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Why would a company care about the price of its own shares in the stock market?
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Overpriced shares: Cheaper to raise new capital through secondary share offerings or debt using shares as a security. Fends off hostile take overs, since the company is too dear. When a company is taken over it needs only one set of management. Top management of the company that is taken over loses their jobs - no one wants to lose their job. Shareholders love to see share price grow - sale brings them profit, secures jobs for company management. Shares are used as a currency during acquisitions, if company shares are overpriced that means they can buy another company on the cheap - paying with the overpriced shares. Undervalued shares: More expensive to raise additional capital through secondary share offerings - for the same amount of capital the management has to offer a bigger chunk of the company; have to offer bigger chunk of a company as a security as well. Makes company vulnerable to hostile take overs, company is undervalues - makes it an attractive bargain. Once the company is taken over top management will almost certainly lose jobs. Falling price makes shareholders unhappy - they will vote management out. Makes difficult to acquire other companies.
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I was given a 1099-misc instead of a w-2 what are my next steps?
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I agree that you should have received both a 1099 and a W2 from your employer. They may be reluctant to do that because some people believe that could trigger an IRS audit. The reason is that independent contractor vs employee is supposed to be defined by your job function, not by your choice. If you were a contractor and then switched to be an employee without changing your job description, then the IRS could claim that you should have always been an employee the entire time, and so should every one of the other contractors that work for that company with a similar job function. It's a hornet's nest that the employer may not want to poke. But that's not your problem; what should you do about it? When you say "he added my Federal and FICA W/H together", do you mean that total appears in box 4 of your 1099? If so, it sounds like the employer is expecting you to re-pay the employer portion of FICA. Can you ask them if they actually paid it? If they did, then I don't see them having a choice but to issue a W2, since the IRS would be expecting one. If they didn't pay your FICA, then the amount this will cost you is 7.65% of what would have been your W2 wages. IMHO it would be reasonable for you to request that they send you a check for that extra amount. Note: even though that amount will be less than $600 and you won't receive a 1099 in 2017 for it, legally you'll still have to pay tax on that amount so I think a good estimate would be to call it 10% instead. Depending on your personality and your relationship with the employer, if they choose not to "make you whole", you could threaten to fill out form SS-8. Additional Info: (Thank you Bobson for bringing this up.) The situation you find yourself in is similar to the concept of "Contract-to-Hire". You start off as a contractor, and later convert to an employee. In order to avoid issuing a 1099 and W2 to the same person in a single tax year, companies typically utilize one of the following strategies: Your particular situation is closest to situation 2, but the reverse. Instead of retroactively calling you a W2 employee the entire time, your employer is cheating and attempting to classify you as a 1099 contractor the entire time. This is frowned upon by the IRS, as well as the employee since as you discovered it costs you more money in the form of employer FICA. From your description it sounds like your employer was trying to do you a favor and didn't quite follow through with it. What they should have done was never switch you to W2 in the first place (if you really should have been a contractor), or they should have done the conversion properly without stringing you along.
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Investing in hemp producers in advance of possible legalization in Canada?
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Hemp is already pretty easily grown by farmers here. Canada had 50,000 acres of legal hemp in 2006, but it's been in decline the last 3 years due to the cost, lack of demand, and the high values of some other crops. It's also difficult to harvest due to its size. It's possible that the demand for hemp products will increase, but given that many Asian countries (Russia, China and Korea, for example) never banned it in the first place, there's a pretty ready supply already in place. In Canada, the big reason to grow it is as an alternative crop for use in rotation that has some commercial demand, but it's certainly not as valuable as crops like canola, oats or soy beans.
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How can you correlate a company stock's performance with overall market performance?
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Generally, if you are trend trading, and if the market as a hole is going up strongly and an individual stock is falling sharply on the same day, I would tend to stay away from buying that stock at the moment. The market is showing strength whilst at the same time the stock is showing weakness. The general rule of thumb for trend trading is to buy rising stocks in a rising market. Or you could look to short sell falling stocks in a falling market.
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Rental Application Fees
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Slightly abbreviated version of the guidance from NOLO.com California state law limits credit check or application screening fees landlords can charge prospective tenants and specifies what landlords must do when accepting these types of fees. (Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6.) Here are key provisions: I am not a lawyer, but it would seem you have two options if you catch a landlord violating these rules. An idea to avoid the whole problem in the first place: Get a copy of your credit report yourself and take a copy with you to meet the landlord. If they want an application fee, ask why they need it making it clear you know the above law. If they say for a credit report offer to give them a copy in lieu of the fee.
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Do other countries have the equivalent of Australia's Negative Gearing?
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In India, where I live, you can: In addition, housing loans are given priority status as well - bank capital requirements on housing loans is lower than for, say, a corporate loan or a loan against other kinds of collateral. That makes housing loans cheaper as well - you get a home loan at around 10% in India versus 15% against most other assets, and since you can deduct it against tax, the effective interest rate is even lower. Housing in India is unaffordable too, if you're wondering. In a suburb 40 Km away from Delhi, a 2000 sq. foot apartment, about 1500 sq. ft. of carpet area, with no appliances costs about USD 250,000.
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Why doesn't the emerging markets index reflect GDP growth?
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GDP being a measurement for an economy's growth and with the stock market being driven (mostly) by company profits you would expect a tight correlation between GDP growth and stock market performance. After all, a growing economy should lead to a corresponding increase in profit right? But the stock market is heavily influenced by investor mentality; irrational exuberant buying and panic selling make the stock market far more volatile than GDP ever can be. Just look at the 2001 bubble and 2008 panic sell-off for famous examples. I feel emerging markets are particularly prone to overly optimistic buying to "get in" on the GDP growth followed by overly pessimistic selling when politics get unfavorable. Also keep in mind that GDP measurements are all done after the fact, the growth that is reported has already happened. The stock market might have already expected the reported growth and priced it in. A final point: governments and companies in emerging markets have a reputation (sometimes deserved) of poor governance, think corruption, nepotism etc. So even if the economy grows substantially investors might not believe they can profit from the growth. P.S. What do you base the "no great increase" on? Emerging markets have had a rough decade but that index would have still returned 9% annually if you held it since 2001.
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Single employee - paying for health insurance premiums with pre-tax money
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Pre tax insurance is not possible unless the emplyer provides hsa and do a payroll deduction. Obamacare is all post tax and you can do deduction if your expenses exceeds 10%of your income
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Why do some symbols not have an Options chain for specific expiration dates?
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All openly traded securities must be registered with the SEC and setup with clearing agents. This is a costly process. The cost to provide an electronic market for a specific security is negligible. That is why the exchange fees per electronic trade are so small per security. It is so small in fact that exchanges compensate price makers partially at the expense of price takers, that exchanges partially give some portion of the overall fee to those that can help provide liquidity. The cost to provide an open outcry market for a specific security are somewhat onerous, but they are initiated before a security has any continual liquidity to provide a market for large trades, especially for futures. Every individual option contract must be registered and setup for clearing. Aside from the cost to setup each contract, expiration and strike intervals are limited by regulation. For an extremely liquid security like SPY, contracts could be offered for daily expiration and penny strike intervals, but they are currently forbidden.
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Pros and cons of using a personal assistant service to manage your personal finances?
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When you want to hire personal assistants, you must be sure that you are hiring in a trusted company or the person you talk to have been proven by a lot of people. You must be wise in choosing one because these people will handle some of your personal things and data.
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How to trade large number of shares?
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If you really did have a large share size, a market order would move the price more so in your desired direction. Although your cost basis would be less ideal. Just use limit orders and scale in to a position. You can also exercise puts to be short stock
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US Stock Market - volume based real-time alert
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TdAmeritrade offers this service for free using 3rd party company markit. From markit's site, below is their guarantee. http://www.markit.com/product/markit-on-demand Markit On Demand delivers an average of two million alerts per day through various technology platforms and via multiple channels, including email, instant messages, wireless, RSS and Facebook. Investors can subscribe to their alerts of choice, and Markit On Demand guarantees that they will receive an alert within five minutes of the event trigger for all price and volume alerts
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Over how much time should I dollar-cost-average my bonus from cash into mutual funds?
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The OP invests a large amount of money each year (30-40k), and has significant amount already invested. Some in the United States that face this situation may want to look at using the bonus to fund two years worth of IRA or Roth IRA. During the period between January 1st and tax day they can put money into a IRA or Roth IRA for the previous year, and for the current year. The two deposits might have to be made separately, because the tax year for each deposit must be specified. If the individual is married, they can also fund their spouses IRA or Roth IRA. If this bonus is this large every year, the double deposit can only be done the first time, but if the windfall was unexpected getting the previous years deposit done before tax day could be useful. The deposits for the current year could still be spread out over the next 12 months. EDIT: Having thought about the issue a little more I have realized there are other timing issues that need to be considered.
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Can someone explain the Option Chain of AMD for me?
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When you buy a put option, you're buying the right to sell stock at the "strike" price. To understand why you have to pay separately for that, consider the other side of the transaction. If I agree to trade stock for money at above market rates, I need to make up the difference somewhere or face bankruptcy. That risk of loss is what the option price is about. You might assume that means the market expects the price of AMD to fall to 8.01 from it's current price of 8.06 by the option expiration date. But that would also mean call options below the market price is worthless. But that's not quite true; people who price options need to factor in volatility, since things change with time. The price MIGHT fall, and traders need to account for that risk. So 1.99 roughly represents the probability of AMD rising to 10. There's probably some technical analysis one can do to the chain, but I don't see any abnormality of AMD here.
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Some stock's prices don't fluctuate widely - Is it an advantages?
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Oracle specifically is paying a dividend with a current yield of about 1.4% annually and has appreciated nearly 50% over the last 5 years. Granted, the past doesn't guarantee the future but the company has paid a pretty steady dividend since 2009. If you're buying as part of an employee program you would presumably be holding the shares for a long time and the daily and even monthly movements aren't terribly relevant to a long term holding period. Additionally, you may be able to buy the shares at a discount to the market price as part of your employee program. You probably also won't pay any transaction fee.
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Does a larger down payment make an offer stronger?
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There is a lot of your financial information that the selling agent handles in the course of a real estate transaction, including but not limited to your pre-approval letter which states what maximum purchase price might be. Closing costs and interest rate are not details they would know unless you shared that with them, given that that is done after you go binding. I agree with xiaomy in that, while in absolute monetary terms the higher amount should always be more attractive, the selling agent wants to ensure the transaction goes as smoothly as possible. With contracts falling through due to first-time buyers not making it through mortgage underwriting, it is in the seller's interest - and thus the seller's agent's concern - that the buyer not present such hurdles. Insofar as a higher down payment is a signal for that, then I can understand why it would be more attractive.
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Shifting income to 401k
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Assumptions made for this answer, they may not be true for anybody: For the numbers part we will assume you are single and make 96,000 per year. Unknowns: how long you have to wait post accumulation to convince the bank you really do make $96,000 per year.
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Why would anyone buy a government bond?
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Why would a bank buy government bonds? Why couldn't they just deposit their money in another bank instead? Generally, banks are limited by laws and regulations about how much they must set aside as reserves. Of the money they receive as deposits, they may loan a certain amount, but must keep some as a reserve (this is called "fractional reserve banking"). Different countries have a different amount that they must set aside in reserves. In countries where bank deposits are guaranteed, there is almost always some upper limit to how much is guaranteed. The amount of money that a bank would deposit in another bank would be far greater than the guarantee.
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Can I lose more on Forex than I deposit?
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If you don't use leverage you can't lose more than you invested because you "play" with your own money. But even with leverage when you reach a certain limit (maintenance margin) you will receive a margin call from your broker to add more funds to your account. If you don't comply with this (meaning you don't add funds) the broker will liquidate some of the assets (in this case the currency) and it will restore the balance of the account to meet with his/her maintenance margin. At least, this is valid for assets like stocks and derivatives. Hope it helps! Edit: I should mention that
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Are lottery tickets ever a wise investment provided the jackpot is large enough?
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Is playing the lottery a wise investment? --Probably not. Is playing the lottery an investment at all? --Probably not though I'll make a remark on that further below. Does it make any sense to play the lottery in order to improve your total asset allocation? --If you follow the theory of the Black Swan, it actually might. Let me elaborate. The Black Swan theory says that events that we consider extremely improbable can have an extreme impact. So extreme, in fact, that its value would massively outweigh the combined value of all impacts of all probable events together. In statistical terms, we are speaking about events on the outer limits of the common probablity distribution, so called outliers that have a high impact. Example: If you invest $2000 on the stock market today, stay invested for 20 years, and reinvest all earnings, it is probable within a 66% confidence interval that you will have an 8 % expected return (ER) per year on average, giving you a total of roughly $9300. That's very much simplified, of course, the actual number can be very different depending on the deviations from the ER and when they happen. Now let's take the same $2000 and buy weekly lottery tickets for 20 years. For the sake of simplicity I will forgo an NPV calculation and assume one ticket costs roughly $2. If you should win, which would be an entirely improbable event, your winnings would by far outweigh your ER from investing the same amount. When making models that should be mathematically solvable, these outliers are usually not taken into consideration. Standard portfolio management (PM) theory is only working within so called confidence intervals up to 99% - everything else just wouldn't be practical. In other words, if there is not at least a 1% probability a certain outcome will happen, we'll ignore it. In practice, most analysts take even smaller confidence intervals, so they ignore even more. That's the reason, though, why no object that would fall within the realms of this outer limit is an investment in terms of the PM theory. Or at least not a recommendable one. Having said all that, it still might improve your position if you add a lottery ticket to the mix. The Black Swan theory specifically does not only apply to the risk side of things, but also on the chance side. So, while standard PM theory would not consider the lottery ticket an investment, thus not accept it into the asset allocation, the Black Swan theory would appreciate the fact that there is minimal chance of huge success. Still, in terms of valuation, it follows the PM theory. The lottery ticket, while it could be part of some "investment balance sheet", would have to be written off to 0 immediately and no expected value would be attached to it. Consequently, such an investment or gamble only makes sense if your other, safe investments give you so much income that you can easily afford it really without having to give up anything else in your life. In other words, you have to consider it money thrown out of the window. So, while from a psychological perspective it makes sense that especially poorer people will buy a lottery ticket, as Eric very well explained, it is actually the wealthier who should consider doing so. If anyone. :)
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Deferring claim of significant purchase of RRSPs
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You can defer RRSP deductions like you've suggested. Here's an article from the CBC about it: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/taxseason/story/2010/03/15/f-taxseason-delay.html
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How do online referal systems work?
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Yeah, I'll take the challenge...:) How trustworthy these are and what are their sources of income? These are in fact two separate questions, but the answers are related. How trustworthy? As trustworthy as they're clear about their own sources of income. If you cannot find any clue as to why, what for and how they're paying you - you probably should walk away. What's too good to be true usually is indeed too good to be true. For those of the sites that I know of their sources of income, it is usually advertisements and surveys. To get paid, you have to watch advertisements and/or answer surveys. I know of some sites who are legit, and pay people (not money, but gift cards, airline miles, etc) for participating in surveys. My own HMO (Kaiser in California) in fact pays (small amounts) to members who participate in enough surveys, so its legit. Are these sites worthwhile to consider for extra income? Not something you could live off, but definitely can get you enough gift cards for your weekly trip to Starbucks. What do I need to consider tax wise? Usually the amounts are very low, and are not paid in cash. While it is income, I doubt the IRS will chase you if you don't report the $20 Amazon gift card you got from there. It should, strictly speaking, be reported (probably as hobby income) on your tax return. Most people don't bother dealing with such small amounts though. In some cases (like the HMO I mentioned), its basically a rebate of the money paid (you pay your copays, deductibles etc. Since the surveys are only for members, you basically get your money back, not additional income). This is in fact similar to credit card rebates. Is there a best practice for handling the income? If we're talking about significant amounts (more than $20-30 a year), then you need to keep track of the income and related expenses, and report it as any other business income on your taxes, Schedule C. Is there a good test to determine what is and isn't a scam? As I said - if it looks too good to be true - it most likely is. If you're required to provide your personal/financial information without any explanation as to why, what it will be used for, and why and what for you're going to be paid - I'd walk away. Otherwise, you can also check Internet reviews, BBB ratings, FTC information and the relevant state agencies and consumer watchdogs (for example: http://www.scamadviser.com) whether they've heard of that particular site, and what is the information they have on it. A very good sign for a scam is contact information. Do they have a phone number to call to? Is it in your own country? If its not in your own country - definitely go away (for example the original link that was in the question pointed to a service whose phone number is in the UK, but listed address is in Los Angeles, CA. A clear sign of a scam). If they do have a phone number - try it, talk to them, call several times and see how many different people you're going to talk to. If its always the same person - run and hide. Do they have an address? If not - walk away. If they do - look it up. Is it a PMB/POB? A "virtual" office? Or do they have a proper office set up, which you can see on the map and in the listings as their office? And of course your guts. If your guts tell you its a scam - it very likely is.
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Can I lose more on Forex than I deposit?
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FX is often purchased with leverage by both retail and wholesale speculators on the assumption daily movements are typically more restrained than a number of other asset classes. When volatility picks up unexpectedly these leveraged accounts can absolutely be wiped out. While these events are relatively rare, one happened as recently as 2016 when the Swiss National Bank unleashed the Swiss Franc from its Euro mooring. You can read about it here: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-snb-brokers-idUSKBN0KP1EH20150116
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In a competitive market, why is movie theater popcorn expensive?
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I think this question has more to do with the business model of cinema. If I remember correctly. Most of the money from ticket sales goes back to the studios. Something like the newer a movie is the greater percentage goes back to the movie studios and the older a movie is the greater percentage of ticket price goes to the cinema. So high priced popcorn and candy is often the only place where the individual theaters make any money. This may not be true for every movie but I believe it was the case for films like James Cameron's Avatar.
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How do currency markets work? What factors are behind why currencies go up or down?
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From my limited experience with foreign exchange... Money is a commodity.. people buy it and sell it like other products.. if "money" is in demand the price goes up.. this is the case when a countries stocks are hot, and you need to purchase that countries currency to buy that stock... I've also seen the currency rise on news and speculation. Many years ago, I administered foreign receivables... My job was to settle letters of credit from Britain... I remember on one ocassion Margaret Thatcher said something to upset the markets.. her remark caused the price of the UK pound to fluctuate.
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Do I have to repay the First-Time Homebuyers tax credit if I refinance?
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The Homebuyers Tax Credit was unrelated to whether or not a mortgage was part of the purchase. You will have no issue with this credit if you refinance.
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Calculating profits for a private fund
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One way I heard of, from a friend who ran a similar fund as yours, is to calculate $days of investment and divide the investment as accordingly. For example, If I invested 10$ for 10 days and you have invested 20$ for 5 days. At the end of the 10th day my $day = 10*10=100, while your $day=20*5=100. If the investement has grown to 100$, the I should get $100/(100+100)*100=$50, you also should get the same. This I guess is equitable, you could try dividing the corpus with above method. It consideres the amount invested as well as the time invested for. I think by the above method, you could also handle the inbetween withdrawals.
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Effect on Bond asset allocation if Equity markets crash?
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I agree that the cause of the crash can make a huge difference in the effect on the bond market. Here's a few other possibilities: All that to say that there's no definitive answer as to how the bond market will respond to an equity crash. Bonds are much more highly correlated to equities lately, but that could be due to much lower interest rates pushing more of the risk of bonds to the credit worthiness of the issuer, increasing correlation.
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What is the economic explanation for the high cost of weddings?
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There is the price they want and the price you pay. Everything is negotiable when its a service (always possible, but usually harder with actual "goods"). You should always haggle and price match your vendors. You can also try going to different vendors and not telling them its for a wedding and see if there really is a price difference. For example, call up a florist and say you need X, Y, and Z for a corporate banquet or for a special event for which you cannot give the details. If you then tell them its actually a wedding, and they blindly raise it without a good justification, move on. That said, they jack up the price because they know most people will says "it's my wedding", "it's once in a lifetime", "it's MY special day", etc.... The same is true about diamonds, their price does not reflect the actual supply and demand ratio, just the perception that has been created. However, as mentioned in some of the comments above, the service provided at a wedding may be different or more involved than just a normal dinner The more important issue is ensuring there are no back fees, no hidden fees, and you have well written, well reviewed contracts. For example, we know a couple whose caterer added a mandatory 20% gratuity, regardless of the service which was provided. Most venues or restaurants will not be making the bar a lose-leader, but they will charge for other things. You can also save money by buying used or looking on ebay for prices closer to wholesale for the product. I think a good analogy to this is the Recent Time Magazine article on the price of healthcare - it costs a lot because its a small market and its harder to navigate, and most are not experienced shoppers in the area or don't have control over the individual item costs.
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
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Sure, form an LLC with an attorney's advice. You need a buyout clause, operating agreement, etc. If you're not married, never buy a home for personal use with someone else.
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What is the tax levied against stock portion cashed out of 401k?
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Withdrawals from a traditional 401(k) plan are always treated as cash income and the taxable portion is taxed at ordinary income tax rates, even if the money was held in stocks within the 401(k) plan and the amount withdrawn is equal to whatever capital gains you made by selling the stock within the 401(k) plan. If your plan permits you to take the distribution as stock shares (transferred to your taxable brokerage account), then, for tax purposes, it is treated as if you took a distribution of cash equal to the market price of the shares as of the day of the distribution and promptly bought the same number of shares in your brokerage account. And yes, if the 401(k) plan assets in your ex-employer's plan consists solely of pretax contributions and the earnings thereon, then the entire distribution is ordinary taxable income regardless of whether you sold the stock within the 401(k) plan or took a distribution of stock from the plan and promptly (or after a few days) sold it. The capital gains or losses (if any) from such a sale are, of course, outside the 401(k) plan and taxable accordingly. Finally, the 10% penalty for premature withdrawal from a traditional 401(k) will also apply if you are not 59.5 years of age or older (or maybe 55 since you are separated from service), and it will be computed on the entire distribution.
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Benefits of Purchasing Company Stock at a Discount
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If your purchases are done at year end, but the money withheld over that 12 month period, the 17% return is for an average time of 6 months, and the return annualizes to 38% or so. All due respect to Alex B, the return would be 100/85 as he states, if the investment were funded in January and sold in December. But this isn't the case on ESPP, the average time you are out that money is 6 months. I will warn you. Don't let the tax tail wag your investing dog. It's easy to wait for long term gains to kick in and then ignore the stock. You then find yourself overloaded on one stock and risk some bad losses. I enjoyed my 15% discount all the way to the stock crashing by 60%+. If you must wait and hold some, be religious about selling the long term shares like clockwork. The 15% is virtually risk free (unless the shares crash between purchase and hitting your account.)
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why is the money withdrawn from traditional IRA taxed at the ordinary income tax rate?
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This is actually (to me) an interesting point to note. While the answer is "that's what Congress wrote," there are implications to note. First, for many, the goal of tax deferral is to shift 25% or 28% income to 15% income at retirement. With long term gains at 15%, simply investing long term post tax can accomplish a similar goal, where all gain is taxed at 15%. Looking at this from another angle, an IRA (or 401(k) for that matter) effectively turns long term gains into ordinary income. It's a good observation, and shouldn't be ignored.
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Is CFD a viable option for long-term trading?
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No, CFD is not viable as a long term trading strategy. You have a minimum margin to maintain, and you are given X days to top up your margin should you not meet the margin requirements. Failure to meet margin requirements will result in a forced sell where you are no longer able to hold onto the stock. A long term trading strategy is where you hold onto the stock through the bad times of the company and keep it long enough to see the good times. However, with CFD, you may be forced to sell before you see the good times. In addition, you incur additional lending charges (e.g. 4%-6%) for the ability to leverage.
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How To Interpret Share Prices?
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The missing information is at the end of the first line: the price is from NASDAQ (most specifically Nasdaq Global Select), which is a stock exchange in the USA, so the price is in US Dollars.
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How to help a financially self destructive person?
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Wow. Just ... wow. We all must start where we are, I guess. The past is the past. There almost certainly isn't a cheap way to fix this. You're already on the hook for $4k per month. Your money is enabling her behavior. You'd rather not enable her behavior, but the money is part of the consequences of your divorce, so into her bank account it goes. Those who control how much alimony your ex-wife receives might reach the conclusion she needs more. That's not a hard conclusion for them to make. It's not their money. The living conditions are hurting your kids, and that's unfortunate, but that's also part of the consequences of your divorce. If it's deemed that your kids are better off not visiting her, then you might be relieved of paying child support (since you're supporting them at that point) but you might still be supporting her until some trigger is met, which might be never. (You know those details better than I do, of course.) If she's already lost her house, filed for bankruptcy, borrowed money from people that she hasn't paid back, and gets a check from you each month and still has utilities shut off, she'll continue to deteriorate financially until she hits rock bottom. Then, and only then, will she see the need to fix her behavior. Now, the (possibly) million dollar question for you is, "Where is rock bottom?" Do what you can to make that happen sooner rather than later, because you'll likely be subsidizing her all the way down, and part of the way back up. You've lost most of the leverage you once had to change her behavior, but try every way you can. You might hit the jackpot.
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What are some tips for getting the upper hand in car price negotiations?
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JohnFX and TTT provide excellent answers. Researching prices others have paid, being up front that you'll go buy a junker car to hold you over if they won't meet your price, and playing a few dealerships off of each other are all great tactics. In addition, I've got a few points about timing your purchase. If you're not desperate for a car, these can really help give you the upper hand in negotiations: Wait until the end of the month. Dealerships and individual salespeople usually have quotas that they're trying to clear, and the month is usually the standard cutoff. The last time I bought a car, the salesman made the mistake of mentioning, "I don't usually work Thursdays, but I'll be in this Thursday." Thursday was the 31st - I inferred from this information that he hadn't made his quota for the month yet. So I came back on the 31st to negotiate, and managed to hammer out a pretty good deal. Wait until about an hour before the dealership closes to show up and shop. This gives you enough time to not be obvious about the tactic, but you'll definitely be holding them past their normal quitting time if you do much negotiating. The salesman will be a little more inclined to make a deal so he can get home and have dinner. Bonus points if you can wait until a month that ends on a Friday!
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Calculate investment's interest rate to break-even insurance cost [duplicate]
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You are comparing a risk-free cost with a risky return. If you can tolerate that level of risk (the ups and downs of the investment) for the chance that you'll come out ahead in the long-run, then sure, you could do that. So the parameters to your equation would be: If you assume that the risky returns are normally distributed, then you can use normal probability tables to determine what risk level you can tolerate. To put some real numbers to it, take the average S&P 500 return of 10% and standard deviation of 18%. Using standard normal functions, we can calculate the probability that you earn more than various interest rates: so even with a low 3% interest rate, there's roughly a 1 in 3 chance that you'll actually be worse off (the gains on your investments will be less than the interest you pay). In any case there's a 3 in 10 chance that your investments will lose money.
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How to use a stop and limit order together?
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You need to use one of each, so a single order wouldn't cover this: The stop-loss order could be placed to handle triggering a sell market order if the stock trades at $95 or lower. If you want, you could use a stop-limit order if you have an exit price in mind should the stock price drop to $95 though that requires setting a price for the stop to execute and then another price for the sell order to execute. The limit sell order could be placed to handle triggering a sell if the stock rises above $105. On the bright side, once either is done the other could be canceled as it isn't applicable anymore.
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Pros/Cons of Buying Discounted Company Stock
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Assuming US. The only con that I know of is that hassle factor. You have to remember to sell when you get the new shares, and your taxes become a bit more complicated; the discount that you receive is taxed as ordinary income, and then any change in the price of the stock between when you receive it and you sell it will be considered a capital gain or loss. It's not hard to account for properly if you keep good records.
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Cashing a cheque on behalf of someone else
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It's possible to cash cheques by post. When I did this, it involved filling out a "paying-in slip" (I had a book of these provided by the bank) and posting the cheque together with the slip to an address provided by the bank. You could also bring the paying-in slip and the cheque to a branch and deposit them there, and it wasn't necessary that you were the account holder, just that the details on the slip matched the account you were paying into. I Googled "paying-in slip" and found the instructions for HSBC as an example: Paying-In Slips. It explicitly mentions that you don't need to be the account holder to do this, and moreover there are even blank slips in the branch, which you just need to fill in with the correct account details. I think the procedure is much the same for other banks, but presumably you could check the relevant bank's website for specific guidance.
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Transfer from credit to debit
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As revised, the answer is still that you're asking the wrong question. If your father wants to make money available on your debit card, all he has to do is deposit the money into your checking account. Where he gets that money from -- as an AmEx casH advance, by selling your bicycle for you, or simply out of one of his own bank accounts -- is irrelevant.
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Possible Risks of Publicizing Personal Stock Portfolio
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I am considering making my investment history publicly available online What is the benefit you are looking for by doing this? Just to establish that you are a successful investor, so in long run can predict things ... have tons of followers? If so yes. Go ahead. Updates to the portfolio would have to be near real-time than post facto else no one will believe you and it would be useless. are there any reasons (legal, personal, etc.) not to publicize my personal investment history legal, depends on country; I can't think any [check the agreement with your broker / depository] on how much can be displayed. i.e. they may forbid from revealing contract ref / or some other details. On Personal front, it depends who takes a liking to your stuff. Relatives: They know you are making huge profits and may want to borrow stuff ... or queue up to you requesting to make similar huge profits for them; only to realize when there is loss they blame you ... this can strain relationships. Friends: Although close friends may have a general idea, if you are too successful and it shows; it can have its own set of issues to deal with. Colleagues / Manager: If you are too successful, it may mean you may notionally be earning more than them ... they would start unconsciously monitoring your behaviour ... this guy spends all day in office researching for stocks and doesn't work. That way he knows how to pick good stock ... he is wasting company time. The same happens if you are loosing stock ... a unrelated bad day you are having maybe equated to loss in stocks. Depending on the job / roles, they may move you to different role as the perceived risk of you swindling goes up. Generally important work doesn't get assigned, as it would be assumed that if you are successful in investing, you may quite soon and start full time into it. Identify Theft: As mentioned by keshlam, to much data one can easily risk identity theft. Realize phone banking to get some routine stuff just asks for basic details [that are available on face book] and few recent debits / credits to the account. This will be easy see the trades you have done. None of us here are expert identity theifs. But the real one have tons of way t
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Are REIT worth it and is it a good option to generate passive income for a while?
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There are tax strategies you could take advantage of if you own the property. Find local real estate investors that like 'buy and hold'. Additional strategy is to buy a property and sell it with owner financing (you use a Residential Mortgage Loan Officer to facilitate.) What is great is you can get a great % real return on your money without being a landlord.
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Car value is almost equal to GMFV with still 2 years to go on PCP
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The "guaranteed minimum future value" isn't really a guarantee so much as the amount they will charge you at the end of the agreement if you want to keep the car. In this sense it might better be considered a "guaranteed maximum future cost". If the car has fallen below that value at that point, then you can just hand back the car and you won't owe anything extra. If it turns out to be worth more, you end up in profit - though only if you either actually pay for the car, or if you roll over into a new PCP deal. So the finance company has an incentive to set it at a sensible value, otherwise they'll end up losing money. Most new cars lose a lot of value quickly initially, and then the rate of loss slows down. But given that it's lost £14k in 2 years, it seems pretty likely it'll lose much more than another £1k in the next 2 years. So it does sound like that in this case, they estimated the value badly at the start of the deal and will end up taking a loss on the deal when you hand it back at the end. It appears you also have the legal right to "voluntary termination" once you have paid off half the "Total Amount Payable". This should be documented in the PCP agreement and if you're half way into the deal then I'd expect you'll be about there. If that doesn't apply, you can try to negotiate to get out of the deal early anyway. If they look at it rationally, they should think about the value of your payments over the next two years minus the loss they will end up with at the end of those two years. But there's no guarantee they will. Disclaimer: Despite living in the UK, I hadn't heard of these contracts until I read this question, so my answer is based entirely on web searches and some inferences. The two most useful sources I found on the general subject were this one and this one.
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Are there any banks in Europe that I can have an account without being in that country?
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Opening account in foreign bank is possible, but you must have strong proofs you use it for legitimate purposes. More chances to get an account if you visit Europe and able to stay, for example, for a week, to visit bank in person and wait for all the checks and approvals. Also keep in mind that there will be deposit/withdraw limits and fees applicable, that are significantly stricter and larger for non-EU citizen. In my opinion, if your amounts are not large, it might not worth it. If amounts are large, you might consider business account rather than personal, as is the example of strong proof I meant.
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Taxes on transactions of services
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Do Alice and Bob have to figure out the fair market value of their services and report that as income or something? Yes, exactly that. See Topic 420. Note that if the computer program is for Bob's business, Bob might be able to deduct it on his taxes. Similarly, if the remodeling is on Alice's business property, she might be able to deduct it. There might also be other tax advantages in certain circumstances.
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Why do mutual fund trading limitations exist? e.g. 90 day transfer limits?
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Mutual funds (that are not exchange-traded funds) often need to sell some of their securities to get cash when a shareholder redeems some shares. Such transactions incur costs that are paid (proportionally) by all the shareholders in the fund, not just the person requesting redemption, and thus the remaining shareholders get a lower return. (Exchange-traded funds are traded as if they are shares of common stock, and a shareholder seeking a redemption pays the costs of the redemption). For this reason, many mutual funds do not allow redemptions for some period of time after a purchase, or purchases for some period of time after a redemption. The periods of time are chosen by the fund, and are stated in the prospectus (which everyone has acknowledged has been received before an investment was made).
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Will ADR owner enjoy same benefit as common shares holders
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As far as I know, with ADRs you're essentially trading by proxy -- a depository bank is holding the actual stock certificate, and must provide you with the actual stock on demand. The one thing that is different is that in the event that the ADR is terminated (which sometimes happens with mergers), you have a limited period of time to sell the shares -- otherwise, you get the actual foreign stock that you may or may not be able to trade without transferring to a different broker.
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
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No. This amount of money is not appropriate for friends to go in on. Although you could consider buying a house with a business partner, have the contracts drawn up, see an attorney, read up on the penalties if one of the partners doesn't hold up their end from the law's point of view. Also, since this is a business arrangement, write and sign all sorts of details regarding the penalties amongst the partners (not just the law) when one person doesn't hold up. It isn't that you don't have good intentions, or that you couldn't do it just fine if no problems ever happen. The issue is that over the course of a mortgage, which is at least several years, something is very likely to come up. If you and your friend aren't prepared to think about all those issues and how to handle them, you will lose a friend, probably a house and your good credit. I wouldn't go into business with my best friend because I want him to stay my best friend.
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What makes a Company's Stock prices go up or down?
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It's been said before, but to repeat succinctly, a company's current share price is no more or less than what "the market" thinks that share is worth, as measured by the price at which the shares are being bought and sold. As such, a lot of things can affect that price, some of them material, others ethereal. A common reason to own stock is to share the profits of the company; by owning 1 share out of 1 million shares outstanding, you are entitled to 1/1000000 of that company's quarterly profits (if any). These are paid out as dividends. Two key measurements are based on these dividend payments; the first is "earnings per share", which is the company's stated quarterly profits, divided by outstanding shares, with the second being the "price-earnings ratio" which is the current price of the stock divided by its EPS. Your expected "yield" on this stock is more or less the inverse of this number; if a company has a P/E ratio of 20, then all things being equal, if you invest $100 in this stock you can expect a return of $5, or 5% (1/20). As such, changes in the expected earnings per share can cause the share price to rise or fall to maintain a P/E ratio that the pool of buyers are willing to tolerate. News that a company might miss its profit expectations, due to a decrease in consumer demand, an increase in raw materials costs, labor, financing, or any of a multitude of things that industry analysts watch, can cause the stock price to drop sharply as people look for better investments with higher yields. However, a large P/E ratio is not necessarily a bad thing, especially for a large stable company. That stability means the company is better able to weather economic problems, and thus it is a lower risk. Now, not all companies issue dividends. Apple is probably the most well-known example. The company simply retains all its earnings to reinvest in itself. This is typically the strategy of a smaller start-up; whether they're making good money or not, they typically want to keep what they make so they can keep growing, and the shareholders are usually fine with that. Why? Well, because there's more than one way to value a company, and more than one way to look at a stock. Owning one share of a stock can be seen quite literally as owning a share of that company. The share can then be valued as a fraction of the company's total assets. Sounds simple, but it isn't, because not every asset the company owns has a line in the financial statements. A company's brand name, for instance, has no tangible value, and yet it is probably the most valuable single thing Apple owns. Similarly, intellectual property doesn't have a "book value" on a company's balance sheet, but again, these are huge contributors to the success and profitability of a company like Apple; the company is viewed as a center of innovation, and if it were not doing any innovating, it would very quickly be seen as a middleman for some other company's ideas and products. A company can't sustain that position for long even if it's raking in the money in the meantime. Overall, the value of a company is generally a combination of these two things; by owning a portion of stock, you own a piece of the company's assets, and also claim a piece of their profits. A large company with a lot of material assets and very little debt can be highly valued based solely on the sum of its parts, even if profits are lagging. Conversely, a company more or less operating out of a storage unit can have a patent on the cure for cancer, and be shoveling money into their coffers with bulldozers.
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Property Trust - who or what is the Owner?
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The trust owns the property, the trustees control the property and the beneficiaries receive any income from rent or gains from sale of property.
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How are stock buybacks not considered insider trading?
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In most countries there are specific guidelines on buy backs. It is never a case where by one fine morning company would buy its shares and sell it whenever it wants. In general company has to pass a board resolution, sometimes it also requires it to be approved by share holders. It has to notify the exchange weeks in advance. Quite a few countries require a price offer to all. I.E. it cannot execute a market order. All in all the company may have inside information, but it cannot time the market.
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Do my parents need to pay me minimum wage?
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There is actually a restriction on how high a wage they can pay you. There didn't use to be, but now it has to be reasonable for the work you are doing, so they can't pay you $100/hr while other people doing the same work get minimum wage. You might ask why on earth a parent would want to pay a child way more than they're worth? The salary is tax deductible to the company. Then the child pays their "expenses" - hockey fees and equipment, field trips, birthday presents for their friends and so on - out of the money the company paid them. They also save for their post-secondary education. The rest of the family budget now has a little more room, and the parents can lower their own salaries if they have expensive children. This means more net money in the company and less total income tax paid by the family for the same total income. My concern is that if your parents don't know whether or not you must be paid minimum wage (you must, there's no family exemption) then they also don't know whether you should have EI deducted (probably not) and various other special cases like eligibility for summer student subsidies. The firm's accountant should be able to help with these things and the company should know all this. It's not the role of a 14 year old to ask the Internet how to run a business, the business owners should know it.
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Are lottery tickets ever a wise investment provided the jackpot is large enough?
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Others have already explained why lotteries have negative expected value, so in that sense it is never wise to buy a lottery ticket. I will provide an alternative view, that it is not always unwise to buy a lottery ticket even though the expected value of the lottery ticket is lower than its cost (i.e. a loss). The question is what you mean with "wise" A (not completely unlikely) scenario is one where your life (financially) suck, and even if you saved the cost of the ticket (instead of buying it) your life would still suck. Even if you saved the cost for a ticket every week for 10 years, your live would not be essentially better. You could maybe afford a TV, or a new car in 40 years, but if you were to quantify the happiness of your life it would still be essentially crappy. But winning the lottery would significantly improve your life and make you happy. So in this scenario there are two choices, either save the money for 0% chance of a happy life, or spend it on a ticket for a (extremely) small chance of a good life. Yes, the expected value of saving the money is higher than when buying the ticket, but "expected happiness" is higher when buying the ticket (non-zero). This is clearly an extreme example, but variants of this might apply (the essence is that your valuation of the money is non-linear, 1 million will make you more than 1000 times as happy as 1000.)
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First time home buyer. How to negotiate price?
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As far as the specific price - it depends so much on the area and the house and other things. 70k could be a perfectly reasonable offer, or it could be an insulting lowball. If they just lowered it from 95 to 85 for example, 70 is pretty low to start off. But who knows. To answer the closing costs side of things, though, the reason those are sometimes paid by seller (rather than just dropping the sales price some) is that it makes it easier for the buyer if the buyer doesn't have much cash on hand. From the seller's point of view it's all the same money - giving you a discount on the sale price vs. covering closing costs - except for the small difference of the realtor's commission (which would be slightly lower in the lower-sales-price example, but usually that's not a significant factor in total cost). IE: vs How much having the 3k less on hand (and instead in your mortgage) is worth to you as a buyer is, of course, up to you. If you have plenty of cash on hand for the down payment and closing costs, then paying closing costs yourself is probably in your best interest as the seller typically assumes buyers value reduced/zero closing costs at more than 100% face value.
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Is this mortgage advice good, or is it hooey?
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Sounds fishy - taking out more debt to pay the main mortgage down faster? There are a couple of issues I can see: I would think that a much more sensible strategy with a lot less risk is to save up extra cash and send your lender a check every quarter or six months.
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Buy/Selling prices at the stock exchange represent someone Selling/Buying at that price?
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You don't see Buying and Selling. You see Bid and Ask. Best Bid--Highest Price someone is willing to pay to buy a stock. Best Ask - Lowest price someone is willing to accept to sell a stock. As for your second question, if you can look up Accumulation/Distribution Algorithm and Iceberg Order, you will get basic idea.
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Do Fundamentals Matter Anymore in Stock Markets?
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All you have to do is ask Warren Buffet that question and you'll have your answer! (grin) He is the very definition of someone who relies on the fundamentals as a major part of his investment decisions. Investors who rely on analysis of fundamentals tend to be more long-term strategic planners than most other investors, who seem more focused on momentum-based thinking. There are some industries which have historically low P/E ratios, such as utilities, but I don't think that implies poor growth prospects. How often does a utility go out of business? I think oftentimes if you really look into the numbers, there are companies reporting higher earnings and earnings growth, but is that top-line growth, or is it the result of cost-cutting and other measures which artificially imply a healthy and growing company? A healthy company is one which shows year-over-year organic growth in revenues and earnings from sales, not one which has to continually make new acquisitions or use accounting tricks to dress up the bottom line. Is it possible to do well by investing in companies with solid fundamentals? Absolutely. You may not realize the same rate of short-term returns as others who use momentum-based trading strategies, but over the long haul I'm willing to bet you'll see a better overall average return than they do.
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Is there an advantage to keeping a liquid emergency fund if one also has an untapped line of credit?
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recommend keeping some amount of money in cash as an emergency fund I see two keywords, with two interpretations here. Cash: Emergency: 1 + 1 is rarely a problem. Even if it takes a couple of days to sell reliable investments. 1 + 2 is a rather large problem. You need to leave town, today, because the town won't be there tomorrow. You're out of gas, and the phones are not working. The guy minding the local service station with an AR-15 can't process your Amex Centurion card and would prefer actual cash. I live in an area prone to earthquakes and cyclonic storms. The last large one didn't knock out anything major, but the cash machines emptied out rather quickly. We keep a month's income in cash in the house, and I have a spare tank of gas in storage*. As others have said, there is no single answer for everyone. But do consider what you take for granted and what happens when it goes away. *Change it every 2 months - common gasoline is not chemically stable
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Why do 10 year-old luxury cars lose so much value?
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I believe one of the main reasons cars -- luxury or otherwise -- depreciate so quickly is that many auto accidents can cause serious engine/frame damage but are easily cosmetically repaired. If you smash up the car but get the body fixed, and you don't go through insurance, it will be indistinguishable from the same car that hasn't been in a crash.
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Do marketmakers always quote a bid and ask simultaneously
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Yes, but also note each exchange have rules that states various conditions when the market maker can enlarge the bid-ask (e.g. for situations such as freely falling markets, etc.) and when the market makers need to give a normal bid-ask. In normal markets, the bid-asks are usually within exchange dictated bounds. MM's price spread can be larger than bid-ask spread only when there are multiple market makers and different market makers are providing different bid-asks. As long as the MM under question gives bid and ask within exchange's rules, it can be fine. These are usually rare situations. One advice: please carefully check the time-stamps. I have seen many occasions when tick data time-stamps between different vendors are mismatched in databases whereas in real life it isn't. MM's profits not just from spreads, but also from short term mean-reversion (fading). If a large order comes in suddenly, the MM increases the prices in one direction, takes the opposite side, and once the order is done, the prices comes down and the MM off-loads his imbalance at lower prices, etc.
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
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Similar to @SoulsOpenSource's answer, I would suggest Venmo, which works like PayPal but is free for debit-card-to-debit-card transactions. More information here.
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What does a well diversified self-managed investment portfolio look like?
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I would like to first point out that there is nothing special about a self-managed investment portfolio as compared to one managed by someone else. With some exceptions, you can put together exactly the same investment portfolio yourself as a professional investor could put together for you. Not uncommonly, too, at a lower cost (and remember that cost is among the, if not the, best indicator(s) of how your investment portfolio will perform over time). Diversification is the concept of not "putting all your eggs in one basket". The idea here is that there are things that happen together because they have a common cause, and by spreading your investments in ways such that not all of your investments have the same underlying risks, you reduce your overall risk. The technical term for risk is generally volatility, meaning how much (in this case the price of) something fluctuates over a given period of time. A stock that falls 30% one month and then climbs 40% the next month is more volatile than one that falls 3% the first month and climbs 4% the second month. The former is riskier because if for some reason you need to sell when it is down, you lose a larger portion of your original investment with the former stock than with the latter. Diversification, thus, is reducing commonality between your investments, generally but not necessarily in an attempt to reduce the risk of all investments moving in the same direction by the same amount at the same time. You can diversify in various ways: Do you see where I am going with this? A well-diversed portfolio will tend to have a mix of equity in your own country and a variety of other countries, spread out over different types of equity (company stock, corporate bonds, government bonds, ...), in different sectors of the economy, in countries with differing growth patterns. It may contain uncommon classes of investments such as precious metals. A poorly diversified portfolio will likely be restricted to either some particular geographical area, type of equity or investment, focus on some particular sector of the economy (such as medicine or vehicle manufacturers), or so on. The poorly diversified portfolio can do better in the short term, if you time it just right and happen to pick exactly the right thing to buy or sell. This is incredibly hard to do, as you are basically working against everyone who gets paid to do that kind of work full time, plus computer-algorithm-based trading which is programmed to look for any exploitable patterns. It is virtually impossible to do for any real length of time. Thus, the well-diversified portfolio tends to do better over time.
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Is it a good idea to get an unsecured loan to pay off a credit card that won't lower a high rate?
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Go where your money is treated best. If you can lower your APR, great. It should help a little bit with getting a mortgage if you can reduce your payment. Your debt-to-income ratio would go down.
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Is it beneficial to my credit score if I close my youngest credit lines while preserving my current credit utilization rate?
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I wrote How Old is Your Credit Card? some time ago. The answer is yes, this helps the credit score, but this factor, age of accounts, is pretty minimal. Grabbing deals, as you did, I'm actually down to a "C" for this part of my score, but still maintain a 770 score.
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Expiring 401(k) Stock Option and Liquidation Implications
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Is the parent company's common stock public? If not, then there will be absolutely no pressure from everyone liquidating at the same time. If so, consider the average daily volume of transactions in the parent company's stock. Is it much greater than the volume your 10k co-workers will have to liquidate? If so, I wouldn't expect much of an impact from all liquidating at once. Any other situation, you are probably right to be a bit worried about simultaneous liquidation. If this was my case, I'd probably submit a limit sell order so as to try and pick out a high for the timing of my liquidation, and lower my limit vs fair value as it got closer to the expiration of your ability to hold the parent company stock.
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Tax implications of holding EWU (or other such UK ETFs) as a US citizen?
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My understanding is that EWU (and EWUS) are both traded on US stock markets (NYSE & BATS), and as such these are not classified as PFIC. However, they do contain PFICs, so iShares takes the responsibility of handling the PFICs they contain and make adjustments in December. This contains the information about the adjustments made in 2016. https://www.ishares.com/us/literature/tax-information/pfic-2016.pdf On page 106 of the statement of the summary information they describe how they handle paying the necessary tax as an expense of the fund. https://www.ishares.com/us/library/stream-document?stream=reg&product=WEBXGBP&shareClass=NA&documentId=925898~926077~926112~1180071~1242912&iframeUrlOverride=%2Fus%2Fliterature%2Fsai%2Fsai-ishares-trust-8-31.pdf (I'm not a tax professional)
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How good is Wall Street Survivor for learning about investing?
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To be honest, wall street survivor is good but when it comes to learning the stock markets from Europe, Beat wall street is the game to be playing. You can try it out for your self here on http://beatwallstreet.equitygameonline.com/ It is easy to use and there are monthly prizes available to winners, such as Ipads, Iphones and students who play it the game can win internships at top investment banks and brokers
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Why can't I short a stock that sells for less than $5? Is there another way to “go short” on them?
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Timothy Sykes specializes in this type of trade, according to his website. He has some recommendations for brokers that allow shorting low-priced stocks:
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Is it okay to be married, 30 years old and have no retirement?
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The question regarding your snapshot is fine, but the real question is what are you doing to improve your situation? As John offered, one bit of guidance suggests you have a full year's gross earnings as a saving target. In my opinion, that's on the low side, and 2X should be the goal by 35. I suggest you look back, and see if you can account for every dollar for the prior 6-12 months. This exercise isn't for the purpose of criticizing your restaurant spending, or cost of clothes, but to just bring it to light. Often, there's some low hanging fruit in this type of budgeting exercise, spending that you didn't realize was so high. I'd also look carefully at your debt. What rate is the mortgage and the student loans? By understanding the loans' rates, terms, and tax status (e.g. whether any is a deduction) you can best choose the way to pay it off. If the rates are low enough you might consider funding your 401(k) accounts a bit more and slow down the loan payments. It seems that in your 30's you have a negative net worth, but your true asset is your education and future earning potential. From a high level view, you make $180K. Taking $50K off the top (which after taxes gives you $30K) to pay your student loan, you are still earning $130K, putting you at or near top 10% of families in this country. This should be enough to afford that mortgage, and still live a nice life. In the end there are three paths, earn more (why does hubby earn half what you do, in the same field?), spend less, or reallocate current budget by changing how you are handling that debt.
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How do I estimate my taxes when I have only 1099 income?
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As long as you paid 100% of your last year's tax liability (overall tax liability, the total tax to pay on your 1040) or 90% of the total tax liability this year, or your underpayment is no more than $1000, you won't be penalized as long as you pay the difference by April 15th. That's per the IRS. I don't know where the "10% of my income" came from, I'm not aware of any such rule.
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Does longterm investment in index funds still make sense in a reality of massive algotrading?
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What the automation mostly does is make short-term trading that much more difficult. Day trading is a zero-sum game, so if they win more, everyone else wins less. Long term trading (years to decades) is a positive-sum game; the market as a whole tends to move upward for fairly obvious reasons (at its basis it's still investing, which in turn is based on lending, and as long as folks make fairly rational decisions about how much return they demand for their investment and the companies are mostly producing profits there will be a share of the profit coming back to the investors as dividends or increased share value or both. Day-to-day churn in individual stocks gets averaged out by diversification and time, and by the assumption that if you've waited that long you can wait a bit longer if necessary for jitters to settle out. Time periods between those will partake of some mix of the two.
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Should I pay a company who failed to collect VAT from me over 6 months ago?
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Note: I am not a lawyer. This is my personal opinion and interpretation. First, your source is European Law, which obviously doesn't apply outside of the EU. The EU cannot make laws that bind entities in other countries; so you cannot claim that the VAT was needed to be mentioned. Second, if you owe something, you owe it; it doesn't matter if it was forgotten to be mentioned. At best, you can say that under those circumstances you don't want the software anymore, and i would assume you can send it back and get your money back (minus a fee for having it used for a while...) - this gets quite difficult to calculate clearly, so it's probably not a good avenue to follow for you. As the company has to send the VAT to your country (they will not be allowed to keep a dime of it, and have to bear the complete cost for the handling), it is a debt you have to your government; they are just the entity responsible for collecting it. Still, if you just ignore them, they will probably suck it up, and your government will also not do a thing to you. If they only have your email address, they have no way of knowing if you even still have/use this address; for all they know, it could be you never got it. They also cannot simply charge your card, as they probably don't have the card data any more (they are not supposed to keep it after the transaction is complete, and they thought it was complete at the time). All in all, you should be safe to ignore it. It's between you and your god/consciousness, if you feel obliged to pay it, as technically you owe it.
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How does the price of oil influence the value of currency?
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Because we need energy in the form of oil. If more of our money is spent on oil, there is less money to spend on other items especially luxuries like dining out and new cars (ironically) Since there is less money available, the price of other things shift with it and the whole economy moves. Since less money is available, the value of a single dollar goes up. Basically, it is because we as a species (let alone nations) are unbelievably dependent on having oil at this point in our existence. How do currency markets work? What factors are behind why currencies go up or down?
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What is a subsidy?
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A subsidy is a payment made by a group (usually the state) to individuals or corporations in order to shift the balance if the rational economic decision for the individual would be detrimental to the group as a whole otherwise. For example, if there are different quality kinds of crops that can be planted, for example a GM maize that brings in high yields but can only be processed to High Fructose Corn Syrup or a naturally bred corn that brings lower yields but tastes well enough for direct consumption, then if demand for both exceeds supply, the economic choice for the individual farmer is to plant the former. If the claims that HFCS contribute to obesity are founded, then it is in the public interest to produce less of it, and more alternative foods. Given that a market rather than a planned economy is desired, this cannot be achieved by decree, but rather money is used as an incentive. In the long term, this investment may very well pay off through reduced health care costs, so it is a rational economic decision from the state's point of view. In a world where all actors make decisions that are fully in their self interest, in principle subsidies would not be needed as consumers would demand healthy rather than cheap foods, and market mechanisms would provide these.
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First time investing advice (Canada)
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Two to three years? That is one long gestation period! :^) Welcome. Congratulations on taking savings into your own hands, you are a winner for taking responsibility for your, and your family's life. If I was you my first priority would be to pay off your car and never buy one on time again. Or you could sell it and buy something with cash if that would be easier. It is tremendous that you are thinking and planning. You are already ahead of most people. Are you working on your basement as you have time/money like when work might be slow? If so great idea.
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Should I pay half a large balance this month before I get my CC statement?
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Utilization is near real-time. What that means is that what is reported is what is taken in terms of debt-to-income (DTI) ratios. When a mortgage broker pulls your credit, they will pull the latest balances with the minimum payments. This is what is taken to determine DTI along with your gross monthly income. If you do not pay your account in full before the statement date, then you more than likely will have to wait an additional statement cycle before it reports to the credit bureaus. Therefore, your utilization is dynamic and the history of your utilization month-to-month is not recorded forever. Only the current balance. What is maintained and reported is your payment history. So you want to never be late if you want to be approved anytime soon for a mortgage. A lower DTI will not help your interest rate. As long as you stay away from the maximum DTI for the mortgage vehicle you are attempting to be approved for (VA, FHA, Conventional, etc), then your DTI should not be a concern. If you are borderline at the time of underwriting, you can take the opportunity and pay off the balances. The mortgage company can then do what is called a credit supplement which entails contacting those lenders where you have proven you have a zero balance and manually input the zero balance cards, that have not yet reported to the bureaus, in your final application to the mortgage company for underwriting approval.
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Conservative ways to save for retirement?
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I didn't even have access to a 401(k) at age 24. You're starting early and that's good. You're frugal and that's good too. Retirement savings is really intended to be a set it and forget it kind of arrangement. You check in on it once a year, maybe adjust your contributions. While I applaud your financial conservatism, you're really hamstringing your retirement if you're too conservative. At age 24 you have a solid 30 years before retirement will even approach your radar and another 10 years after that before you have to plan your disbursements. The daily, monthly, quarterly movements of your retirement account will have literally zero impact on your life. There will be money market type savings accounts, bond funds, equity funds, and lifecycle funds. The lifecycle fund rolls your contributions to favor bonds and other "safer" investments as you age. The funds available in retirement accounts will all carry something called an expense ratio. This is the amount of money that the fund manager keeps for maintaining the fund. Be mindful of the expense ratios even more than the published performance of the fund. A low fee fund will typically have an expense ratio around 0.10%, or $1 per $1,000 per year in expense. There will be more exotic funds targeting this or that segment, they can carry expense ratios nearing 1% and some even higher. It's smart to take advantage of your employer's match. Personally, at age 24, at a minimum I would contribute the match to a low-fee S&P index fund.
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Do market shares exhaust?
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Yes, all the shares of a publicly traded company can be purchased. This effectively takes the company private so that it's no longer traded on a stock market. Here are some examples: EDIT: to answer your edited question... the corporation can issue more stock. However that would dilute the value of existing shares. Thus, existing shareholders must vote to allow more shares to be issued. So... in your situation yes, you'd need to wait for someone else to sell.
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How does Yahoo finance adjust stock data for splits and dividends?
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Yahoo's "Adj Close" data is adjusted for splits, but not for dividends. Despite Yahoo's webpage's footnote saying *Close price adjusted for dividends and splits. we can see empirically that the "Adj Close" is only adjusted for splits. For example, consider Siemens from Jan 27, 2017 to Mar 15, 2017: The Adj Close adjusts for splits: On any particular day, the "Adj Close" is equal to the "Close" price divided by the cumulative product of all splits that occurred after that day. If there have been no splits after that day, then the "Adj Close" equals the "Close" price. Since there is a 2-for-1 split on Mar 14, 2017, the Adj Close is half the Close price for all dates from Jan 27, 2017 to Mar 13, 2017. Note that if Siemens were to split again at some time in the future, the Adj Close prices will be readjusted for this future split. For example, if Siemens were to split 3-for-1 tomorrow, then all the Adj Close prices seen above will be divided by 3. The Adj Close is thus showing the price that a share would have traded on that day if the shares had already been split in accordance with all splits up to today. The Adj Close does not adjust for dividends: Notice that Siemens distributed a $1.87 dividend on Feb 02, 2017 and ~$3.74 dividend on Jan 30, 2017. If the Adj Close value were adjusted for these dividends then we should expect the Adj Close should no longer be exactly half of the Close amount. But we can see that there is no such adjustment -- the Adj Close remains (up to rounding) exactly half the Close amount: Note that in theory, the market reacts to the distribution of dividends by reducing the trading price of shares post-dividend. This in turn is reflected in the raw closing price. So in that sense the Adj Close is also automatically adjusted for dividends. But there is no formula for this. The effect is already baked in through the market's closing prices.
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Why does capital gains tax apply to long term stock holdings?
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Most well-off people have investments which they have held for long periods of time, often of very substantial value such as a large part of a company. They also have influence on legislators and officials through various social contacts, lobbyists, and contributions. They managed to convince these law makers to offer a lower tax on income derived from sales of such investments. The fig leaf covering this arrangement is that it "contributes to the growth of economy by encouraging long-term investment in new enterprises."
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Is it a good idea to rebalance without withdrawing money?
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There will quickly come a time when buying to rebalance is impractical. Consider, you save 10%, and at some point, you have 5x your income saved. (you earn $50K and have accumulated $250K). A simple allocation, 50/50, so $125K stock, $125K bonds. Now, in a year the market is up much over 4%, your $5K deposit will not be enough to balance. Earlier on, the method may work just fine, later on, not so much. Edit - The above is an example, to show that there will come a time when deposits are not enough to rebalance. The above single year produces a 52/48 split, and the rebalance deposits more than 2 years. If the market continues to rise a reasonable amount, 2 years later you are even more out of balance, perhaps 56/44. I chose reasonable numbers as a starting point, just 5X income saved, and a 10% annual deposit. In the end, you can waive off any divergence from your target. That's your choice.
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Why are interbank payment (settlement) systems closed for weekends and holidays?
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The second part of your question is the easiest to answer, how much manual work is involved in settlement processes? Payment systems which handle low value (i.e. high volume) transactions work on the basis of net settlement. Each of the individual payments are netted across all of the participant banks, so that only one "real" payment is made by each bank. Some days banks will receive money, others they will pay money. This is arbitrary and depends on whether their outbound payments exceed their inbound payments for that day. The payment system will notify each Bank how much it owes/will receive for the day. The money is then transferred between all of the banks simultaneously by the payment system to remove the risk that some pay and others don't. If you're going to make or receive a very large payment, you're going to want to make certain that its correct. This means that if there's a discrepancy, you need operations people available to find out why its wrong. When dealing with this many payments, answering that question can be hard. Did we miss a payment? Is there a duplicate? Etc. The vast majority of payments will process without any human involvement, but to make the process work, you always need human brains there to fix problems that occur. This brings me to your first question. On every day that settlement happens, a bank will receive (or pay) a very large sum of money. As a settlement bank you must settle that money - the guarantee that every bank will pay is one of the main reasons these systems exist. For settlement to happen, every bank has to agree to participate, and be ready to verify the data on their side and deliver the funds from their account. So there is no particular reason that this doesn't happen on weekends and holidays other than history. But for any payment system to change, it would require the support of (at least) a majority of participants to pay staff to manage the settlement process on weekends. This would increase costs for banks, but the benefits would only really be for you and me (if at all). That means it's unlikely to happen unless a government forces the issue.
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Is it possible to see option prices from the past?
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Yes, past option prices are available for many options, but as far as I know not for free. You can get them from, for example, OptionMetrics. Probably there are other providers as well, which may be cheaper for an individual or small institution. OptionMetrics data comes from the National Best Bid and Offer. Probably there are some over-the-counter options that are not included here, but for someone asking this question, OptionMetrics will most likely have the option you are interested in.
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Advice for opening an IRA as a newbie
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First, a Roth is funded with post tax money. The Roth IRA deposit will not offset any tax obligation you might have. The IRA is not an investment, it's an account with a specific set of tax rules that apply to it. If you don't have a brokerage account, I'd suggest you consider a broker that has an office nearby. Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard are 3 that I happen to have relationships with. Once the funds are deposited, you need to choose how to invest for the long term. The fact that I'd choose the lowest cost S&P ETF or mutual fund doesn't mean that's the ideal investment for you. You need to continue to do research to find the exact investment that matches your risk profile. By way of example, up until a few years ago, my wife and I were nearly 100% invested in stocks, mostly the S&P 500. When we retired, four years ago, I shifted a bit to be more conservative, closer to 80% stock 20% cash.
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Is it legal if I'm managing my family's entire wealth?
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My answer is with respect to the United States. I have no idea about India's regulatory environment. You are opening yourself up to massive liabilities and problems if you deposit their money in your account. I managed investment accounts as a private investment advisor for years (those with less than 15 clients were not required to register) until Dodd-Frank changed the rules. Thus you would have to register as an advisor, probably needing to take the series 65 exam (or qualifying some other way, e.g. getting your CFP/CFA/etc...). I used a discount broker/dealer (Scottrade) as the custodian. Here's how it works: Each client's account was their own account, and I had a master account that allowed me to bill their accounts and manage them. They signed paperwork making me the advisor on their account. I had very little accounting to handle (aside from tracking basis for taxed accounts). If you take custody of the money, you'll have regulatory obligations. There are always lots of stories in the financial advisor trade publications about advisors who go to jail for screwing their clients. The most common factor: they took custody of the assets. I understand why you want a single account - you want to ensure that each client gets the same results, right? Does each client want the same results? Certainly the tax situation for each is different, yes? Perhaps one has gains and wants to take losses in one year, and the other doesn't. If their accounts are managed separately, one can take losses while the other realizes gains to offset other losses. Financial advisors offer these kinds of accounts as Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs). The advisors on these kinds of accounts are mutual funds managers, and they try to match a target portfolio, but they can do things like realize gains or losses for clients if their tax situation would prefer it. You certainly can't let them put retirement accounts into your single account unless the IRS has you on their list of acceptable custodians. I suggest that you familiarize yourself thoroughly with the regulatory environment that you want to operate under. Then, after examining the pros and cons, you should decide which route you want to take. I think the most direct and feasible route is to pass the Series 65, register as an investment advisor, and find a custodian who will let you manage the assets as the advisor on the account. Real estate is another matter, you should talk to an attorney, not some random guy on the internet (even if he has an MBA and a BS in Real Estate, which I do). This is very much a state law thing.
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Using multiple bank accounts
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There is nothing conceptually wrong with it. If you like it that way, go ahead. The only thing to watch out for is bank policies that effectively penalize having many small accounts. For instance, some banks charge you a fee for checking accounts with a balance below a certain minimum, but will waive the fees for accounts with a higher balance. You may be able to avoid such fees by judicious management of your funds (or by switching to a different bank), but it's something to be aware of. (The interest rates on savings accounts also often vary with the balance, making many small balances less efficient than one big balance. However, right now, at least in the US, interest rates on savings accounts are so low that the difference here is likely to be minimal.)
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“Occupation” field on IRS Form 1040
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It doesn't generally matter, and I'm not sure if it is in fact in use by the IRS other than for general statistics (like "this year 20% of MFJ returns were with one spouse being a 'homemaker'"). They may be able to try and match the occupation and the general levels and types of income, but for self-employed there's a more precise and reliable field on Schedule C and for employees they don't really need to do this since everything is reported on W2 anyway. So I don't think they even bother or give a lot of value to such a metric. So yes, I'm joining the non-authoritative "doesn't matter" crowd.
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How much should a new graduate with new job put towards a car?
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As someone who has a very similar debt amount and environment (new grad, nice new paying job, want a car, etc), I'd like to share something with you. Life has unexpected costs. Luckily I didn't buy that new car the first few months out of college like I had planned to; I'm glad that I didn't because, as a fledgling "adult", despite having lived on my own while in college while working part-to-full time there are some things you just don't realize until it either happens or it happens to someone else. Here are some of those things: I could go on but I won't. $95K is good money and I would definitely recommend spending it a bit to enjoy yourself. But I would honestly tell you that taking your monthly expenses, adding a few hundred on top of that and then multiplying that sum by 3 would be a smart savings amount before picking up a car loan. Maybe that's an excessive savings but I've seen way too many people burn out over their cost-of-living and their failure to adjust appropriately when shit hits the fan. So instead of having to deal with the stab at your pride when having to lower the cost/quality of living that you'll probably grow accustomed to at a $95K salary, just prepare for the worst. Oh, and did I mention... A NEW JOB IS NOT A SECURE JOB Consider yourself to likely be the first asset dropped from the company if even the tiniest thing goes wrong. I know way too many people who were fresh hires at Intel, Boeing, and a few other big tech companies that pay around what you make and, despite being bad asses in college, they were dropped like a bad habit when their employers hit rough patches. To those even more experienced than me, please feel free to add to the list. I'd personally love to know them myself.
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Why are credit cards preferred in the US?
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nan
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How to invest with a low net worth
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You might want to consider 'investing' a portion of that money into educating yourself. The payoff might not be as immediately obvious or gratifying but with appropriate determination, in the long term it will generate you a much greater return. If you would like to learn about investing, a great starting point would be to buy and read the book 'The Intelligent Investor' by Benjamin Graham. This will be a great barometer for how ready you are to invest in the stock market. If you are able to understand the concepts discussed and comprehend why they are important, you will have gone far in ensuring that you will make adequate returns over your lifetime and will - more importantly - increase the odds of safeguarding your capital.
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Can Mutual Funds Invest In the Start Up Market?
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Bloomberg suggests that two Fidelity funds hold preferred shares of Snapchat Inc.. Preferred shares hold more in common with bonds than with ordinary stock as they pay a fixed dividend, have lower liquidity, and don't have voting rights. Because of this lower liquidity they are not usually offered for sale on the market. Whether these funds are allowed to hold such illiquid assets is more a question for their strategy document than the law; it is completely legal for a company to hold a non-marketable interest in another, even if the company is privately held as Snapchat is. The strategy documents governing what the fund is permitted to hold, however, may restrict ownership either banning non-market holdings or restricting the percentage of assets held in illiquid instruments. Since IPO is very costly, funds like these who look to invest in new companies who have not been through IPO yet are a very good way of taking a diversified position in start-ups. Since they look to invest directly rather than through the market they are an attractive, low cost way for start-ups to generate funds to grow. The fund deals directly with the owners of the company to buy its shares. The markdown of the stock value reflects the accounting principle of marking to market (MTM) financial assets that do not have a trade price so as to reflect their fair value. This markdown implies that Fidelity believe that the total NPV of the company's net assets is lower than they had previously calculated. This probably reflects a lack of revenue streams coming into the business in the case of Snapchat. edit: by the way, since there is no market for start-up "stocks" pre-IPO my heart sinks a little every time I read the title of this question. I'm going to be sad all day now :(.
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1099 Misc for taking care of foreign exchange students
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In general, you are allowed to deduct up to $50/month per student (see page 4), but only if you aren't reimbursed. In your case, since you are receiving a stipend, the full $2000 will be treated as taxable income. But the question of "is it worth it" really depends on how much you will actually spend (and also what you'll get from the experience). Suppose you actually spend $1000/month to host them, and if your combined tax rate is 35%, you'll pay $700 in additional taxes each month, but you'll still profit $300 each month. If your primary motivation for hosting students is to make a profit, you could consider creating a business out of it. If you do that you will be able to deduct all of your legitimate business expenses which, in the above example, would be $1000/month. Keeping with that example, you would now pay taxes on $1000 instead of $2000, which would be $350, meaning your profit would now be $650/month. (Increasing your profit by $350/month.) You will only need to keep spending records if you plan to go the business route. My advice: assume you won't be going the business route, and then figure out what your break even point is based on your tax rate (Fed+state+FICA). The formula is: Max you can spend per month without losing money = 2000 - (2000 * T) e.g. if T = 35%, the break even point is $1300. Side note: My family hosted 5 students in 5 years and it was always a fantastic experience. But it is also a very big commitment. Teenagers eat a lot, and they drive cars, and go on dates, and play sports, and need help with their homework (especially English papers), and they don't seem to like bed times or curfews. IMHO it's totally worth it, even without the stipend...
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What to do with old company's 401k? [duplicate]
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I suggest rolling it over to the 401(k) with your new employer. Particularly if they match any percentage of your contribution, it would be in your interest to take as much of that money as possible. When it comes to borrowing money from your 401(k), it looks like the issues AbraCadaver mentioned only apply if you don't pay back the money (http://www.kiplinger.com/article/real-estate/T010-C000-S002-borrowing-from-your-retirement-plan-to-buy-a-home.html). The reasonable argument against taking money out of your 401(k) to buy a home is that it leaves a dent in your retirement nest egg (and its earning power) during key earning years. On the plus side for borrowing from your 401(k), it's very low interest--and it's interest you're paying back to yourself over a 5-year period. At its current value, the most you could borrow from your 401(k) is $35K. If you're fortunate in where you live, that could be most or all of the downpayment. In my own experience, my wife borrowed against her 401(k) balance for the earnest money when we purchased a new home. Fortunately for us, an investor snapped up my previous home within 4 days of us listing it, so she was able to pay back her loan in full right away.
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How is it possible that a preauth sticks to a credit card for 30 days, even though the goods have already been delivered?
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This is not a normal occurrence, and you have every right to be annoyed, but the technical way it usually happens goes like this: What can happen is when the merchant incorrectly completes the transaction without referencing the pre-authorization transaction. The bank effectively doesn't "know" this is the same transaction, so they process it the same way they process any other purchase, and it has no effect on the pre-authorization and related held/pending transaction. As far as the bank knows, you purchased a second set of blinds in the store for $200 and are still waiting on the first order to come in, they have no idea the store screwed up. The reason this is possible is the purpose of the pre-auth in the first place is that it is a contractual agreement between the bank (credit card) and the merchant that the funds are available, will be available except under rare special circumstances, and thus they can go ahead and process the order. This lets the merchant be secure in the knowledge that they can collect their payment, but you aren't paying interest or monthly payments on something you haven't even gotten yet! This system works reasonably well for everyone - right up until someone screws up and fails to properly release a hold, makes a second transaction instead of properly referencing the first one, or the bank screws up their system and fails to correctly match referenced pre-authorization codes to purchases. The problem is that this should not be a normal occurrence, and the people you are speaking with to try to sort out the issue often do not have the authority or knowledge necessary to properly fix the issue, or its such a hassle for them that they hope you just go away and time fixes the issue on its own. The only sure-fire solution to this is: make sure you have so much extra credit line that this doesn't effect you and you can safely let it time out on its own, or stop doing business with this combination of merchant/payment that creates the problem. Back when my credit limits were being pushed, I would never pay at gas pumps because their hold polices were so weird and unpredictable, and I would only pre-pay inside or with cash to avoid the holds.
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How can I help others plan their finances, without being a “conventional” financial planner?
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I think it's great that you want to contribute. Course Instructor You may want to take a look at becoming an instructor for a course like Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. These are commonly offered through churches and other community venues for a fee. This may be a good fit if you want to focus on basic financial literacy, setting up and sticking to a budget, and getting their financial "house" in order. It may not be a good fit if you don't want to teach an existing curriculum, or if you find the tenets of the course too unpalatable. A significant number of the people in Dave's audience are close to or in the middle of a financial meltdown, and so his advice includes controversial ideas such as avoiding credit altogether, often because that's how they got into their current mess. Counselor If you want to run your own show, I know of several people who have built their own practice that is run along the lines of a counselor charging hourly rates, and they work with couples who are having money problems. Building a reputation and a network of referring counselors and professionals is key here, and definitely seems like it would require a full-time commitment. I would avoid "credit counseling" and the like. Most of these organizations are focused on restructuring credit card debt, not spending signficant time on behavioral change. You don't need a series 7, 63, 65 etc. or even a CFA. I've previously acquired a number of these and can confirm that they are investment credentials that are intended to help you get a job and/or get more business as a broker or conventional financial planner, i.e. salesperson of securities. The licensure process is necessary to protect consumers from advice that serves the investment sales force but is bad for the consumer, and because you must be licensed to provide investment advice. There is a class of fee-only financial planners, but they primarily deal with complex issues that allow them to make money, and often give away basic personal finance advice for free in the form of articles, podcasts, etc. Charity For part-time or free work, in my area there are also several charity organizations that help people do their taxes and provide basic budgeting and personal finance instruction, but this is very localized and may vary quite a bit depending on where you live. However, if there are none near you, you can always start one! Journalism If you have an interest in writing, there are also people who work as journalists and write columns, books, or newsletters, and it is much easier now to publish and build a network online, either on your own, through a blog or contributing to a website. Speaker at Community events There are also many opportunities to speak to a specific community such as a church or social organization. For example, where I live there are local organizations for Spanish speaking, Polish speaking, elderly, young professional, young mother and retiree groups for example, all of who might be interested in your advice on issues that specifically address their needs. Good luck!
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What is the median retirement savings in the United States today?
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Statistics are often tough to grasp. Specifically, we need to understand the exact context and implication of the data and how it's presented. An example - I look at real estate sales data for a given town, and find that for the last 10 years, the average sale price has dropped, 3%/yr, every year for these 10. What can I conclude? Now, to your data. You don't mention age. When we look at this chart, combined with the next - The picture, while still bleak, is at least more clear. Nearly half of pre-retirees have no "retirement" savings. If that lower half is running close to zero, the average for the upper half is nearly twice the reported $164K. Even now, there are important bits going unaddressed. People who have had no access to retirement accounts, either through lack of company availability, or self-employeds who just ignored them, may very well have saved outside of retirement-labled accounts. You can see these graphs are tracking only 401(k), IRA, and Keogh accounts. Last, social security for the $30K earner will replace nearly half their working income at retirement, almost 65% if they work till 70. I don't advocate counting on SS for the entirety of one's retirement income, but the way SS benefits are structured, replacement benefits are far higher (as a percent) for lower wage workers, as the system intended. To conclude, median alone is too small a data point to be useful, in my opinion. This kind of information presented in these charts is far more preferable to get a fuller picture.
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Nasdaq vs Nasdaq Trade Reporting Facility
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You can infer some of the answers to your questions from the BATS exchange's market data page and its associated help page. (I'm pretty sure a page like this exists on each stock exchange's website; BATS just happens to be the one I'm used to looking at.) The Matched Volume section refers to all trades on a given date that took place on "lit" exchanges; that is, where a public protected US stock exchange's matching engine helped a buyer and a seller find each other. Because there are exactly 11 such exchanges in existence, it's easy to show 100% of the matched volume broken down into 11 rows. The FINRA & TRF Volume section refers to all trades on a given date that took place on "non-lit" exchanges. These types of trades include dark pool volume and any other trade that is not required to take place in public but is required to be reported (the R in TRF) to FINRA. There are three venues via which these trades may be reported to FINRA -- NASDAQ's, NYSE's, and FINRA's own ADF. They're all operated under the purview of FINRA, so the fact that they're "located at" NASDAQ or NYSE is a red herring. (For example, from the volume data it's clear that the NASDAQ facility does not only handle NASDAQ-listed (Tape C) securities, nor does the NYSE facility only handle NYSE-listed (Tape A) securities or anything like that.) The number of institutions reporting to each of the TRFs is large -- many more than the 11 public exchanges -- so the TRF data is not broken down further. (Also I think the whole point of the TRFs is to report in secret.) I don't know enough details to say why the NASDTRF has always handled more reporting volume than the other two facilities. Of course, since we can't see inside the TRF reporting anyway, it's sort of a moot point.
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Why does the share price tend to fall if a company's profits decrease, yet remain positive?
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The company's value (which should be reflected in the share price) is not how much money it has in the bank, but something along the lines of 'how much money will it make between now and the end of times' (adjusted for time value of money and risk). So when you purchase a share of a company that has, say, little money in the bank, but expects to make 1M$ profit this year, 2M$ for the following 3 years, and say, nothing after, you are going to pay your fraction of 7M$ (minus some discount because of the risk involved). If now they announce that their profits were only 750k$, then people may think that the 2M$ are more likely to be 1.5M$, so the company's value would go to ~ 5M$. And with that, the market may perceive the company as more risky, because its profits deviated from what was expected, which in turn may reduce the company's value even further.
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