or gets it wrong, you can just select the proper category. Mint has an iPhone (also Android and Windows phone) app that I find very easy to use. Many people state that they don't have this psychologically difference between spending cash and debit/credit, but I would say that most actually do, especially with small purchases. It doesn't have anything to do with intellect or knowing that you are actually spending money. It has more to do with tangibility, and the physical act of handing over cash. You may not add that soda and candy bar to your purchase if you have visible cash in your wallet that will disappear more quickly. I lived in Germany for 2 years before debit cards were around or common. I'm a sharp guy and even though I knew that I paid $100 for the 152 DM, it still kind of felt like spending Monopoly money, especially considering that in the US we are used to coins normally being 25 cents or less and in Germany coins are up to 10 DM (almost $10) and are used more frequently than paper. |
Should I get a personal loan to pay on my mortgage to go “above water” to qualify for a refinance? | If you have a mortgage backed by FHA, Fannie, or Freddie I would hold off. There is talk of a new plan that would allow refi's on mortages that were underwater. I would expect rates to stay about the same for the forseeable future. Take that money you would spend each month on the personal loan and stick it into your mortgage payment to bring down your debt on it. Your home may be underwater on paper but once the economy comes back, or hyperinflation sets in (one of the 2 will happen) you will have equity in your home again soon after. |
Should I move my money market funds into bonds? | How much money do you have in your money market fund and what in your mind is the purpose of this money? If it is your six-months-of-living-expenses emergency fund, then you might want to consider bank CDs in addition to bond funds as an alternative to your money-market fund investment. Most (though not necessarily all, so be sure to check) bank CDs can be cashed in at any time with a penalty of three months of interest, and so unless you anticipate being laid off very soon, you might get a slightly better rate of interest, FDIC insurance (which mutual funds do not have), and with any luck you may never have to break a CD and lose the interest. Building a ladder of CDs with one maturing each month might be another way to reduce the risk of loss. On the other hand, bond mutual funds are a risky bet now because your investment will lose value if interest rate go up, and as JohnFx points out, interest rates have nowhere to go but up. Finally, the amount of the investment is something that you might want to consider before making changes. If you have $50K put away as your six-month fund, you are talking of $500 versus $350 per annum in changing to a riskier investment with a 1% yield from a safer investment with a 0.7% yield. Whether bragging rights at neighborhood parties are worth the trouble is something for you to decide. |
Why is being “upside down” on a mortgage so bad? | I can think of a few reasons why they seem like a bigger deal to people than similar situations with other loans. As you point out, though, being underwater on your home loan is a less serious condition than having large student loans and a poor paying job, for example. If the student loan situation ever comes to a head, we may have people talking about student loans in hushed tones. |
How is your credit score related to credit utilization? | Curious, why are you interested in building/improving your credit score? Is it better to use your card and pay off the bill completely every month? Yes. How is credit utiltization calculated? Is it average utilization over the month, or total amount owed/credit_limit per month? It depends on how often your bank reports your balances to the reporting agencies. It can be daily, when your statement cycle closes, or some other interval. How does credit utilization affect your score? Closest to zero without actually being zero is best. This translates to making some charges, even $1 so your statement shows a balance each statement that you pay off. This shows as active use. If you pay off your balance before the statement closes, then it can sometimes be reported as inactive/unused. Is too much a bad thing? Yes. Is too little a bad thing? Depends. Being debt free has its advantages... but if your goal is to raise your credit score, then having a low utilization rate is a good metric. Less than 7% utilization seems to be the optimal level. "Last year we started using a number, not as a recommendation, but as a fact that most of the people with really high FICO scores have credit utilization rates that are 7 percent or lower," Watts said. Read more: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/how-to-bump-up-your-credit-score.aspx Remember that on-time payment is the most important factor. Second is how much you owe. Third is length of credit history. Maintain these factors in good standing and you will improve your score: http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/WhatsInYourScore.aspx |
Is real (physical) money traded during online trading? | I think you need to define what you mean by "buy currency online using some online forex trading platform" ... In large Fx trades, real money [you mean actual electronic money, as there is not paper that travels these days]... The Fx market is quite wide with all kinds of trades. There are quite a few Fx transactions that are meant for delivery. You have to pay in the currency for full amount and you get the funds electronicall credited to you in other currency [ofcouse you have an account in the other currency or you have an obligation to pay]. This type of transaction is valid in Ismalic Banking. The practise of derivaties based on this or forward contracts on this is not allowed. |
Buying a small amount (e.g. $50) of stock via eToro “Social Trading Network” using a “CFD”? | Concerning the Broker: eToro is authorized and registered in Cyprus by the Cyprus Securities Exchange Commission (CySEC). Although they are regulated by Cyprus law, many malicious online brokers have opened shop there because they seem to get along with the law while they rip off customers. Maybe this has changed in the last two years, personally i did not follow the developments. eToro USA is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and thus doing business in a good regulated environment. Of course the CFTC cannot see into the future, so some black sheep are getting fined and even their license revoked every now and then. It has no NFA Actions: http://www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet/Details.aspx?entityid=45NH%2b2Upfr0%3d Concerning the trade instrument: Please read the article that DumbCoder posted carefully and in full because it contains information you absolutely have to have if you are to do anything with Contract for difference (CFD). Basically, a CFD is an over the counter product (OTC) which means it is traded between two parties directly and not going through an exchange. Yes, there is additional risk compared to the stock itself, mainly: To trade a CFD, you sign a contract with your broker, which in almost all cases allows the broker A CFD is just a derivative financial instrument which allows speculating / investing in an asset without trading the actual asset itself. CFDs do not have to mirror the underlying asset's price and price movement and can basically have any price because the broker quotes you independently of the underlying. If you do not know how all this works and what the instrument / vehicle actually is and how it works; and do not know what to look for in a broker, please do not trade it. Do yourself a favor and get educated, inform yourself, because otherwise your money will be gone fast. Marketing campaigns such as this are targeted at people who do not have the knowledge required and thus lose a significant portion (most of the time all) of their deposits. Answer to the actual question: No, there is no better way. You can by the stock itself, or a derivative based on it. This means CFDs, options or futures. All of them require additional knowledge because they work differently than the stock. TL;DR: DumbCoder is absolutely right, do not do it if you do not know what it is about. EDIT: Revisiting this answer and reading the other answers, i realize this sounds like derivatives are bad in general. This is absolutely not the case, and i did not intend it to sound this way. I merely wanted to emphasize the point that without sufficient knowledge, trading such products is a great risk and in most cases, should be avoided. |
German stock exchange, ETR vs FRA | I still can't understand why there is a price discrepancancy. There isn't. It's the same stock and price differences between such major exchanges will always be minimal. I think you simply haven't paid attention to the date range. It seems Google finance only has data for FRA:BMW reaching back to 2011, so if you try to look at the development of your investment since 2009, you're not getting comparable data. |
As director, can I invoice my self-owned company? | No, as a director normally you can't. As a director of a Limited company, all those payments should be accounted for as directors' remuneration and have been subject to PAYE and NIC, even if you are self-employed. Currently there is no legislation which prevents a director from receiving self-employment income from a company in which he is a director, however the default position of HMRC's is that all the payments derived from the directorship are subject to PAYE. In other words, it's possible only invoice from an unconnected business or in a consultancy role that's not directly related to the trade of business. But it really depends on the circumstances and the contracts in place. Sources: Monsoon at AAT forum, David Griffiths at UKBF, Paula Sparrow and Abutalib at AW More sources: If a person does other work that’s not related to being a director, they may have an employment contract and get employment rights. Source: Employment status as director at Gov.uk In principle, it is possible for an employee or office holder to tender for work with their employer outside their normal duties, in circumstances where that individual will not be providing service as an employee or office holder but as a self-employed contractor. Where there is any doubt about whether service is provided constitutes employment or self-employment, see the Employment Status Manual (ESM). Source: Section 62 ITEPA 2003 at HMRC |
How to fix Finance::Quote to pull quotes in GnuCash | The yahoo finance API is no longer which broke the Finance:Quote perl module. The Finance:Quote developers have been quick to fix things and have produced several new versions in the last week or two. The short of it is that you need to update Finance:Quote, then obtain an AlphaVantage free key and tell Gnucash to use AlphaVantage as it's source for online quotes by editing your securities in the Price Editor. |
Options for the intelligent but inexperienced | Realize this is almost a year old, but I just wanted to comment on something in Dynas' answer above... "Whenever you trade always think about what the other guys is thinking. Sometimes we forget their is someone else on the other side of my trade that thinks essentially the exact opposite of me. Its a zero sum game." From a market maker's perspective, their primary goal is not necessarily to make money by you being wrong, it is to make money on the bid-offer spread and hedging their book (and potentially interalize). That being said, the market maker would likely be quoting one side of the market away from top of the book if they don't want to take exposure in that direction (i.e. their bid will be lower than the highest bid available or their offer higher than the lowest offer available). This isn't really going to change anything if you're trading on an exchange, but important to consider if you can only see the prices your broker/dealer provides to you and they are your counterparty in the trade. |
How to save money for future expenses | how can I save money for the future The fact that you are worrying is good. This is the first step. Follow this up with a plan. One way is first get hold of your income [its fixed you know the salary]. Maintain expenses, then see which costs can be cut down. Create individual goals and start investing for these. The best way for first timer is to invest into a Recurring Deposits or SIP in mutual fund, i.e. kind of forced saving so that you don't spend what is available in bank Account. |
Cheapest way to “wire” money in an Australian bank account to a person in England, while I'm in Laos? | I've used OFX quite a lot for international transfers. They are much faster than a normal international transfer from your bank. Instead it ends up being a local transfer on either end which just works a heck of a lot quicker. They also claim lower exchange rates. In the past we have compared and sometimes found them lower and sometimes found them a little higher. Their fees certainly are lower though. Only thing is I think there was a lag setting up the account initially (they need to contact you by phone), so if you're in a hurry this may be problematic. And yes, you will need internet banking to do this. Since the question is specifically about how to do this in the cheapest way possible, I think the answer is to use internet banking. |
Pay off entire mortgage or put into investments | At the moment the interest rate... implies a variable rate mortgage. I believe rates are only going to go up from here. So, if I were in your position, I would pay off the mortgage first. If you don't have 3-6 months in savings for an emergency, I would invest that much money in low risk investments. Anything remaining I would invest in a balanced portfolio of mutual funds. The biggest benefit to this is the flexibility it gives you. Not being burdened by a monthly mortgage frees you up to invest. This may be in your stock portfolio each month or it may be in your community or charitable causes. You have financial margin. |
Why are big companies like Apple or Google not included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) index? | The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is a Price-weighted index. That means that the index is calculated by adding up the prices of the constituent stocks and dividing by a constant, the "Dow divisor". (The value of the Dow divisor is adjusted from time to time to maintain continuity when there are splits or changes in the roster.) This has the curious effect of giving a member of the index influence proportional to its share price. That is, if a stock costing $100 per share goes up by 1%, that will change the index by 10 times as much as if a stock costing $10 per share goes up by the same 1%. Now look at the price of Google. It's currently trading at just a whisker under $700 per share. Most of the other stocks in the index trade somewhere between $30 and $150, so if Google were included in the index it would contribute between 5 and 20 times the weight of any other stock in the index. That means that relatively small blips in Google's price would completely dominate the index on any given day. Until June of 2014, Apple was in the same boat, with its stock trading at about $700 per share. At that time, Apple split its stock 7:1, and after that its stock price was a little under $100 per share. So, post-split Apple might be a candidate to be included in the Dow the next time they change up the components of the index. Since the Dow is fixed at 30 stocks, and since they try to keep a balance between different sectors, this probably wouldn't happen until they drop another technology company from the lineup for some reason. (Correction: Apple is in the DJIA and has been for a little over a year now. Mea culpa.) The Dow's price-weighting is unusual as stock indices go. Most indices are weighted by market capitalization. That means the influence of a single company is proportional to its total value. This causes large companies like Apple to have a lot of influence on those indices, but since market capitalization isn't as arbitrary as stock price, most people see that as ok. Also, notice that I said "company" and not "stock". When a company has multiple classes of share (as Google does), market-cap-weighted indices include all of the share classes, while the Dow has no provision for such situations, which is another, albeit less important, reason why Google isn't in the Dow. (Keep this in mind the next time someone offers you a bar bet on how many stocks are in the S&P 500. The answer is (currently) 505!) Finally, you might be wondering why the Dow uses such an odd weighting in its calculations. The answer is that the Dow averages go back to 1896, when Charles Dow used to calculate the averages by hand. If your only tools are a pencil and paper, then a price-weighted index with only 30 stocks in it is a lot easier to calculate than a market-cap-weighted index with hundreds of constituents. About the Dow Jones Averages. Dow constituents and prices Apple's stock price chart. The split in 2014 is marked. (Note that prices before the split are retroactively adjusted to show a continuous curve.) |
A guy scammed me, but he gave me a bank account number & routing number. Can I use that to take out what he owes me? | What legal way can I take what I am owed from this guy? The legal ways are for this guy to transfer you the money or give you instructions that will allow you to get the money. Alternatively you would need to file a civil suite to recover the funds. What illegal way do people use this info if they had it? I don't want to get in trouble, but I'm just curious because you always hear how easy it is. There are quite a few illegal ways. I don't think this is the right forum to discuss this. |
How high should I set my KickStarter funding goal in order to have $35,000 left over? | You are wildly over-estimating your taxes. First, remember that your business expenses reduce your gross income. Second, remember that taxes are progressive, so your flat 35% only applies if you're already making a high salary that pushed you into the higher brackets of US and CA. I think the deeper problems are: 1) you are expecting a super early start-up (with no finished product) to pay you the same as a steady job, including health insurance, and 2) you are expecting Kickstarter to independently fund the venture. The best source of funding is yourself. If you believe in this venture and in your game design abilities, then pay for most of the costs out of your own savings. Cut your expenses to the extent you can. You may want to wander over to startups.SE to get more perspective and ideas on your business plan. |
What is inflation? | Inflation refers to the money supply. Think of all money being air in a balloon. Inflation is what happens when you blow more air in the balloon. Deflation is what happens when you let air escape. Inflation may cause prices to go up. However there are many scenarios possible in which this does not happen. For example, at the same time of inflation, there might be unemployment, making consumers unable to pay higher prices. Or some important resource (oil) may go down in price (due to political reasons, war has ended etc), compensating for the money having less value. Similarly, peoples wages will tend to rise over time. They have to, otherwise everyone would be earning less, due to inflation. However again there are many scenarios in which wages do not keep up with inflation, or rise much faster. In fact over the past 40 years or so, US wages have not been able to keep up with inflation, making the average worker 'poorer' than 40 years ago. At its core, inflation refers to the value of the money itself. As all values of other products, services, assets etc are expressed in terms of money which itself also changes value, this can quickly become very complex. Most countries calculate inflation by averaging the price change of a basket of goods that are supposed to represent the average Joe's spending pattern. However these methods are often criticized as they would be 'hiding' inflation. The hidden inflation may come back later to bite us. |
How is options implied volatility for a stock determined? | There are a few different "kinds" of implied volatility. They are all based on the IVs obtained from the option pricing model you use. (1) Basically, given a few different values (current stock price, time until expiration, right of option, exercise style, strike of the option, interest rates, dividends, etc), you can obtain the IV for a given option price. If you look at the bid of an option, you can calculate the IV for that bid. If you look at the ask, there's a different IV for the ask. You can then look at the mid price, then you have a different IV, and so on and so on. And that's for each strike, in each expiration cycle! So you have a ton of different IVs. (2) In many option trading platforms, you'll see another kind of IV: the IV for each specific expiration cycle. That's calculated based on some of the IVs I mentioned on topic (1). Some kind of aggregation (more on this later). (3) Finally, people often talk about "the IV of stock XYZ". That's, again, an aggregation calculated from many of the IVs mentioned on topic (1). Now, your question seems to be: which IVs, from which options, from which months, with which weight, are part of the expiration cycle IV or for the IV of the stock itself? It really depends on the trading platform you are talking about. But very frequently, people will use a calculation similar to how the CBOE calculates the VIX. Basically, the VIX is just like the IV described on topic (3) above, but specifically for SPX, the S&P 500 index. The very detailed procedure and formulas to calculate the VIX (ie, IV of SPX) is described here: http://cfe.cboe.com/education/vixprimer/about.aspx If you apply the same (or a similar) methodology to other stocks, you'll get what you could call "the IV of stock XYZ". |
Why ever use a market order? | The original poster's concern is valid. Sometimes, market orders do get executed at seemingly ridiculous prices. In addition to Victor's reasons for using a market order, sometimes a seller does not care how low the price is. For example, after a company goes broke, its stock continues to trade for a while. This allows shareholders to realize their losses for tax purposes, and allows short-sellers to close out their positions. A shareholder who is trying to realize a 10 dollar per share loss for tax purposes probably does not care whether he gets 10 cents per share or 0.001 cents per share, so a sell-at-market order makes sense. |
Emulating a 'long straddle' without buying or selling Options? | Up until your strategy's money losing leg is stopped out, you have zero PnL, while a straddle has lost time value but may gain from price movements - all the PnL at that time you cannot capture with your strategy. Also stop loss cannot guarantee your price. |
Why buy insurance? | There are several insurance products that I buy for legal reasons: Both of these protect me from lawsuits and fines. Many people buy similar products to protect their business operations. (e.g. medical malpractice insurance) There are some insurance products I buy for tax planning and financial planning purposes: I have a large amount of savings available, so I have several tricks to reduce my insurance costs, and I have several products that I avoid. Several of these reasons are mentioned in other answers, but I thought I would collect them into a single answer to demonstrate that there are reasons other than the rational calculation of what the payout will be for the insurance products vs. the premium paid. If I gain access to a tax advantaged Health savings account, that is a bigger benefit to me than avoiding the premium, especially when my employer is paying the majority of the premium. Perhaps it makes no sense to buy insurance given sufficient savings (like the products I listed that make no sense for me given my finances) but not everyone can self-insure; it does require a certain level of wealth. |
Is it possible to quantify the probability of sudden big movements for a high-volume stock? | This is a classic correlation does not imply causation situation. There are (at least) three issues at play in this question: If you are swing- or day-trading then the first and second issues can definitely affect your trading. A higher-price, higher-volume stock will have smaller (percentage) volatility fluctuations within a very small period of time. However, in general, and especially when holding any position for any period of time during which unknowns can become known (such as Netflix's customer-loss announcement) it is a mistake to feel "safe" based on price alone. When considering longer-term investments (even weeks or months), and if you were to compare penny stocks with blue chip stocks, you still might find more "stability" in the higher value stocks. This is a correlation alone — in other words, a stable, reliable stock probably has a (relatively) high price but a high price does not mean it's reliable. As Joe said, the stock of any company that is exposed to significant risks can drop (or rise) by large amounts suddenly, and it is common for blue-chip stocks to move significantly in a period of months as changes in the market or the company itself manifest themselves. The last thing to remember when you are looking at raw dollar amounts is to remember to look at shares outstanding. Netflix has a price of $79 to Ford's $12; yet Ford has a larger market cap because there are nearly 4 billion shares compared to Netflix's 52m. |
How do we know the number of shorted shares of a stock? | For a company listed on NASDAQ, the numbers are published on NASDAQ's site. The most recent settlement date was 4/30/2013, and you can see that it lists 27.5 million shares as held short. NASDAQ gets these numbers from FINRA member firms, which are required to submit them to the exchange twice a month: Each FINRA member firm is required to report its “total” short interest positions in all customer and proprietary accounts in NASDAQ-listed securities twice a month. These reports are used to calculate short interest in NASDAQ stocks. FINRA member firms are required to report their short positions as of settlement on (1) the 15th of each month, or the preceding business day if the 15th is not a business day, and (2) as of settlement on the last business day of the month.* The reports must be filed by the second business day after the reporting settlement date. FINRA compiles the short interest data and provides it for publication on the 8th business day after the reporting settlement date. |
How to quantify differences in return with low expense ratio vs high expense ratio mutual funds? | Yes you should take in the expenses being incurred by the mutual fund. This lists down the fees charged by the mutual fund and where expenses can be found in the annual statement of the fund. To calculate fees and expenses. As you might expect, fees and expenses vary from fund to fund. A fund with high costs must perform better than a low-cost fund to generate the same returns for you. Even small differences in fees can translate into large differences in returns over time. You don't pay expenses, so the money is taken from the assets of the fund. So you pay it indirectly. If the expenses are huge, that may point to something i.e. fund managers are enjoying at your expense, money is being used somewhere else rather than being paid as dividends. If the expenses are used in the growth of the fund, that is a positive sign. Else you can expect the fund to be downgraded or upgraded by the credit rating agencies, depending on how the credit rating agencies see the expenses of the fund and other factors. Generally comparison should be done with funds invested in the same sectors, same distribution of assets so that you have a homogeneous comparison to make. Else it would be unwise to compare between a fund invested in oil companies and other in computers. Yes the economy is inter twined, but that is not how a comparison should be done. |
What forces cause a company to write down goodwill? | To understand the answer we first have to understand what Goodwill is. Goodwill in a companies balance sheet is an intangible asset that represents the extra value because of a strong brand name, good customer relations, good employee relations and any patents or proprietary technology. An article from The Economist explains this very well and actually talks about Time Warner directly - The goodwill, the bad and the ugly When one firm buys another, the target’s goodwill—essentially the premium paid over its book value—is added to the combined entity’s balance-sheet. Goodwill and other intangibles on the books of companies in the S&P 500 are valued at $2.6 trillion, or 10% of their total assets, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs. As the economy deteriorates and more firms trade down towards (or even below) their book value, empire-builders are having to mark down the value of assets they splashed out on in rosier times. A recently announced $25 billion goodwill charge is expected to push Time Warner into an operating loss for 2008, for instance. Michael Moran of Goldman Sachs thinks such hits could amount to $200 billion or more over the cycle. Investors have so far paid little attention to intangibles, but as write-downs proliferate they are likely to become increasingly wary of industries with a high ratio of goodwill to assets, such as health care, consumer goods and telecoms. How bad things get will depend on the beancounters. American firms used to be allowed to amortise goodwill over many years. Since 2002, when an accounting-rule change ended that practice, goodwill has had to be tested every year for impairment. In this stormy environment, with auditors keener than ever to avoid being seen to go easy on clients, companies are being told to mark down assets if there is any doubt about their value. The sanguine point out that this has no effect on cashflow, since such charges are non-cash items. Moreover, some investors take goodwill write-offs with a pinch of salt, preferring to look past such non-recurring costs and accept the higher “normalised” earnings numbers to which managers understandably cling. The largest companies are thus able to survive thumping blows that might otherwise floor them, such as the $99 billion loss that the newly formed but ill-conceived AOL Time Warner, as it then was, reported for 2002. But the impact can be all too real, as write-downs reduce overall book value and increase leverage ratios, a particular concern in these debt-averse times. |
Can I cash a cashier's check at any bank? | Cashiers check is as good as cash. I use them all the time as banks don't carry over 2-3k anymore. I can bring the cashiers check anywhere and thus cash it for u without an account. It's basically a piece of paper that says these funds are set aside from the issuers account just for and only for the check. That's why it's accepted anywhere. It's a gurantee from one bank to another that the funds are there waiting to be transferred. The whole point of the check is so the funds are available immediately. The bank will call the issuing bank verify the Check is real and than cash it immediately. You don't pay a fee to buy the cashiers check just to wait for it to clear like a normal free check. Its immediate and just as good as cash. I use them weekly/monthly for amounts from 5k up to over 100k. |
What are the economic benefits of owning a home in the United States? | Is all interest on a first time home deductible on taxes? What does that even mean? If I pay $14,000 in taxes will My taxes be $14,000 less. Will my taxable income by that much less? If you use the standard deduction in the US (assuming United States), you will have 0 benefit from a mortgage. If you itemize deductions, then your interest paid (not principal) and your property tax paid is deductible and reduces your income for tax purposes. If your marginal tax rate is 25% and you pay $10000 in interest and property tax, then when you file your taxes, you'll owe (or get a refund) of $2500 (marginal tax rate * (amount of interest + property tax)). I have heard the term "The equity on your home is like a bank". What does that mean? I suppose I could borrow using the equity in my home as collateral? If you pay an extra $500 to your mortgage, then your equity in your house goes up by $500 as well. When you pay down the principal by $500 on a car loan (depreciating asset) you end up with less than $500 in value in the car because the car's value is going down. When you do the same in an appreciating asset, you still have that money available to you though you either need to sell or get a loan to use that money. Are there any other general benefits that would drive me from paying $800 in rent, to owning a house? There are several other benefits. These are a few of the positives, but know that there are many negatives to home ownership and the cost of real estate transactions usually dictate that buying doesn't make sense until you want to stay put for 5-7 years. A shorter duration than that usually are better served by renting. The amount of maintenance on a house you own is almost always under estimated by new home owners. |
Is there a benefit, long term, to life insurance for a youngish, debt, and dependent free person? | Term life insurance for a healthy 30 year old is a heck of a lot cheaper than for a 40 year old who's starting to break down (and who needs the coverage since he's got a spouse and kids). So, get a long term policy now while it's cheap. |
What could be the best tax saving option before a month of financial year end | I was thinking to do mix of ELSS and Tax Saving FDs. But is my choice correct? Also what other options I am left with? This depends on individual's choice and risk appetite. Generally at younger age, investment in ELSS / PPF is advisable. Other options are Life Insurance, Retirement Plans by Mutual Funds, NSC, etc |
How do rich people guarantee the safety of their money, when savings exceed the FDIC limit? | They might not have to open accounts at 12 bank because the coverage does allow multiple accounts at one institution if the accounts are joint accounts. It also treats retirement accounts a separate account. The bigger issue is that most millionaires don't have all their money siting in the bank. They invest in stocks, bonds, government bonds, international funds, and their own companies. Most of these carry risk, but they are diversified. They also can afford advisers to help them manage and protect their assets. |
How much is university projected to cost in Canada in 18 years? | I personally do not buy any those so-call forecasts - look no further than the economic forecasts by those experts with PhDs over the last decade or so. Truth is there are too many factors that affects the tuition fees that far down the road (think inflation, cost of living, the method for which the education is being delivered, anticipated salary for the teachers, the ratio of schools and students, your children's ability to obtain scholarship money, and etc). Put in what you can afford for RESP - I put in $2000 annually per child to take maximum advantage of the 20% government matching. And be prepare to augment that with additional fund in 18 years. I am prepared to take on significant loans if my children both decided and qualified for graduated studies in specialized fields in a prestige universities - I have had met people with graduate degrees from Harvard and Cambridge and the obscure sum they (or their parents) paid on tuition are about as good investment as I have ever seen. Education is one of the best gifts any parent could give to their child. |
What is the best way to stay risk neutral when buying a house with a mortgage? | You can hedge your house price from losing value if you believe that the housing market is correlated with major stock indices. Speak with a commodities broker because they will be able to help you buy puts on stock indices which if correlated with housing prices will offer somewhat of a hedge. Example. House prices drop 30% because of weak economy, stocks will generally drop around that same amount 30%. If you have enough exposure to in the puts compared to your house value you will be protected. You can also buy calls in 30 year bonds for interest rate lock if you are not on a fixed interest rate. Many investors like warren buffet and carl icahn have been protecting them selves from a potential market downward turn. Speak to a local commodity broker to get some detailed advice, not etrade or any discount brokers they won't be able to help you specialize your trades. look for a full time commodity broker house. |
Money market account for emergency savings | Depends on how urgent your need for the emergency savings might be. If the money market account allows you to get your money in the same amount of time as the savings account then there is no real downside, but if the account takes a few days for you to access and you need your money sooner then you probably shouldn't. Also money market accounts DO give more interest than most savings accounts, but the interest rates are generally still pretty low, so it might be an improvement, but probably not a huge one |
Which Novo Nordisk ticker is most tax efficient in a UK SIPP? | What I ended up doing was finding where each ticker of Novo was registered (what exchange), then individually looking up the foreign taxation rules of the containing country. Luckily, most companies only have a few tickers so this wasn't too hard in the end. |
Does Tennessee have anything like a principal residence exemption? | There's no homestead property tax exemption in TN. According to the TN comptroller site: Exemptions Exemptions are available for religious, charitable, scientific, and nonprofit educational uses, governmental property, and cemeteries. Most nongovernmental exemptions require a one-time application and approval by the State Board of Equalization (615/401-7883) and there is a May 20 application deadline. There is no "homestead" exemption, but low income elderly and disabled persons and disabled veterans may qualify for a rebate of taxes on a specified portion of the value of property used as their residence. Business inventories held for sale or exchange by merchants subject to the business gross receipts tax, are not assessable. Farm and residential tangible personal property are not assessable. |
Is selling put options an advisable strategy for a retiree to generate stable income? | Selling options is a great idea, but tweak it a bit and sell credit spreads on both sides of the market, i.e. sell OTM bear call spreads and OTM bull put spreads. This is also known as an iron condor, and limits risk, and allows for much more flexibility. |
What is the smartest thing to do in case of a stock market crash | If you know the market will crash, you could opt for going short. However, if you think this is too risky, not investing at all is probably your best move. In case of crises, correlation go up and almost all assets go down. |
What happens to 401(k) money that isn't used by the time the account holder dies? | A 401k plan will ask you to name a beneficiary who will receive the funds if you don't withdraw them all before death. Usually, a primary beneficiary and a secondary beneficiary is requested. If you don't specify a beneficiary, your estate is the beneficiary by default. Note that the name supplied to the 401k plan is who will get the money, and you cannot change this by bequeathing the money in your will. For example, if you neglected to change the beneficiary upon divorce, it is useless to say in your will that the money in the 401k plan goes to your new wife; the 401k plan will give it to your ex-wife who still remains the beneficiary of your 401k Money in a 401k plan is what is called income with respect to a decedent (IRD) on which income tax is levied, and it is also is part of your estate and thus liable to be subject to estate tax. The latter is true even if the 401k plan assets are not mentioned anywhere in your will, and even if the assets got sent to your ex-wife which is not what you wanted to have happen. There are various estate tax exceptions for spouse beneficiaries (no estate tax due now, but will be charged when the spouse passes away). With regard to income tax, the beneficiaries of a 401k plan (similarly IRAs, 403b plans etc) generally get to take the whole amount and pay the income tax themselves. Edit in response to littleadv's comments: Each 401k plan is different, and some plans, especially the smaller ones, may prefer to distribute the 401k assets as a lump sum rather than allow the beneficiaries to withdraw the money over several years (and pay income tax on the amount withdrawn each year). This is because there are far too many rules and regulations to trip over when making withdrawals over several years. The lump sum distribution can be transferred into a newly established Inherited IRA (see the Nolo article linked to in @littleadv's answer for some details and some pitfalls to avoid) and the income tax is thus deferred until withdrawals occur. Spouse beneficiaries are entitled to more generous rules than non-spouse beneficiaries. If your heirs are otherwise well provided for and you are in a philanthropic mood (or you don't want to give 'em a dime, the ungrateful... who never call, not even on Father's Day!), one way of avoiding a lot of tax is to make the beneficiary of your 401k be one or more of your favorite charities. In fact, if your testamentary inclination is to make some charitable bequests as part of your will, it is much more advantageous to give money from a tax-deferred account to the charity (size of estate is reduced, no income tax paid by anyone on amount given), and bequeath assets in non-retirement accounts to one's heirs (bequests are not taxable income, and heirs get a step up in basis for assets that have appreciated) rather than the other way around (heirs pay income tax as they withdraw the money from tax-deferred account) Estate planning is a complicated business, and you really should talk to a professional about such matters and not rely on advice from an Internet forum. |
Where to start with personal finance? | This Stack Exchange site is a nice place to find answers and ask questions. Good start! Moving away from the recursive answer... Simply distilling personal finance down to "I have money, I'll need money in the future, what do I do", an easily digestible book with how-to, multi-step guidelines is "I Will Teach You To Be Rich". The author talks about setting up the accounts you should have, making sure all your bills are paid automatically, saving on the big things and tips to increase your take home pay. That link goes to a compilation page on the blog with many of the most fundamental articles. However, "The World’s Easiest Guide To Understanding Retirement Accounts" is a particularly key article. While all the information is on the free blog, the book is well organized and concise. The Simple Dollar is a nice blog with frugal living tips, lifestyle assessments, financial thoughts and reader questions. The author also reviews about a book a week. Investing - hoping to get better returns than savings can provide while minimizing risk. This thread is an excellent list of books to learn about investing. I highly recommend "The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing" and "The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need". The world of investment vehicles is huge but it doesn't have to be complicated once you ignore all the fads and risky stuff. Index mutual funds are the place to start (and maybe end). Asset allocation and diversification are themes to guide you. The books on that list will teach you. |
Everyone got a raise to them same amount, lost my higher pay than the newer employees | Why do you think you are entitled to "fairness"? In this world you get what you get. I am pretty sure your employer is not paying you for how you "feel" either. And by-the-way turning up on time and not leaving early is not exceptional behaviour; it is expected behaviour. Bottom line: do you add more value to your employer's business then the new hires? If so, ask for a raise, if not find a way to add more value and then ask for a raise or keep doing what you're doing and accept what you get. |
Was this bill forgotten by a medical provider, and do notices need to be sent before collections? | Sometimes I think a question like this is one of moral versus legal. The reality is that you know you owe the money because you received the services. You're right that the bill should have been sent to you, and the natural urge for many people is to just count it in the win column when things like this happen and there's the chance to avoid paying. I suppose my question for you is, are you comfortable with the notion that you are not paying something that your heart of hearts tells you should be paid? If roles were reversed and you, as a business owner, had forgotten to bill something for which you were rightfully due payment, wouldn't you hope they'd have the integrity to pay you anyway? The legal side of this can be a bit trickier, and much depends on the state you're in (assuming you're in the U.S.) because some have stiffer consumer collection and protection laws than others. The rehab center could, when doing an audit of its accounts, discover that you didn't pay for these. They could take the polite course of action and call you with a gentle reminder or send a bill, or they could be not so nice about it. Either way, they can't send anything to collections for which you haven't been presented a bill and demonstrated an unwillingness to pay. There's a process in place, regardless of the state, so they can't just automatically put it into collections. I will close with this question for you: did the rehab center help you with what you needed, and are you healthier and better because of their care? If so, pay the bill. That's my advice. Keep in mind that unpaid medical costs just raise the prices for everyone else, because these providers will make up for the loss somewhere. I hope this helps. Good luck! |
Should I sell when my stocks are growing? | My thoughts are that if you've seen considerable growth and the profit amassed would be one that makes sense, you would have to seriously consider selling NOW because it could take yeoman's time to mimic that profit in the next 10 quarters or so. To analogize; If you bought a house for 100k and we're renting it for say 1,000/month and we're making $ 250/month profit and could sell it now for 125k, it would take you 100 months to recoup that $25k profit (or 8 years 4 months). Doesn't it make sense to sell now? You would have that profit NOW and could invest it somewhere else without losing that period of time, and TIME is the emphasis here. |
What taxes are assessed on distributions of an inherited IRA? | Distributions from an inherited IRA will be taxed as ordinary income and there are required minimum distributions for the inherited account. Assuming you were 55 at the time of your mother's death, your life expectancy according to the IRS is 29.6 years. Your required yearly distributions on $200,000 would be roughly $6800. For each year that you didn't withdraw that, you would owe a 50% penalty of the distribution amount (~$3400). That's probably better than the tax hit you would take if you pulled it all in as income in a 5 year window (ie. all right now since you're at the end of the window). |
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