Question stringlengths 14 166 | Answer stringlengths 3 17k |
|---|---|
How should I prepare for the next financial crisis? | Your asset mix should reflect your own risk tolerance. Whatever the ideal answer to your question, it requires you to have good timing, not once, but twice. Let me offer a personal example. In 2007, the S&P hit its short term peak at 1550 or so. As it tanked in the crisis, a coworker shared with me that he went to cash, on the way down, selling out at about 1100. At the bottom, 670 or so, I congratulated his brilliance (sarcasm here) and as it passed 1300 just 2 years later, again mentions how he must be thrilled he doubled his money. He admitted he was still in cash. Done with stocks. So he was worse off than had he held on to his pre-crash assets. For sake of disclosure, my own mix at the time was 100% stock. That's not a recommendation, just a reflection of how my wife and I were invested. We retired early, and after the 2013 excellent year, moved to a mix closer to 75/25. At any time, a crisis hits, and we have 5-6 years spending money to let the market recover. If a Japanesque long term decline occurs, Social Security kicks in for us in 8 years. If my intent wasn't 100% clear, I'm suggesting your long term investing should always reflect your own risk tolerance, not some short term gut feel that disaster is around the corner. |
Growth rate plus dividend yieid total? | Avoiding the complexities of tax [dividends likely taxed the year they are received, barring special tax accounts which many countries implement in for example, locked-in retirement type accounts; share growth is likely only taxed when sold / on death / on expatriation / similar], and assuming you reinvest the dividends every year in new shares, then yes, total growth in your account is the same whether that growth is comprised of entirely dividends, entirely share increase, or a mixture of both. It is those caveats (tax + reinvestment) which could change things. |
How long does it take for a Tangerine no-fee money-transfer email to be delivered? | I phoned Tangerine; they enlightened me. It generally takes 2 hours for the email to arrive. Next, the recipient must open the email, click the link, and enter their bank account number. They'll generally receive the money 2-3 business days after that. This forum post suggests that the delays are due to systemic risk management, tendering, and clearing. |
Can I claim a tax deduction for working from home as an employee? I work there 90% of the time | The general rule is: Generally, in order to claim a business deduction for your home, you must use part of your home exclusively and regularly: Exclusively seems to be the toughest standard and I do not know exactly how strict the IRS's interpretation is. Working in your living room where you regularly watch TV and have people over on the weekends would seem to fail that test. A separate room with your computer in it would pass it. If it was your only computer and you regularly played online games with it, that would seem to be a grey area. The IRA booklet covering this area is here http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p587.pdf I know people that have rented rooms in other places or made use of rental offices for this purpose. |
Does the currency exchange rate contain any additional information at all? | No. An exchange rate tells you the exchange rate, that's all. Changes in exchange rates are a little more interesting because they suggest economic changes (or anticipation of such), but since the exchange rate is the composite of many economic forces, determining what changes may be in action from an exchange rate change is not really possible. |
Why are interest rates on saving accounts so low in USA and Europe? | The short answer is that banking is complicated, but the bank really doesn't need your money because it can get it from the Fed almost free, it can only use 90% of the money you give the bank, it can only make money on that 90% from very low-risk and thus low-return investments, and as it has to show a profit to its shareholders it will take whatever cut it needs to off the top of the returns. All of these things combine to make savings account interest roughly .05% in the US right now. The longer answer: All FDIC-insured banks (which the US requires all "depositor" banks to be) are subject to regulation by the Federal Reserve. The very first rule that all banks must comply with is that depositor money cannot be invested in things the Fed terms "risky". This limits banks from investing your money in things that have high returns, like stocks, commodities and hedges, because along with the high possible returns come high risk. Banks typically can only invest your savings in T-debt and in certain Fed-approved AAA bonds, which have very low risk and so very little return. The investment of bank assets into risky market funds was a major contributor to the financial crisis; with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, banks had been allowed to integrate their FDIC-insured depositor business with their "investment banking" business (not FDIC insured). While still not allowed to bet on "risky" investments with deposits, banks were using their own money (retained profits, corporate equity/bond money) to bet heavily in the markets, and were investing depositor funds in faulty AAA-rated investment objects like CDOs. When the housing market crashed, banks had to pull out of the investment market and cash in hedges like credit-default swaps to cover the depositor losses, which sent a tidal wave through the rest of the market. Banks really can't even loan your money out to people who walk in, like you'd think they would and which they traditionally used to do; that's how the savings and loan crisis happened, when speculators took out huge loans to invest, lost the cash, declared bankruptcy and left the S&Ls (and ultimately the FDIC) on the hook for depositors' money. So, the upshot of all this is that the bank simply won't give you more on your money than it is allowed to make on it. In addition, there are several tools that the Fed has to regulate economic activity, and three big ones play a part. First is the "Federal Funds Rate"; this is the interest rate that the Fed charges on loans made to other banks (which is a primary source of day-to-day liquidity for these banks). Money paid as interest to the Fed is effectively removed from the economy and is a way to reduce the money supply. Right now the FFR is .25% (that's one quarter of one percent) which is effectively zero; borrow a billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) from the Fed for one month and you'll pay them a scant $208,333. Banks lend to other banks at a rate based on the FFR, called the Interbank Rate (usually adding some fraction of a percent so the lending bank makes money on the loan). This means that the banks can get money from the Fed and from other banks very cheaply, which means they don't have to offer high interest rates on savings to entice individual depositors to save their money with the bank. Second is "quantitative easing", which just means the Fed buys government bonds and pays for them with "new" money. This happens all the time; remember those interest charges on bank loans? To keep the money supply stable, the Fed must buy T-debt at least in the amount of the interest being charged, otherwise the money leaves the economy and is not available to circulate. The Fed usually buys a little more than it collects in order to gradually increase the money supply, which allows the economy to grow while controlling inflation (having "too much money" and so making money worth less than what it can buy). What's new is that the Fed is increasing the money supply by a very large amount, by buying bonds far in excess of the (low) rates it's charging, and at fixed prices determined by the yield the Fed wants to induce in the markets. In the first place, with the Fed buying so many, there are fewer for institutions and other investors to buy. This increases the demand, driving down yields as investors besides the Fed are willing to pay a similar price, and remember that T-debt is one of the main things banks are allowed to invest your deposits in. Inflation isn't a concern right now despite the large amount of new money being injected, because the current economy is so lackluster right now that the new cash is just being sat upon by corporations and being used by consumers to pay down debt, instead of what the Fed and Government want us to do (hire, update equipment, buy houses and American cars, etc). In addition, the "spot market price" for a T-bond, or any investment security, is generally what the last guy paid. By buying Treasury debt gradually at a fixed price, the Fed can smooth out "jitters" in the spot price that speculators may try to induce by making low "buy offers" on T-debt to increase yields. Lastly, the Fed can tell banks that they must keep a certain amount of their deposits in "reserve", basically by keeping them in a combination of cash in the vault, and in accounts with the Fed itself. This has a dual purpose; higher reserve rates allow a bank to weather a "run" (more people than usual wanting their money) and thus reduces risk of failure. An increased reserves amount also reduces the amount of money circulating in the economy, because obviously if the banks have to keep a percentage of assets in cash, they can't invest that cash. Banks are currently required to keep 10% of "deposited assets" (the sum of all checking and savings accounts, but not CDs) in cash. This compounds the other problems with banks' investing; not only are they not getting a great return on your savings, they can only use 90% of your savings to get it. |
If a startup can always issue new shares, what value is there to stocks/options? | It's called "dilution". Usually it is done to attract more investors, and yes - the existing share holders will get diluted and their share of ownership shrinks. As a shareholder you can affect the board decisions (depends on your stake of ownership), but usually you'll want to attract more investors to keep the company running, so not much you can do to avoid it. The initial investors/employees in a startup company are almost always diluted out. Look at what happened to Steve Jobs at Apple, as an example. |
Why not pay in full upfront for a car? | Possible (unlikely) reasons: But usually, yeah, if you can pay cash, you should. |
First 401K portfolio with high expense ratios - which funds to pick? (24yo) | If it was me, I would withdraw money from savings and be debt free today. I would then pour the $500 into building back your savings. Then of course, never again carry a balance on your CC. At your age MSFRX is a losing game. You can handle the volatility of better performing funds, I would have zero in there. If it was me, I would do something totally different then you are doing: Keep in mind you are doing very good as is. The best way to win with money is to make good moves overtime, and given your debt level, savings, and willingness to contribute to a 401K your moves are pretty darn good. Keep in mind you will probably want to start saving a down payment for a house. This should be done outside of your 401K. Overall good work! |
What's a normal personal debt / equity ratio for a highly educated person? | What is your biggest wealth building tool? Income. If you "nerf" your income with payments to banks, cable, credit card debt, car payments, and lattes then you are naturally handicapping your wealth building. It is sort of like trying to drive home a nail holding a hammer right underneath the head. Normal is broke, don't be normal. Normal obtains student loans while getting an education. You don't have to. You can work part time, or even full time and get a degree. As an example, here is one way to do it in Florida. Get a job working fast food and get your associates degree using a community college that are cheap. Then apply for the state troopers. Go away for about 5 months, earning an income the whole time. You automatically graduate with a job that pays for state schools. Take the next three years (or more if you want an advanced degree) to get your bachelors. Then start your desirable career. What is better to have "wasted" approx 1.5 years being a state trooper, or to have a student loan payment for 20 years? There is not even pressure to obtain employment right after graduation. BTW, I know someone who is doing exactly what I outlined. Every commercial you watch is geared toward getting you to sign on the line that is dotted, often going into debt to do so. Car commercials will tell you that you are a bad mom or not a real man if you don't drive the 2015 whatever. Think differently, throw out your numbers and shoot for zero debt. EDIT: OP, I have a MS in Comp Sci, and started one in finance. My wife also has a masters. We had debt. We paid that crap off. Work like a fiend and do the same. My wife's was significant. She planned on having her employer pay it off for each year she worked there. (Like 20% each year or something.) Guess what, that did not work out! She went to work somewhere else! Live like you are still in college and use all that extra money to get rid of your debt. Student loans are consumer debt. |
Why can't a US state default, but a EU state can? | But do you know about a US state risking to go default now or in the past? Ultimately, a US state could go into default. However, I doubt that such a scenario would be allowed to transpire. This seems to happen to California with some regularity. That is, risking default. What would happen is not quite well known: "There is no provision for a state to go bankrupt," Kyser said. "I don't think anyone really knows what will happen or even if the state will go into receivership if it does default. I can tell you this, officials are looking at all the (current) laws." (source) I believe that the answer to your question is that it could happen, but likely would not be allowed to occur. The nature of the EU and US are quite different. The individual states forming the US are not separate nations. For better or for worse, the US is a stronger federation than the EU. (Something that is lamented at times when the Feds mess with the purview of the locals.) |
How can I find out the credit rating of a company | Dunn & Bradstreet offers detailed credit reports on businesses. They are not cheap, but they appear to have information on RIOCAN. |
How does the price of oil influence the value of currency? | From an investor's standpoint, if the value of crude oil increases, economies that are oil dependent become more favourable (oil companies will be more profitable). Therefore, investors will find that country's currency more attractive in the foreign exchange market. |
What does an options premium really mean? | Intuitive? I doubt it. Derivatives are not the simplest thing to understand. The price is either in the money or it isn't. (by the way, exactly 'at the money' is not 'in the money.') An option that's not in the money has time value only. As the price rises, and the option is more and more in the money, the time value drops. We have a $40 stock. It makes sense to me that a $40 strike price is all just a bet the stock will rise, there's no intrinsic value. The option prices at about $4.00 for one year out, with 25% volatility. But the strike of $30 is at $10.68, with $10 in the money and only .68 in time premium. There's a great calculator on line to tinker with. Volatility is a key component of options trading. Think about it. If a stock rises 5%/yr but rarely goes up any more or less, just steady up, why would you even buy an option that was even 10% out of the money? The only way I can describe this is to look at a bell curve and how there's a 1/6 chance the event will be above one standard deviation. If that standard deviation is small, the chance of hitting the higher strikes is also small. I wrote an article Betting on Apple at 9 to 2 in which I describe how a pair of option trades was set up so that a 35% rise in Apple stock would return 354% and Apple had two years to reach its target. I offer this as an example of options trading not being theory, but something that many are engaged in. What I found curious about the trade was that Apple's volatility was high enough that a 35% move didn't seem like the 4.5 to 1 risk the market said it was. As of today, Apple needs to rise 13% in the next 10 months for the trade to pay off. (Disclosure - the long time to expiration was both good and bad, two years to recover 35% seemed reasonable, but 2 years could bring anything in the macro sense. Another recession, some worldwide event that would impact Apple's market, etc. The average investor will not have the patience for these long term option trades.) |
How to keep control of shared expenses inside marriage? | Websites like neobudget dot com or mint dot com can help you see where your money is going, especially if you use mostly checks, debit cards, or credit cards for your purchases. They are less useful if you use cash often. |
Do brokers execute every trade on the exchange? | There are two terms that are related, but separate here: Broker and Market Maker. The former is who goes and finds a buyer/seller to buy/sell shares from/to you. The latter (Market Maker) is a company which will agree to partner with you to complete the sale at a set price (typically the market price, often by definition as the market maker often is the one who determines the market price in a relatively low volumne listing). A market maker will have as you say a 'pool' of relatively common stock (and even relatively uncommon, up to a point) for this purpose. A broker can be a market maker (or work for one), also, in which case he would sell you directly the shares from the market maker reservoir. This may be a bad idea for you - the broker (while obligated to act in your interest, in theory) may push you towards stocks that the brokerage acts as a market maker for. |
Investing $50k + Real Estate | I have been on the same boat as you are right now. So basically, it depends on your goals, risk tolerance, upcoming life events! You want a plan not just for this particular 50K, but for your household assets and future earnings to come! My suggestion: Get a flat fee, online financial advisor to do the work for you. You don’t have to figure this out by yourself. Personally, I would invest in a portfolio that: Offers dynamic asset allocation plans that evolves over time based on changing market conditions. Offers a healthy mix of beta and alpha strategies along with the liquidity and ability to monitor activity online. Has structural risk management in place. Risk management is as much about increasing risk as it is about cutting risk. Therefore, you want a plan for de-allocating and re-allocating risk Hope this helps. |
Why would someone want to sell call options? | I do this often with shares that I own - mostly as a learning/experience-building exercise, since I don't own enough individual stocks to make me rich (and don't risk enough to make me broke). Suppose I own 1,000 shares of X. I don't expect my shares to go down, but I want to be compensated in case they do go down. Sure, I could put in a stop-loss order, but another option is to sell a call above where the stock is now (out-of-the-money). So I get the premium regardless of what happens. From there three things can happen: So a covered call essentially lets you give up some upside for some compensation against downward moves. Mathematically it's roughly equivalent to selling a put option - you make a little money (from the premium) if the stock goes up but can lose a lot if the stock plummets. So you would sell call options if: |
Paying myself a dividend from ltd company | In a simple case as the sole UK resident director/shareholder of a company, with that company as your only income, you are usually best paying yourself a salary of the maximum tax free amount allowed under your tax code (~£11k for most people at present). On this you will have to pay some employer and employee National Insurance (NI) contributions (totalling around £1000). Your salary/employer NI counts as an expense, so that is taken off the company profits. You then pay corporation tax on the remainder (20%). The first £5k you take as dividends is tax free, the remainder at a lower tax rate than the equivalent combined income tax/NI (starting at 7.5% instead of 20% tax plus employee plus employer NI), giving a significant saving compared to salaried income even after corporation tax. To declare and pay the tax, you would need to complete a self-assessment tax return. Your company will also need to file a return. The Contractor UK website, although aimed at IT contractors, has some very useful information on operating Ltd companies. That said, finances are rarely that simple so I would concur with the recommendation you engage an accountant, which is a tax-deductible expense. |
When is the right time to buy a new/emerging technology? | When is the right time to buy a new/emerging technology? When it's trading at a discount that allows you to make your money back and then some. The way you presented it, it is of course impossible to say. You have to look at exactly how much cheaper and efficient it will be, and how long that will take. Time too has a cost, and being invested has opportunity cost, so the returns must not only arrive in expected quantity but also arrive on time. Since you tagged this investing, you should look at the financial forecasts of the business, likely future price trajectories, growth opportunity and so on, and buy if you expect a return commensurate with the risk, and if the risk is tolerable to you. If you are new to investment, I would say avoid Musk, there's too much hype and speculation and their valuations are off the charts. You can't make any sensible analysis with so much emotion running wild. Find a more obscure, boring company that has a sound business plan and a good product you think is worth a try. If you read about it on mainstream news every day you can be sure it's sucker bait. Also, my impression that these panels are actually really expensive and have a snowball's chance in Arizona (heh) in a free market. Recently the market has been manipulated through green energy subsidies of a government with a strong environmentalist voter base. This has recently changed, in case you haven't heard. So the future of solar panels is looking a bit uncertain. I am thinking about buying solar panels for my roof. That's not an investment question, it's a shopping question. Do you actually need a new roof? If no, I'd say don't bother. Last I checked the payoff is very small and it takes over a decade to break even, unless you live in a desert next to the Mexican border. Many places never break even. Electricity is cheap in the United States. If you need a new roof anyway, I suppose look at the difference. If it's about the same you might as well, although it's guaranteed to be more hassle for you with the panels. Waiting makes no sense if you need a new roof, because who knows how long that will take and you need a roof now. If a solar roof appeals to you and you would enjoy having one for the price available, go ahead and get one. Don't do it for the money because there's just too much uncertainty there, and it doesn't scale at all. If you do end up making money, good for you, but that's just a small, unexpected bonus on top of the utility of the product itself. |
Why do people buy insurance even if they have the means to overcome the loss? | All investors have ultimately the same investment goal: maximize returns while limiting risk to an acceptable level. Of course we would love to maximize returns while minimizing risk, but in most cases if you want higher returns you must be willing to accept higher levels of risk. We must keep in mind that investors are humans, not computers. As such not everybody is willing to accept the same level of risk. Insurance is simply a way to "buy down" risk. Yes, it reduces our overall gains (most of the time), but so do bonds vs stocks (most of the time). And yet who among us doesn't have bonds in our portfolio? Insurance is yet another way to balance risk and return. |
RSU vested recently | ML is a brokerage firm. Tell them to sell. If you can't or don't know how to do it on-line - call them and do it over the phone. Your citizenship might come in effect when tax are withheld, you need to fill form W8-BEN if you haven't done so yet. If US taxes are withheld, you can file 1040NR to request refund, or get it credited against your local tax liabilities. |
What's an economic explanation for why greeting cards are so expensive? | I actually have a bit of experience with the supplier side of this. Having worked with other people attempting to get the business launched, I can shed a bit of insight. The primary reason for the pricing is that there simply isn't enough competition to warrant dropping the price any lower than it already is. Large companies such as Hallmark will typically buy card designs at 5% of the card's selling price. With their existing distribution network, this makes bringing in new and varied designs much easier for large companies that are already well established. Having talked with such designers in the past, someone working full time producing designs makes on average 30-60k annually from this, which is worth it to someone who doesn't want to jump through the hoops of actually getting into the business independently. The primary issue stifling competition is actually getting your product into stores. There are topics here that I cannot discuss due to NDA, but I can break down the overall outline for you: You need to start with a large number of designs, with enough variety that companies think could sell well. If you bring a handful of designs with you, no company is going to take your business venture seriously enough. You need to find a company that can stamp out a large production process for you. The company is going to need to be nice enough to take smaller purchase orders on the magnitude of several hundred cards, but also be capable of scaling that production to several hundreds of thousands of cards very quickly. For cards specifically, most companies want you to ship custom racks with your cards. Some companies may provide their own racks for stocking your product, but not all of them will. This will also cost a lot of money up front. You need to find a buyer for a company you want to sell your product to. This is important, and what killed our original business plans. Think Wal-Mart, Target, or even CVS Pharmacy. These big companies are going to have people who's entire job is to buy new products to put on their shelves. This is where networking is key, you need to find people with connections to these buyers if you're not already well established with them. You will also likely fail several times, either getting outright ignored, or through a broker that can't meet expectations. For example, we had a broker that introduced us to a buyer for a large store chain, and after several months of work we found out that this broker was just pulling our strings. Typically a company will want to test your product in a handful of stores to see if it will sell. For example, Target may want to test your product in 100-200 stores over 3 months and expect your product to sell at a minimum rate. Finally, you need to be able to scale your production. Suddenly you'll be asked to go from supplying 100 stores to supplying 1,800 stores with a deadline in 2 weeks. Buyers will even turn you down at this point if they don't think you can meet the production. All of this work takes at least a year, and typically takes several years to go from an initial product to having your product in every store. Without breaking the numbers down too much, we could make a profit of ~$1.60 for every $3 card that sold. That number doesn't cover the cost of racks and other overhead, that's just the per-card profit. Even then, people are more likely to go view the Hallmark or other big-name cards over your offering. Only when another company becomes a big powerhouse to be competitive will these companies be forced to drop their prices. |
Does the “Free Ride” rule always apply to your entire collection of shares in a particular stock? | You should check with your broker for details, but you can generally specify which "lot" you are selling. where I've seen it, that's done by concurrently sending a "letter of instruction" documenting your choice of lot concurrent with the sale, but different brokers may handle this differently. I would think this should work for the case that you describe. (In addition, the default rule used by your broker is "probably" first-in-first-out, which will do what you want here.) Note that this may come into play even in a margin account to the extent that you might want to specify a lot in order to obtain (or set yourself up for later benefit of) favorable tax treatment under the long-term capital gains rules |
Are underlying assets supposed to be sold/bought immediately after being bought/sold in call/put option? | When you can exercie your option depends on your trading style. In the american options trading style (the most popular) you're allowed to exercice your options and make profit (if any) whenever you want before the expiration date. Thus, the decision of exercising your option and make a profit out of it does not rely only on the asset price. The reason is, you already paid for the premium to get the option. So, if taken into account the underlying price AND your premium, your investment is profitable then you can exercice your contract anytime. |
In a competitive market, why is movie theater popcorn expensive? | A multiplex is a concession stand which happens to show movies in order to lure you into range of the smell of their popcorn. It has nothing to do with movie theater monopolies. As it was explained to me by my manager, back when I worked in a movie theater in a small Midwestern chain, for every movie, the studios take some percentage cut of gross ticket sales, varying from movie to movie. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in 1999 was the first film for which the studio demanded 90% of gross ticket price — continuing a long-standing trend of raising the take which possibly began with the original first Star Wars movie. The other studios quickly followed suit and raised their take to 90%, especially for the big blockbusters — the textbook term is "oligopoly pricing" — and since then the percentage has inched ever closer to 100%. I forget exactly what it was on the second Matrix movie or Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, both of which premiered while I was at the theater, but the number that sticks in my head is 94%. Obviously the studios can't directly capture any revenue from the sale of popcorn — unlike the movie, it's not their product — so every time they raise their take, the theater compensates for lost revenue by raising the price of popcorn. This trend hasn't reversed with 3D and IMAX and all the new technologies coming down the pike. The only reason they're attractive to the theaters is that the theater can charge $15 a ticket rather than $10. Even on a small percentage share, that's a 50% jump in revenue, and covers the not insignificant cost of the projection equipment. 3D is also currently getting more butts in seats than 2D was, leading to somewhat more concessions sales — going to the movies is an outing and an event again — though that's tapering off as it becomes less and less of a novelty. The ticket prices aren't coming down, though. Moral of the story: like razors or printers, theaters lose a ton of money to show you movies due to studio oligopoly pricing, and make it up on popcorn. |
Flex spending accounts and hsa when changing jobs | Some of this may depend on how your employer chose to deal with your notice period. Most employers employ you for the duration (which means you'd be covered for March on your insurance). They could 'send you home' but pay you (in which case you're an employee for the duration still); or they could terminate you on your notice day, and give you effectively a severance equal to two weeks' pay. That is what it sounds like they did. They should have made this clear to you when you left (on 2/23). Assuming you work in an at-will state, there's nothing wrong (legally) with them doing it this way, although it is not something I believe is right morally. Basically, they're trying to avoid some costs for your last two weeks (if they employ you through 3/6, they pay for another month of insurance, and some other things). In exchange, you lose some insurance benefits and FSA benefits. Your FSA terminates the day you terminate employment (see this pdf for a good explanation of these issues). This means that the FSA administrator is correct to reject expenses incurred after 2/23. The FSA is in no way tied to your insurance plan; you can have one or the other or both. You still can submit claims for expenses prior to 2/23 during your runout period, which is often 60 or 90 days. In the future, you will want to think ahead when leaving employment, and you may want to time when you give notice carefully to maximize your benefits in the event something like this happens again. It's a shady business practice in my mind (to terminate you when you give notice), but it's not unknown. As far as the HSA/FSA, you aren't eligible to contribute to an HSA in a year you're also in an FSA, except that they use "plan year" in the language (so if your benefits period is 6/1/yy - 5/31/yy, that's the relevant 'year'). I'd be cautious about opening a HSA without advice from a tax professional, or at least a more knowledgeable person here. |
Unmarried couple buying home, what are the options in our case? | Personally I would advise only buying what you can afford without borrowing money, even if it means living in a tent. Financially, that is the best move. If you are determined to borrow money to buy a house, the person with income should buy it as sole owner. Split ownership will create a nightmare if any problems develop in the relationship. Split ownership has the advantage that it doubles the tax-free appreciation deduction from $250,000 to $500,000, but in your case my sense is that that is not a sufficient reason to risk dual ownership. Do not charge your "partner" rent. That is crazy. |
Paypal website donations without being a charity | An answer from PayPal stated that donations may be turned on only for Business PayPal accounts that are verified for its non-profit status. Such PayPal Business account must be opened in the name of non-profit organization (not a single person) and go through verification process. One must provide the following information: That would mean that one cannot ask for donations as a private person, at least in Croatia, and probably in Europe. |
Do I have to explain the source of *all* income on my taxes? | As a gift, the responsibility lays with the giver to file a 709 with their taxes for gifting to a single entity (barring certain exclusions) an amount over $14,000 within the (2017) tax year. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i709.pdf If this person is a foreign entity from outside the country, you might need to provide in your tax filing a form 3520 https://www.irs.gov/businesses/gifts-from-foreign-person The reporting limits are: more than $100,000 from a foreign estate or non-resident alien, or more than $15,102 from a foreign company. If you don't know who/where the money came from i.e. cash, it would be considered found money and fall under income (not a gift). |
What are some good books for learning stocks, bonds, derivatives e.t.c for beginner with a math background? | Not perhaps practically useful, but I found it conceptually useful to learn the basics of mathematical finance, a way of describing financial markets via probability theory and stochastic processes. It's a little like trying to understand horse racing by studying spherical horses rolling without friction in a vacuum, but it does give you some ways of thinking that may be more appealing to someone with a math background. For instance, there's the idea that shorting a stock is effectively owning negative shares. Option pricing is a common motivation. There's a brief introduction, at the advanced undergraduate level, in Durrett's Essentials of Stochastic Processes. At the graduate level, I liked Ruth Williams' Introduction to the Mathematics of Finance. |
How to pay with cash when car shopping? | You can pay with a cashiers check or personal check. You can even pay cash, or combine payment methods. However, in the USA if you give the dealership $10,000 or more in actual cash, they will be required to fill out a form 8300 with the IRS. |
Small withdrawals from IRA | First - Welcome to Money.SE. You gave a lot of detail, and it's tough to parse out the single question. Actually, you have multiple issues. $1300 is what you need to pay the tax? In the 25% bracket plus 10% penalty, you have a 65% net amount. $1300/.65 = Exactly $2000. You withdraw $2000, have them (the IRA holder) withhold $700 in federal tax, and you're done. All that said, don't do it. Nathan's answer - payment plan with IRS - is the way to go. You've shared with us a important issue. Your budget is running too tight. We have a post here, "the correct order of investing" which provides a great guideline that applies to most visitors. You are missing the part that requires a decent sized emergency fund. In your case, calling it that, may be a misnomer, as the tax bill isn't an unexpected emergency, but something that should have been foreseeable. We have had a number of posts here that advocate the paid in full house. And I always respond that the emergency fund comes first. With $70K of income, you should have $35K or so of liquidity, money readily available. Tax due in April shouldn't be causing you this grief. Please read that post I linked and others here to help you with the budgeting issue. Last - You are in an enviable position, A half million dollars, no mortgage, mid 40s. Easily doing better than most. So, please forgive the soapbox tone of the above, it was just my "see, that's what I'm talking about" moment from my tenure here. |
What does inflation mean to me? | Inflation as defined in the general, has many impacts at a personal level. For example, you say that the reduction in the price of oil has no impact on you. That's absolutely not true, unless you're a hermit living off of the land. Every box or can or jar of food you buy off the shelf of the grocery store has the price of oil baked into it, because it had to get there somehow. High fuel costs for trucks mean increased costs to put food on shelves, which mean increased prices for that food. Even tobacco prices can affect you, because they affect what other people are spending. Demand is always a significant factor in prices, particularly retail prices, and if people are spending more money on tobacco, they're probably spending less on other things - either buying less snacks, for example, or buying cheaper brands of those snacks. So the price of Doritos may drop a bit (or not rise), for example. General inflation also tends to drive raises, particularly in industries with relatively small performance ties to raises. If inflation is 3%, wages need to raise 3% or so in order to keep up, on average; even if your personal cost-of-living went up 0%, or 5%, or 10%, the default wage inflation will be closer to that of the national average. Any raise less than national average is effectively a pay cut (which is one reason why inflation is needed in a healthy economy). So your company probably has a cost-of-living raise everyone gets that's a bit less than inflation, and then good performers get a bump up to a bit more than inflation. You can read more on this topic for a more in-depth explanation. Finally, inflation rates tend to be major factors in stock market movement. Inflation that is too high, or too low, can lead to higher volatility; inflation that is "right" can lead to higher stability. An economy that has consistently "right" inflation (around 2-3% typically) will tend to have more stable stock market in general, and thus more reliable returns from that market. There are many other factors that lead to stock markets rising and falling, but inflation is one very relevant one, particularly if it's not in the "right" zone. |
What is the US Fair Tax? | You asked about the challenges. The transition itself is the biggest one. For people to get used to the tax at the register vs at their paycheck. For a great number of people to find new work. I don't know the numbers, but anyone involved with personal income taxes would be out of work. Sales tax is already part of the process in most states, bumping it to a federal tax wont add too much in overhead. I make no moral judgment, but consider, most prostitutes and drug dealers are avoiding income tax, but they still are buying the same goods in stores you and I are. This proposed tax reduces the collection noncompliance, and brings more people into "the system". Another factor some may not like is the ability to affect behavior by picking and choosing what to promote, via deductions, such as home buying or charity. |
Tax implications of having some self-employment income? | Havoc P's answer is good (+1). Also don't forget the other aspects of business income: state filing fees, county/city filing fees, business licenses, etc. Are there any taxes you have to collect from your customers? If you expect to make more this year, then you should make estimated quarterly tax payments. The first one for 2011 is due around the same time as your federal income tax filing. |
How do share dilution scams make money? | For this to work, those who control the dilution must also control their salaries because the only way for them to be paid off when it's the corporation itself selling is to gain access to the proceeds. When a corporation sells newly issued equity, the corporation itself owns the money. To at least have the appearance of propriety, the scammers must be paid those proceeds. Both actions imply that the board is captured by the scammers. There are many corporations that seem to do this even with persistently large market capitalizations. The key difference between this and pump-and-dump is that its a fraudulent group of investors selling in this case instead of the corporation itself. A detailed simple example Corporations are mandated by law to be little oligarchies; although, "republic" is now becoming more appropriate with all of the new shareholder rights. A corporation is controlled at root by the board of directors who are elected by the shareholders. The board has no direct operational control, as that is left to the "king", the CEO; however, the board does control what everyone wants access to: the money. Board members have all sorts of legal qualitative mandates on how to behave, and they've functioned fairly decently efficiently over the long run, but there are definitely some bad apples. Boards are somewhat intransigent since it's difficult to hold board elections, and usually only specific board members are put up for election by a shareholder vote, so a bad one has the potential to really get stuck in there. Once a bad one is in there, they don't care because they know it will be tough to get them out, so they run roughshod over the company's purse. Only the board can take action on major funding such as the CEO's operating budget, board compensation, financing, investment, etc, some with shareholder approval, some without. The corporation itself owns all of those assets, but the board controls them. In this example, they scheme with most likely the top executive, but a rubber stamp top executive could allow a lower rung to scheme with the board, but the board is always constant until the law is changed. Because there's no honor amongst thieves, the board votes which can require some combination of executive and shareholder approval are taken very close together: sell shares, increase salaries to key executive schemers, increase board compensation. The trusting shareholders believe this is in the best interests of the company at large so go along. So the money flows from existing & new shareholders to the corporation now controlled by a malicious board and then finally to the necessary malicious executive and the vital malicious board. |
Where can I buy European-style options? | On the US markets, most index options are European style. Most stock and ETF options are, as you noted, American style. |
Retirement & asset allocation of $30K for 30 year old single guy | IMHO bonds are not a good investment at this present time, nor generally. Appreciate for a moment that the yield of an investment is DIRECTLY related to the face/trading value. If a thing (bond/stock) trades for $100 and yields 3%, it pays $3. In the case of a bond, the bond doesn't pay a % amount, it pays a $ amount. Meaning it pays $3. SO, for the yield to rise, what has to happen to the trading price? It has to decrease. As of 2013/14 bonds are trading at historically LOW yields. The logical implication of this is if a bond pays a fixed $ amount, the trading price of the bond has to have increased. So if you buy bonds now, you will see a decrease in its face value over the long term. You may find the first tool I built at Simple Stock Search useful as you research potential investments. |
How to sell option with no volume | A few observations - A limit order can certainly work, as you've seen. I've put in such an order far beyond the true value, and gotten back a realistic bid/ask within 10 minutes or so. That at least gave me an idea where to set my limit. When this doesn't work, an exercise is always another way to go. You'll get the full intrinsic value, but no time value, by definition. Per your request in comment - You own a put, strike price $100. The stock (or ETF) is trading at $50. You buy the stock and tell the broker to exercise the put, i.e. deliver the stock to the buyer of the put. |
How many days does Bank of America need to clear a bill pay check | This is based on my experience with Chase and may not be applicable to other banks. As you mentioned Chase as one of the banks you do business with hopefully this will be helpful to you. The money does come out of your account immediately. If the check isn't cashed in a certain amount of time, the check expires and you get the money credited back to your account. Once you have made a bill payment online you can check on the status of your check by looking at your payment activity, finding the payment in question, and following the "proof of payment" link. There is will provide you with information on your payment which you can submit to your payee to prove when you submitted the payment, and which they can use to verify with the bank that you really did send the payment as you claimed. Once the check is cashed, this page will also contain images of the front and back of the cashed check, so you can prove that the recipient really did cash it. You can see from this info that the check is being funded from a different account number than your own, which is good for security purposes since (per Knuth, 2008) giving someone else your bank routing number and account number as found on your personal checks basically provides them with all they need to (fraudulently, of course) clean out your account. |
What should I do with my $25k to invest as a 20 years old? | Investing is really about learning your own comfort level. You will make money and lose money. You will make mistakes but you will also learn a great deal. First off, invest in your own financial knowledge, this doesn't require capital at all but a commitment. No one will watch or care for your own money better than yourself. Read books, and follow some companies in a Google Finance virtual portfolio. Track how they're doing over time - you can do this as a virtual portfolio without actually spending or losing money. Have you ever invested before? What is your knowledge level? Investing long term is about trying to balance risk while reducing losses and trying not to get screwed along the way (by people). My personal advice: Go to an independent financial planner, go to one that charges you per hour only. Financial planners that don't charge you hourly get paid in commissions. They will be biased to sell you what puts the most money in their pockets. Do not go to the banks investment people, they are employed by the banks who have sales and quota requirements to have you invest and push their own investment vehicles like mutual funds. Take $15k to the financial planner and see what they suggest. Keep the other $5K in something slow and boring and $1k under your mattress in actual cash as an emergency. While you're young, compound interest is the magic that will make that $25k increase hand over fist in time. But you need to have it consistently make money. I'm young too and more risk tolerant because I have time. While I get older I can start to scale back my risk because I'm nearing retirement and preserve instead of try to make returns. |
Offer Price for my stock not shown on quote and a subsequent sale higher than my offer | It depends on the way you have directed the order and the execution agreement you have signed with your broker. In case of DMA (direct market access) you would direct your order to the specific exchange - and that exchange would post your offer, assuming you did not tag it as hidden. However, if you just gave your order to the broker (be it via telephone, email or even online), they may not have to display your order to the market or chose which exchange to sell it on. It will also depend where the stock is listed. For most US listed and OTC stocks, regulation NMS applies where your order should have been executed against if it went to the exchanges. Check your account opening docs and agreements, particulary the execution agreement. In there it will tell you how your order should be treated. In case where the broker stipulates that you have DMA or that they will direct your order to Lit markets (public exchanges and not market making firms and dark-pools) then you may have a case - you would need to request information to whcih exchange your broker sent the order to. In case that you gave them discretion on routing of your order - read the fine print. The answer lies there. Regarding NBBO missing you quote as quantycuenta suggested above is also a possibility, however Reg NMS should take care of this. Do you have stock and date & time of your order? |
Calculate APR for under 1 year loan | Is the pay cycle every 2 weeks? So 30% each two week period is 1.3^26 = 917.33 or an APR of 91633%. Loansharks charge less, I believe standard vig was 2%/week for good customers. Only 180% per year. |
Sales Tax: Rounded Then Totaled or Totaled Then Rounded? | You should total the items first, to get $3.00, then add the tax, then round up/down accordingly. Your two examples above don't offer this option, even though your second example arrives at the same result. In your first example, a number of items taxed one at a time might result in many .006 results which would round to .01. A long enough list of items would result in an error of many cents depending how many items there are. Totaling first then applying tax results in your saving .004 or losing .005 cents maximum due to rounding. See A Guide to Sales and Use Tax which is a document put out by the Massachusetts Dept of Revenue. In the chart for tax, it shows that $1.09 is taxed at five cents, but at 5%, it would be 5.45. So, at least for this state, I believe I correctly stated the rounding process. |
Separating money in bank account without opening another account | There are some banks that offer "pot" accounts like this (off the top of my head I think Intelligent Finance does, although they call them "jars"). The other option for charity specifically would be a CAF account: https://www.cafonline.org/my-personal-giving/plan-your-giving/individual-charity-account.aspx |
Couch Potato Portfolio for Europeans? | The question is asking for a European equivalent of the so-called "Couch Potato" portfolio. "Couch Potato" portfolio is defined by the two URLs provided in question as, Criteria for fund composition Fixed-income: Regardless of country or supra-national market, the fixed-income fund should have holdings throughout the entire length of the yield curve (most available maturities), as well as being a mix of government, municipal (general obligation), corporate and high-yield bonds. Equity: The common equity position should be in one equity market index fund. It shouldn't be a DAX-30 or CAC-40 or DJIA type fund. Instead, you want a combination of growth and value companies. The fund should have as many holdings as possible, while avoiding too much expense due to transaction costs. You can determine how much is too much by comparing candidate funds with those that are only investing in highly liquid, large company stocks. Why it is easier for U.S. and Canadian couch potatoes It will be easier to find two good funds, at lower cost, if one is investing in a country with sizable markets and its own currency. That's why the Couch Potato strategy lends itself most naturally to the U.S.A, Canada, Japan and probably Australia, Brazil, South Korea and possibly Mexico too. In Europe, pre-EU, any of Germany, France, Spain, Italy or the Scandinavian countries would probably have worked well. The only concern would be (possibly) higher equity transactions costs and certainly larger fixed-income buy-sell spreads, due to smaller and less liquid markets other than Germany. These costs would be experienced by the portfolio manager, and passed on to you, as the investor. For the EU couch potato Remember the criteria, especially part 2, and the intent as described by the Couch Potato name, implying extremely passive investing. You want to choose two funds offered by very stable, reputable fund management companies. You will be re-balancing every six months or a year, only. That is four transactions per year, maximum. You don't need a lot of interaction with anyone, but you DO need to have the means to quickly exit both sides of the trade, should you decide, for any reason, that you need the money or that the strategy isn't right for you. I would not choose an ETF from iShares just because it is easy to do online transactions. For many investors, that is important! Here, you don't need that convenience. Instead, you need stability and an index fund with a good reputation. You should try to choose an EU based fund manager, or one in your home country, as you'll be more likely to know who is good and who isn't. Don't use Vanguard's FTSE ETF or the equivalent, as there will probably be currency and foreign tax concerns, and possibly forex risk. The couch potato strategy requires an emphasis on low fees with high quality funds and brokers (if not buying directly from the fund). As for type of fund, it would be best to choose a fund that is invested in mostly or only EU or EEU (European Economic Union) stocks, and the same for bonds. That will help minimize your transaction costs and tax liability, while allowing for the sort of broad diversity that helps buy and hold index fund investors. |
How does a 2 year treasury note work? | Look at this question here. In my answer there, I put a link to an Investopedia article about the bond prices. Keep in mind that speculating over a short term period is pretty dangerous, even with the Treasury notes, and the prices may be affected temporary but greatly by the ordeals like the latest Republican shenanigans in Washington. |
How to become an investment banker? | Apply for a job/internship to get a first impression of what it means to work in investment banking. Go to a tier one business school and try to get an CFA. Most importantly: work, work, work... Get practical experience as much as possible. |
Shouldn't a Roth IRA accumulate more than 1 cent of interest per month? | Unfortunately for investors, returns for equity-based investments are not linear - you'll see (semi-random) rises and dips as you look at the charted per-share price. Without knowing what the investments are in the target date retirement fund that you've invested in, you could see a wide range of returns (including losses!) for any given period of time. However, over the long term (usually 10+ years), you'll see the "average" return for your fund as your gains and losses accumulate/compound over that period. |
How can cold-callers know about my general financial status | The cold caller is just a different way to contact you compared to the junk mail that they send. The business gets information from the credit rating companies for households that meet a specific set of criteria. It could be town, age, home ownership, low credit utilization...Or the exact opposite depending on what they are selling. Some business do sell your data. Grocery store know who buys certain products: parents buying diapers may want to start saving for college; ones buying acne medicine may want to talk about lower rates for car insurance. When they call via phone they have a different success rate compared to junk mail, but for that business that may be acceptable for their needs. |
First job: Renting vs get my parents to buy me a house | Rent. You have no idea whether you will still be in the same part of the country five years from now; you may not even be in the same country. A house is a boat anchor you really do not need or want at this time. It's also a set of obligations you may not want to take on yet. And buying is not automatically more financially advantageous than renting, when you remember that money not going into the house can go into your retirement plan or other investments. |
Someone asks you to co-sign a loan. How to reject & say “no” nicely or politely? | I have been in this situation and I essentially went for the truthful answer. I first explained that co-signing for a loan wasn't just vouching for the person, which I certainly would do, but it was putting my name on the loan and making me the person they loan company would go after if a payment was ever missed. Then I explained that even within married couples, money can be a major source of strife and fights, it would be even worse for someone not quite as close like a family member or friend. Essentially I wouldn't want to risk my relationship with a good friend or family member over some financial matter. |
Judge market efficiency from raw price action | The shortest-hand yet most reliable metric is daily volume / total shares outstanding. A security with a high turnover rate will be more efficient than a lower one, ceteris paribus. The practical impacts are tighter spread and lower average percentage change between trades. A security with a spread of 0% and an average change of 0% between trades is perfectly efficient. |
Is it inadvisable to leave a Roth IRA to charity upon death? | You need to keep in mind that there's an exemption amount of more than $5M (five million) dollars for estate tax. Unless you used all of it for gifts during your life time, it will more than cover all of your $70K estate, so there's no need in any additional planning. As to Roth vs Traditional IRA - if you want to leave something to your siblings, leave them the Roth. Why would you give the taxable income to your siblings when you can give them the nontaxable one? Charities are tax exempt anyway. |
How much can you write off on a car lease through a LLC? | An expense is an expense. You can deduct your lease payment subject to some limitations, but you don't make out by having more expenses. Higher expenses mean lower profit. Is leasing better than owning? It depends on the car you'd buy. If your business doesn't benefit from flashiness of your car, then buying a quality used car (a few years old at most) would probably be a wiser decision financially. I'd think hard about whether you really need an up-to-date car. |
What is a good way to save money on car expenses? | Don't buy the first model year of a new model unless the fuel economy is much better in the latest model. Buying a car in later years just before the changeover will result in a slightly higher quality vehicle or in some cases dramatically higher quality. Find the best forum for your make/model/year of car. Join the forum, check the FAQ, sticky threads and post questions when you have trouble. Do NOT rely passively on the dealer or even private mechanics as they do not drive the car every day. You are in the best position to identify problems but only if you have some help. Preventive maintenance is the best if you intend to keep the car for a really long time. Forums are a really good place to find the typical problems of a particular model and potentially head them off. |
In your 20s how much money should you have and how to properly use & manage it? | If you are just barely scraping by on your current income, then you shouldn't be thinking about buying a car or house unless you can present (at least to yourself) clear evidence that doing so will actually lower your monthly expenses. Yes, there are times when even buying depreciating assets such as a car can lower your expenses, but you need to think hard about whether that is the case or if it is just something you want to get because you feel you "should". Remember the old adage that rich people buy themselves income streams (investments that either earn money or reduce expenses), while poor people buy expenses. If you are in the situation of barely scraping by on your current income, then the first step in my mind is to find out exactly what you are spending your money on (do this for a month or two, and then try to include non-regular or rarely-occuring bills such as subscriptions, insurance, perhaps utilities, and so on). Once you know where your money is going right now, outline that in a budget. At this point, you aren't judging your spending, but rather simply looking at the facts. Once you have a decent idea of where your money is going, only then try to think about what you can cut back on. Some things will be easier than others to change (it's much easier to cancel a premium TV channels package than to move to cheaper living quarters, for example, although in some cases simply picking the low-hanging fruit alone won't help you). Make a revised budget for the next month based on the new numbers, and try to live by it. Keep writing down what you actually spend your money on, then rinse and repeat. (Of course, you can make a budget for whatever period of time works for you; if you get paid every two weeks, budgeting per two weeks might be easier than budgeting per month.) The bottom line is that a budget is useless without a follow-up process to see how well your spending actually matches the budgeted amounts, so you need to spend some time following up on it and making adjustments. No budget will ever match reality exactly; think of the budget as a map, not a footstep-by-footstep guide for getting from A to B. When you find some wiggle room in your budget (for example, let's say you decide to cancel the premium TV channels package you got some time ago because it turns out you aren't watching much TV anyway), don't put that money into a "discretionary spending" category. There is an old rule in personal finance that says pay yourself first. If you are able to find $5/month of wiggle room, put it into savings of some kind. If you are unsure what kind of savings vehicle you should use, I'd suggest starting off with a simple savings account; it certainly won't earn you a great return (you'll be lucky if you can keep up with inflation), but it will get you into the habit of saving which at this point is a lot more important. And make that savings transfer as soon as the money hits your account. If you can, get the depositor to put a portion of your income directly into the savings account; if you cannot, make the transfer yourself immediately afterwards. And try to force yourself to live with the money that's left, not touching the savings account. Ideally, you should save a decent fraction of your income - I've seen figures everywhere from 10% to 25% of your after-tax income recommended by various people - and start out by budgeting that to savings and then working with whatever is left. In practice, saving anything and putting the money anywhere is much better than saving nothing. Just make sure that the savings are liquid (easy to convert to cash and withdraw without a penalty, should the need arise), set up a regular bank transfer for whatever amount you can find in that budget, and try to forget about it until you get the bank statement for the savings account and get that warm, fuzzy feeling for actually having a decent amount of money set aside should something ever happen making you need it. Then, later, you can decide whether to use the money to buy a car, start a company, take early retirement, or something entirely different. Having the money will give you the options, and you can decide what is more important to you yourself. Just keep on saving. |
Company stock listed in multiple exchanges? | Keep in mind that the exchanges do not hold, buy, or sell the stock - people (or funds) do. All the exchange does is facilitate the sale of stock from one entity to another. So the shares outstanding (and market cap) for a company are set regardless of how many exchanges the stock is listed on. The company typically indicates the number of shares outstanding in its financial statements. I do not know if the exchange itself keeps track of shares outstanding; it may just report whatever the company publishes. So theoretically, if you wanted to buy all of the stock of a company, you could do it all in one exchange, provided that all the existing holders of the stock were willing to sell you their shares. There are many issues with that, though, which I don't think are germane to your question. |
Can dividends be exploited? | In addition to the other answers it's also noteworthy that the stock exchanges themselves adjust the price quotes via their ex-div mechanism. All limit orders present in the book when the stock goes ex-div will be adjusted by the dividend. Which means you can't even get "accidentally" filled in the very unlikely case that everyone forgot to adjust their quotes. |
Would it make sense to buy a rental property as an LLC and not in my own name? | I'd have a good look at how much anonymity an LLC offers in your state - as far as I'm aware this varies from state to state. Out here in NV an LLC owner's privacy is supposedly fairly well protected, but in other states, not quite as much. Also keep in mind that while the LLC offers some protection (and I'm a big advocate of this sort of structure if you're taking larger risks that might have a big impact on your overall personal finances), this might not apply to financing. A lot of banks tend to require an LLC's owner to guarantee loans to an LLC once they go over a certain amount or even in general. Do some research in this area because the LLC would be worth less as a protective shield to you if you're on the hook for the full amount of the loans anyway. |
What are the consequences of not respecting a notice period when leaving a job? | It's provincial jurisdiction, so it can vary by province. In Manitoba, it's different when an employee quits vs. being terminated: Quiting: Being terminated: Edit: At least in Manitoba, according to the above link, an employer can't set different notice periods. Effective April 30, 2007, employers cannot have alternate notice policies. A notice policy set under the previous legislation is not valid. The only exclusion is a unionized workplace, where a collective agreement has a probationary period that is one year or less. Ontario, on the other hand doesn't have anything legislated about resignation notice except under a couple very specific circumstances. This leaves it open for contracts to put in place their own requirements. In this case, you can be sued for provable losses (minus the savings from not having to pay you.) |
How can I lookup the business associated with a FEIN? | In most cases you cannot do "reverse lookup" on tax id in the US. You can verify, but for that you need to have more than just the FEIN/SSN. You should also have a name, and some times address. Non-profits, specifically, have to publish their EIN to donors, so it may be easier than others to identify those. Other businesses may not be as easy to find just by EIN. |
Income Tax and Investments | Unless you make those investments inside a tax-deferred account, you will have to pay income-taxes on that money this year. Because you made that money through your own business, you will also have payroll taxes due on that money this year. |
Can my broker lock my cash account if I try to use the money from a stock sale during the three-day settlement period? | Brokerage firms must settle funds promptly, but there's no explicit definition for this in U.S. federal law. See for example, this article on settling trades in three days. Wikipedia also has a good write-up on T+3. It is common practice, however. It takes approximately three days for the funds to be available to me, in my Canadian brokerage account. That said, the software itself prevents me from using funds which are not available, and I'm rather surprised yours does not. You want to be careful not to be labelled a pattern day trader, if that is not your intention. Others can better fill you in on the consequences of this. I believe it will not apply to you unless you are using a margin account. All but certainly, the terms of service that you agreed to with this brokerage will specify the conditions under which they can lock you out of your account, and when they can charge interest. If they are selling your stock at times you have not authorised (via explicit instruction or via a stop-loss order), you should file a complaint with the S.E.C. and with sufficient documentation. You will need to ensure your cancel-stop-loss order actually went through, though, and the stock was sold anyway. It could simply be that it takes a full business day to cancel such an order. |
Why do 10 year-old luxury cars lose so much value? | Personally, I buy newer luxury cars for two reasons. 1) Status symbol Newer cars have the latest looks, performance, and features like heated side mirrors and sensors that adjust cruse control speed when in heavy traffic etc. 2) Older cars have more wear and tear. No one has spent any significant amount of time in the car before and therefore you know the history of what the car has been through, like buying a new pair of pants. You know that no one has pissed in them ;). After I have pissed in and tore up my now older luxury car, I sell it off and get a new one. Cars wear out and as they get older, they need parts replaced. My brother's Mazda, for example, just blew the head gasket after buying the car new and driving 130k miles over a four year period. Part of the luxury for owning a new car is the luxury of time, not having your car spend any significant amount of time in a garage being worked on, unless you buy a Land Rover of course ;). |
How is gold shared in worldwide economies? | I think you are asking a few questions here. Why is gold chosen as money? In a free market there are five characteristics of a good money: Gold and silver meet all five characteristics. Diamonds are not easily divisible which is why they are not normally used as money. Copper, Iron, and lead are not scarce enough - you would need a lot of these metals to make weekly or daily purchases. Paper is also way too plentiful to be used as money. By the way, historically silver has been used for money more than gold. How does international trade work with gold as money (is this what you are asking with your hypothetical example of 10 countries each with y amount of gold?) Typically a government will issue a currency that is backed by gold. This means you can redeem your currency for actual gold. Then when an American spends 5 US dollars (USD) to purchase a Chinese good the Chinese man now owns 5 USDs. The Chinese man can either redeem the 5 USD for gold or spend the 5 USD in the US. If a government issues more currency then they have gold for then the gold will start to flow from that country to other countries as the citizens of the other countries redeem the over-issued currency for gold. This outflow of gold restricts governments from over-issuing paper currency. Who creates the procedures and who supervises them in modern worldwide economy? The Federal Reserve, IMF, and Bank of International Settlements all are involved in the current system where the US dollar (see Bretton Woods agreement) is the reserve currency used by central banks throughout the world. Some think this system is coming to an end. I tend to agree. |
What happens to options if a company is acquired / bought out? | When the buyout happens, the $30 strike is worth $10, as it's in the money, you get $10 ($1000 per contract). Yes, the $40 strike is pretty worthless, it actually dropped in value today. Some deals are worded as an offer or intention, so a new offer can come in. This appears to be a done deal. From Chapter 8 of CHARACTERISTICS AND RISKS OF STANDARDIZED OPTIONS - FEB 1994 with supplemental updates 1997 through 2012; "In certain unusual circumstances, it might not be possible for uncovered call writers of physical delivery stock and stock index options to obtain the underlying equity securities in order to meet their settlement obligations following exercise. This could happen, for example, in the event of a successful tender offer for all or substantially all of the outstanding shares of an underlying security or if trading in an underlying security were enjoined or suspended. In situations of that type, OCC may impose special exercise settlement procedures. These special procedures, applicable only to calls and only when an assigned writer is unable to obtain the underlying security, may involve the suspension of the settlement obligations of the holder and writer and/or the fixing of cash settlement prices in lieu of delivery of the underlying security. In such circumstances, OCC might also prohibit the exercise of puts by holders who would be unable to deliver the underlying security on the exercise settlement date. When special exercise settlement procedures are imposed, OCC will announce to its Clearing Members how settlements are to be handled. Investors may obtain that information from their brokerage firms." I believe this confirms my observation. Happy to discuss if a reader feels otherwise. |
Can a high down-payment on a house offset the need for proof of income? | It's difficult to provide an exact answer as this will very much depend on the bank & the local regulatory scheme. However as a business owner you should be able to provide incorporation docs, some proof of ownership of the company and last years' financial statements or tax returns, many banks would accept this as a proof of income for the purposes of granting credit. In general in most jurisdictions I can think of, a high downpayment will not remove the need to verify income as the bank needs to feel comfortable that you have the ability to pay the remaining 25% (e.g. how do they know you're not a serially unemployed lottery winner) and if the downpayment is quite large they may want some assurance that you got the money legally (e.g. how do they make sure you're not a drug dealer). So probably regardless of how large a downpayment most banks would probably want some additional proofs of income however what proofs are needed may be more flexible than just a salary stub. I suggest taking a look at what sort of documents you may have on hand that can serve to validate your revenue in some way and contacting a few banks directly to see what options they can provide and whether some custom-tailored arrangement can be made. |
What is a trust? What are the different types of trusts? | From a more technical point of view, a trust is a legal relationship between 3 parties: Trusts can take many forms. People setup trusts to ensure that property is used in a specific way. Owning a home with a spouse is a form of a trust. A pension plan is a trust. Protecting land from development often involves placing it in trust. Wealthy people use trusts for estate planning for a variety of reasons. There's no "better" or "best" trust on a general level... it all depends on the situation that you are in and the desired outcome that you are looking for. |
Investing in real estate when the stock market is high, investing in stocks when it's low? | The price of real estate reacts to both demand for property and the rate of inflation and rate of income growth. Mortgage rates generally move as treasury rates move. See this paragraph: As we mentioned, intermediate term bonds and long-term mortgages (more properly, Mortgage-Backed Securities, or MBS) compete for the same fixed-income investor dollar. Treasury issues are 100% guaranteed to be repaid, but mortgages are not; therefore mortgages carry more risk of default or early repayment, which could potentially disturb the return on the investment. Therefore, mortgage rates must be priced higher to compensate for that risk. But how much higher are mortgages priced? In a normal market, the average "spread" or markup above the 100% secured Treasury is about 170 basis points, or 1.7%. That markup -- the spread relationship -- widens and contracts with a range of market conditions, investor appetites and supply of available product -- as well as the presence of competing investment opportunities, like corporate bonds or domestic (or foreign) equity markets Source: What Moves Mortgage Rates? And when the stock market crashes, investors tend to run to bonds and treasuries, which causes prices to go up and treasury yields to drop. Theoretically, this would also cause mortgage rates to drop, although most mortgage rates have a base price below which they cannot fall. How easy is it to profit from recent stock market drops and at what frequency? Incredibly difficult. The issue with your strategy is that you cannot predict the bottom of the market (at least us mortals can't). Just take the month of August for example. Stocks fell something like 15%? After the first 5-10% drop, people felt that the bottom was there, so they rushed in, only to have the market fall even more. How will you know when to invest? Even if the market falls by 50%, and there's a huge buying opportunity, and you increase the mortgage on your house, odds are your rates will increase because of the equity you take out. What if the market stays low for a very long time? Will you be able to maintain mortgage payments? Japan's stock bubble popped in the early 90's, and they've had two lost decade's now. Furthermore, there are issues of liquidity. What if you need more capital? Can you just sell a property or can you buy now property to draw equity against? What if the market is moving too fast for you to take advantage of. Don't ignore transaction costs and taxes either. Overall, there are a lot of ways that your idea can go wrong, and not many ways it can go right. |
Why do I get a much better price for options with a limit order than the ask price? | There are usually so many different options around for the same stock that some are rarely traded. Especially if the price has moved since the option was issued, nobody might be interested in that particular option at that price anymore. So the asking price might be something that someone asked for ages ago and that is much higher than anyone would reasonably pay today. With a bid of $20 and an ask of $30, nobody is trading, but the value of that option is somewhere between $20 and $30. If the value is below $25, someone will notice your $25 bid and sell. |
Need something more basic than a financial advisor or planner | You know how when people called in on the Car Talk radio show (Click and Clack, I miss those guys), and while the caller asked a question about his car, really he needed marital advice? And the hosts would pounce on the part about the disagreement with family member and provide an unexpected answer ("Yeah, the trick to a using a clutch is [...], but really, if you want to learn to drive a stick shift, get your dad out of the car!") So I'm pouncing on the part about the spouse. It sounds like you and your spouse don't always agree on saving and spending, and you want to find a way to agree on saving and spending. If you can find a coach or planner or counselor that you both like and both trust, then go for it. You're looking more for the right personality than a precise job description. Start with exploring what you do agree on: we agree we need to save money, we agree we need to have a spending plan and budget, etc. The right coach will help you get to more agreement -- the job title is less important. |
How do rich people guarantee the safety of their money, when savings exceed the FDIC limit? | Even assuming hypothetically that you are able to split money in different bank accounts to get full coverage and all your accounts are in top ranking financial institutions in USA, you can not rely on FDIC if all or most of those banks go broke. Because FDIC just has a meagre 25 billion dollars to cover all bank accounts in the USA. And you know the amount of bank deposits in USA run in at least a trillion of dollars. US Deposits & FDIC Insurance figures |
Should I set a stop loss for long term investments? | You should definately have a stop loss in place to manage your risk. For a time frame of 5 to 10 years I would be looking at a trailing stop loss of 20% to 25% off the recent high. Another type of stop you could use is a volatility stop. Here the more volatile the stock the larger the stop whilst the less volatile the stock the smaller the stop. You could use 3 or 4 x Weekly ATR (Average True Range) to achieve this. The reason you should always use a stop loss is because of what can happen and what did happen in 2008. Some stock markets have yet to fully recover from their peaks at the end of 2007, almost 9 years later. What would you do if you were planning to hold your positions for 5 years and then withdrawal your funds at the end of June 2021 for a particular purpose, and suddenly in February 2021 the market starts to fall. By the time June comes the market has fallen by over 50%, and you don't have enough funds available for the purpose you planned for. Instead if you were using a trailing stop loss you would manage to keep at least 75% of the peak of your portfolio. You could even spend 10 minutes each week to monitor your portfolio for warning signs that a downtrend may be around the corner and adjust your trailing stop to maybe 10% in these situations, protecting 90% of the peak of your portfolio. If the downtrend does not eventuate you can adjust your trailing back to a higher percentage. If you do get stopped out and shortly after the market recovers, then you can always buy back in or look for other stocks and ETFs to replace them. Sure you might lose a bit of profits if this happens, but it should always be part of your investment plan and risk management how you will handle these situation. If you are not using stop losses, risk management and money management you are essentially gambling. If you say I am going to buy these stocks and ETFs hold them for 10 years and then sell them, then you are just hoping to make gains - which is essentially gambling. |
What size “nest egg” should my husband and I have, and by what age? | For most people, a million dollars is about right. Here's the back of the napkin math that you should consider to find your own estimate: If you take 1 and divide it by 2, that's roughly the size of the nest egg you'll need to live indefinitely. For example, if your retirement investments are earning 5% a year, and you want to live on $50,000 a year, you would need a $1,000,000 nest egg (50,000 / 0.05) Note that you don't have to make any assumptions about how long you'll live. The whole idea of a nest egg is that you live off the interest it earns each year without ever dipping into the principle. It's the gift that keeps on giving! When you die, you can pass it along to children, charities, etc. |
Learning investing and the stock market | It is great that you want to learn more about the Stock Market. I'm curious about the quantitative side of analyzing stocks and other financial instruments. Does anyone have a recommendation where should I start? Which books should I read, or which courses or videos should I watch? Do I need some basic prerequisites such as statistics or macro and microeconomics? Or should I be advanced in those areas? Although I do not have any books or videos to suggest to you at the moment, I will do some more research and edit this answer. In order to understand the quantitative side of analyzing the stock market to have people take you serious enough and trust you with their money for investments, you need to have strong math and analytical skills. You should consider getting a higher level of education in several of the following: Mathematics, Economics, Finance, Statistics, and Computer Science. In mathematics, you should at least understand the following concepts: In finance, you should at least understand the following concepts: In Computer Science, you should probably know the following: So to answer your question, about "do you need to be advanced in those areas", I strongly suggest you do. I've read that books on that topics are such as The Intelligent Investor and Reminiscences of A Stock Operator. Are these books really about the analytics of investing, or are they only about the philosophy of investing? I haven't read the Reminiscences of A Stock Operator, but the Intelligent Investor is based on a philosophy of investing that you should only consider but not depend on when you make investments. |
How to make a decision for used vs new car if I want to keep the car long term? | This is my opinion as a car nut. It depends on what you want out of a car. For your situation (paying cash, want to keep the car long-term but also save money) I recommend seriously considering a slightly used vehicle, maybe 2 or 3 years old, or a "certified pre-owned vehicle". Reasons: Much less expensive than a brand new car because the first two years have the biggest depreciation hit. Cars come with a 4-year warranty, so a 3 year old car will still be in warranty. Yes, a certified pre-owned car will have a bit of a premium compared to a private-party used car, but the peace of mind of knowing it's in good shape is worth the extra cost considering you want to keep it long term. Consumer Reports will have good advice on the best values in used cars. |
How can small children contribute to the “family economy”? | @MrChrister - Savings is a great idea. Coudl also give them 1/2 the difference, rather than the whole difference, as then you both get to benefit... Also, a friend of mine had the Bank of Dad, where he'd keep his savings, and Dad would pay him 100% interest every year. Clearly, this would be unsustainable after a while, but something like 10% per month would be a great way to teach the value of compounding returns over a shorter time period. I also think that it's critical how you respond to things like "I want that computer/car/horse/bike/toy". Just helping them to make a plan on how to get there, considering their income (and ways to increase it), savings, spending and so on. Help them see that it's possible, and you'll teach them a worthwhile lesson. |
Why don't banks give access to all your transaction activity? | Many good points have been brought up, and I'll just link to them here, for ease. Source: I work at a credit/debit card transaction processing company on the Database and Processing Software teams. See mhoran_psprep's answer. See Chris' answer. Believe it or not, banks don't expose their primary (or secondary) database to end users. They don't expose their fastest / most robust database to end users. By only storing x days of data in that customer-facing database and limiting the range of any one query, any query run against it is much less likely to cause system-wide slowness. They most definitely have database archives which are kept offline, and most definitely have an employee-facing database which allows employees to query larger ranges of data. What would a bank have to gain by allowing you to query a full year of transactions? |
Exercising an option without paying for the underlying | Unless you want to own the actual shares, you should simply sell the call option.By doing so you actual collect the profits (including any remaining time-value) of your position without ever needing to own the actual shares. Please be aware that you do not need to wait until maturity of the call option to sell it. Also the longer you wait, more and more of the time value embedded in the option's price will disappear which means your "profit" will go down. |
Would it make sense to take a loan from a relative to pay off student loans? | The interest that you are proposing to pay your MIL is actually quite low compared to even extremely conservative investing which easily earns 7% or more with quantifiable low risk. You claim that it would be no risk, but what would happen if you lost your job? The risk she faces is more or less exactly what a bank would experience while giving the loan, or in other words it is pretty much whatever your credit score says. Even worse, she does not have a large pool of investments to distribute this risk like a bank would. Making loans this large in a family situation is a recipe for disaster. Taking a huge risk with the relationship your wife has with her mother over three points of interest is exceptionally unwise. Are these private or federal student loans? Federal student loan debt is some of the safest to carry due to its income based repayment plans and eventual loan forgiveness after 25 years. Have you investigated income based repayment options? |
Does it make any sense to directly contribute to reducing the US national debt? | At its heart, I think the best spirit of "donation" is helping others less fortunate than yourself. But as long as the US remains solvent, the chief benefit of paying down the national debt is - like paying off a credit card - lowering the future interest payments the U.S. taxpayer has to make. Since the wealthy pay a disproportionately large portion of taxes (per capita), your hard earned money would be disproportionately benefitting the wealthy. So I'd recommend you do one or both of the following: instead target your donations to a charity whose average beneficiary is less fortunate than yourself take political action with an aim towards balancing the federal budget (since the US national debt is principally financed in the form of 30 year treasuries, the U.S. will be completely out of debt if it can maintain a balanced budget for 30 years recanted, see below) |
Source of income: from dividends vs sale of principal or security | The trend in ETFs is total return: where the ETF automatically reinvests dividends. This philosophy is undoubtedly influenced by that trend. The rich and retired receive nearly all income from interest, dividends, and capital gains; therefore, one who receives income exclusively from dividends and capital gains must fund by withdrawing dividends and/or liquidating holdings. For a total return ETF, the situation is even more limiting: income can only be funded by liquidation. The expected profit is lost for the dividend as well as liquidating since the dividend can merely be converted back into securities new or pre-existing. In this regard, dividends and investments are equal. One who withdraws dividends and liquidates holdings should be careful not to liquidate faster than the rate of growth. |
Equity As Part of Compensation | With LLCs, the operation agreement can define different shares for different kinds of income or equity, and different partners may be treated differently. In essence, you can end up with a different stock class for each partner/member. So you need to read the grant document and the OA really carefully to know what you're getting. You may want to have a lawyer read through it for you. This may be way more complicated than classes of shares in a corporation. |
Problems with Enterprise Value and better valuation techniques | How you use the metric is super important. Because it subtracts cash, it does not represent 'value'. It represents the ongoing financing that will be necessary if both the equity plus debt is bought by one person, who then pays himself a dividend with that free cash. So if you are Private Equity, this measures your net investment at t=0.5, not the price you pay at t=0. If you are a retail investor, who a) won't be buying the debt, b) won't have any control over things like tax jurisdictions, c) won't be receiving any cash dividend, etc etc .... the metric is pointless. |
What are the consequences of not respecting a notice period when leaving a job? | When I was pursuing my Business Degree in Canada we were told the standard notice period is 2 weeks on both sides. This means your employer is required to give you at least two weeks notice and you are required to give it as well. If you violate your notice requirement the employer can sue you for lost revenues and etc. for that time period. The converse side is if your employer failed to provide you with sufficient notice you could sue for lost wages for that time frame as well. I'm sure you can contractually agree to more than the legal minimum of two weeks. |
Is it better to pay an insurance deductible, or get an upgrade? | You asked for simple, and I promise you this is... it just looks a bit math-heavy to start with because we have to handle a couple of different scenarios. Bear with me :) I find the best way to deal with these kinds of questions is to put together a "Total cost" for each option, for a sensible amount of time, and see what the difference is. We'll include the current cost for both options, plus the subsequent costs for 12 months: I find that more useful than a straight "which is more expensive right now" because it includes the potential costs of the next upgrade, and any changes to the plan. Let's throw some numbers together for the next 12 months (if your current plan is longer than 12 months, read the note at the bottom first) First, write down the cost of these things **The above assume that you have two options if you take the repair option (and only one option if you use the buy-out option). The two options we're assuming here are that you can either: If you'd choose the same new plan regardless of whether you take the $100 or $150 option, there's no need to include both options: to simplify things you can just use the same numbers for both b/c and Pu/Py and the calculation below will still work. When you've found and written down the above, just do the sums below to find your two total costs over 12 months. Nothing fancy, just plug the numbers above into the equation. eg if Pe (eBay value of the phone) is $80, replace Pe with 80. Don't forget to do the parts in brackets first! That's your total cost for both options for the next year. Note: I'm assuming that your plan ends within the next 12 months. If not, just replace 12 in the above calculations with another term! You can also do this if you want to find out the price difference over a longer period (noting that if you upgrade to the same plan regardless of choice, you'll get the same answer for any period longer than your current contract) |
Why is it not a requirement for companies to pay dividends? | The shareholders have a claim on the profits, but they may prefer that claim to be exercised in ways other than dividend payments. For example, they may want the company to invest all of its profits in growth, or they may want it to buy back shares to increase the value of the remaining shares, especially since dividends are generally taxed as income while an increase in the share price is generally taxed as a capital gain, and capital gains are often taxed at a lower rate than income. |
Pros & cons in Hungary of investing retirement savings exclusively in silver? What better alternatives, given my concerns? | I think precious metals as an investment might set one up for disappointment. Why does it seem to continually decline despite the variance? As many have noted, there isn't much productive use for precious metals, and no major wars are taking place, so they aren't being used as currency substitutes, not to mention that more is being pulled out of the ground every day. The real reason why this graph shows silver to decline in real value over time is because its using a suboptimal price index. An optimal one would most likely show a stable price over the long run. Silver is a great speculation if one can determine with high confidence the direction. |
Books, Videos, Tutorials to learn about different investment options in the financial domain | Investopedia does have tutorials about investments in different asset classes. Have you read them ? If you had heard of CFA, you can read their material if you can get hold of it or register for CFA. Their material is quite extensive and primarily designed for newbies. This is one helluva book and advice coming from persons who have showed and proved their tricks. And the good part is loads of advice in one single volume. And what they would suggest is probably opposite of what you would be doing in a hedge fund. And you can always trust google to fish out resources at the click of a button. |
How can I trade in U.S stock exchange living in India by choosing the broker in U.S? | i have been trading with dollarbird Trading firm for past 1 year there is absolutly no problem everything is fine you can google them to find anything about them.they have provided me with LASER trading platform which requires a bit of training as in to know the software but i can say one thing trading in US Equity market exp. is very diffrent from indian market they are very mature market and highly liqd and have good volatality to trade best equity market to trade with great trading platform you should have a exp. to trade on US equity it is diffrent |
Assessed value of my house | I had the same thing happen to my house. I bought it in 2011 for 137,000, which was the same as the FHA appraised value (because FHA won't guarantee a loan for more than their appraiser thinks its worth). January of last year, I get the letter from the tax office and see that my house has been assessed at only 122,000. I was shocked too, until I read a similar document that Phil told you to read. The short of it is, no matter what the tax assessor calls their calculation, it is an assessment. It was mass-produced along with everyone else's in your neighborhood by looking at its specs on paper (acreage, house square footage, age, beds/baths) and by driving by your home to see its general condition. The fact that your lawn may be less well-kept than the last time they drove by could have affected the decision a little. It's very unlikely to have been a major determinant of the assessment. The assessment value affects taxes, and taxes only. It is, in most states, a matter of public record, and so it could be used by a potential buyer to negotiate a lower price. However, everyone in the housing business knows that the assessed value is not the market value, and the buyer's agent will be encouraging their client to make a more realistic bid. This "assessed value" is not an "appraisal value". An appraisal is done by someone actually walking into and through your home, inspecting the general condition inside and out, to try to make a fair evaluation of what the home is actually worth. That number is almost always going to be more than the assessment value, because it takes into account all the amenities of the home; the current fixtures, the well-kept (or recently-replaced) flooring, the energy-efficient HVAC and hot water system, etc etc. It also takes into account recent comparables; what have other houses, with the same general statistics, the same amenities, relatively close in location, sold for recently? That will still generally be different from the true market value of the home. That value is nothing more or less than what a potential buyer will pay to have it at the time you decide to sell it, and that in turn depends 100% on your potential buyers' myriad situations. Someone may lowball even the assessed value because they're looking for a deal and hoping you're desperate; you just reject the offer. Someone may be looking at comparables indicating the house is maybe overpriced by $10k. You can counter and try to come to an agreement. Or, your potential buyer could work five minutes from your house, and be willing to pay at or above your asking price because the next best possibility is another 10 miles away. Since you aren't looking to sell the home, none of this matters, except to determine any escrow payments you might be making towards property taxes. Just keep making your mortgage payment, and don't worry about it. If you really wanted to, you could petition the state for a second opinion, but you think the value should be higher; if they agree with you, they'll raise the assessed value and you'll pay more in taxes. Why in the world would you want to do that? |
Is there a government-mandated resource that lists the shareholders of a public company? | There are several such "lists." The one that is maintained by the company is called the shareholder registry. That is a list that the company has given to it by the brokerage firms. It is a start, but not a full list, because many individual shareholders hold their stock with say Merrill Lynch, in "street name" or anonymously. A more useful list is the one of institutional ownership maintained by the SEC. Basically, "large" holders (of more than 5 percent of the stock) have to register their holdings with the SEC. More to the point, large holders of stocks, the Vanguards, Fidelitys, etc. over a certain size, have to file ALL their holdings of stock with the SEC. These are the people you want to contact if you want to start a proxy fight. The most comprehensive list is held by the Depositary Trust Company. People try to get that list only in rare instances. |
Why would a company care about the price of its own shares in the stock market? | Why do companies exist? Well, the corporate charter describes why the company exists. Usually the purpose is to enrich the shareholders. The owners of a company want to make money, in other words. There are a number of ways that a shareholder can make money off a stock: As such, maintaining the stock price and dividend payouts are generally the number one concern for any company in the long term. Most of the company's business is going to be directed towards making the company more valuable for a future buyout, or more valuable in terms of what it can pay its shareholders directly. Note that the company doesn't always need to be worried about the specifics of the day-to-day moves of the stock. If it keeps the finances in line - solid profits, margins, earnings growth and the like - and can credibly tell people that it's generally a valuable business, it can usually shrug off any medium-term blips as market craziness. Some companies are more explicitly long-term about things than others (e.g. Berkshire Hathaway basically tells people that it doesn't care all that much about what happens in the short term). Of course, companies are abstractions, and they're run by people. To make the people running the company worry about the stock price, you give them stock. Or stock options, or something like that. A major executive at a big company is likely to have a significant amount of stock. If the company does well, he does well; if it does poorly, he does poorly. Despite a few limitations, this is really a powerful incentive. If a company is losing a lot of money, or if its profits are falling so it's just losing a lot of its value as a business, the owners (stockholders) tend to get upset, and may vote in new management, or launch some sort of shareholder lawsuit. And, as previously noted, to raise funds, a company can also issue new shares to the market as a secondary offering as well (and they can issue fewer shares if the price is high - meaning that whatever the company is worth afterward, the existing owners own proportionally more of it). |
Insurance company sent me huge check instead of pharmacy. Now what? | You mentioned depositing the check and then sending a personal check. Be sure to account for time, since any deposit over $10,000 the money will be made available in increments, so it may take 10-14 days to get the full amount in your account before you could send a personal check. I would not recommend this option regardless, but if you do, just a heads up. |
Why does historical price data not go back all the way on Google Finance? | Google Finance and Yahoo Finance have been transitioning their API (data interface) over the last 3 months. They are currently unreliable. If you're just interested in historical price data, I would recommend either Quandl or Tiingo (I am not affiliated with either, but I use them as data sources). Both have the same historical data (open, close, high, low, dividends, etc.) on a daily closing for thousands of Ticker symbols. Each service requires you to register and get a unique token. For basic historical data, there is no charge. I've been using both for many months and the data quality has been excellent and API (at least for python) is very easy! If you have an inclination for python software development, you can read about the drama with Google and Yahoo finance at the pandas-datareader group at https://github.com/pydata/pandas-datareader. |
merging transactions in 8949 | From the instructions: If you do not need to make any adjustments to the basis or type of gain or loss (short-term or long-term) reported to you on Form 1099-B (or substitute statement) or to your gain or loss for any transactions for which basis has been reported to the IRS (normally reported on Form 8949 with box A checked), you do not have to include those transactions on Form 8949. Instead, you can report summary information for those transactions directly on Schedule D. For more information, see Exception 1, later. However, in case of ESPP and RSU, it is likely that you actually do need to make adjustments. Since 2014, brokers are no longer required to track basis for these, so you better check that the calculations are correct. If the numbers are right and you just summarized instead of reporting each on a separate line, its probably not an issue. As long as the gains reported are correct, no-one will waste their time on you. If you missed several thousand dollars because of incorrect calculations, some might think you were intentionally trying to hide something by aggregating and may come after you. |
What is an “International Equity”? | International means from all over the world. In the U.S. A Foreign Equity fund would be non-US stocks. There's an odd third choice I'm aware of, a fund of US companies that derive their sales from overseas, primarily. |
Making an offer on a property - go in at market price? | From then on we've felt he was really pushy and rushing us to make a decision (we need to lock in a good rate, its a sellers market, it'll go fast, snooze loose, etc). This is the first reason for walking away. I understand that all those factors might be true but my question is: How do I know we made a good offer? I'm going to be blunt, here: You don't. You work out ahead of time what you will pay (ignore the agent) and you make the offer on the basis of your own research, research you spent months undertaking. The listed price on the location is $375,000 and according to our agent similar units over the last few years had sold for that amount. So our agent suggested making an offer at market price. According to the agent. I'm going to be blunt here, what do any of the real estate sites out there - that offer a wealth of information for free - indicate? If you don't know, then yet again you don't know if you made the right offer or not. Do some research now by yourself. I would be shocked if your offer was at the right level. Set your emotions aside - there are a gazillion houses out there. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.