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Are there online brokers in the UK which don't require margin account? | Most UK stock brokers don't require or allow margin trading. A quick web search for 'UK share dealing comparison' shows entries from money.co.uk and moneysupermarket.com who both provide lists of different brokers, e.g. Barclays, Hargraves Lansdown, IG Share Dealing, The Share Centre, TD Direct, Interactive Investor, ... |
Why do stocks gap up after a buyout is announced? | The price gaps up because the offer is for a price above the current price. Therefore people want to buy now before the price jumps to the offer level. Of course it does depend on the tone of the announcement, which party is making the announcement, and are they announcing an offer or a deal. If the price is $10, and ... |
How are Share Awards and Sales Treated? | You likely received the shares as ordinary income for services of $10k, since they withheld taxes at granting. Separately, you likely had a short term capital loss on sale of $2k, since your holding period seems to have been under one year. |
Can I trust the Motley Fool? | I would personally beware of the Motley Fool. Their success is based largely on their original investment strategy book. It had a lot of good advice in it, but it pushed a strategy called "The Foolish Four" which was an investing strategy. Since it was based on a buy-and-hold method with 18-month evaluation intervals, ... |
Tax implications of ESPP shares when company is bought out | When the deal closes, will it be as if I sold all of my ESPP shares with regards to taxes? Probably. If the deal is for cash and not stock exchange, then once the deal is approved and closed all the existing shareholders will sell their shares to the buyer for cash. Is there any way to mitigate this? Unlikely. You ne... |
valuing options | Below I will try to explain two most common Binomial Option Pricing Models (BOPM) used. First of all, BOPM splits time to expiry into N equal sub-periods and assumes that in each period the underlying security price may rise or fall by a known proportion, so the value of an option in any sub-period is a function of its... |
What happens when the bid and ask are the same? | In simple terms, this is how the shares are traded, however most of the times market orders are placed. Consider below scenario( hypothetical scenario, there are just 2 traders) Buyer is ready to buy 10 shares @ 5$ and seller is ready to sell 10 shares @ 5.10$, both the orders will remain in open state, unless one wish... |
What debts are both partners liable for in a 'community property' state? | No two states have the same exact laws regarding community property. I would recommend asking a competent financial advisor in your area, as they would be more familiar with the local statutes. |
Does the IRS reprieve those who have to commute for work? | When I have a question about my income taxes, the first place I look is generally the Giant Book of Income Tax Information, Publication 17 (officially called "Your Federal Income Tax"). This looks to be covered in Chapter 26 on "Car Expenses and Other Employee Business Expenses". It's possible that there's something in... |
Is there any benefit to investing in an index fund? | when the index is altered to include new players/exclude old ones, the fund also adjusts The largest and (I would say) most important index funds are whole-market funds, like "all-world-ex-US", or VT "Total World Stock", or "All Japan". (And similarly for bonds, REITS, etc.) So companies don't leave or enter these in... |
Are index-tracking ETF popular in Japan? | The Japanese stock market offers a wide selection of popular ETFs tracking the various indices and sub-indices of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. See this page from the Japan Exchange Group site for a detailed listing of the ETFs being offered on the Tokyo exchange. As you have suggested, one would expect that Japanese inve... |
New to options trading and need help understanding an options spread risk graph. What am I missing? | Suppose the stock is $41 at expiry. The graph says I will lose money. I think I paid $37.20 for (net debit) at this price. I would make money, not lose. What am I missing? The `net debit' doesn't have anything to do with your P/L graph. Your graph is also showing your profit and loss for NOW and only one expiration. Yo... |
How do you invest in real estate without using money? | They're probably talking about flipping houses. The conventional wisdom when flipping is to purchase the property with a mortgage or other loan on day-0. Do the work to rehabilitate it. Get it listed for re-sale promptly (this step has varying strategies) with a profitable price but one that will make it move. Have the... |
Can Warren Buffet's method be distilled into basic steps? | Warren Buffet isn't using any special sauce. He looks for value and ignores hype, greed, and fear. He buys what he knows and looks for companies that generate cash and/or are available for a discount of their true value. He explains what he looks for in a company and his reasons for buying it. He has said on numerous o... |
Payroll question | That $200 extra that your employer withheld may already have been sent on to the IRS. Depending on the size of the employer, withholdings from payroll taxes (plus employer's share of Social Security and Medicare taxes) might be deposited in the US Treasury within days of being withheld. So, asking the employer to reimb... |
Is a car loan bad debt? | Here is another way to look at it. Does this debt enable you to buy more car than you can really afford, or more car than you need? If so, it's bad debt. Let's say you don't have the price of a new car, but you can buy a used car with the cash you have. You will have to repair the car occasionally, but this is generall... |
Buy securities at another stock exchange | In a simple statement, no doesn't matter. Checked on my trade portal, everything lines up. Same ISIN, same price(after factoring in FX conversions, if you were thinking about arbitrage those days are long gone). But a unusual phenomenon I have observed is, if you aren't allowed to buy/sell a stock in one market and tr... |
If I put in a limit order for the same price and size as someone else, which order goes through? | While littleadv's answer is true for many exchanges (in particular the stock market, it's called FIFO matching) you should also know that some markets trade pro rata. That is, for a match at some price level everyone at that level gets a chunk of the deal proportional to their input (i.e. order size). E.g. match for q... |
How come the government can value a home more than was paid for the house? | Keep in mind, there are times that house is in such bad shape that it's going to need 6 months of renovations, in which case you might ask the town if they are willing to reappraise a lower value until the work is completed. Keep in mind, you'll get a new appraisal when permitted (I mean pulling a permit from the town)... |
Is there an online cost-basis calculator that automatically accounts for dividend re-investments and splits? | Google Finance portfolios take into account splits and cash deposits/withdrawals. |
Why invest for the long-term rather than buy and sell for quick, big gains? | The problem is that short-term trends are really unpredictable. There is nobody who can accurately predict where a fund (or even moreso, a single stock or bond) is going to move in a few hours, or days or even months. The long-term trends of the entire market, however, are (more or less) predictable. There is a defin... |
What does the phrase “To make your first million” mean? | I'd interpret it as "Net Worth" reached 1M where "net worth" = assets - liabilities. |
What is your effective tax rate if you work from home in Montreal for a company in Toronto? | For tax purposes, what matters is your province of residence at December 31st. Quebec Tax abatement therefore applies if you were living in Quebec, regardless of your employer, assuming you are an employee. As for effective tax, your question misses some data and does not quite make sense as effective tax is the result... |
Fund or ETF that simulates the investment goals of an options “straddle” strategy? | Why bother with the ETF? Just trade the options -- at least you have the ability to know what you actually are doing. The "exotic" ETFs the let you "double long" or short indexes aren't options contracts -- they are just collections of unregulated swaps with no transparency. Most of the short/double long ETFs also only... |
How is yahoo finance P/E Ratio TTM calculated? | The correct p/e for bp.l is 5.80. Bp.l is on the London stock exchange and prices are in local currency. The share price of 493 is reported in pence (not dollars). The EPS is reported in pounds. Using .85 pounds = 85 pence, you calculate the EPS as follows: 493.40/85 = 5.80 PE Yahoo totally screwed up. They converted t... |
Any experience with maxing out 401(k)? | The answers so far are excellent. I need to respond to your 8-9% withdrawal rate. Uh, wherever you heard that, I'd suggest you listen/read elsewhere. 4% seems to be the "safe" withdrawal rate. I've seen people who were convinced that 7-10% were ok get absolutely trashed in the downturns, both 2000 and 2008. Proper asse... |
Dividend vs Growth Stocks for young investors | A lot of people use dividend stocks as a regular income, which is why dividend stocks are often associated with retirement. If your goal is growth and you're reinvesting capital gains and dividends then investing growth stocks or dividend stocks should have the same effect. The only difference would be if you are manua... |
A guy scammed me, but he gave me a bank account number & routing number. Can I use that to take out what he owes me? | As long as there is nothing more to this story you aren't sharing, you can expect those bills you paid to come back (you will have to pay them again later). You can be pretty certain that the name he gave you was fake, and that the bank account you paid your bills with was not his. I would not try to do anything at all... |
Should I invest in real estate to rent, real estate to live in, or just stocks and bonds to earn 10-15%? | That your asking is a good first step towards taking control of your future. But truly, you must seek the advice of a personal consultant that is much more in tune with your finances that anyone out here in the public will be. You can get this type of advice locally, or if you want something online, I suggest oDesk or... |
When can we exercice an option? | American options (like those on ADBE) can be exercised by the holder anytime before expiration. They will be exercised automatically at expiration if they are in the money. However, if there is still time before expiration (as in this case), and they are not extremely in the money, there is probably extrinsic value to ... |
Buying and selling the same stock | If you buy for $1 and sell $1 when the price goes to $2, you would have sold only half of your initial investment. So your investment would now be worth $2 and you sell $1 leaving $1 still in the market. This means you would have sold half your initial investment, making a profit of $0.50 on this half of your initial ... |
How can rebuilding a city/large area be considered an economic boost? | Wikipedia's article on the Parable of the broken window mentions that Keynesians would argue that broken windows can be useful in depressed economies. I think Japan's economy was somewhat depressed, so if it applies anywhere, it'd apply in this scenario. |
Ordering From UK to Base Overseas - VAT exempt? | If you are an UK citizen and resident, then no. If you are an EU resident or non-EU resident then yes, but there are conditions. Source You can sometimes get VAT refunds on goods bought in the UK if you: You can’t get a VAT refund for: As bringing a laptop PCSpecialist is an online sale(I bought my desktop from them), ... |
Pay for a cheap car or take out a loan? | Buying a car is a very big financial decision. There are three major factors to decide which car to buy: Pick two because you can't have all three. You can either have a reliable car that has cheap running costs but will be expensive to buy or a cheap car that is unreliable. If you are mechanically minded then relia... |
How do you translate a per year salary into a part-time per hour job? | As an easy and rough rule of thumb, a job for $55,000 per year is $55 per hour as a contractor. That's roughly twice the hourly rate. In return, the company gets the rate to vary your hours or cease your employment with less financial, legal or managerial overhead than a full time employee. You have less stability, l... |
Is it better for a public company to increase its dividends, or institute a share buyback? | I would prefer a dividend paying company, rather than share appreciation. And I would prefer that the dividends increase over time. |
How to find cheaper alternatives to a traditional home telephone line? | Try to use VOIP service provider or web enabled conference calling services in your home phone. Now a days communication technologies have seen a boost as well as integration of different formats and platforms which easily reduces phone bills of a user. Service such as UberConference, Skype, Webinar etc enables audio/... |
Buy on dip when earnings fail? | What is cheap? A stock may fall from $20 per share to $10 per share, but it may have gone from making a $100M profit last year to a $100M loss this year. So now at $10 per share it may still be considered expensive. You need to be very careful when to consider that a stock is cheap or not, you'll have to look at more t... |
How should I pay off my private student loans that have a lot of restrictions? | Not that I doubted everyone's assumption but I wanted to see the math so I did some spreadsheet hacking. I assumed a monthly payments for 30 years which left us with total payments of 483.89. I then assumed we'd pay an extra $200/month in one of two scenarios. Scenario 1 we just paid that $200 directly to the lender.... |
Options for the intelligent but inexperienced | I strongly suggest you read up the Option Greeks. You can be right about a stocks price movement and still not make money b/c other factors come into play from time or volatility. For a "free" option hedge you can look at collars. Buying puts and selling calls to offset the debit you pay for the transaction. Ex: AAPL i... |
How can I find hotel properties to buy other than using Google? | Probably the easiest way to invest in hotel rooms in the U.S. is to invest in a Real Estate Investment Trust, or REIT. REITs are securities that invest in real estate and trade like a stock. There are different REITs that invest in different things: some own office buildings, some residential rentals, some hold mortg... |
What is the fastest way to retire, using passive income on real estate | You can't calculate how many houses it will take. To do so you would have to know how much you can charge in rent compared to how much is costs to run that particular location. If the desirability of that location changes, so does the ability to rent the place, and so does the amount you can charge. It is possible to c... |
Is it legal to receive/send “gifts” of Non-Trivial Amounts to a “friend”? | In almost all cases, gifts from employers are considered taxable compensation, based on the employer-employee nature of the relationship. Furthermore, cash gifts are always considered to be intended as wages, regardless of how you receive the money. Furthermore, regardless of whether you expect to receive anything in r... |
Who should pay taxes in my typical case? | Once you turn 18 you should open an account in your own name and transfer the assets there. Currently your mom is the one responsible as far as the IRS cares with respect to taxes as it is her name on the account. The taxes due will be based on your mom's tax rate. As a good child you can reimburse your mom for the tax... |
Can paying down a mortgage be considered an “investment”? | I think it is just semantics, but this example demonstrates what they mean by that: If you put $100 in a CD today, it will grow and you will be able to take out a greater amount plus the original principal at a later time. If you put $100 extra on your house payment today, you may save some money in the long run, but y... |
Money put down on home | To quote Judge Judy: "Our courts are not in the business of settling assets of couples who decide to play house". This is one of the reasons we put off buying houses with a partner until we are married. The courts have rules for couples who marry, then split, but none for those who don't. In the scenerio you spelled... |
Huge return on investment, I feel like im doing the math wrong | Your math is correct. These kind of returns are possible in the capital markets. (By the way, Google Finance shows something completely different for $CANV than my trading console in ThinkorSwim, ToS shows a high of $201, but I believe there may have been some reverse splits that are not accurately reflected in either ... |
Do people tend to spend less when using cash than credit cards? | Others have commented on the various studies. If, as JoeTaxpayer says, this one particular study he mentions does not really exist, there are plenty of others. (And in that case: Did someone blatantly lie to prove a bogus point? Or did someone just get the name of the organization that did the study wrong, like it was ... |
Would you withdraw your money from your bank if you thought it was going under? | If the FDIC didn't insure your deposit, there would be a run on EVERY bank, so there is no way the government will let it fail or go broke. It will be backstopped one way or another. So I wouldn't worry about losing my money. The only worry is the hassle of having to deal with the bank failure and getting at your m... |
Switching Accountants - who does the audit review for past years? | It depends on what you paid for, but usually audit support is an unrelated engagement to the return preparation. If the accountant made a professional mistake, you can request correction and compensation from that accountant, other than that any accountant can help you with audit regardless of who prepared the return. ... |
Deduct Health Care Premiums for Family When Employer Only Pays for Me | You can deduct what you pay for your own and your family's health insurance regardless of whether it is subsidized by your employer or not, as well as all other medical and dental expenses for your family, as an itemized deduction on Schedule A of Form 1040, but only to the extent that the total exceeds 7.5% of your ... |
If I have all this stock just sitting there, how can I lend it out to people for short selling? | Lending of securities is done by institutional investors and mutual funds. The costs of dealing with thousands of individual investors, small share blocks and the various screw-ups and drama associated with each individual are too high. Like many exotic financial transactions, if you have to ask about it, you're probab... |
Anonymous CC: Does “Entropay” really not hand my personal data over to a company - are there alternatives? | Do you guys know any options that are accessible to any global citizen? Prepaid and stored value cards are anonymous. For an arbitrary reason, the really anonymous ones only allow you to load $500 but there is no regulation that dictates this amount. In the USA, these cards are exempt from being declared at border cros... |
In a house with shared ownership, if one person moves out and the other assumes mortgage, how do we determine who owns what share in the end? | The answer is "it depends". What does it depend on? If it's a breakup situation, good luck. Whatever you do, get this issue settled as quickly as possible. In the future, don't make significant purchases with people unless you have a written contract or you are married. |
Do Affordable Care Act business requirements apply to “control groups?” | Yes, it applies to control groups. If I remember correctly common ownership rules are used to determine "Applicable Large Employer" status but if the time comes to owe a penalty, only the actual entity missing the mark will owe a penalty, not the entire control group. This is an excerpt from Section 4980H (the section... |
Saving $1,000+ per month…what should I do with it? | Daniel, first of all, I'm jealous of your predicament. That said, I think you've gotten some good advice already, so I won't repeat what's been said. But I will throw out a few ideas that haven't come up. My first thought is that you may be underestimating upcoming expenses. It sounds like your current expenses are... |
How to find out if I have a savings account already? | If you know what bank your parents used, call them and ask. (Or you might have to go there and show id). Chances are if such an account exists, it would be at the same bank. You can also search for unclaimed property. Here's the information link for Florida. |
Responsible investing - just a marketing trick? | You are correct that, barring an equity capital raise, your money doesn't actually end up in the company. However, interest in their stock can help a company in other ways; Management/board members hopefully own shares or options themselves, thus knowing that "green" policies are favorable for the stock price (as your ... |
How can I pay for school to finish my degree when I can't get a student loan and have bad credit? | Here's what you can do: roll up your sleeves and get to work. Work 2 or 3 jobs while you take 12 credit hours. Live in the cheapest available housing (that is reasonably safe). Have no social life. Wake up, work, class, eat, work, study, sleep. Every day. Don't eat at restaurants. Eat only simple meals at home. ... |
Is this the right formula to use implied volatility to gauge probability of a stock being within a certain range? | To get the probability of hitting a target price you need a little more math and an assumption about the expected return of your stock. First let's examine the parts of this expression. IV is the implied volatility of the option. That means it's the volatility of the underlying that is associated with the observed op... |
Should my retirement portfolio imitate my saving portfolio? | Short Answer: Length of Time invested and risk should be correlated. From what I am hearing this is pretty good game plan for your age. Minutia: Once you get closer to retirement lets say in 20 years. You might want to treat two lumps of money with different risk. For me at 49 I have a lump of money for 55-70 that ... |
If the housing market is recovering, why would a REIT index ETF (e.g. VNQ) not be performing well? | To round out something that @Chris W. Rea pointed out, the business that a REIT is in will be either A) Equity REIT... property management, B) mortgage REIT... lending, or C) hybrid REIT (both). A very key point about why REITs broadly have been struggling lately, (and this would show up in the REIT indices/ETFs you'v... |
Does Tennessee have anything like a principal residence exemption? | There's no homestead property tax exemption in TN. According to the TN comptroller site: Exemptions Exemptions are available for religious, charitable, scientific, and nonprofit educational uses, governmental property, and cemeteries. Most nongovernmental exemptions require a one-time application and approval by ... |
Filing personal with 1099s versus business s-corp? | Depends whom the 1099 was issued to. If it was issued to your corporation - then its your corporation's income, not yours. Why would it go to your tax return? Your corporation and you are two separate legal entities. You will have to file the 1120S, whether you have corporate income or not, it has to be filed each year... |
What does it really mean to buy a share? | Ditto to MD-Tech, but from a more "philosophical" point of view: When you buy stock, you own it, just like you own a cell phone or a toaster or a pair of socks that you bought. The difference is that a share of stock means that you own a piece of a corporation. You can't physically take possession of it and put it in y... |
Does doing your “research”/“homework” on stocks make any sense? | The markets are not as information efficient as some might have you believe. But on the contrary, looking up what the aggregate professional analysts have said is also part of "doing your homework" |
What is the purpose of property tax? | Governments only have a few ways to get income: tax income, tax consumption, tax property (cars & boats), tax real estate, or tax services (hotel & meals). The National, state, county, city, and town taxing authorities determine what is taxed and what the rate will be to get enough money to run their share of the gover... |
Why public companies care how their stock price fluctuates? [duplicate] | The folks who hold stock are the legal owners of the company. If a majority of stock holders become unhappy with the management of a company they can fire the executives and put in new management, or they can direct the company to close its doors and sell off its assets. As a crude approximation, the stock holders are ... |
Where can I borrow money for investing? | The question should read: "Borrow huge money for speculating". This is a bad idea on many levels. The lowest rates available will be from time-limited credit card offers, followed by broker margin accounts. Personal loans are going to be higher. My advice: if you insist on throwing your money away, go to Vegas with $40... |
Is there any flaw in this investment scheme? | You didn't win in case B. Borrowing shares and then selling them is known as "selling short". You received $2000 when you sold short 100 shares at $20. You spent $1000 to buy them back at $10, so you come out $1000 ahead on that deal. But at the same time, the 100 shares you already owned have declined in value from... |
Should I really pay off my entire credit card balance each month or should I maintain some balance? | Always pay on time, and stop listening to whoever is telling you not to -- they are clueless. Credit cards are revolving accounts with a grace period. The balance owed is due on the statement date, and you have a grace period of 20-40 days to pay. Paying bills on time is the single most important thing that you can do... |
What benefits are there to having a Pension (Retirement Account) In Ireland? | As you point out, the main benefits of a pension/retirement account over a traditional cash/taxable account are the legal and tax benefits. Most Western countries establish a specific legal definition for an account which is often taxed less or not at all relative to taxable accounts and which contains some protection... |
Debit card funds on preauthorization hold to paypal: can it be used for another transaction? | You said the hold would last a week. That's your answer. No you can't spend it again until the hold clears. |
Are my parents ripping me off with this deal that doesn't allow me to build my equity in my home? | You are getting totally hosed mate. Assume you live in the house for ten years, can get a normal 30 year mortgage and house prices average at 3% annually You could get a mortgage at 3.8% so your monthly payment would be $560 a month. $60 a month difference over 10 year is $7200 Because you are paying down on a conven... |
Avoiding timing traps with long term index investing | It's amusing that despite all the evidence that "you can't time the market", everyone still wants to try. Of course I understand your fear. If you invest all your money in the stock market today and it suddenly falls tomorrow you will feel very bad. There are a few things you can do to reduce your risk with respect ... |
Can we estimate the impact of a large buy order on the share price? | I may be underestimating your knowledge of how exchanges work; if so, I apologize. If not, then I believe the answer is relatively straightforward. Lets say price of a stock at time t1 is 15$ . There are many types of price that an exchange reports to the public (as discussed below); let's say that you're referring t... |
Merchant dispute with airline over missed flight, and which credit cards offer protection? | EDIT To answer what I think you question is: I do not know of anything other than trip cancellation insurance. And you must be very careful that the policy you purchase for your trip covers the circumstance you described. Essentially, you opted not to take the flight. Not all trip cancellation policies will cover th... |
Sole proprietorship or LLC? | The primary advantage is protection of your personal assets. If your LLC gets sued, they can't take your house/car/dog/wife. There aren't really any financial incentives to be an LLC; because of the pass-thru taxing structure, you wind up paying the same in taxes either way. "The cost" will depend on where you're locat... |
Buying insurance (extended warranty or guarantee) on everyday goods / appliances? | Most of the consumer products that you buy at retail these days are commodity priced, and have been for a long time. Margins are thin, so if there are retail salespeople milling about, their compensation isn't coming from the TV or computer with a 6% gross margin. It comes from the extended warranty programs (which are... |
What is meant by “buy-side firm” and “sell-side firm”? | Traditionally, dealers and broker-dealers were in contact with the actual producers of a product or issuers of a security, selling it at the exchange on their behalf. Consumers would traditionally be on the buy side, of course. These days, anyone can enter the market on either side. Even if you don't hold the securit... |
Placing limit order and stop loss on same stock at same time | From your question, I am guessing that you are intending to have stoploss buy order. is the stoploss order is also a buy order ? As you also said, you seems to limit your losses, I am again guessing that you have short position of the stock, to which you are intending to place a buy limit order and buy stoploss order ... |
What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000? | The "$1000 is no money at all" people are amusing me. Way back in the mists of time, a very young me invested on the order of ~$500 in a struggling electronics manufacturer I had a fondness for. An emotional investment, not much money, but enough that I could get a feel for what it was like owning stock in something. T... |
Is this follow-up after a car crash a potential scam? | You wouldn't pay what the quote says, you would pay what the bill says. If the car is used as a taxi then either it's done illegally and not your problem, or they have proper insurance. One reason to go through your insurance is that they know how to handle all these things for you. If you have only their phone number... |
What return are you getting on your money from paying down a mortgage on a rental property? | There are a few ways to look at this question. Assumptions. Per the original post's assumptions, this answer: In other words, if the owner paid the mortgage on its original schedule, the deal could boil down to a $ 40,000 up-front payment, in exchange for $ 200,000 of equity after 30 years. Or the deal could boil down... |
Should I stockpile nickels? | It seems like a lot of hassle to make a few bucks. $1,000 in nickels would weight 100kg. I'd rather put my money in ING or into a bond mutual fund like VBMFX. |
How to pay with cash when car shopping? | The very first time I bought a new car I wrote out a personal check for $5000 (this was a looong time ago!). And got a call from the sales person that he had called the bank and was told that I did not have that much money in my checking account! I explained that I had just that day transferred money from savings to ... |
How to make money from a downward European market? | The best way to make money on a downward market is to buy at the bottom, sell at the top. Lather, rinse, repeat. |
Alternatives to Intuit's PayTrust service for online bill viewing and bill payment? | Paytrust seems to be the only game in town. We've changed banks several times over the last 15 years and I can tell you that using a bank's bill pay service locks you in, big time. I loved paytrust because I could make one change if we changed banks. If you're using a bank directly for your bills, the ides of recrea... |
Are cashiers required to check a credit card for a signature in the U.S.? | Working retail myself, I do not accept an unsigned card without verification. If I received one I would ask for ID and verify the photo with the Name. I would also let the buyer know it was unsigned and remind them that anyone finding it can sign it and use the card without issue. Putting on the back of the card "SEE ... |
Can one use dollar cost averaging to make money with something highly volatile? | if you know when and by how much something will fluctuate, you can always make money. Buy it when it's cheaper and sell it when it's more expensive. If you just know that it fluctuated a lot recently, then you don't know what it will do next. Most securities that go to zero or go much higher bounce all over the place f... |
Losing Money with Norbert's Gambit | Can someone please clarify if Norbert's gambit is the optimal procedure to exchange CAD to USD? I'm not sure I'd call an arbitrage trade the "optimal procedure," because as you point out you're introducing yet another point of risk in to the transaction. I think buying the foreign currency for an agreed upon price is ... |
Is Cash Value Life Insurance (“whole life” insurance) a good idea for my future? | Almost everyone needs an insurance, you should also probably buy it. If you are good at planning [which it seems from your question], you should stick to Pure "Term" insurance and avoid any other types / variants of CVLI. CVLI is only advisable if one cannot commit to investing or is not good at saving money, or one f... |
When a fund drops significantly, how can I research what went wrong? [duplicate] | Usually there are annual or semi-annual reports for a mutual fund that may give an idea for when a fund will have "distributions" which can cause the NAV to fall as this is when the fund passes the taxable liabilities to shareholders in the form of a dividend. Alternatively, the prospectus of the fund may also have the... |
Why is it good to borrow money to buy a house? | First, as others have commented, the idea that getting a mortgage to buy a house is always a good idea is false. It depends on a number of factors including the current interest rate, what you think the future interest rate will do over the life of your mortgage, the relative cost of renting vs. buying, and how long y... |
Question about Tax Information from a Prospectus | A mutual fund could make two different kinds of distributions to you: Capital gains: When the fund liquidates positions that it holds, it may realize a gain if it sells the assets for a greater price than the fund purchased them for. As an example, for an index fund, assets may get liquidated if the underlying index ch... |
Why can't you just have someone invest for you and split the profits (and losses) with him? | The issue is the time frame. With a one year investment horizon the only way for a fund manager to be confident that they are not going to lose their shirt is to invest your money in ultra conservative low volatility investments. Otherwise a year like 2008 in the US stock market would break them. Note if you are willin... |
Options vs Stocks which is more profitable | First, to mention one thing - better analysis calls for analyzing a range of outcomes, not just one; assigning a probability on each, and comparing the expected values. Then moderating the choice based on risk tolerance. But now, just look at the outcome or scenario of 3% and time frame of 2 days. Let's assume your inv... |
Why and why would/wouldn't a company split their stock? | The reason to do a stock split is to get the price of the stock down to an affordable range. If your stock costs $100,000 per share, you are seriously cutting in to the number of people who can afford to buy it. I can think of two reasons NOT to do a stock split. The biggest is, Why bother? If your stock is trading at ... |
Why doesn’t every company and individual use tax-havens to pay less taxes? | Many of the Financial intermediaries in the business, have extraordinary high requirements for opening an account. For example to open an account in Credit Suisse one will need 1 million US dollars. |
Why can't poor countries just print more money? | Printing money doesn't mean that their wealth increases. It just devalues the money they already have. So it will just take more money to buy goods from another country. Printing money will also lead to over inflation which has its own set of problems such as: |
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