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Easiest way to diversify savings | Are there banks where you can open a bank account without being a citizen of that country without having to visit the bank in person? I've done it the other way around, opened a bank account in the UK so I have a way to store GBP. Given that Britain is still in the EU you can basically open an account anywhere. German online banks for instance allow you to administrate anything online, should there be cards issued you would need an address in the country. And for opening an account a passport is sufficient, you can identify yourself in a video chat. Now what's the downside? French banks' online services are in French, German banks' services are in German. If that doesn't put you off, I would name such banks in the comments if asked. Are there any online services for investing money that aren't tied to any particular country? Can you clarify that? You should at least be able to buy into any European or American stock through your broker. That should give you an ease of mind being FCA-regulated. However, those are usually GDRs (global depository receipts) and denominated in GBp (pence) so you'd be visually exposed to currency rates, by which I mean that if the stock goes up 1% but the GBP goes up 1% in the same period then your GDR would show a 0% profit on that day; also, and more annoyingly, dividends are distributed in the foreign currency, then exchanged by the issuer of the GDR on that day and booked into your account, so if you want to be in full control of the cashflows you should get a trading account denominated in the currency (and maybe situated in the country) you're planning to invest in. If you're really serious about it, some brokers/banks offer multi-currency trading accounts (again I will name them if asked) where you can trade a wide range of instruments natively (i.e. on the primary exchanges) and you get to manage everything in one interface. Those accounts typically include access to the foreign exchange markets so you can move cash between your accounts freely (well for a surcharge). Also, typically each subaccount is issued its own IBAN. |
Clarification on 529 fund | You are faced with a dilemma. If you use a 529 plan to fund your education, the short timeline of a few years will limit your returns that are tax free. Most people who use a 529 plan either purchase years of tuition via lump sum, when the child is young; or they put aside money on a regular basis that will grow tax deferred/tax free. Some states do give a tax break when the contribution is made by a state taxpayer into a plan run by the state. The long term plans generally use a risk profile that starts off heavily weighted in stock when the child is young, and becomes more fixed income as the child reaches their high school years. The idea is to protect the fund from big losses when there is no time to recover. If you choose the plan with the least risk the issue is that the amount of gains that are being protected from federal tax is small. If you pick a more aggressive plan the risk is that the losses could be larger than the state tax savings. Look at some of the other tax breaks for tuition to see if you qualify Credits An education credit helps with the cost of higher education by reducing the amount of tax owed on your tax return. If the credit reduces your tax to less than zero, you may get a refund. There are two education credits available: the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the Lifetime Learning Credit. Who Can Claim an Education Credit? There are additional rules for each credit, but you must meet all three of the following for either credit: If you’re eligible to claim the lifetime learning credit and are also eligible to claim the American opportunity credit for the same student in the same year, you can choose to claim either credit, but not both. You can't claim the AOTC if you were a nonresident alien for any part of the tax year unless you elect to be treated as a resident alien for federal tax purposes. For more information about AOTC and foreign students, visit American Opportunity Tax Credit - Information for Foreign Students. Deductions Tuition and Fees Deduction You may be able to deduct qualified education expenses paid during the year for yourself, your spouse or your dependent. You cannot claim this deduction if your filing status is married filing separately or if another person can claim an exemption for you as a dependent on his or her tax return. The qualified expenses must be for higher education. The tuition and fees deduction can reduce the amount of your income subject to tax by up to $4,000. This deduction, reported on Form 8917, Tuition and Fees Deduction, is taken as an adjustment to income. This means you can claim this deduction even if you do not itemize deductions on Schedule A (Form 1040). This deduction may be beneficial to you if, for example, you cannot take the lifetime learning credit because your income is too high. You may be able to take one of the education credits for your education expenses instead of a tuition and fees deduction. You can choose the one that will give you the lower tax. |
How can I invest in US Stocks from outside the US with a credit card instead of a bank account? | You'll have to take cash from your Credit Card account and use that to trade. I doubt any brokerage house will take credit cards as it's trading without any collateral (since credit cards are an unsecured credit) |
Getting started in stock with one special field of activity | I don't think investing in only one industry, which you may know well, is very wise. You may want to invest in that industry but you should not restrict yourself from investing solely in that industry. There are many times when your chosen industry may not be performing very well and other industries are performing much better. If you restrict yourself to just one industry you may be either out of the market for long periods of time or your portfolio may show negative returns for extended periods of time. You may want to know an industry or a number of companies very well but do not fall in love with them. The worst thing you can do is get emotional about an investment, an investment is there to make you money not for you to get emotional about. Don't restrict yourself, instead look to maximise your returns with investments that are performing better at the time. |
If USA defaults on its debt, will the T bond holder get back his money | There is no situation one can imagine in which the US defaults (beyond a day or three) on its obligations. The treasury can print money, and while it would be disastrous, 'monetizing' the debt would simply eliminate all outstanding debt at the risk of devaluing the dollar to hyperinflation levels. |
How come the government can value a home more than was paid for the house? | When a house is sold at a foreclosure auction, the selling bank usually does not provide the guarantees that a normal house seller provides. Furthermore, the previous owner may have neglected the property, and/or spitefully damaged the property. Bank-owned properties are often neglected and/or vandalized. Banks are usually too short-sighted to properly market the real estate they own, and do a poor job of making it easy to buy the property. Thus, foreclosure sales usually happen at a price that is significantly below the "fair market value" of sales between competent households. It is common for a house that is worth $ 125,000 (even in a depressed market) to sell for only $ 100,000 in a short sale or foreclosure. It is possible that this property sold for an even larger discount. It is also possible that the tax assessor is (inadvertently) comparing a run-down property with well-maintained properties that have extra expensive features, without fully adjusting for the properties' conditions and features. In the latter scenario, the property owner can ask the tax assessor to re-consider the assessment. Usually this request is called an "appeal". |
When a company liquidates, are earlier investors paid back first? | All shares of the same class are considered equal. Each class of shares may have a different preference in order of repayment. After all company liabilities have been paid off [including bank debt, wages owing, taxes outstanding, etc etc.], the remaining cash value in a company is distributed to the shareholders. In general, there are 2 types of shares: Preferred shares, and Common shares. Preferred shares generally have 3 characteristics: (1) they get a stated dividend rate every year, sometimes regardless of company performance; (2) they get paid out first on liquidation; and (3) they can only receive their stated value on liquidation - that is, $1M of preferred shares will be redeemed for at most $1M on liquidation, assuming the corporation has at least that much cash left. Common Shares generally have 4 characteristics: (1) their dividends are not guaranteed (or may be based on a calculation relative to company performance), (2) they can vote for members of the Board of Directors who ultimately hire the CEO and make similar high level business decisions; (3) they get paid last on liquidation; and (4) they get all value remaining in the company once everyone else has been paid. So it is not the order of share subscription that matters, it is the class. Once you know how much each class gets, based on the terms listed in that share subscription, you simply divide the total class payout by number of shares, and pay that much for each share a person holds. For companies organized other-than as corporations, ie: partnerships, the calculation of who-gets-what will be both simpler and more complex. Simpler in that, generally speaking, a partnership interest cannot be of a different 'class', like shares can, meaning all partners are equal relative to the size of their partnership interest. More complex in that, if the initiation of the company was done in an informal way, it could easily become a legal fight as to who contributed what to the company. |
Are COBRA premiums deductible when self-employed? | COBRA premiums are not deductible on 1040 line 29; to qualify, the IRS says the insurance plan must be in your name (COBRA is in your former employer's name). H&R Block confirms this. |
What does “issued XXX and YYY shares” mean? | authorized 100,000,000 shares They cannot issue shares more than that so 102M isn't possible. Common stock - $.01 par value, authorized 100,000,000 shares, issued 51,970,721 and 51,575,743 shares If you look at the right 2 columns it become clear what it means. You missed the $ symbol and on the top (In thousands, except share amounts) ouststanding share 51,970,721 -> 520 On Sept 30, 2014 outstanding shares * 0.01 and rounded off to arrive at 520. ouststanding share 51,575,743 -> 516 On June 30, 2014 outstanding shares * 0.01 and rounded off to arrive at 516. |
What steps should be taken, if any, when you find out your home's market value is underwater, i.e. worth less than the mortgage owed? | I will echo the others; your home should be worth more to you than its market value. It is YOUR HOME. It's where you come home every day to your wife and kids, where you build a life. Yes it's an investment, but it's not like a stock or bond that you hold for a little while and then cash out for the profit. The one time you should be worried about being "upside-down" on your mortgage is if you're getting out. If you're moving to a new job at a new company in a new city, you have to make good on the remaining loan balance, and that won't all be from the sale of the house. Unless you're at that point however, if you can afford making the payments and have no reason to move or to cash in equity (of which you have none), then just keep making the payments. Hey, it's better than rent; you'll never see rent money again, while even if you're underwater, you're making headway with each payment. |
Options liquidity and trading positions larger than the daily volume? | One broker told me that I have to simply read the ask size and the bid size, seeing what the market makers are offering. This implies that my order would have to match that price exactly, which is unfortunate because options contract spreads can be WIDE. Also, if my planned position size is larger than the best bid/best ask, then I should break up the order, which is also unfortunate because most brokers charge a lot for options orders. |
What are the reasons to get more than one credit card? | In the case of reward cards, different cards may offer different rewards for different kind of purchases. For example, in the UK, one of the Amex cards offers 1.25% cashback on all purchases, whereas one of the Santander cards offers 3% on fuel, 2% or 1% on certain other transactions, and nothing on others. Of course, you then have to remember to use the right card! Another reason is that a person may use a card for a while, build up a good credit limit, and then move to a different card (perhaps because it has better rewards, or a lower interest rate, etc) without cancelling the first. If it costs nothing to keep the first card, then it can be useful to have it as a spare. |
How can I determine how much my car insurance will cost me? | I'd recommend getting online quotes from several insurance companies. During the process of getting a quote, you will be asked for the year/make/model of your car. You can put in one of the cars you were thinking about buying and get a quote. Then start over and try with a different type of car. This should show you how the insurance will compare between different cars. I've done this in the past when I was trying to make a decision on a car purchase. It takes a while, but seemed worth it to me. |
Using Loan to Invest - Paying Monthly Installments by Selling Originally Bought Shares | In addition to the answer from CQM, let me answer your 'am I missing anything?' question. Then I'll talk about how your approach of simplifying this is making it both harder and easier for you. Last I'll show what my model for this would look like, but if you aren't capable of stacking this up yourself, then you REALLY shouldn't be borrowing 10,000 to try to make money on the margin. Am I missing anything? YES. You're forgetting (1) taxes, specifically income tax, and (2) sales commissions//transaction fees. On the first: You have not considered anything in your financial model for taxes. You should include at least 25% of your expected returns going to taxes, because anything that you buy... and then sell within 12 months... is taxed as income. Not capital gains. On the second: you will incur sales commissions and/or transaction fees depending on the brokerage you are using for your plan. These tend to vary widely, but I would expect to spend at least $25 per sale. So if I were building out this model I would think that your break-even would have to at least cover: monthly interest + monthly principal payment income tax when sold commissions and broker's fees every time you sell holdings On over-simplifying: You have the right idea with thinking about both interest and principal in trying to sketch this out. But as I mentioned above, you're making this both harder and easier for yourself. You are making it harder because you are doing the math wrong. The actual payment for this loan (assuming it is a normal loan) can be found most easily with the PMT function in Excel: =PMT(rate,NPER,PV,FV)... =PMT(.003, 24, -10000, 0). That returns a monthly payment (of principal + interest) of 432.47. So you actually are over-calculating the payment by $14/month with your ballpark approach. However, you didn't actually have all the factors in the model to begin with, so that doesn't matter much. You are making it artificially easier because you have not thought about the impact of repaying principal. What I mean is this--in your question you indicate: I'm guessing the necessary profit is just the total interest on this loan = 0.30%($10000)(24) = $720 USD ? So I'll break even on this loan - if and only if - I make $720 from stocks over 24 months (so the rate of return is 720/(10000 + 720) = 6.716%). This sounds great-- all you need is a 6.716% total return across two years. But, assuming this is a normal loan and not an 'interest-only' loan, you have to get rid of your capital a little bit at a time to pay back the loan. In essence, you will pay back 1/3 of your principal the first year... and then you have to keep making the same Fixed interest + principal payments out of a smaller base of capital. So for the first few months you can cover the interest easily, but by the end you have to be making phenomenal returns to cover it. Here is how I would build a model for it (I actually did... and your breakeven is about 1.019% per month. At that outstanding 12.228% annual return you would be earning a whopping $4.) At least as far as the variables are concerned, you need to be considering: Your current capital balance (because month 1 you may have $10,000 but month 2 you have just 9,619 after paying back some principal). Your rate of return (if you do this in Excel you can play with it some, but you should save the time and just invest somewhere else.) Your actual return that month (rate of return * existing capital balance). Loan payment = 432 for the parameters you gave earlier. Income tax = (Actual Return) * (.25). With this kind of loan, you're not actually making enough to preserve the 10,000 capital and you're selling everything you've gained each month. Commission = ($25 per month) ... assuming that covers your trade fees and broker commissions. I guarantee you that this is not the deal breaker in the model, so don't get excited if you think I'm over-estimating this and you realize that Scottrade or somewhere will let you have trades at $7.95 each. Monthly ending balance == next month's starting capital balance. Stack it all up in Excel for 24 months and see for yourself if you like. The key thing you left out is that you're repaying each month out of capital that you'd like to use to invest with. This makes you need much higher returns. Even if your initial description wasn't clear and this is an interest-only loan, you're still looking at a rate of about 7.6% annually that you need to hit in order to just break even on the costs of holding the loan and transferring your gains into cash. |
Online Foreign Exchange Brokerages: Which ones are good & reputable for smaller trades? | I used XE trade once several years ago. I found them quite easy to use after the slightly fiddly account setup process (needed for security/anti-money laundering I think). I trusted them because I'd been using their online FX rates for a long time. I can't really comment on the specific questions you ask though as this was a long time ago and I haven't needed one since. |
Is Real Estate ever a BAD investment? If so, when? | No, it can really not. Look at Detroit, which has lost a million residents over the past few decades. There is plenty of real estate which will not go for anything like it was sold. Other markets are very risky, like Florida, where speculators drive too much of the price for it to be stable. You have to be sure to buy on the downturn. A lot of price drops in real estate are masked because sellers just don't sell, so you don't really know how low the price is if you absolutely had to sell. In general, in most of America, anyway, you can expect Real Estate to keep up with inflation, but not do much better than that. It is the rental income or the leverage (if you buy with a mortgage) that makes most of the returns. In urban markets that are getting an influx of people and industry, however, Real Estate can indeed outpace inflation, but the number of markets that do this are rare. Also, if you look at it strictly as an investment (as opposed to the question of "Is it worth it to own my own home?") there are a lot of additional costs that you have to recoup, from property taxes to bills, rental headaches etc. It's an investment like any other, and should be approached with the same due diligence. |
Does a falling dollar mean doom for real estate? | A falling $AUD would be beneficial to exporters, and thus overall good for the economy. If the economy improves and exporters start growing profits, that means they will start to employ more people and employment will increase - and with higher employment, employees will become more confident to make purchases, including purchasing property. I feel the falling $AUD will be beneficial for the economy and the housing market. However, what you should consider is that with an improving economy and a rising property market, it will only be a matter of time before interest rates start rising. With a lower $AUD the RBA will be more confident in starting to increase interest rates. And increasing interest rates will have a dampening effect on the housing market. You are looking to buy a property to live in - so how long do you intend to live in and hold the property? I would assume at least for the medium to long term. If this is your intention then why are you getting cold feet? What you should be concerned about is that you do not overstretch on your borrowings! Make sure you allow a buffer of 2% to 3% above current interest rates so that if rates do go up you can still afford the repayments. And if you get a fixed rate - then you should allow the buffer in case variable rates are higher when your fixed period is over. Regarding the doomsayers telling you that property prices are going to crash - well they were saying that in 2008, then again in 2010, then again in 2012. I don't know about you but I have seen no crash. Sure when interest rates have gone up property prices have levelled off and maybe gone down by 10% to 15% in some areas, but as soon as interest rates start falling again property prices start increasing again. It's all part of the property cycle. I actually find it is a better time to buy when interest rates are higher and you can negotiate a better bargain and lower price. Then when interest rates start falling you benefit from lower repayments and increasing property prices. The only way there will be a property crash in Australia is if there was a dramatic economic downturn and unemployment rates rose to 10% or higher. But with good economic conditions, an increasing population and low supplies of newly build housing in Australia, I see no dramatic crashes in the foreseeable future. Yes we may get periods of weakness when interest rates increase, with falls up to 15% in some areas, but no crash of 40% plus. As I said above, these periods of weakness actually provide opportunities to buy properties at a bit of a discount. EDIT In your comments you say you intend to buy with a monthly mortgage repayment of $2500 in place of your current monthly rent of $1800. That means your loan amount would be somewhere around $550k to $600K. You also mention you would be taking on a 5 year fixed rate, and look to sell in about 2 years time if you can break even (I assume that is break even on the price you bought at). In 2 years you would have paid $16,800 more on your mortgage than you would have in rent. So here are the facts: A better strategy: |
What ETF best tracks the price of gasoline, or else crude oil? | There is no ETF that closely tracks oil or gasoline. This is because all existing oil and gasoline ETFs hold futures contracts or other derivatives. Storing the oil and gasoline would be prohibitively costly. Futures contracts are prone to contango and backwardation, sometimes resulting in large deviations from the price of the physical commodity. Contrast oil ETFs with metal ETFs, which track nicely. EDIT: See this article about contango. The UNG chart is particularly ugly. |
Index ETF or Index mutual fund - standard brokerage account | The main difference between a mutual fund and an ETF are how they are bought and sold (from the investors perspective). An ETF is transacted on the open market. This means you normally can't buy partial shares with your initial investment. Having to transact on the open market also means you pay a market price. The market price is always a little bit different from the Net Asset Value (NAV) of the fund. During market hours, the ETF will trade at a premium/discount to the NAV calculated on the previous day. Morningstar's fund analysis will show a graph of the premium/discount to NAV for an ETF. With a mutual fund on the other hand, your investment goes to a fund company, which then grants you shares while under the hood buying the underlying investments. You pay the NAV price and are allowed to buy partial shares. Usually an ETF has a lower expense ratio, but if that's equal and any initial fees/commissions are equal, I would prefer the mutual fund in order to buy partial shares (so your initial investment will be fully invested) and so you don't have to worry about paying premium to NAV |
Settling house with husband during divorce. Which of these two options makes the most sense? | How about a third approach: Figure the buyout as above. Figure what percentage of the value of the house the buyout constitutes. When the house sells the other party gets that percentage of the sales price. |
What are some good ways to control costs for groceries? | Check out the bulk stores like BJs, Sam's Club or whatever else is available to you. You can definitely save money shopping there but you also need to keep your wits about you as well. Example, if you're buying in bulk only to let food go to waste, obviously that's not good either... |
Working Capital Definition | As you say, if you delay paying your bills, your liabilities will increase. Like say your bills total $10,000 per month. If you normally pay after 30 days, then your short-term liabilities will be $10,000. If you stretch that out to pay after 60 days, then you will be carrying two months worth of bills as a short-term liability, or $20,000. Your liabilities go up. Assume you keep the same amount of cash on hand after you stretch out your payments like this as you did before. Now your liabilities are higher but your assets are the same, so your working capital goes down. For example, suppose you kept $25,000 in the bank before this change and you still keep $30,000 after. Then before your working capital was $25,000 minus $10,000, or $15,000. After it is $25,000 minus $20,000, or only $5,000. So how does this relate to cash flow? While presumably if the company has $10,000 per month in bills, and their bank balance remains at $25,000 month after month, then they must have $10,000 per month in income that's going to pay those bills, or the bank balance would be going down. So now if they DON'T pay that $10,000 in bills this month, but the bank account doesn't go up by $10,000, then they must have spent the $10,000 on something else. That is, they have converted that money from an on-going balance into cash flow. Note that this is a one-time trick. If you stretch out your payment time from 30 days to 60 days, then you are now carrying 2 months worth of bills on your books instead of 1. So the first month that you do this -- if you did it all at once for all your bills -- you would just not pay any bills that month. But then you would have to resume paying the bills the next month. It's not like you're adding $10,000 to your cash flow every month. You're adding $10,000 to your cash flow the month that you make the change. Then you return to equilibrium. To increase your cash flow every month this way, you would have to continually increase the time it takes you to pay your bills: 30 days this month, 45 days the next, 60 the next, then 75, 90, etc. Pretty soon your bills are 20 years past due and no one wants to do business with you any more. Normally people see an action like this as an emergency measure to get over a short-term cash crunch. Adopting it as a long-term policy seems very short-sighted to me, creating a long-term relationship problem with your suppliers in exchange for a one-shot gain. But then, I'm not a big corporate finance officer. |
Does buying and selling a stock OR holding onto it make a company look better? | Not sure I fully understand your question but my take on it is this: There a lot of people out there that admire companies and own the stock just because they like the company. For example, I know some kids who own Disney stock. They only have a share or two but they keep it because they want to say "I own a part of Disney." Realistically speaking, if they hold or sell the stock it is so minuscule to have any realizable affect on the overall value of the stock which does not really make the company look better from an investor perspective. However, if a company has people that just want to own the stock just like your uncle are indeed "better" because they must have provided a product or service that is valued intrinsically. |
Can a single-member LLC have a fiscal year not as the calendar year? | I'm no tax expert by any means. I do know that a disreagarded entity is considered a sole proprietor for federal tax purposes. My understanding is that this means your personal tax year and your business tax year must be one and the same. Nevertheless, it is technically possible to have a non-calendar fiscal year as an individual. This is so rare that I'm unable to find a an IRS reference to this. The best reference I could find was this article written by two CPAs. If you really want to persue this, you basically need to talk with an accountant, since this is complicated, and required keeping propper accounting records for your personal life, in addition to your business. A ledger creqated after-the-fact by an accountant has been ruled insufficent. You really need to live by the fiscal year you choose. |
What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000? | $1000 is not that much, and I think the best you can do with them is keeping them in a high-yield savings account (look at the online savings accounts that give 1% and more, not the regular bank savings accounts which are worthless). If you need money all of a sudden (for a school book, or rent, or bills, or some other emergency expense), you don't want to deal with selling stocks or funds (which may be at loss) or breaking into your CD's. It is usually considered a good practice to keep cash that would keep you afloat for 5-6 months in savings or some cash equivalent, as an emergency fund. |
What should I do with my stock options? | The main reason to exercise the shares sooner rather than later is that you have to hold the shares for 1 year to gain access to the long-term capital gains rate when you sell your shares. You do not want short-term capital gains rates to apply to these shares when you sell them. If the company is unable to go public and sells privately, you may not have any choice but to sell your shares immediately. If the company goes public you will simply have to hold your shares for a year after you buy them before selling to get the lower tax rate. |
If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting? | Paying tax is a Good Thing. However, warren has made good point and I would like you to consider this other thing: Go into your payees bank with the payee, get the money withdrawn from the teller and take it with you. Unless I am missing something, or the teller handed your payee fake notes, you are "safe" |
Paid off oldest CC keep it open or close it? | First off, congratulations on taking care of your finances and paying off your cards! Takes a lot of discipline. If your next oldest card is just a year apart, you can safely close this card. |
What are some good books for learning stocks, bonds, derivatives e.t.c for beginner with a math background? | Start with Options, Futures and Other Derivatives by John Hull. |
How does AMT/state taxes work for stock options in California? | Does this technically mean that she has to pay AMT on $400,000? Yes. Well, not exactly 400,000. She paid $1 per share, so 390,000. And if so, is %28 the AMT for this sum? (0.28 * $400,000 = $112,000)? Or does she have to include her salary on top of that before calculating AMT? (Suppose in the fake example that her salary is $100,000 after 401k). All her income is included in calculating the AMT, minus the AMT exemption amount. The difference between the regular calculated tax and the calculated AMT is then added to the regular tax. Note that some deductions allowed for the regular calculation are not allowed for the AMT calculation. How does California state tax come into play for this? California has its own AMT rules, and in California any stock option exercise is subject to AMT, unless you sell the stock in the same year. Here's a nice and easy to understand write up on the issue from the FTB. When would she have to pay the taxes for this huge AMT? Tax is due when income is received (i.e.: when you exercise the options). However, most people don't actually pay the tax then, but rather discover the huge tax liability when they prepare to submit their tax return on April 15th. To avoid that, I'd suggest trying to estimate the tax and adjust your withholding using form W4 so that by the end of the year you have enough withheld. Suppose in the worst case, the company goes completely under. Does she get her massive amounts of tax back? Or if it's tax credit, where can I find more info on this? That would be capital loss, and only up to $3K a year of capital loss can be deducted from the general income. So it will continue offsetting other capital gains or being deducted $3K a year until it all clears out. Is there any way to avoid this tax? (Can she file an 83b election?) You asked and answered. Yes, filing 83(b) election is the way to go to avoid this situation. This should be done within 30 days of the grant, and submitted to the IRS, and a copy attached to the tax return of the grant year. However, if you're considering exercise - that ship has likely sailed a long time ago. Any advice for Little Susie on how she can even afford to pay that much tax on something she can't even sell anytime soon? Don't exercise the options? Should she take out a loan? (e.g. I've heard that in the extreme case, you can find angel investors who are willing to pay all your taxes/strike price, but want 50% of your equity? I've also heard that you can sell your illiquid shares on SecondMarket?) Is she likely to get audited by IRS for pulling something like this? You can take a loan secured by shares you own, there's nothing illegal in it. If you transfer your shares - the IRS only cares about the taxes being paid, however that may be illegal depending on the terms and the conditions of the grant. You'll need to talk to a lawyer about your situation. I suggest talking to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) about the specifics concerning your situation. |
When entering a Futures contract, must the margin deposit be idle or can I profit from it? | In theory, an FCM may accept various types of collateral, including assets such as cash, treasuries, certain stocks, sovereign debt, letters of credit, and (as of 2009, I think,) gold. In practice, most will want you to post cash or cash. Some will take treasuries, but I think you'll generally have a hard time posting securities or other riskier asset classes at most shops, as dealing with the margining around them is more complex (and less profitible). |
Why are options created? | At my soon to be legendary Stock Options Cafe, I recently wrote an article "Betting On Apple at 9 to 2." It described a trade in which a 35% move in a stock over a fixed time (2 years) would result in a 354% gain in one's bet. In this case, the options serve to create remarkable leverage for speculators. In general, option help provide liquidity and extend the nature of the risk/reward curve. There are option trades that range from conservative (e.g. a 'covered call') to wildly speculative, as the one I described above. |
Buy tires and keep car for 12-36 months, or replace car now? | I tend to agree with Rocky's answer. However it sounds like you want to look at this from the numbers side of things. So let's consider some numbers: I'm assuming you have the money to buy the new car available as cash in hand, and that if you don't buy the car, you'll invest it reasonably. So if you buy the new car today, you're $17K out of pocket. Let's look at some scenarios and compare. Assuming: If you buy the new car today, then after 1 year you'll have: If you keep the old car, after 1 year you get: After 2 years, you have: And after 3 years, you're at: Or in other words, nothing depletes the value of your assets faster than buying the new car. After 1 year, you've essentially lost $5K to depreciation. However, over the short term the immediate cost of the tires combined with the continued depreciation of the old car do reduce your purchasing power somewhat (you won't be able to muster $25K towards a new car without chipping in a bit of extra cash), and inflation will tend to drive the cost of the new car up as time goes on. So the relative gap between the value of your assets and the cost of the new car tends to increase, though it stays well below the $5k that you lose to depreciation if you buy the new car immediately. Which is something that you could potentially spin to support whichever side you prefer, I suppose. Though note that I've made some fairly pessimistic assumptions. In particular, the current U.S. inflation rate is under 1%, and a new car may depreciate by as much as 25% in the first year while older cars may depreciate by less than the 8% assumed. And I selected the cheapest new car price cited, and didn't credit the tires with adding any value to your old car. Each of those aspects tends to make continuing to drive the older car a better option than buying the new one. |
Where can I find the current price to rent ratio of the locality of my interest? | Chris, this is an arbitrage question with a twist: you cannot treat the location you want to live objectively. For example, why not SoCal instead of Texas? Yes, SoCal's expensive but what if you account for the weather? This question is very interesting for me personally: something I am going to focus on myself, soon, as well. To the question at hand: it's very hard to get a close estimate of the price from a single source, say, a website. The cost of a house is always negotiable and there's no sticker price, and there begins your problems. However, there are some publicly available information which websites aggregate, see: http://www.city-data.com/ Also, some heuristics might help: Rent is at-least as expensive as the monthly mortgage, (property) taxes, HOA fees, etc. Smart people have told me this, and this also makes sense to me as the landlord is in this business to make some money after all. However, there are also other hidden costs of home ownership that I am not aware of in details (and which I craftily sidestepped in my "etc" above) that could put a rental to be "cheaper". One example that comes to mind is you as a tenant get to complain if the washer-dryer misbehaves and demand the landlord get you a new one (see how you wouldn't make a sound were you to own it however) Such a website to gauge rentals: http://www.rentometer.com/ Houses cost more where the median income is more. Again, you cannot be objective about this because smart people like to live around smart people (and pay for the privilege). Turn again to http://www.city-data.com/ to get this information Better weather is more expensive than not so good weather. In the article you linked, notice the ratio of homes in California. Yes, I know of people who sold off their family ranches in Vancouver and Seattle to buy homes in Orange Country. In short, there is a lot of information you would have to gather from multiple sources, and even then never be sure that you did your best! This also includes arbitrage, as you would like to "come out ahead" and while you are doing your research (and paying your rent), you want to invest your "savings" in instruments where you earn more than what you would have saved in a mortgage, etc. I would very much like to be refuted on every point and my answer be edited and "made better" as I need the same answers as you do :-D Feel free to comment, edit your question etc and I will act on feedback and help both of us (and future readers) out! |
What can I do when the trading price of a stock or ETF I want to buy is too high? | You have a couple of options: Auto-investing in an open-end mutual fund. Some companies may waive a minimum if you sign up for an automatic investing, e.g. T. Rowe Price will waive its minimum if you agree to invest $100/month. There may be some lower ones out there as well. Some brokers like ShareBuilder have programs where someone could auto-invest getting fractional shares with each purchase. However, something to consider is what percentage is it costing you to buy each time as it may be quite a bit of friction if you are paying $4 a purchase and only buying $40, this is 10% of your investment being eaten up in costs that I'd highly advise taking the first option. |
Should I switch/rollover my IRA to a Gold IRA at Regal Assets? | The link you originally included had an affiliate code included (now removed). It is likely that your "friend" suggested the site to you because there is something in it for your "friend" if you sign up with their link. Seek independent financial advice, not from somebody trying to earn a commission off you. Don't trust everything you read online – again, the advice may be biased. Many of the online "reviews" for Regal Assets look like excuses to post affiliate links. A handful of the highly-ranked (by Google Search) "reviews" about this company even obscure their links to this company using HTTP redirects. Whenever I see this practice in a "review" for a web site, I have to ask if it is to try and appear more independent by hiding the affiliation? Gold and other precious metal commodities can be part of a diversified portfolio, a small part with some value as a hedge, but IMHO it isn't prudent to put all your eggs in that basket. Look up the benefits of diversification. It isn't hard to find compelling evidence in favor of the practice. You should also look up the benefits of low-fee passively-managed index funds. A self-directed IRA with a reputable broker can give you access to a wide selection of low-fee funds, not just a single risky asset class. |
Ways to avoid being labeled a pattern day trader | FINRA Description of Day Trading rules The rules adopt a new term "pattern day trader," which includes any margin customer that day trades (buys then sells or sells short then buys the same security on the same day) four or more times in five business days, provided the number of day trades are more than six percent of the customer's total trading activity for that same five-day period. So, there's several ways to avoid being labeled a pattern day trader: |
To sell or to rent the house? | So either scenario has about $10K upfront costs (either realtor/selling expenses or fixing up for rental). Furthermore, I'm sure that the buyers would want you to fix all these things anyway, or reduce the price accordingly, but let's ignore this. Let's also ignore the remaining mortgage, since it looks like you can comfortably pay it off. Assuming 10% property management and 10% average vacancy (check your market), and rental price at $1000 - you end up with these numbers: I took very conservative estimates both on the rent (lower than you expect) and the maintenance expense (although on average over the years ,since you need to have some reserves, this is probably quite reasonable). You end up with 2.7% ROI, which is not a lot for a rental. The rule of thumb your wife mentioned (1% of cash equity) is indeed usually for ROI of leveraged rental purchase. However, if rental prices in your area are rising, as it sounds like they are, you may end up there quite soon anyway. The downside is that the money is locked in. If you're confident in your ability to rent and are not loosing the tax benefit of selling since it sounds like you've not appreciated, you may take out some cash through a cash-out refi. To keep cash-flow near-0, you need to cash out so that the payments would be at or less than the $3200/year (i.e.: $266/month). That would make about $50K at 30/yr fixed 5% loan. What's best is up to you to decide, of course. Check whether "you can always sell" holds for you. I.e.: how stable is the market, what happens if one or two large employers disappear, etc. |
How to calculate the number of months until a loan is paid off (given principal, APR and payment amount)? | The formula for determining the number of payments (months) you'll need to make on your loan is: where i=monthly interest rate (annual rate / 12), A=loan amount (principal), and P=monthly payment. To determine the total interest that you will pay, you can use the following formula: where P=monthly payment, N=number of payments (from above formula), and A=loan amount (principal). A quick example: using the numbers in the screenshot above ($10,000 loan, $500 monthly payment, 10% APR), the number of payments ends up to be 21.97 (which means that payment number 22 is slightly less than the rest). In the second formula, you take that number times your $500 payment and determine that you have paid $10,984.81 over the course of the entire loan period. Subtracting the principal, you have paid $984.81 in total interest. On your spreadsheet, the function you are looking for is NPER: NPER(rate, payment_amount, present_value, [future_value, end_or_beginning]) rate - The interest rate. (This should be the monthly rate, or the annual rate divided by 12.) payment_amount - The amount of each payment made. (For a loan payment, this should be a negative number.) present_value - The current value of the annuity. (The initial principal of the loan) future_value - [ OPTIONAL ] - The future value remaining after the final payment has been made. (This should be 0, the default if omitted.) end_or_beginning - [ OPTIONAL - 0 by default ] - Whether payments are due at the end (0) or beginning (1) of each period. |
Recent college grad. Down payment on a house or car? | Given the state of the economy, and the potential of a rough near future for us recent grads (i.e. on/off work), I would recommend holding off on large purchases while your life is in flux. This includes both a NEW car and purchasing a house. My short answer is: you need a reliable vehicle, so purchase a used car, from a major dealer (yes this will add a fairly high premium, but easier financing), that is 4-5 years old, or more. Barring the major dealer purchase, be sure to get a mechanic to check out a vehicle, many will offer this service for a reasonable payment. As people point out, cars these days will run for another 100k miles. You will NOT have to pay anywhere near $27,000 for this vehicle. You may need to leverage your 10k for a loan if you choose to finance, but it should not be a problem, especially as you seem to imply an established credit history. In addition to this, start saving your money for the house you would like to eventually get. We have no idea where you live, but, picking rough numbers, assuming a 2 year buy period, 20% down, and a $250,000 home, the down payment alone will require you to save ~$2,000/month starting now. Barring either of these options, max out your money to tax sheltered accounts (your Roth IRA, work 401k, or a regular IRA) asap. Obviously, do not deplete your emergency fund, if anything, increase it. 10k can be burned through in a heartbeat. Long Answer: I purchased a brand new car, right out of school, at a reasonable interest rate. Like you, I can afford this vehicle, however, if someone were to come to me today (3.5 years later) and offer me the opportunity to take it back and purchase a 4-5 year used vehicle, at a 4-5 year used car price, albeit at a much higher interest rate (since I financed), it would be about a 0.02 second decision. I like my car, but, I'd like the differential cash savings between it and a reliable used car more. $27,000 is also fairly expensive for a new vehicle, there are many, very nice vehicles, for 21-23k. I still would not consider these priced appropriate to spend your money on them, but they exist. However, you do very much need a reliable vehicle, and I think you should get one. On the home front, your $400 all inclusive rent is insanely cheap. Many people spend more than that on property tax and PMI each year, so anyone who throws the "You're throwing money away!" line at you is blowing smoke to justify their own home purchase. Take the money you would have spent on a mortgage, and squirrel it away. Do your own due diligence and research the home market in your area and decide for yourself if you think home prices have bottomed and will stay there, have further to go, or are going to begin to rise. That is a decision only you can make for yourself. I'd add a section about getting expenses under control, but you said you could save 50% of your takehome pay. This is an order of magnitude above the average. Good job. Try doing 50% for 4 months, then calculate your actual amount. Then try to beat it. |
What governs the shape of price history graphs? | Let me see if I can restate your question: are speculative investments more volatile (subject to greater spikes and drops in pricing) than are more long-term investments which are defined by the predictability of their dividend returns? The short answer is: yes. However, where it gets complicated is in deciding whether something is a speculative investment. Take your example of housing. People who buy a house as an investment either choose to rent it out (so receive "rent" as "dividend") or live in it (foregoing dividends). Either way, the scale of the investment is large and this is often the only direct investment that people manage themselves. For this reason houses are bound up in the sentimental value people attach to a home, the difficulty of uprooting and moving elsewhere in search of cheaper housing or better employment, or the sunk cost of debt that can't be recovered by a fire-sale. Such inertia can lead to sudden sell-offs as critical inflection points are reached (such as hoped-for economic improvements fail to materialise and cash needs become critical). At different levels that is true of just about every investment. Driving price-volatility is the ease of sale and the trade-offs involved. A share that offers regular and dependable dividends, even if its absolute value falls, is going to be hung on to more frequently than those shares that suffer a similar decline but only offer a capital gain. For the latter, the race is on to sell before the drop neutralises any remaining capital gain the investor may have experienced. A house with a good tenant or a share with stable dividends will be kept in preference for the quick cash-return of selling an asset that offers no such ongoing returns. This would result, visually, in more eratic curves for "speculative" shares while more stable shares are characterised by periods of stability interspersed with moments of mania. But I have to take your query further, since you provide graphical evidence to support your thesis. Your charts combine varying time-scales, different sample rates and different scales (one of which is even a log scale). It becomes impossible to draw any sort of meaningful micro-comparison unless they're all presented using exactly the same criteria. |
What is high trading volume in a stock indicative of? Is high liquidity a good thing or a bad thing? | In general, there should be a "liquidity premium" which means that less-liquid stocks should be cheaper. That's because to buy such a stock, you should demand a higher rate of return to compensate for the liquidity risk (the possibility that you won't be able to sell easily). Lower initial price = higher eventual rate of return. That's what's meant when Investopedia says the security would be cheaper (on average). Is liquidity good? It depends. Here's what illiquidity is. Imagine you own a rare piece of art. Say there are 10 people in the world who collect this type of art, and would appreciate what you own. That's an illiquid asset, because when you want to sell, maybe those 10 people aren't buying - maybe they don't want your particular piece, or they all happen to be short on funds. Or maybe worse, only one of them is buying, so they have all the negotiating leverage. You'll have to lower your price if you're really in a hurry to sell. Maybe if you lower your price enough, you can get one of the 10 buyers interested, even if none were initially. An illiquid asset is bad for sellers. Illiquid means there aren't enough buyers for you to get a bidding war going at the time of your choosing. You'll potentially have to wait around for buyers to turn up, or for a stock, maybe you'd have to sell a little bit at a time as buyers want the shares. Illiquid can be bad for buyers, too, if the buyer is for some reason in a hurry; maybe nobody is selling at any given time. But, usually buyers don't have to be in a hurry. An exception may be if you short sell something illiquid (brokers often won't let you do this, btw). In that case you could be a forced buyer and this could be very bad on an illiquid security. If there are only one or two sellers out there, they now have the negotiating leverage and they can ask whatever price they want. Illiquidity is very bad when mixed with margin or short sales because of the potential for forced trades at inopportune times. There are plenty of obscure penny stocks where there might be only one or two trades per day, or fewer. The spread is going to be high on these because the bids at a given time will just be lowball offers from buyers who aren't really all that interested, unless you want to give your stock away, in which case they'll take it. And the asks are going to be from sellers who want to get a decent price, but maybe there aren't really any buyers willing to pay, so the ask is just sitting there with no takers. The bids and asks may be limit orders that have been sitting open for 3 weeks and forgotten about. Contrast with a liquid asset. For example, a popular-model used car in good condition would be a lot more liquid than a rare piece of art, though not nearly as liquid as most stocks. You can probably find several people that want to buy it living nearby, and you're not going to have to drop the price to get a buyer to show up. You might even get those buyers in a bidding war. From illiquid penny stocks, there's a continuum all the way up to the most heavily-traded stocks such as those in the S&P500. With these at a given moment there will be thousands of buyers and sellers, so the spread is going to close down to nearly zero. If you think about it, just statistically, if there are thousands of bids and thousands of asks, then the closest bid-ask pair is going to be close together. That's a narrow spread. While if there are 3 bids and 2 asks on some illiquid penny stock, they might be dollars away from each other, and the number of shares desired might not match up. You can see how liquidity is good in some situations and not in others. An illiquid asset gives you more opportunity to get a good deal because there aren't a lot of other buyers and sellers around and there's some opportunity to "negotiate" within the wide spread. For some assets maybe you can literally negotiate by talking to the other party, though obviously not when trading stocks on an exchange. But an illiquid asset also means you might get a bad deal, especially if you need to sell quickly and the only buyers around are making lowball offers. So the time to buy illiquid assets is when you can take your time on both buying and selling, and will have no reason for a forced trade on a particular timeline. This usually means no debt is involved, since creditors (including your margin broker) can force you to trade. It also means you don't need to spend the money anytime soon, since if you suddenly needed the money you'd have a forced trade on your hands. If you have the time, then you put a price out there that's very good for you, and you wait for someone to show up and give you that price - this is how you get a good deal. One more note, another use of the term liquid is to refer to assets with low or zero volatility, such as money market funds. An asset with a lot of volatility around its intrinsic or true value is effectively illiquid even if there's high trade volume, in that any given point in time might not be a good time to sell, because the price isn't at the right level. Anyway, the general definition of a liquid investment is one that you'd be comfortable cashing out of at a moment's notice. In this sense, most stocks are not all that liquid, despite high trading volume. In different contexts people may use "liquid" in this sense or to mean a low bid-ask spread. |
What are some good, easy to use personal finance software? [UK] | Money Dashboard and Love Money look like two best options out there now that Kublax closed their doors. Mint were making noises last year about spreading to UK/Canada, but I've not heard anything new about that. |
Save money in company for next year | As was once famously said, Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. — Benjamin Franklin, 1789 It's very likely that either the company or you personally is going to have to pay taxes on that money. Really the only way to avoid it would be if the company spent that money on next year's expenses, and paid the bill before the end of this year. Of course you can only do that if the recipient is willing to receive their money so far in advance, which isn't necessarily the case since they would pay more taxes this year as a result. As for whether it's better to have the company pay the tax or for you to do as your accountant suggests, there are a lot of factors that go into that equation, and my gut feeling is that your accountant already ran it both ways and is suggesting the better choice. |
Bringing money to UK for investment purposes | Transfers of money to the UK for any purpose are not generally taxed, so you can just transfer it here and invest. Once the money is here, you'll be taxed on the business activity like anyone else - the company will have to pay corporation tax, and depending on your own residency you might have to pay income tax on any distributions from the company. |
Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT | It isn't EFT, but you might mention to your tenant, that many banks offer a Bill Pay service (example) where the bank will automatically mail a check to the right person for you. I have my rent setup this way. My bank will send a rent check directly to my landlord 5 days before it is due. |
What is the smartest thing to do in case of a stock market crash | Remind yourself that markets recover, usually within a few years. If you believe this and can remind yourself of this, you will be able to see the down cycles of the market as an opportunity to buy stock "on sale". No one knows the future, so many people have found investing on a regular schedule to be helpful. By putting in the same amount of money each period, you will end up buying fewer shares when the market is up, and more when it is down. As long as your time horizon is appropriate, you should be able to wait out the ups and downs. Stocks are volatile by their very nature, so if you find that you are very concerned by this, you might want to consider whether you should adjust the amount of risk in your investments, since over time, most people lose money by trying to "time" the market. However, if your investment goals and requirements haven't changed, there likely isn't any need to change the types of assets you are investing in, as what you are choosing to invest in should depend on your personal situation. Edit: I am assuming you want to be a long-term investor and owner, making money by owning a portion of companies' profits, and not by trading stocks and/or speculation. |
Does it make sense to talk about an ETF or index in terms of technical indicators? | With the disclaimer that I am not a technician, I'd answer yes, it does. SPY (for clarification, an ETF that reflects the S&P 500 index) has dividends, and earnings, therefore a P/E and dividend yield. It would follow that the tools technicians use, such as moving averages, support and resistance levels also apply. Keep in mind, each and every year, one can take the S&P stocks and break them up, into quintiles or deciles based on return and show that not all stock move in unison. You can break up by industry as well which is what the SPDRs aim to do, and observe the movement of those sub-groups. But, no, not all the stocks will perform the way the index is predicted to. (Note - If a technician wishes to correct any key points here, you are welcome to add a note, hopefully, my answer was not biased) |
Why invest for the long-term rather than buy and sell for quick, big gains? | On Black Friday, 1929,the market fell from over 350 to just above 200. If you were following your plan then you would buy in at about 200. But look what the market did for two years after Black Friday. It went down to about 50. You would have lost around 75% of your capital. |
Advantages/Disadvantages to refinancing online? | For what its worth, I recently closed on a 30 year refinance mortage with an agent I found through Zillow. The lender has a perfect 5/5 reputation score, whose office was located within 5 miles of my house, and as suggested by justkt on MrChrister's response, I checked out the business on the better business bureau and its online presence prior to going forward with the bank. The process was relatively painless, and the APR and closing costs were less than my previous loan with a federal credit union which I've used in the past. I can't say if the bank I'll be using going forward is as good as the one I've used in the past, but overall I'm quite happy with it. I never met the individual in person but this saved both of us a fair amount of time honestly. |
Why are credit cards preferred in the US? | The real reason credit cards are so popular in the US is that Americans are lazy and broke, and the credit card companies know how to market to that. Have you ever heard of the $30k millionaires? These were individuals that purchased as if they were some of the wealthy elite, but had no real money to back it up. American society has pushed the idea of "living on credit" for quite some time now. An idea that is even furthered by watching the US government operate solely on credit. (Raise the debt ceiling much?) Live in America for more than six months and you will be bombarded with "Pre-Approved Deals" with low introductory rates that are designed to sucker the average consumer into opening multiple accounts that they don't need. Then, they try and get you to carry a balance by allowing low minimum payments that could take in the neighborhood of 20 years to pay off, depending on carried balance. This in turn pads the credit companies' pockets with all of the interest you now pay on the account. The few truly wealthy Americans do not purchase on credit. |
How should I prepare for the next financial crisis? | A somewhat provocative (but not unserious) proposal: Rent, don't buy a house to live in. In 2007/8, the thing that got many people in deep trouble is their mortgage. It's not a productive investment but a speculative bet on what was in fact a bubble and a class of assets that is notoriously slow to recover after a slump. Before thinking about your savings or buying into silly ideas about gold, you should realise that as a middle class worker, the biggest risk after a crisis is losing your job. Renting your accommodation means being able to downgrade or move very quickly and not being forced to sell a house at the worse possible time. If you really do need to liquidate some of your investments at a bad time, having a more diversified portfolio means that you are not losing everything to meet some short-term obligations. Assuming you're in the US, this means forgoing some nice tax advantages that might be too tempting to resist (I'm not so I am basing this on what I read on this site) but, bubbles aside, there is nothing that makes real estate a particularly good investment as such, especially if you also live in the house you're buying. You might very well come out on top but you expose yourself to several risks and are less prepared to face a crisis. |
How can the ROE on a stock be more than 100%? | A company's Return on Equity (ROE) is its net income divided by its shareholder's equity. The shareholder's equity is the difference between total assets and total liabilities, and is not dependent on the stock price. What it takes to have a ROE over 100% is to have the income be greater than the equity. This might happen for a variety of reasons, but one way a high ROE happens is if the shareholder's equity (the divisor) is small, which can occur if past losses have eroded the company's capital (the original invested cash and retained earnings). If the equity has become a small value, the income for some period might exceed it, and so the ROE would be over 100%. Operating margin is not closely related to ROE. Although operating income is related to net income, to calculate the margin you divide by sales, which is completely unrelated to shareholder's equity. So there is no relationship with ROE to be expected. Operating margin is primarily dependent on market conditions, and can be substantially different in different industries. |
Why does gold have value? | I think the primary reason it is so pricey now is that it is an inflation hedge, and considering how shaky the economies and out of control the spending is in many countries right now, people are running to it as a safe harbor. The increased demand raises the price as it does with any asset. This brings us to the titular question. Why does gold have value? The same reason anything has value. There is someone out there who wants it enough to trade something else of value to get it. It is in the news so much because it is so high right now, which unfortunately is going to cause a lot of people to foolishly invest in it at likely the worst possible time. |
Townhouse or stand-alone house for a first home? | If you buy a townhouse, you often are in a condominium arrangement in the US (when you're really in a rowhouse in particular). So that's a downside right away: you have to have a HOA, or at least some sort of common agreement, though it might not have formal meetings. Everyone who owns an interest in the entire group of townhouses gets some say in landscaping and such. Beyond that though, townhouses (and similarly, condominiums) are often easier to own (as they don't have as much maintenance that you have to do), but more expensive because you pay someone to do it (the landscaping, the external repairs, etc.). You likely don't have as much control over what the external looks like (because you have to be in agreement with the other owners), but you also don't have to do the work, unless your agreement is to collectively do the mowing/landscaping, which you should know in advance. I wouldn't underestimate the value of easier, by the way; it's very valuable to not have to deal with as many repairs and to be able to go a week without thinking about mowing or watering. In that sense it can be a nice transition into ownership, getting some-but-not-all of the obligations. But if that's something you really value, doing the landscaping and mowing and whatnot, that's relevant too. You can always tell your realtor to look for townhouses where the owners do some/all of the landscaping, though that opens up a different can of worms (where you rely on others to do work that they may not do, or do well). They're also somewhat noisier; you may be sharing a wall (but not necessarily, air-gap townhouses do exist) and either way will be closer to your neighbors. Does noise bother you? Conversely, are you noisy? In a college town this is probably something to pay attention to. Price wise, of course stay well within your means; if being close to the city center is important, that may lead you to buy a townhouse in that area. If being further out isn't a problem, you'll probably have similar choices in terms of price as long as you look in cheaper areas for single family homes. |
Using credit cards online: is it safe? | You're right that someone who, say, photographed the front of your card at the store could use it to make some online purchases. Schemes like Visa's 3-D Secure provide additional online security by having you enter your password on the issuer's website, but they aren't common yet in the US. But as littleadv says, you as the cardholder generally aren't liable for fraud (except $50 in some cases). Just be sure to check your statement monthly and notify the issuer of any fraud within 60 days. To issuers, fraud losses are fairly predictable, and the cost is acceptable. |
Can I save our credit with a quickie divorce? | My advice to you? Act like responsible adults and owe up to your financial commitments. When you bought your house and took out a loan from the bank, you made an agreement to pay it back. If you breach this agreement, you deserve to have your credit score trashed. What do you think will happen to the $100K+ if you decide to stiff the bank? The bank will make up for its loss by increasing the mortgage rates for others that are taking out loans, so responsible borrowers get to subsidize those that shirk their responsibilities. If you were in a true hardship situation, I would be inclined to take a different stance. But, as you've indicated, you are perfectly able to make the payments -- you just don't feel like it. Real estate fluctuates in value, just like any other asset. If a stock I bought drops in value, does the government come and bail me out? Of course not! What I find most problematic about your plan is that not only do you wish to breach your agreement, but you are also looking for ways to conceal your breach. Please think about this. Best of luck with your decision. |
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. |
Ethics and investment | Are there businesses which professionally invest ethically? Yes. The common term for this is "socially responsible investing". Looking at that page and googling that term should provide you with plenty of pointers to funds to investigate. Of course, the definitions of "ethical" and "socially responsible" vary from person to person and fund to fund. You'll have to take a look at each fund to see which ones match your principles. |
Can I buy only 4 shares of a company? | The least expensive way to buy such small amounts is through ING's Sharebuilder service. You can perform a real-time trade for $9, or you can add a one-time trade to their investment schedule for $4 (transaction will be processed on the next upcoming Tuesday morning). They also allow you to purchase fractional shares. |
Moving savings to Canada? | Yes, you can put assets in Canadian banks. Will it protect your wealth to a greater extent than the FDIC protection provided by the US Government? Probably not. If you do business or spend significant time in Canada, then having at least some money in Canada makes sense. Otherwise, you're trying to protect yourself against some outlying risk of a US banking collapse, while subjecting yourself to a very real currency exchange risk. |
Where should I park my money if I'm pessimistic about the economy and I think there will be high inflation? | The best investment is always in yourself and increasing your usable skills. If you invest the money in expanding your skills, it won't matter what the economy does, you will always be useful. |
Car dealer saying that they cannot see any credit information for my co-applicant. Could this be a scam? | By law, your wife can get her full Equifax credit report (sans-FICO score) instantly (once every 12 months) via https://www.annualcreditreport.com She can even get her FICO score with a 7-day free trial of Equifax Complete Premier. |
Taxes and withholding on unpaid salary | As others have said, make sure you can and do file your taxes on a cash basis (not accrual). It sounds like it's very unlikely the company is going to issue you a 1099 for invoices they never paid you. So you just file last year's taxes based on your income, which is the money you actually received. If they do pay you later, in the new year, you'll include that income on next year's tax return, and you would expect a 1099 at that time. Side note: not getting paid is unfortunately common for consultants and contractors. Take the first unpaid invoice and sue them in small claims court. After you win (and collect!), tell them you'll sue them for each unpaid invoice in turn until they pay you in full. (You might need to break up the lawsuits like that to remain under the small claims limit.) |
How smart is it to really be 100% debt free? | My take is that there are many factors to consider when deciding whether to accelerate payment of a debt beyond the require minimum. Ideally you would want to be debt-free with a home owned outright, a pension big enough to lead a nice life for the rest of your days and plenty of savings to cover any unexpected expenses. Being debt-free is not a bad thing but it should not come at the expense of your overall financial health. |
What evidence is there that rising interest rates causes Canadian condo prices to go down? | In general, prices are inversely proportional to rates; however, accurate interest rate prediction would make one worthy of managing a large credit derivative hedge fund. This is not to say that interest rates cannot go up in Canada since the world is currently undergoing a resource bust, and the United States has begun exporting more oil, even trying to recently open the market to Europe, both of which Canada is relatively dependent upon. Also, to say that Canada currently has the most overpriced real estate is an oversight to say the least considering China currently has entire cities that are empty because prices are too high. A ten to twenty percent drop in real estate prices would probably be a full blown financial crisis, and since mortgage rates are currently around 2.5%, a one to two hundred basis point rise could mean a nearly 50% decrease in real estate prices if interest payments are held constant. Canada would either have to start growing its economy at a much higher rate to encourage the central bank to raise rates to such a height, or oil would have to completely collapse suddenly to cause a speculatively possible collapse of CAD to encourage the same. The easiest relationship to manipulate between prices and rates is the perpetuity: where p is the price, i is the interest payment, and r is the interest rate. In this case, an increase of r from 2.5% to 4.5% would cause a 44.5% decrease in p if i is held constant. However, typical Canadian mortgages seem to mature in ten years at a fixed rate, so i cannot be held constant, and the relationship between r and p is less strong at earlier maturities, thus the most likely way for prices to collapse is for a financial collapse as described above. |
Renters Liability in Case of Liability Claims for Property Damage or Fire | The truth is anyone can sue anyone for anything. So yes you could be sued, but the more important part to measure is the probability of success. While this is probably more of a legal stack exchange question, in order for a successful suit there has to be proven at least some negligence on your part in the situation you cite. The very fact that the landlord is not willing to turn on the heat is probably enough to absolve you from any liability. Once you go down to a local store and purchase a UL certified heater then a suit would have a very low probability of success. Perhaps a case could be made if you made your own heater and it burned down the house. But that would require finding a jury that is sympathetic to landlords that will not provide heat for their tenants (highly unlikely). Could the landlord sue the heater company? Yes and would likely receive an out of court settlement. Even in the case that liability can be proven on your part, it is very unlikely you would be targeted. These type of suits target "deep pockets" or those with wealth. Unless something is specifically known about you having a high level of net worth a civil suit will not be brought against a "room renter" because of the lack of funds. People in your demographic tend not to have a lot of money. (No offense intended, I was there myself once.) In the case that you do have a high net worth, then get renters insurance and possibly an umbrella policy. It is a small price to pay to protect a significant amount of assets. If I was in your shoes here is what I would do: |
Does a US LLC need to file taxes if owned by a foreign citizen? | First, yes, your LLC has to file annual taxes to the US government. All US companies do, regardless of where their owners live. Second, you will also probably be liable to personally file a return in the US and unless the US has a tax treaty with India (which I don't believe it does) you may end up paying taxes on your same income to both countries. Finally, opening a US bank account as a foreign citizen can be very tricky. You need to talk to a US accountant who is familiar with Indian & US laws. |
How do I read technicals for tickers that move together but are slightly different? | Following comments to your question here, you posted a separate question about why SPY, SPX, and the options contract don't move perfectly together. That's here Why don't SPY, SPX, and the e-mini s&p 500 track perfectly with each other? I provided an answer to that question and will build on it to answer what I think you're asking on this question. Specifically, I explained what it means that these are "all based on the S&P." Each is a different entity, and different market forces keep them aligned. I think talking about "technicals" on options contracts is going to be too confusing since they are really a very different beast based on forward pricing models, so, for this question, I'll focus on only SPY and SPX. As in my other answer, it's only through specific market forces (the creation / redemption mechanism that I described in my other answer), that they track at all. There's nothing automatic about this and it has nothing to do with some issuer of SPY actually holding stock in the companies that comprise the SPX index. (That's not to say that the company does or doesn't hold, just that this doesn't drive the prices.) What ever technical signals you're tracking, will reflect all of the market forces at play. For SPX (the index), that means some aggregate behavior of the component companies, computed in a "mathematically pure" way. For SPY (the ETF), that means (a) the behavior of SPX and (b) the behavior of the ETF as it trades on the market, and (c) the action of the authorized participants. These are simply different things. Which one is "right"? That depends on what you want to do. In theory you might be able to do some analysis of technical signals on SPY and SPX and, for example, use that to make money on the way that they fail to track each other. If you figure out how to do that, though, don't post it here. Send it to me directly. :) |
Why do banks finance shared construction as mortgages instead of financing it directly and selling the apartments in a building? | Remember that risk should correlate with returns, in an investment. This means that the more risk you take on, the more return you should be receiving, in an efficient marketplace. That's why putting your money in a savings account might earn you <1% interest right now, but putting money in the stock market averages ~7% returns over time. You should be very careful not to use the word 'interest' when you mean 'returns'. In your post, you are calling capital gains (the increase in value of owned property) 'interest'. This may be understating in your head the level of risk associated with property ownership. In the case of the bank, they are not in the business of home construction. Rather than take that risk themselves, they would rather finance many projects being done by construction companies that know the business. The bank has a high degree of certainty of getting its money back, because its mortgages are protected by the value of the property. Part of the benefit of an efficient marketplace is that risk gets 'bought' by individuals who want it. This means that people with a low-risk tolerance (such as banks, people on fixed incomes, seniors, etc.) can avoid risk, and people with a high risk tolerance (stock investors, young people with high income, etc.) can take on that risk for higher average returns. The bank's reasoning should remind you of the risk associated with property ownership: increases in value are not a sure thing. If you do not understand the risk of your investment, you cannot be certain that you are being well compensated for that risk. Note also that most countries place regulations on their banks that limit the amount of their funds that can be placed in 'higher risk' asset classes. Typically, this something along the lines of "If someone places a deposit with your bank, you can only invest that deposit in a low-risk debt-based asset [ie: you can take money deposited by customer A and use it to finance a mortgage for customer B]". This is done in an attempt to prevent collapse of the financial sector, if risky investments start failing. |
How can I find a list of self-select stocks & shares ISA providers? | My go-to response whenever anyone asks me this is the Monevator table of platform fees. It looks a little complicated at first, but scroll past the table for a couple of paragraphs of useful info to help narrow down your search. The general tone of the page is geared more towards investors in index funds, but the fees on share-dealing are right there in the table too. There are also special notes if there are discounts for frequent traders and that sort of thing, so not too much passive-investor elitism on show! |
Filing a corporation tax return online? | This may not exactly answer your question but, as a small business owner, I would highly recommend having a professional handle your taxes. It is worth the money to have it done correctly rather than doing something wrong and getting audited or worse having penalties assessed and owing more than you thought would be possible. I would recommend this especially if this is how you make your primary income, you can always write it off as a business expense. |
Does the “Free Ride” rule always apply to your entire collection of shares in a particular stock? | Your question is unanswerable as you haven't provided enough information. I.e. If those shares cost $1000 and you have $50000 ( or any number above $1000) of cash available in the account then you can't possibly free ride. I think your understanding of the free ride rule is incorrect. Basically what this rule is stating is that you have to have the cash when the trade is placed in order to settle the trade. Otherwise you are taking on margin (which you can't do in a cash account). So at order entry you have to have the cash to cover the purchase so it's able to be settled. If you do, no problem and you can sell that stock before trade settlement. There is no law that says you have to hold it past trade settlement. However, you cannot spend the same dollar more than once before it settles. This site does a good job explaining this more throughly with examples: http://www.invest-faq.com/articles/trade-day-free-ride.html |
One of my stocks dropped 40% in 2 days, how should I mentally approach this? | First: do you understand why it dropped? Was it overvalued before, or is this an overreaction to some piece of news about them, or about their industry, or...? Arguably, if you can't answer that, you aren't paying enough attention to have been betting on that individual stock. Assuming you do understand why this price swing occurred -- or if you're convinced you know better than the folks who sold at that price -- do you believe the stock will recover a significant part of its value any time soon, or at least show a nice rate of growth from where it is now? If so, you might want to hold onto it, risking further losses against the chance of recovering part or all of what is -- at this moment -- only a loss on paper. Basically: if, having just seen it drop, you'd still consider buying it at the new price you should "buy it from yourself" and go on from here. That way at least you aren't doing exactly what you hope to avoid, buying high and selling low. Heck, if you really believe in the stock, you could see this as a buying opportunity... On the other hand, if you do not believe you would buy it now at its new price, and if you see an alternative which will grow more rapidly, you should take your losses and move your money to that other stock. Or split the difference if you aren't sure which is better but can figure out approximately how unsure you are. The question is how you move on from here, more than how you got here. What happened happened. What do you think will happen next, and how much are you willing to bet on it? On the gripping hand: This is part of how the market operates. Risk and potential reward tend to be pretty closely tied to each other. You can reduce risk by diversifying across multiple investments so no one company/sector/market can hurt you too badly --- and almost anyone sane will tell you that you should diversify -- but that means giving up some of the chance for big winnings too. You probably want to be cautious with most of your money and go for the longer odds only with a small portion that you can afford to lose on. If this is really stressing you out, you may not want to play with individual stocks. Mutual funds have some volatility too, but they're inherently diversified to a greater or lesser extent. They will rarely delight you, but they won't usually slap you this way either. |
Are there alternatives to double currency account to manage payments in different currencies? | Yes, there is indeed a great alternative for all European residents: getting a Revolut account. Revolut is a fully-online bank who's main benefits include the lack of fees (with some limits) and a great exchange rate for all currency operations (better than what you would get at any brick and mortar bank in Europe). In your particular scenario it would work as following: This is what I personally use to handle a salary in EUR while living in Czech Republic. Things might change in the future once they run out of investor money, but for now it's the only solution I know for converting currencies without a loss. |
Does the bid/ask concept exist in dealer markets? | The Auction Market is where investors such you and me, as well as Market Makers, buy and sell securities. The Auction Markets operate with the familiar bid-ask pricing that you see on financial pages such as Google and Yahoo. The Market Makers are institutions that are there to provide liquidity so that investors can easily buy and sell shares at a "fair" price. Market Makers need to have on hand a suitable supply of shares to meet investor demands. When Market Makers feel the need to either increase or decrease their supply of a particular security quickly, they turn to the Dealer Market. In order to participate in a Dealer Market, you must be designated a Market Maker. As noted already, Market Makers are dedicated to providing liquidity for the Auction Market in certain securities and therefore require that they have on hand a suitable supply of those securities which they support. For example, if a Market Maker for Apple shares is low on their supply of Apple shares, then will go the Dealer Market to purchase more Apple shares. Conversely, if they are holding what they feel are too many Apple shares, they will go to the Dealer Market to sell Apple shares. The Dealer Market does operate on a bid-ask basis, contrary to your stated understanding. The bid-ask prices quoted on the Dealer Market are more or less identical to those on the Auction Market, except the quote sizes will be generally much larger. This is the case because otherwise, why would a Market Maker offer to sell shares to another Market Maker at a price well below what they could themselves sell them for in the Auction Market. (And similarly with buy orders.) If Market Makers are generally holding low quantities of a particular security, this will drive up the price in both the Dealer Market and the Auction Market. Similarly, if Market Makers are generally holding too much of a particular security, this may drive down prices on both the Auction Market and the Dealer Market. |
Setting a trailing stop loss at $39.70 bid price, stock sold at $41 | Is this due to the delay? Yes, but the delay is caused by your broker and its affiliates. Trailing Stop Order is not exchange native, meaning that the broker is responsible for keeping track of whether the stop price has been reached, and the broker is responsible for sending the subsequent Market Order to the exchange. For certain exchange, even Stop Order or Stop Limit Order is not exchange native. Is it common to be so different? No, only in times of extreme volatility. |
Why should we expect stocks to go up in the long term? | The total value of the stock market more or less tracks the total value of the companies listed in the stock market, which is more or less the total value of the US economy (since very few industries are nationalized or dominated by privately held companies). The US economy has consistently grown over time, thanks to the wonders of industrialization, the discovery of new markets, new natural resources, etc. Thus, the stock market has continued to grow as well. Will it forever? No. The United States will not exist for ever. But there's no obvious reason it won't continue to grow, at least for a while, though of course if I could accurately predict that I would be far richer than I am. Why do other countries not have the same result? China is its own ball of wax since it's a sort-of-market-sort-of-command economy. Japan has major issues economically right now and doesn't really have the natural or people resources; it also had a huge market bubble a while back that it's never recovered from. And many European countries are doing fine. German's DAX30 index was at around 2500 in 2004 and is now at nearly 13000. That's pretty fast growth. If you go back further (there was a crash ending in around 2004), you can see around the fall of the Berlin wall it was still around 2000; even going that far back, that's about an 8% annual bump. The FTSE was also around 2000 back then, around 8000 now, which is around 5% annual growth. Many of these indexes were more seriously hurt than the US markets in the two major crashes of this millenium; while the US markets fell a lot in 2008, they didn't fall nearly as much as many smaller markets in 2002, so had less to recover from. Both DAX and FTSE suffered similar falls in 2002 to 2008, and so even though during good periods they've grown quite quickly, they haven't overall done as well as they could have given the crashes. |
What to do with $50,000? | Here is some good advice, read your UCO prospectus. It seems to hold 20% of it's value ($600MM out of $3B) via 13800 of the Apr 21st 2015 contracts. (expiring in 30 days) Those will be rolled very quickly into the May contracts at a significant loss of NAV. (based on current oil futures chains) Meaning if crude oil stays exactly the same price, you'd still lose 1% (5% spread loss * .20% the percentage of NAV based off futures contracts) on the roll each month. Their other $2.4Billion is held in swaptions or cash, unsure how to rate that exposure. All I know is those 13,800 contracts are in contango danger during roll week for the next few months (IMO). I wonder if there is a website that tracks inflows and outflows to see if they match up with before and after the roll periods. http://www.proshares.com/funds/uco_daily_holdings.html How Oil ETFs Work Many oil ETFs invest in oil futures contracts. An oil futures contract is a commitment to buy a given amount of crude oil at a given price on a particular date in the future. Since the purpose of oil ETFs is only to serve as an investment vehicle to track the price of oil, the creators of the fund have no interest in stockpiling actual oil. Therefore, oil ETFs such as USO periodically “roll over” their futures contracts by selling the contracts that are approaching expiration and buying contracts that expire farther into the future. The Contango Problem While this process of continually rolling over futures contracts may seem like a great way to track the price of crude oil, there’s a practical problem with the method: contango. The rollover method would work perfectly if oil funds could sell their expiring contracts for the exact same price that they pay for the futures contracts they buy each month. However, in reality, it’s often true that oil futures contracts get more expensive the farther their expiration date is in the future. That means that every time the oil ETFs roll over their contracts, they lose the difference in value between the contracts they sell and the contracts they buy. That’s why funds like USO, which invests only in WTI light, sweet crude oil futures contracts, don’t directly track the performance of the WTI crude oil spot price. http://www.etftrends.com/2015/01/positioning-for-an-oil-etf-rebound-watch-for-contango/ Due to these reasons, I'd deem UCO for swing trading, not for 'investing' (buy-and-hold). Maybe later I'll remember why one shouldn't buy and hold leveraged vehicles (leverage slippage/decay). Do you have an exit price in mind ? or are you buy and hold ? |
Finance, Cash or Lease? | Now, to buy in full (and essentially have zero savings), buy in part (£10000 deposit, followed by a loan of £4000) or PCP/HP more of the value? So, you are assessing if the car is worth having with either none or only 4,000 in savings. This is the most critical information you have provided. My outright opinion is to always buy a mildly used car as I hate the idea of loans and interest. With the amount of money that you currently possess, I believe the "Buy-in-part" option is best as it reduces your interest liability; but, I don't believe you should do it currently. 4,000 is a rather small cash fund for if something were to go boom in the night. As for your question of interest: This is completely dependent on the amount you are able to pay per period and the total interest you are willing to spend, rows four and seven respectively. This is your money, and no one can tell you what's best to do with it than yourself. Keep looking for good leasing deals or if you think you can survive financial strife with 4,000 then follow your heart. "Depreciation" fluctuates to the buyer, so never assume what the car may lose in the next 2-3 years. Hope it all goes well my friend. |
Setting up a LLC for two partners in different states, what should we look into? | TL;DR: Get a tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) for tax issues, and a lawyer for the Operating Agreement, labor law and contract related issues. Some things are not suitable for DIY unless you know exactly what you're doing. We both do freelance work currently just through our personal names. What kind of taxes are we looking into paying into the business (besides setup of everything) compared to being a self proprietor? (I'm seeing that the general answer is no, as long as income is <200k, but not certain). Unless you decide to have your LLC taxed as a corporation, there's no change in taxes. LLC, by default, is a pass-through entity and all income will flow to your respective tax returns. From tax perspective, the LLC will be treated as a partnership. It will file form 1065 to report its income, and allocate the income to the members/partners on schedules K-1 which will be given to you. You'll use the numbers on the K-1 to transfer income allocated to you to your tax returns and pay taxes on that. Being out of state, will she incur more taxes from the money being now filtered through the business? Your employee couldn't care less about your tax problems. She will continue receiving the same salary whether you are a sole proprietor or a LLC, or Corporatoin. What kind of forms are we looking into needing/providing when switching to a LLC from freelance work? Normally we just get 1099's, what would that be now? Your contract counterparts couldn't care less about your tax problems. Unless you are a corporation, people who pay you more than $600 a year must file a 1099. Since you'll be a partnership, you'll need to provide the partnership EIN instead of your own SSN, but that's the only difference. Are LLC's required to pay taxes 4 times per year? We would definitely get an accountant for things, but being as this is side work, there will be times where we choose to not take on clients, which could cause multiple months of no income. Obviously we would save for when we need to pay taxes, but is there a magic number that says "you must now pay four times per year". Unless you choose to tax your LLC as a corporation, LLC will pay no taxes. You will need to make sure you have enough withholding to cover for the additional income, or pay the quarterly estimates. The magic number is $1000. If your withholding+estimates is $1000 less than what your tax liability is, you'll be penalized, unless the total withholding+estimates is more than 100% of your prior year tax liability (or 110%, depending on the amounts). The LLC would be 50% 50%, but that work would not always be that. We will be taking on smaller project through the company, so there will be times where one of us could potentially be making more money. Are we setting ourselves up for disaster if one is payed more than the other while still having equal ownership? Partnerships can be very flexible, and equity split doesn't have to be the same as income, loss or assets split. But, you'll need to have a lawyer draft your operational agreement which will define all these splits and who gets how much in what case. Make sure to cover as much as possible in that agreement in order to avoid problems later. |
Will I be paid dividends if I own shares? | gnasher729, was able to see my problem here. It was a silly oversight. It's not 50p a share, its 0.5p a share. @Bezzzo: The dividend is not 50p per share, it is 0.50p per share - half a penny per share. Thanks! |
Return on asset (ROA) value for a stock is reported differently on Yahoo Finance and MarketWatch | IESC has a one-time, non-repeatable event in its operating income stream. It magnifies operating income by about a factor of five. It impacts both the numerator and the denominator. Without knowing exactly how the adjustments are made it would take too much work for me to calculate it exactly, but I did get close to their number using a relatively crude adjustment rule. Basically, Yahoo is excluding one-time events from its definitions since, although they are classified as operating events, they distort the financial record. I teach securities analysis and have done it as a profession. If I had to choose between Yahoo and Marketwatch, at least for this security, I would clearly choose Yahoo. |
When should I walk away from my mortgage? | How much is rent in your area? You should compare a rental payment versus your mortgage payment now, bearing in mind the opportunity cost of the difference. Let's say that a rental unit in your area that has the same safety & convenience as your house costs $1600 per month to rent, and your mortgage is $2400. By staying in the house, you are losing that $800 month as well as interest earned on banking that money (however, right now, interest rates are negligible). Factor in total cost of ownership too, meaning extra utilities for one or the other (sometimes houses are cheaper, sometime not), property insurance and taxes for the house (if they aren't already in escrow through your mortgage) and generic house repair stuff. If the savings for a rental are worth more than a couple hundred a month, then I suggest you consider bailing. Start multiplying $500-1000 per month out over a year or two and decide if that extra cash is better for you than crappy credit. Also, this is not the most ethical thing, but I do know of one couple who stopped paying their mortgage for several months, knowing they were going to give the house back at the end. They took what they would have spent in mortgage payments during that time into a savings account, and will have more than enough cash to float for the few years that their credit is lowered by the default. Also something to consider is that we are in a time of ridiculous numbers of people defaulting. As such, a poor credit score might start to be more common among people with decent incomes, to the point where a "poor" score in 5 years is worth about the same as an "average" score today. I wouldn't count on that, but it might soften the blow of your bad credit if you default. |
Would it make sense to take a loan from a relative to pay off student loans? | Would it make sense to take a loan from a relative... Other people have pointed this out, but honestly, I'd be very reluctant to answer "yes" to this no matter how you completed that sentence. There's always an intangible risk to mixing money and relationships. There's a lot that can go wrong during the duration of the loan, and if it does, the consequences could be a lot greater than just a bad credit score. |
Recourse with Credit Card company after victimized by fraud? | If the business is being investigated by your state's Attorney General's office, then your first call should be to that office. They will be able to help you in a few ways, even if they can't explicitly resolve the situation, and they also would undoubtedly appreciate your information to add to their case as well. First, they may be able to tell you how other victims have had their cases resolved, particularly if any went to court on their own. While they won't be able to provide you with personal information of the other victims unless it is public knowledge (via a court case), the information about how the other victims resolved the cases may be helpful - both to show what to do, and what not to do. Second, they may be able to put you in contact with an attorney who is handling other cases like yours. That may reduce the cost of the attorney (as they'll have already done some of the work), and may mean that the attorney is willing to work with no up front fee on the assumption of winning the case. Third, if there are options for getting your money back without a court case, the AG's office may be able to help provide those as well. If the Attorney General's office is unable to help you, then your best bet is to contact an attorney on your own - look for one who specializes in consumer protection and fraud. This is the purpose attorneys exist for: pursuing your interests against another's. Let them do their job. Do make an effort to find a good, honest attorney; you may find some help on how to do this on law.se if you need it (not actual recommendations, mind you, just help with how you would go about finding one). It sounds like your claim would be above and beyond the level of a small claims court lawsuit, but verify this in your jurisdiction; if small claims court goes up to $10,000, you may be able to pursue it there on your own - but I would still get some help from an attorney, at least finding out what you would need to win. |
What are the reasons to get more than one credit card? | Someone mentioned sign up bonuses but only mentioned dollar values. You might get points, sweet, sweet airline points :) which some might find compelling enough to churn cards so they always have a few open. |
Is the stock market too risky for long term retirement funds? Why should a 20- or 30-something person invest in stocks? | I would start with long term data. It would show how 40 years worth of stock investing puts the investor so far ahead of the "safe" investor that they can afford to lose half and still be ahead. But - then I would explain about asset allocation, and how the soon to be retired person had better be properly allocated if they weren't all along so that the impact of down years is mitigated. The retiree is still a long term investor as life spans of 90 are common. Look at the long term charts for the major indexes. So long as you average in, reinvest earnings (dividends) and stay diversified, you will be ahead. The market is still not where it was at the end of 2001, but in the decade, our worth has risen from 5X our income to 12.5X. This was not genius, just a combination of high savings and not panicking. |
How do I get a Tax Exemption Certificate for export from the US if I am in another country? | Assuming you are being charged sales tax, it all depends on where you take possession of the shipment. Are your suppliers shipping to a US address, say your freight forwarder, from where you handle the ongoing shipment, or directly to you in South America? If the latter, per Michael Pryor's answer, you should not be charged sales tax. If the former, if the address is in a state in which your supplier has a physical location they will have to charge sales tax. That said, your freight forwarder should be able to furnish your supplier with a letter stating that the goods have been exported (with a copy of the relevant Bill of Lading) which will allow your supplier to refund you the taxes (a company I was at before would allow refunds up to two years past the date of sale per various tax regulations). Alternatively, you could see if just a letter of intent from your freight forwarder is enough to not charge you in the first place, but that's technically not proof of exportation. You might be able to get a refund or an exception from the state's tax department directly, but I would recommend going through your supplier - much less hassle. |
Is there a dollar amount that, when adding Massachusetts Sales Tax, precisely equals $200? | Don't worry about it. The State doesn't care about rounding error. All you need to do is say "We charge our prices with tax included" - you know, like carnivals and movie theaters. Then follow the procedures your state specifies for computing reportable tax. Quite likely it wants your pre-tax sales total for the reporting period. To get that, total up your gross sales that you collected, and divide by (1 + tax rate). Just like DJClayworth says, except do it on total sales instead of per-item. If you need to do the split per-transaction for Quickbooks or something, that's annoying. What Quickbooks says will be pennies off the method I describe above. The state don't care as long as it's just pennies, or in their favor. |
What's the catch with biweekly mortgage payments? | Depending on who you have the loan through and how they figure the interest charges (whether daily, monthly, bi-monthly, etc. normally monthly I would assume), your interest is probably figured either daily or once a month. Let's assume that it is figured daily, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to make bi-weekly payments. At 4% Annual Interest on a $150,000 home loan the interested added each day is about $16.44, but it doesn't stop there because it is compounding interest daily so the next day it becomes 4% of 150,0016.44 (which is negligibly larger amount) and they will tack on another $16.44. So what will happen is that the amount of interest you owe grows rather quickly, especially if you miss a monthly payment. Everyone knows that the faster you pay something off the less interest you pay, but not everyone knows the formula for compounding interest. a quick Google search rendered this site with a simple explanation Compound Interest Formula unfortunately this formula doesn't take into account the payments being made. The big thing with making your payments bi-weekly rather than a bigger payment once a month is that you pay off some of that principle right away and it won't collect interest for 14 more days. if the interest is only calculated once a month, make your full payment before the interest is calculated, the same goes for your credit cards. |
What does a well diversified self-managed investment portfolio look like? | Diversified is relative. Alfred has all his money in Apple. He's done very well over the last 10 years, but I think most investors would say that he's taking an incredible risk by putting everything on one stock. Betty has stock in Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Compared to Alfred, she is diversified. Charlie looks at Betty and realizes that she is only investing in one particular industry. All the companies in an individual industry can have a downturn together, so he invests everything in an S&P 500 index fund. David looks at Charlie and notes that he's got everything in large, high-capitalization companies. Small-cap stocks are often where the growth happens, so he invests in a total stock market fund. Evelyn realizes that David has all his money tied up in one country, the United States. What about the rest of the world? She invests in a global fund. Frank really likes Evelyn's broad approach to equities, but he knows that some portion of fixed-income assets (e.g. cash deposits, bonds) can reduce portfolio volatility—and may even enhance returns through periodic rebalancing. He does what Evelyn does, but also allocates some percentage of his portfolio to fixed income, and intends to maintain his target allocations. Being diversified enough depends on your individual goals and investing philosophy. There are some who would say that it is wrong to put all of your money in one fund, no matter what it is. Others would say that a sufficiently broad index fund is inherently diversified as-is. |
Why would anyone want to pay off their debts in a way other than “highest interest” first? | Another unmentioned reason: flexibility and liquidity. There is a fundamental difference between installment and revolving debt, such that it could be rational to pay revolving debt before an amortizing loan. Lets say you have 100K in cash, a 100K mortgage at 4% and 4 25K credit cards at maximum balance and a 0% promotional rate (at least for now). If you pay off the mortgage, you may not get liquidity if you need it. This path is not necessarily reversible. If you pay off the credit cards, you have 100K of credit available to you. You can reverse to the case of having 100K in cash, and 200K in debt. |
Why do financial institutions charge so much to convert currency? | Banks do of course incur costs on currency transactions. But they're not as high as the fee charged to the customer. Most banks in most places lose a lot of money on operating bank accounts for customers, and make the money back by charging more than their costs for services like currency exchange. If you don't choose to pay those fees, use an online service instead. But bear in mind that if everyone does so then banks will be forced to charge higher fees for current accounts. |
Buy or sell futures contracts | We struck a deal. I sold an asset to some body on june 1 . However he says, he would pay me any time on or before august 1st . This puts me in a dilemma. What if price goes down by august 1st and i would have to accept lower payment from him.? If price goes up till august 1st, then obviously i make money since ,even though item is sold,price is yet to be fixed between parties. However i know anytime on or before august 1st, i would get paid the price quoted on that particular day. This price could be high in my favor, or low against me. And, this uncertainty is causing me sleepless nights. i went to futures market exchange. My item (sugar,gold,wheat,shares etc..anything). i short sell a futures which just happens to be equivalent to the quantity of my amount i sold to the acquirer of my item. I shorted at $ 100 , with expiry on august 1st. Now fast orward and august 1st comes. price is $ 120 quoted . lets Get paid from the guy who was supposed to pay on or before august 1st. He pays 120 $. his bad luck, he should have paid us 100 $ on june 1st instead of waiting for august 1st . His judgement of price movement faulted. WE earned 20 $ extra than we expected to earn on june 1st (100$) . However the futures short of 100$ is now 120$ and you must exit your position by purchasing it at back. sell at 100$ and buy at 120$ = loss of 20$ . Thus 20 $ gained from selling item is forwarded to exchange . Thus we had hedged our position on june 1st and exit the hedge by august 1st. i hope this helps |
Interest on security deposits paid to landlords, in Michigan? | NO. The legislation requires the landlord to deposit it in a bank. Check out pages 7-10 of the linked document. There is no mention of interest. The second clause, I believe, is probably for large landlords who hold hundreds of thousands of dollars of security. http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/publications/tenantlandlord.pdf Q4 Once collected, what must the landlord do with the security deposit? The landlord must either: a) Deposit the money with a regulated financial institution (e.g., bank), OR b) Deposit a cash bond or surety bond, to secure the entire deposit, with the Secretary of State. ( Note: If the landlord does this, he or she may use the money at any time, for any purpose.) The bond ensures that there is money available to repay the tenant’s security deposit |
Sanity check on choosing the term for a mortgage refinance | One thing you didn't mention is whether the 401(k) offers a match. If it does, this is a slam-dunk. The $303 ($303, right?) is $3636/yr that will be doubled on deposit. It's typical for the first 5% of one's salary to capture the match, so this is right there. In 15 years, you'll still owe $76,519. But 15 * $7272 is $109,080 in your 401(k) even without taking any growth into account. The likely value of that 401(k) is closer to $210K, using 8% over that 15 years, (At 6%, it drops to 'only' $176K, but as I stated, the value of the match is so great that I'd jump right on that.) If you don't get a match of any kind, I need to edit / completely rip my answer. It morphs into whether you feel that 15 years (Really 30) the market will exceed the 4% cost of that money. Odds are, it will. The worst 15 year period this past century 2000-2014 still had a CAGR of 4.2%. |
When the market crashes, should I sell bonds and buy equities for the inevitable recovery? | When the market moves significantly, you should rebalance your investments to maintain the diversification ratios you have selected. That means if bonds go up and stocks go down, you sell bonds and buy stocks (to some degree), and vice versa. Sell high to buy low, and remember that over the long run most things regress to the mean. |
What are the ins/outs of writing equipment purchases off as business expenses in a home based business? | First of all, Dilip's answer explains well how the business deductions generally work. For most (big) expenses you depreciate it. However, in some cases you need to capitalize it, which is another accounting method. When you capitalize your expense, it becomes part of the basis of the product you're creating. Since you're an engineer, this might be relevant for you. Talk to your tax adviser. How exactly you deduct/depreciate/capitalize things, and what expense goes which way depends greatly on the laws and jurisdictions. Even in the US, different states have different laws, and the IRS and State laws don't have to conform (unfortunately). For example, the limitations on Sec. 179 deduction in 2010-2011 were 20 times higher on Federal level than in the State of California. This could have lead to cases where you fully deducted your expense on your Federal tax return, but need to continue and depreciate it on your State return (or vice versa). Good tax adviser is crucial to avoid or manage these cases. |
Is there such a thing as “stock insurance”? | Not that I am aware. If you are trying to mitigate losses from stock purchases, you may want to consider stock mutual funds. This is why single stocks can be extremely risky. |
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