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When should you use an actively managed mutual fund in a 401k? | For US stocks it's a bit of a gamble. Many actively managed funds underperform the market indexes, but some of them outperform in many years. With an index you will get average results. With an active manager you "might" do better than average. So you can view active management as a higher risk, potentially higher reward investment approach. On the other hand, if you want to diversify some of your investments into international stocks, bonds, junk bonds, and real estate (REITs) active management is highly likely to be better than indexing. For these specialized areas specialized knowledge and research is needed. |
Which US market indexes (Dow/DJIA, S&P500, NASDAQ) include reinvested dividends? | While the S&P500 is not a total return index, there is an official total return S&P500 that includes reinvested dividends and which is typically used for benchmarking. For a long time it was not available for free, but it can currently be found on yahoo finance using the ticker ^SP500TR. |
How to rebalance a passive portfolio if I speculate a war is coming? | At a risk of stating the obvious: a passive portfolio doesn't try to speculate on such matters. |
Historical share price at exact day and time | On 2012/05/18 at 15:34:00 UTC (11:34:00 EDT) FB was in chaos mode. The most recent public US trade at that moment was at $40.94, but in the next one second (i.e. before the clock hit 15:34:01) there were several dozen trades as low as $40.76 and as high as $41.00. On 2012/05/30 at 17:21:00 UTC (13:21:00 EDT) the most recent public US trade for FB was at $28.28. |
Is it wise to invest in a stock with a large Div yield? | There have been many interesting and correct answers but to give a direct answer to your first question, dividend yield is simply dividend over current share price. So, if the share price drops, your dividend yield increases proportionately. Dividend yield is not something one should use as the only source of information of whether a stock is a good/bad buy. It does not show many important factors: the riskiness of the company business, its financial position, profitability, ability to generate cash. Furthermore, dividend yield is just a snapshot of an income gain at a given point in time. It does not mean that this very dividend policy is going to continue in the future (especially not so if the company finances this dividend payments using not its own cash reserves but outside capital by issuing debt securities, which is unsustainable). |
Do I need to own all the funds my target-date funds owns to mimic it? | Over time, fees are a killer. The $65k is a lot of money, of course, but I'd like to know the fees involved. Are you doubling from 1 to 2%? if so, I'd rethink this. Diversification adds value, I agree, but 2%/yr? A very low cost S&P fund will be about .10%, others may go a bit higher. There's little magic in creating the target allocation, no two companies are going to be exactly the same, just in the general ballpark. I'd encourage you to get an idea of what makes sense, and go DIY. I agree 2% slices of some sectors don't add much, don't get carried away with this. |
What pension options are there for a 22 year old graduate in the UK? | Major things to consider: If you're expecting to look at the property market: it might prove to be sensible to start doing it now, since the market is just recovering, and (IMHO warning -I'm not a professional investor, just a random guy on the internet) prices still hasn't caught up with value fundamentals. check out cash ISA's for a 24-36 month timeframe; most do a reasonable 3-4% AER, with the current inflation rate being around 4%, this will, at the very least, make sure your money doesn't loose it's purchasing power. Finally, a word of caution: SIPPs have a rather rubbish AER rates. This, by itself, wouldn't be much of a problem on a 30-40 years timeframe, but keep the (current, and historically strictly monotonically increasing) 4% inflation rate in mind: this implies the purchasing power of any money tied in these vehicles will loose it's purchasing power, in a compounding manner. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions. |
How to reconcile performance with dividends? | You didn't identify the fund but here is the most obvious way: Some of the stocks they owned could had dividends. Therefore they would have had to pass them on to the investors. If the fund sold shares of stocks, they could have capital gains. They would have sold stocks to pay investors who sold shares. They also could have sold shares of stock to lock in gains, or to get out of positions they no longer wanted. Therefore a fund could have dividends, and capital gains, but not have an increase in value for the year. Some investors look at how tax efficient a fund is, before investing. |
Joint Account for Common Earnings | Short Answer: Go to the bank and ask them about your options for opening a business account. Talk to an attorney about the paperwork and company structure and taxes. Long Answer: You and your buddies jointly own an unincorporated business. This is called a partnership. Yes, there is paperwork involved in doing it properly and the fact that you guys are minors might complicate that paperwork a little bit. In terms of what type of account to open: A business account! Running a business through a personal account (joint or otherwise) is a sure way to get that account shut down. Your bank will want to know the structure of the business, and will require documentation to support that. For a partnership, they will probably want a copy of the partnership agreement. For an LLC, they'll probably want a copy of the filing with Ohio Secretary of State as well as the operating agreement etc. That said, pop into a local bank and ask a business banker directly what you should do. They deal with new businesses all the time, and would probably be best qualified to help you figure out the bank account aspect of it. Regarding business structure... this really impacts a lot more than just the type of bank account to open and how you file your taxes. It is something you guys should really discuss with an attorney. What happens if down the road one of you quits? What happens if you want to bring in a new partner later? What if there is a disagreement about something? These are all things that the attorney can help you address ahead of time - which is a heck of a lot easier (and cheaper) than trying to figure it out later. You're brining in enough that you should certainly be able to buy a couple hours of a lawyer's time. Getting the formation stuff right could save all of you a lot of money and heartache later. |
First job: Renting vs get my parents to buy me a house | As everyone is saying, this depends on a lot of variables. However... I had my dad help me with the downpayment on my house. In my case, the cost of mortgage payment and all maintenance expenses is still lower than paying rent. If I sell my house and walk away from the closing office with just $1 then I've still come out ahead compared to renting. The New York Times has a fantastic tool figure out if it's a good idea to buy vs. rent. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html?_r=0 It's asks all the relevant questions, and then it tells you how cheap rent would have to be make it the better option. |
How does owning a home and paying on a mortgage fit into family savings and investment? | Like @littleadv, I don't consider a mortgage on a primary residence to be a low-risk investment. It is an asset, but one that can be rather illiquid, depending on the nature of the real estate market in your area. There are enough additional costs associated with home-ownership (down-payment, insurance, repairs) relative to more traditional investments to argue against a primary residence being an investment. Your question didn't indicate when and where you bought your home, the type of home (single-family, townhouse, or condo) the nature of your mortgage (fixed-rate or adjustable rate), or your interest rate, but since you're in your mid-20s, I'm guessing you bought after the crash. If that's the case, your odds of making a profit if/when you sell your home are higher than they would be if you bought in the 2006/2007 time-frame. This is no guarantee of course. Given the amount of housing stock still available, housing prices could still fall further. While it is possible to lose money in all sorts of investments, the illiquid nature of real estate makes it a lot more difficult to limit your losses by selling. If preserving principal is your objective, money market funds and treasury inflation protected securities are better choices than your home. The diversification your financial advisor is suggesting is a way to manage risk. Not all investments perform the same way in a given economic climate. When stocks increase in value, bonds tend to decrease (and vice versa). Too much money in a single investment means you could be wiped out in a downturn. |
How does Vanguard determine the optimal asset allocation for their Target Retirement Funds? | Googling vanguard target asset allocation led me to this page on the Bogleheads wiki which has detailed breakdowns of the Target Retirement funds; that page in turn has a link to this Vanguard PDF which goes into a good level of detail on the construction of these funds' portfolios. I excerpt: (To the question of why so much weight in equities:) In our view, two important considerations justify an expectation of an equity risk premium. The first is the historical record: In the past, and in many countries, stock market investors have been rewarded with such a premium. ... Historically, bond returns have lagged equity returns by about 5–6 percentage points, annualized—amounting to an enormous return differential in most circumstances over longer time periods. Consequently, retirement savers investing only in “safe” assets must dramatically increase their savings rates to compensate for the lower expected returns those investments offer. ... The second strategic principle underlying our glidepath construction—that younger investors are better able to withstand risk—recognizes that an individual’s total net worth consists of both their current financial holdings and their future work earnings. For younger individuals, the majority of their ultimate retirement wealth is in the form of what they will earn in the future, or their “human capital.” Therefore, a large commitment to stocks in a younger person’s portfolio may be appropriate to balance and diversify risk exposure to work-related earnings (To the question of how the exact allocations were decided:) As part of the process of evaluating and identifying an appropriate glide path given this theoretical framework, we ran various financial simulations using the Vanguard Capital Markets Model. We examined different risk-reward scenarios and the potential implications of different glide paths and TDF approaches. The PDF is highly readable, I would say, and includes references to quant articles, for those that like that sort of thing. |
Is it legal to charge interest on interest? | Yes it most cases it is legal. Plus depending on how you look at it, the last payment of 1000 can be principal paid and interest was paid in initial installments. |
Should I scale down my 401k? | Because stock markets don't always go up, sometimes they go down. Sometimes they go way down. Between 2007 and 2009 the S&P 500 lost over half its value. So if in 2007 you thought you had just enough to retire on, in 2009 you'd suddenly find you had only half of what you needed! Of course over the next few years, many of the stocks recovered value, but if you had retired in 2008 and depended on a 401k that consisted entirely of stocks, you'd have been forced to sell a bunch of stocks near the bottom of the market to cover your retirement living expenses. Bonds go up and down too, but usually not to the same extent as stocks, and ideally you aren't selling the bonds for your living expenses, just collecting the interest that's due you for the year. Of course, some companies and cities went bankrupt in the 2008 crisis too, and they stopped making interest payments. Another risk is that you may be forced to retire before you were actually planning to. As you age you are at increasing risk for medical problems that may force an early retirement. Many businesses coped with the 2008 recession by laying off their older workers who were earning higher salaries. It wasn't an easy environment for older workers to find jobs in, so many folks were forced into early retirement. Nothing is risk free, so you need to make an effort to understand what the risks are, and decide which ones you are comfortable with. |
Interactive Brokers: IOPTS and list of structured products | Interactive Brokers offers global securities trading. Notice that the security types are: cash, stock (STK), futures (FUT), options (OPT), futures options (FOP), warrants (WAR), bonds, contracts for differences (CFD), or Dutch warrants (IOPT) There is a distinction between options (OPT), warrants (WAR), options on futures (FOP) and finally, Dutch Warrants (IOPT). IOPT is intuitively similar to an "index option". (For index option valuation equations, iopt=1 for a call, and iopt= -1 for a put. I don't know if Interactive Brokers uses that convention). What is the difference between a "Dutch Warrant" and an option or warrant? Dutch warrants aren't analogous to Dutch auctions e.g. in the U.S.Treasury bond market. For North America, Interactive Brokers only lists commissions for traditional warrants and options, that is, warrants and options that have a single stock as the underlying security. For Asia and Europe, Interactive Brokers lists both the "regular" options (and warrants) as well as "equity index options", see commission schedule. Dutch warrants are actually more like options than warrants, and that may be why Interactive Brokers refers to them as IOPTS (index options). Here's some background from a research article about Dutch warrants (which was NOT easy to find): In the Netherlands, ING Bank introduced call and put warrants on the FT-SE 100, the CAC 40 and the German DAX indexes. These are some differences between [Dutch] index warrants and exchange traded index options: That last point is the most important, as it makes the pricing and valuation less subject to arbitrage. Last part of the question: Where do you find Structured Products on Interactive Brokers website? Look on the Products page (rather than the Commissions page, which does't mention Structured Products at all). There is a Structured Products tab with details. |
Formula that predicts whether one is better off investing or paying down debt | I ended up writing a simulation in R. Here is my code: It produces a plot like this: This code assumes you have a lump sum and either wish to pay down a loan or invest it all immediately. Feedback welcome. |
What is the best way to save money from inflation and currency devaluation? | Generally speaking, so-called "hard assets" (namely gold or foreign currency), durable goods, or property that produces income is valuable in a situation where a nation's money supply is threatened. Gold is the universal hard asset. If you have access to a decent market, you can buy gold as bullion, coins and jewelry. Small amounts are valuable and easy to conceal. The problem with gold is that it is often marked up alot... I'm not sure how practical it is in a poor developing nation. A substitute would be a "harder" currency. The best choice depends on where you live. Candidates would be the US Dollar, Euro, Australian Dollar, Yen, etc. The right choice depends on you, the law in your jurisdiction, your means and other factors. |
Sell home to buy another home for cash | The cleanest way to accomplish this is to make the purchase of your new house contingent on the sale of your old one. Your offer should include that contingency and a date by which your house needs to sell to settle the contract. There will also likely be a clause that lets the seller cancel the contract within a period of time (like 24-48 hours) if another offer is received. This gives you (the buyer) at least an opportunity to either sell the house or come up with financing to complete the deal. For example, suppose you make an offer to buy a house for $300,000 contingent on the sale of your house, which the seller accepts. In the meantime, the seller gets an offer of $275,000 in cash (no contingency). The seller has to notify you of the offer and give you some time to make good on your offer, either by selling your house or obtaining $300,000 in financing. If you cannot, the seller can accept the cash offer. This is just a hypothetical example; the offer can have whatever clauses you agree to, but since sale contingencies benefit the buyer, the seller will generally want some compensation for that benefit, e.g. a larger offer or some other clause that benefits them. Or do I find a house to buy first, set a closing date far out and then use that time to sell my current one? Most sellers will not want to set a closing date very far out. Contingency clauses are far more common. In short, yes it's possible, and any competent realtor should be able to handle it. It also may mean that you have to either make a higher offer to compensate for the contingency and to dissuade the seller from entertaining other offers, or sell your home for less than you'd like to get the cash sooner. You can weigh those costs against the cost of financing the new house until yours sells. |
How to find a public company's balance sheet and income statement? | The balance sheet and income statements are located in the 10-K and 10-Q filings for all publicly traded companies. It will be Item 8. |
To pay off a student loan, should I save up a lump sum payoff payment or pay extra each month? | There are a few ways you can go about paying this off quickly (and safely): You could start paying $386 monthly (ie, double what you're paying now). You'll pay less interest in the long run because they can only charge you for the amount outstanding. Remember, 6.8% of $12k is more than 6.8% of $6k. However, your plan sounds more sensible. Say you get to $6k paid off and $6k saved, you're able to pay off what's left and that's almost $200 a month you'll have extra. Although what I like about this is - if you become ill, lose your job, or whatever, then you're still able make the $193 payments, PLUS you'll have money saved for day-to-day expenses (food, water, gas, electricity, etc.) long enough to see yourself through. PS. They may charge you a settlement fee because if you pay early then they miss out on money... but check your contract with them first. Hope this helps! |
First time home buyer. How to negotiate price? | Whether applying for a job or buying a house, Offer a more specific price like $72,500, which tells them you thought hard about the price. $70K is too 'round' of a number. Additionally, your financial ability/condition can be a factor too. If you have 20% down, and your Realtor assures the seller that your transaction will go down without a hitch, and you'll be approved for a mortgage, they may accept your offer of $72,500 over the other guys $78K offer if [s]he has less desirable finances. Good Luck! |
Why would a bank need to accept deposits from private clients if it can just borrow from the Federal Reserve? | Let's just focus on the "why would a bank need to accept deposits from private clients part" and forget the central bank for a moment. I'm a guy. I have a wife and two kids. They have this pesky habit of wanting to buy stuff. When I get paid, I could just get a check, cash it, stuff it under a mattress, and pull it out when I need it. Hey that worked for a long time didn't it? But sometimes it's nice to write checks. (Just kidding, that's so gauche...) I use my debit card. I use my credit cards, but they need to be paid somehow. My light and phone bills need to be paid too. If only there were someone out there who could facilitate this transfer of money between me, the private client and the merchants I'm forced to spend my money at. Now some of those merchants have plans. Light bills I can pay at my grocer if I choose. But most of the other's don't. Luckily I have a bank that's willing to do this, for a fee. So basically they do it because there's a void in the market if they don't. I don't know if it's true what they say about supply creating its own demand, but it certainly is true that demand creates supply! |
How should I be contributing to my 401(k), traditional or Roth? | I wrote a brilliant guest post at Don't Mess With Taxes, titled Roth IRAs and Your Retirement Income. (Note - this article now reflects 2012 rates. Just updated) Simply put, it's an ongoing question of whether your taxes will be higher now than at any point in the future. If you are in the 25% bracket now, it would take quite of bit of money for your withdrawals to put you in that bracket at retirement. In the case of the IRA, you have the opportunity to convert in any year between now and retirement if your rate that year drops for whatever reason. The simplest case is if you are now in the 25% bracket. I say go pre-tax, and track, year by year what your withdrawal would be if you retired today. At 15%, but with a good chance for promotion to the 25% bracket, start with Roth flavor and then as you hit 25%, use a combination. This approach would smooth your marginal rate to stay at 15%. To give you a start to this puzzle, in 2012, a couple has a $11,900 standard deduction along with 2 exemptions of $3800 each. This means the first $19,500 in an IRA comes out tax free at retirement. If you believe in a 4% withdrawal rate, you need a retirement account containing $500K pretax to generate this much money. This tick up with inflation, 2 years ago, it was $18,700 and $467K respectively. This is why those who scream "taxes will go up" may be correct, but do you really believe the standard deduction and exemptions will go away? Edit - and as time passes, and I learn more, new info comes to my attention. The above thoughts not withstanding, there's an issue of taxation of Social Security benefits. This creates a The Phantom Tax Rate Zone which I recently wrote about. A single person with not really too high an income gets thrust into the 46% bracket. Not a typo, 46.25% to be exact. |
Advantages of paying more of your mortgage while you know you won't continue to live there your whole life | Another factor: When you sell this house and buy the next one, the more equity you have the easier the loan process tends to be. We rolled prior equity into this house and had a downpayment over 50%--and the lender actually apologized for a technicality I had to deal with--they perfectly well knew it was a basically zero-risk loan. |
Why do consultants or contractors make more money than employees? | The "more money" aspect is only true if you ignore the lack of symmetry between employment and contracting. Consulting is another story altogether. Companies are willing to pay consultants for a number of reasons but the most important is deniability. If a decision is recommended and goes wrong then the consultants can be sued. Liability cover is expensive. Cynicism aside, it often isn't cost-effective to keep specialists permanently on the payroll for tasks that are performed once a year. Recently I've noticed that the nature of consulting is changing. Companies are starting to assemble brains-trusts of internal consultants who can create and manage projects while outsourcing only the labour-intensive data-collection roles. Expect this to have a big impact on the management consulting industry. |
How can I stop wasting food? | The best way to stop wasting food is to create a weekly plan. Every weekend, before making your grocery shopping, take 30-60 mins and plan (with your spouse if your married) for the next week's meals. It doesn't need to be too detailed, but it'll help you to approximate what you need in terms of food for the whole week and buy accordingly. I have a similar problem where I need to go out often and also work a lot. But spending some time on the weekend to create a plan helps me minimize my wastage a lot. My inspiration to do this has been from the below 2 articles from Trent in SimpleDollar http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/10/16/how-to-plan-ahead-for-next-weeks-meals-and-save-significant-money-a-step-by-step-guide/ http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/15/the-one-hour-project-plan-your-meals-for-one-week-in-advance/ |
Why do people buy insurance even if they have the means to overcome the loss? | Your basic point is correct; the savvy move is to use insurance only to cover losses that would be painful or catastrophic for you. Otherwise, self-insure. In the specific example of car insurance, you may be missing that it doesn't only cover replacement of the car, it also covers liability, which is a hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars risk. The liability coverage may well be legally required; it may also be required as a base layer if you want to get a separate umbrella policy up to millions in liability. So you have to be very rich before this insurance stops making sense. In the US at least you can certainly buy car insurance that doesn't cover loss of the car, or that has a high deductible. And in fact, if you can afford to self-insure up to a high deductible, on average as you say that should be a good idea. Same is true of most kinds of insurance, a high deductible is best as long as you can afford it, unless you know you'll probably file a claim. (Health insurance in particular is weird in many ways, and one is that you often can estimate whether you'll have claims.) On our auto policy, the liability and uninsured motorist coverage is about 60% of the cost while damage to the car coverage is 40%. I'm sure this varies a lot depending on the value of your cars and how much you drive and driving record, etc. On an aging car the coverage for the car itself should get cheaper and cheaper since the car is worth less, while liability coverage would not necessarily get cheaper. |
Strategies for putting away money for a child's future (college, etc.)? | Others have given some good answers. I'd just like to chime in with one more option: treasury I-series bonds. They're linked to an inflation component, so they won't lose value (in theory). You can file tax returns for your children "paying" taxes (usually 0) on the interest while they're minors, so they appreciate tax-free until they're 18. Some of my relatives have given my children money, and I've invested it this way. Alternatively, you can buy the I-bonds in your own name. Then if you cash them out for your kids' education, the interest is tax-free; but if you cash them out for your own use, you do have to pay taxes on the interest. |
Which Benjamin Graham book should I read first: Security Analysis or Intelligent Investor? | I would recommend reading Intelligent Investor first. It was written slightly more recently (1949) than Security Analysis (1934). More important is that a recently revised edition* of Intelligent Investor was published. The preface and appendix were written by Warren Buffett. Intelligent Investor is more practical as an introduction for a novice. You may decide not to read Security Analysis at all, as it seems more like an academic text or professional's guide i.e. for accounting. Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor remains relevant. It is used, successfully, as a guide for value investing, despite the hysteria of market sentiment and day-to-day variations, even extreme volatility. For example, I just read a nice article about applying the value investing principles extolled in Intelligent Investor a few weeks ago. It was written in the context of current markets, which is amazing, to be so applicable, despite the passage of decades. For reference, you might want to glance at this book review (published in March 2010!) of the original 1934 edition of Security Analysis. * The URL links to a one-paragraph summary by U.S. News & World Report. It does not link to a book sales website! |
Do ETF dividends make up for fees? | It depends. Dividends and fees are usually unrelated. If the ETF holds a lot of stocks which pay significant dividends (e.g. an S&P500 index fund) these will probably cover the cost of the fees pretty readily. If the ETF holds a lot of stocks which do not pay significant dividends (e.g. growth stocks) there may not be any dividends - though hopefully there will be capital appreciation. Some ETFs don't contain stocks at all, but rather some other instruments (e.g. commodity-trust ETFs which hold precious metals like gold and silver, or daily-leveraged ETFs which hold options). In those cases there will never be any dividends. And depending on the performance of the market, the capital appreciation may or may not cover the expenses of the fund, either. If you look up QQQ's financials, you'll find it most recently paid out a dividend at an annualized rate of 0.71%. Its expense ratio is 0.20%. So the dividends more than cover its expense ratio. You could also ask "why would I care?" because unless you're doing some pretty-darned-specific tax-related modeling, it doesn't matter much whether the ETF covers its expense ratio via dividends or whether it comes out of capital gains. You should probably be more concerned with overall returns (for QQQ in the most recent year, 8.50% - which easily eclipses the dividends.) |
Why do some companies offer 401k retirement plans? | One important thing that hasn't been mentioned here is that the vast majority of companies have eventually eliminated their Company provided Pension Plans and replaced it with a 401K with some degree of matching. There is a cost advantage to doing this as companies no longer have to maintain or work to maintain a 100% vested pension plan. This takes a great burden off them. They also don't have to manage the pension/annuity that the retirement benefit entails. |
How does high frequency trading work if money isn't available for 2-3 days after selling? | Purchases and sales from the same trade date will both settle on the same settlement date. They don't have to pay for their purchases until later either. Because HFT typically make many offsetting trades -- buying, selling, buying, selling, buying, selling, etc -- when the purchases and sales settle, the amount they pay for their purchases will roughly cancel with the amount they receive for their sales (the difference being their profit or loss). Margin accounts and just having extra cash around can increase their ability to have trades that do not perfectly offset. In practice, the HFT's broker will take a smaller amount of cash (e.g. $1 million) as a deposit of capital, and will then allow the HFT to trade a larger amount of stock value long or short (e.g. $10 million, for 10:1 leverage). That $1 million needs to be enough to cover the net profit/loss when the trades settle, and the broker will monitor this to ensure that deposit will be enough. |
Does material nonpublic information cover knowledge of unannounced products? | There's the question whether knowledge about unannounced products is actually "material" if everyone (the public) knows that something new will be released. If you work at Apple on the development of the iPhone 8, that's not material. If you worked at Apple and you knew that they stopped developing new phones, that would be very, very, very material information. The important thing as far as the stock market is concerned is what sales look like, and that's not something you know as a product developer. |
When shorting a stock, do you pay current market price or the best (lowest) available ask price? | I would never use a market order. Some brokerages have an approval process your short-sale goes through before going to market. This can take some time. So the market prices may well be quite different later. Some brokerages use a separate account for short sales, so you must get their approval for the account before you can do the trade. I like the listing of shares available for shorting the Interactive Brokers has but I have experienced orders simply going into dead-air and sitting there on the screen, not being rejected, not going to market, not doing anything --- even though the shares are on the list. |
I've got $100K to invest over the next 2 to 7 years. What are some good options? | Well, a proper answer needs a few more details: 1) What's your marginal tax bracket? (A CD is just plain silly for someone in a high tax bracket and in a high tax state) 2) What's your state of residence? 3) Do you have a 401k to draw on for a house loan in case of badly timed volatility? 4) What does will the rest of our investment portfolio look like in case of a sudden rise in interest rates? Depending on the answers to those questions, the mix of investments could be anywhere from: Tell me more about bracket/state/other investment mix and I can suggest something. |
Changing Bank Account Number regularly to reduce fraud | We change it every so often to reduce fraud. This is idiocy. They receive regular payments. They are asking the people who pay them to regularly change where their money is being sent. This increases their exposure to fraud dramatically as each time the account is changed, there is a risk it will be changed to an account they do not control. This is a huge red flag. Confirm that this is authentic and, if so, insist that they sign an agreement accepting all liability for the risks this crazy policy causes, otherwise, you should refuse to go through the effort of confirming new accounts and risking typing or communication errors on a regular basis. This is definitely a "what were they thinking?!" kind of thing. If it's not fake entirely. (This answer assumes that you were given a correct explanation, that they change it regularly believing that will reduce fraud.) |
How do I make a small investment in the stock market? What is the minimum investment required? | There are more than a few ideas here. Assuming you are in the U.S., here are a few approaches: First, DRIPs: Dividend Reinvestment Plans. DRIP Investing: How To Actually Invest Only A Hundred Dollars Per Month notes: I have received many requests from readers that want to invest in individual stocks, but only have the available funds to put aside $50 to $100 into a particular company. For these investors, keeping costs to a minimum is absolutely crucial. I have often made allusions and references to DRIP Investing, but I have never offered an explanation as to how to logistically set up DRIP accounts. Today, I will attempt to do that. A second option, Sharebuilder, is a broker that will allow for fractional shares. A third option are mutual funds. Though, these often will have minimums but may be waived in some cases if you sign up with an automatic investment plan. List of mutual fund companies to research. Something else to consider here is what kind of account do you want to have? There can be accounts for specific purposes like education, e.g. a college or university fund, or a retirement plan. 529 Plans exist for college savings that may be worth noting so be aware of which kinds of accounts may make sense for what you want here. |
What would happen if the Euro currency went bust? | Krugman (Nobel prize in Economy) has just said: Greek euro exit, very possibly next month. Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors try to move their money to Germany. 3a. Maybe, just possibly, de facto controls, with banks forbidden to transfer deposits out of country and limits on cash withdrawals. 3b. Alternatively, or maybe in tandem, huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing. 4a. Germany has a choice. Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain, plus a drastic revision of strategy — basically, to give Spain in particular any hope you need both guarantees on its debt to hold borrowing costs down and a higher eurozone inflation target to make relative price adjustment possible; or: 4b. End of the euro. And we’re talking about months, not years, for this to play out. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/eurodammerung-2/ |
Advantages of Shareholder over Director in new Company | I know the general principles of acting as a director in a company, and am familiar with the rights of shareholders. In the last ten years or so, I believe Australia has introduced legislation that strongly punishes those directors who do not act in a professional or prudent manner. While I will of course attempt to fulfill the duties required - I am new to conducting business at this level, and am concerned about mistakenly breaching some unknown rule/law and being subject to repercussions that I just don't know about. As you have already stated, the key to being director in a company is the additional responsibility. Legally you can be held in breach. At the same time you will be able to influence your decision much better if you a director and thus safeguard your interest. If you are only a shareholder, you cannot be held responsible for decision by company, individual malpractice may still be applicable, but this is less of a risk. However over a period of time, the board can take certain decision that may marginalize your holding in the company. |
Historical Stock Prices of delisted company [duplicate] | You need a source of delisted historical data. Such data is typically only available from paid sources. According to my records, Lawson Software Inc listed on the NASDAQ on 7 Dec 2001 and delisted on 6 Jul 2011. Its final traded price was $11.23. It was taken over by Infor who bid $11.25 per share. Source: Symbol LWSN-201107 within Premium Data US delisted stocks historical data set available from http://www.premiumdata.net/products/premiumdata/ushistorical.php Disclosure: I am a co-owner of Norgate / Premium Data. |
Close to retirement & we may move within 7 years. Should we re-finance our mortgage, or not? | I would think it depends on when within the 7 years you're planning to move. If you want to move within a year or two, the closing costs for the new mortgage may postpone the break even until after your move date; that wouldn't be a financially smart decision. If your plans suggest you're going to move after the break even point I'd definitely refi sooner rather than later and would try to reduce the term, either by overpaying or by choosing a 15 year mortgage that should have an even lower interest rate anyway. |
What evidence is there that rising interest rates causes Canadian condo prices to go down? | In general, prices are inversely proportional to rates; however, accurate interest rate prediction would make one worthy of managing a large credit derivative hedge fund. This is not to say that interest rates cannot go up in Canada since the world is currently undergoing a resource bust, and the United States has begun exporting more oil, even trying to recently open the market to Europe, both of which Canada is relatively dependent upon. Also, to say that Canada currently has the most overpriced real estate is an oversight to say the least considering China currently has entire cities that are empty because prices are too high. A ten to twenty percent drop in real estate prices would probably be a full blown financial crisis, and since mortgage rates are currently around 2.5%, a one to two hundred basis point rise could mean a nearly 50% decrease in real estate prices if interest payments are held constant. Canada would either have to start growing its economy at a much higher rate to encourage the central bank to raise rates to such a height, or oil would have to completely collapse suddenly to cause a speculatively possible collapse of CAD to encourage the same. The easiest relationship to manipulate between prices and rates is the perpetuity: where p is the price, i is the interest payment, and r is the interest rate. In this case, an increase of r from 2.5% to 4.5% would cause a 44.5% decrease in p if i is held constant. However, typical Canadian mortgages seem to mature in ten years at a fixed rate, so i cannot be held constant, and the relationship between r and p is less strong at earlier maturities, thus the most likely way for prices to collapse is for a financial collapse as described above. |
What is the best way to help my dad consolidate his credit card debt at a lower rate? | I agree with you that you need to consolidate this debt using a loan. It may be hard to find a bank or credit organization that will give you an unsecured personal loan for that much money. I know of one, called Lending Club (Disclaimer - I'm an investor on this platform. Not trying to advertise, it's just the only place I know of off the top of my head) that facilitates loans like this, but instead of a bank financing the loan, the loan is split up accross hundreds of investors who each contribute a small amount (such as $25). They have rates anywhere between 5-30%, based on your credit profile(s), and I believe they have some loan amounts that go up to the area that you're discussing. Regarding buying the house - The best thing you can do when trying to buy a house is to save up a 20% downpayment, if at all possible. Below this amount, you may be asked to pay for 'PMI' - Private Mortgage Insurance. This is a charge that doesn't go away for quite a while (until you've paid them 20% of the appraised value of the home), where you pay a premium because you didn't have the 20% downpayment for the house. I would suggest you try to eliminate your credit card debt as soon as possible, and would recommend the same for your father. Getting your utilization down and reconsolidating the large debts with a loan will help to reduce interest charges and get you a reasonable, fixed payment. Whether you decide to pay off your own balances using your savings account is up to you; if it were me, personally, I'd do so immediately rather than trying to pay it off over time. But if you lose money to taxes by withdrawing the money from your 'tax free savings account', it may not be a beneficial situation. Treat debt, especially credit card debt, like an emergency at all times, and you'll find yourself in a better place as a result. Credit card debt and balances are and should be temporary, and their rates and fees are structured that way. If, for any reason, you expect that a credit card's balance will remain for an extended period of time, you may want to consider whether it would be advantageous for you to consolidate the debt into a loan, instead. |
High Leverage Inflation Hedges for Personal Investors | I assume you're looking for advice, not an actual guaranteed-to-appreciate answer, yes? If you believe Treasury bonds will increase as fast as inflation, that may be the way to go. |
When trading put options, is your total risk decreased if you are in a position to exercise the option? | The risk situation of the put option is the same whether you own the stock or not. You risk $5 and stand to gain 0 to $250 in the period before expiration (say $50 if the stock reaches $200 and you sell). Holding the stock or not changes nothing about that. What is different is the consideration as to whether or not to buy a put when you own the stock. Without an option, you are holding a $250 asset (the stock), and risking that money. Should you sell and miss opportunity for say $300? Or hold and risk loss of say $50 of your $250? So you have $250 at risk, but can lock in a sale price of $245 for say a month by buying a put, giving you opportunity for the $300 price in that month. You're turning a risk of losing $250 (or maybe only $50 more realistically) into a risk of losing only $5 (versus the price your stock would get today). |
Repaying Debt and Saving - Difficult Situation | She seems to be paying an inordinate amount of money for car payments. $850/month is just too high. She may be able to get by on public transit, depending on where she lives, but if not, she needs to look at selling her car and picking up a cheap second-hand vehicle. Public transit would probably save her $750/month. Going to a cheaper car should still save her $300 - $400/month. Next, phone and cable. These are certainly nice, but they are rarely necessities. I do not have cable t.v., for example. I do have a cell phone, and I do have Internet (a requirement of my job), but no cable t.v. She may be able to save some money there. My guess is that she could save $125/month here, though I may be biased on how much it costs to heat a Canadian home in our cold, cold winters. And, of course, the college payment. $900 - $1000 a month? I understand that she is paying this so that your sister can attend college. That's very nice, but it certainly sounds like your mother cannot afford that. On the other hand, if this is repayment of college expenses already incurred, there may be no choice here. Rent, at $1625/month. I have no idea what that gets you in NJ, but perhaps she could rent out a room. It's not inconceivable that she could bring in $1000/month from doing so, though obviously that's going to very much depend on the real estate/rental market where you live. Alternatively, she could move out and move in with someone else and that should certainly get her share of the rent down to $800 - $1000/month or thereabouts, and most likely cut her utility bills, also. I've identified a number of places where she can save money. No doubt, the budget is tight, but I think she's spending on far more than just bare essentials. One thing that concerns me here is that she appears to have no emergency funds and very little for entertainment, other than cable t.v. If at all possible, she needs to cut her budget down so that she is not living paycheque to paycheque and has money to cover, for example, emergency car repairs. And I'd really like to see her have more than $50/month for expenses (which I'm guessing is entertainment). It may not be possible, of course, but I would most definitely say she should not be paying for your sister's college if this places her in such dire financial risk. Easier said than done, of course. Most certainly, I would not even consider cutting the health insurance, by the way. Another approach would be to look at how her expenses will go down when your sister is done school and perhaps cleared up other expenses. It may be worth borrowing from family and friends, knowing that in a year, her expenses will go down $500/month. That makes her budget manageable. Additionally, the debt repayment presumably will finish at some point. The point I'm trying to make is that, in a year, her budget will be just about manageable, and she may be able to get there with smaller trims in the immediate future. |
Is it prudent to sell a stock on a 40% rise in 2 months | Did you buy near the bottom? Suppose you did then the price is still 16% below. 50% fall and then 40% increase leaves a 16% gap. So there could still be upside. However, it appears that you are talking about a small-cap that is volatile. I wouldn't hold it. I would take the money and invest elsewhere. If you have a lot of shares and brokerage is less then sell 60% now and the remaining 40% on either 10-15% jump in price or if it falls by 5% from now. Too risky to hold longer-term. |
How much life insurance do I need? | If I remember the information in "The Wealthy Barber" correctly, he said: And as someone once said to me, "make sure you're worth more alive than dead!" :-) |
Contract job (hourly rate) as a 1099: How much would I be making after taxes? | There are way too many details missing to be able to give you an accurate answer, and it would be too localized in terms of time & location anyway -- the rules change every year, and your local taxes make the answer useless to other people. Instead, here's how to figure out the answer for yourself. Use a tax estimate calculator to get a ballpark figure. (And keep in mind that these only provide estimates, because there are still a lot of variables that are only considered when you're actually filling out your real tax return.) There are a number of calculators if you search for something like "tax estimator calculator", some are more sophisticated than others. (Fair warning: I used several of these and they told me a range of $2k - $25k worth of taxes owed for a situation like yours.) Here's an estimator from TurboTax -- it's handy because it lets you enter business income. When I plug in $140K ($70 * 40 hours * 50 weeks) for business income in 2010, married filing jointly, no spouse income, and 4 dependents, I get $30K owed in federal taxes. (That doesn't include local taxes, any itemized deductions you might be eligible for, IRA deductions, etc. You may also be able to claim some expenses as business deductions that will reduce your taxable business income.) So you'd net $110K after taxes, or about $55/hour ($110k / 50 / 40). Of course, you could get an answer from the calculator, and Congress could change the rules midway through the year -- you might come out better or worse, depending on the nature of the rule changes... that's why I stress that it's an estimate. If you take the job, don't forget to make estimated tax payments! Edit: (some additional info) If you plan on doing this on an ongoing basis (i.e. you are going into business as a contractor for this line of work), there are some tax shelters that you can take advantage of. Most of these won't be worth doing if you are only going to be doing contract work for a short period of time (1-2 years). These may or may not all be applicable to you. And do your research into these areas before diving in, I'm just scratching the surface in the notes below. |
How much does taking a Microeconomics course help you understand the field of investing? | Not much at all, especially an introductory level Microeconomics class. There are a few reasons for this: That's not to say that Economics isn't worth studying. I loved both my Micro and Macro class. But I probably got more useful investing knowledge from a class on linear regression. |
What will be the long term impact of the newly defined minimum exchange rate target from francs to euro? | The total size of the eurozone economy is $13 trillion, whereas Switzerland'd GDP is about $0.5 trillion, so the eurozone is about 26 times larger. As such, I would not expect this move to have a large effect on the eurozone economy. On the margins, this may decrease somewhat eurozone exports to Switzerland and increase imports from Switzerland, so this would be a slight negative for eurozone growth. Switzerland accounts for 5.2% of the EU's imports, and these imports will now be slightly cheaper, which puts some deflationary pressure on the EU, particularly in the Swiss-specialized industries of chemicals, medicinal products, machinery, instruments and time pieces. But overall, 5.2% is a rather small proportion. Bottom line, most common eurozone countries' people should probably not fret too much about this announcement. What it means for Switzerland and Swiss citizens, however, is a totally different (and much more interesting) question. |
Why do Americans have to file taxes, even if their only source of income is from a regular job? | One significant reason it makes sense for filing to be the default is home ownership rates. I think far more so than investment income, Americans own homes: as there is a significant mortgage interest deduction, between that and investments a large number of Americans would have to file (about a third of Americans get the mortgage interest tax deduction, and a large chunk of the richest don't qualify but would have to file for investments anyway). We also have a very complicated tax code, with nearly everyone getting some kind of deduction. Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor (folks making, say, $30k for a family of 4 with a full-time job get several thousand dollars in refundable credits, for example), the Student Loan interest deduction, the above mortgage deduction, almost everyone gets something. Finally, your employer may not know about your family situation. As we have tax credits and deductions for families based on number of children, for example, it's possible your employer doesn't know about those (if you don't get health insurance on their behalf, they may well not know). Start reporting things like that separately... and you end up with about as much work as filing is now. |
How much time does a doctor's office have to collect balance from me? | If they had told me that I owe them $10,000 from 3 years ago, I wouldn't have anything to fight back. Why? First thing you have to do is ask for a proof. Have you received treatment? Have you signed the bill when you were done? This should include all the information about what you got and how much you agreed to pay. Do they have that to show to you, with your signature on it? If they don't - you owe nothing. If they do - you can match your bank/credit card/insurance records (those are kept for 7 years at least) and see what has been paid already. Can a doctor's office do that? They can do whatever they want. The right question is whether a doctor's office is allowed to do that. Check your local laws, States regulate the medical profession. Is there a statute of limitation (I'm just guessing) that forces them to notify me in a certain time frame? Statute of limitations limits their ability to sue you successfully. They can always sue you, but if the statute of limitations has passed, the court will throw the suite away (provided you bring this defense up on time of course). Without a judgement they cannot force you to pay them, they can only ask. Nicely, as the law quoted by MrChrister mandates. They can trash your credit report and send the bill to collections though, but if the statute of limitations has passed I doubt they'd do that. Especially if its their fault. I'm not a lawyer, and you should consult with a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction for definitive answers and legal advice. |
Can I use stop limit orders on vanguard orders to prevent loss? | You've laid out a strategy for deciding that the top of the market has passed and then realizing some gains before the market drops too far. Regardless of whether this strategy is good at accomplishing its goal, it cannot by itself maximize your long-term profits unless you have a similar strategy for deciding that the bottom of the market has passed. Even if you sell at the perfect time at the top of the market, you can still lose lots of money by buying at the wrong time at the bottom. People have been trying to time the market like this for centuries, and on average it doesn't work out all that much better than just plopping some money into the market each week and letting it sit there for 40 years. So the real question is: what is your investment time horizon? If you need your money a year from now, well then you shouldn't be in the stock market in the first place. But if you have to have it in the market, then your plan sounds like a good one to protect yourself from losses. If you don't need your money until 20 years from now, though, then every time you get in and out of the market you're risking sacrificing all your previous "smart" gains with one mistimed trade. Sure, just leaving your money in the market can be psychologically taxing (cf. 2008-2009), but I guarantee that (a) you'll eventually make it all back (cf. 2010-2014) and (b) you won't "miss the top" or "miss the bottom", since you're not doing any trading. |
1040 or 1040NR this time? | Since you were a nonresident alien student on F-1 visa then you will be considered engaged in a trade or business in the USA. You must file Form 1040NR. Here is the detailed instruction by IRS - http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Taxation-of-Nonresident-Aliens |
When the market price for a stock is below a tender offer's price, is it free money (riskless) to buy shares & tender them? | It is not a "riskless" transaction, as you put it. Whenever you own shares in a company that is acquiring or being acquired, you should read the details behind the deal. Don't make assumptions just based on what the press has written or what the talking heads are saying. There are always conditions on a deal, and there's always the possibility (however remote) that something could happen to torpedo it. I found the details of the tender offer you're referring to. Quote: Terms of the Transaction [...] The transaction is subject to certain closing conditions, including the valid tender of sufficient shares, which, when added to shares owned by Men’s Wearhouse and its affiliates, constitute a majority of the total number of common shares outstanding on a fully-diluted basis. Any shares not tendered in the offer will be acquired in a second step merger at the same cash price as in the tender offer. [...] Financing and Approvals [...] The transaction, which is expected to close by the third quarter of 2014, is subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including expiration or termination of the applicable waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Act. Both Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank are working cooperatively with the Federal Trade Commission to obtain approval of the transaction as soon as possible. [...] Essentially, there remains a small chance that one of these "subject to..." conditions fails and the merger is off. The chance of failure is likely perceived as small because the market price is trading close to the deal price. When the deal vs. market price gap is wider, the market would be less sure about the deal taking place. Note that when you tender your shares, you have not directly sold them when they are taken out of your account. Rather, your shares are being set aside, deposited elsewhere so you can no longer trade them, and later, should the conditions be satisfied, then you will be paid for your shares the deal price. But, should the deal fall apart, you are likely to get your shares deposited back into your account, and by that time their market value may have dropped because the price had been supported by the high likelihood of the transaction being completed. I speculated once on what I thought was a "sure deal": a large and popular Canadian company that was going to be taken private in a leveraged buyout by some large institutional investors with the support of major banks. Then the Global Financial Crisis happened and the banks were let off the hook by a solvency opinion. Read the details here, and here. What looked like a sure thing wasn't. The shares fell considerably when the deal fell apart, and took about four years to get back to the deal price. |
Live in Florida & work remote for a New York company. Do I owe NY state income tax? | This question came up again (Living in Florida working remotely - NY employer withholds NYS taxes - Correct or Incorrect?) and the poster on the new version didn't find the existing answers to be adequate, so I'm adding a new answer. NYS will tax this income if the arrangement is for the convenience of the employee. If the arrangement is necessary to complete the work, then you should have no NYS tax. New York state taxes all New York-source salary and wage income of nonresident employees when the arrangement is for convenience rather than by necessity (Laws of New York, § 601(e), 20 NYCRR 132.18). Source: http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2009/jun/20091371.html Similar text can also be found here: http://www.koscpa.com/newsletter-article/state-tax-consequences-telecommuting/ The NYS tax document governing this situation seems to be TSB-M-06(5)I. I looked at this page from NYS that was mentioned in the answer by @littleadv. That language does at first glance seem to lead to a different answer, but the ruling in the tax memo seems to say that if you're out of state only for your convenience then the services were performed in NYS for NYS tax purpose. From the memo: However, any allowance claimed for days worked outside New York State must be based upon the performance of services which of necessity, as distinguished from convenience, obligate the employee to out-of- state duties in the service of his employer. |
What things should I consider when getting a joint-mortgage? | Your lack of numbers makes the question a difficult read. What I'm hearing is "I want a house requiring a mortgage 8X my income." This alone is enough to suggest it's a bad deal. On a personal note, when my wife and I bought our house, it was 2.5X our income. 20% down, so the mortgage was exactly 2X income. And my wife was convinced we were in over our heads. The use of a partner who will take a portion of the profit is interesting, but doesn't change the fact that you are proposing to live in a house that costs far too much for you. If you are determined to buy such a house, I'd suggest you do it with the plan to rent out a room or two to roommates. If you are living in an area where the cost of buying is so high, the demand for rentals is likely high as well. Absent a plan to bring ion more income, I see no good coming from this. Heed the warnings posted in the other two answers as well. |
Why is day trading considered riskier than long-term trading? | It's important to distinguish between speculation and investing. Buying something because you hope to make money on market fluctuations is speculation. Buying something and expecting to make money because your money is providing actual economic value is investing. If Person A buys 100 shares of a stock with the intent of selling them in a few hours, and Person B buys 100 shares of the same stock with the intent of holding on to it for a year, then obviously at that point they both have the same risk. The difference comes over the course of the year. First, Person B is going to be making money from the economic value the company provides over the whole year, while the only way Person A can make money is from market fluctuation (the economic value the company provides over the course of an hour is unlikely to be significant). Person B is exposed to the risk of buying the stock, but that's counterbalanced by the profit from holding the stock for a year, while Person A just has the risk. Second, if Person A is buying a new stock every hour, then they're going to have thousands of transactions. So even though Person B assumed just as much risk as Person A for that one transaction, Person A has more total risk. |
Are SPDR funds good for beginners? | No, SPDR ETFs are not a good fit for a novice investor with a low level of financial literacy. In fact, there is no investment that is safe for an absolute beginner, not even a savings account. (An absolute beginner could easily overdraw his savings account, leading to fees and collections.) I would say that an investment becomes a good fit for an investor as soon as said investor understands how the investment works. A savings account at a bank or credit union is fairly easy to understand and is therefore a suitable place to hold money after a few hours to a day of research. (Even after 0 hours of research, however, a savings account is still better than a sock drawer.) Money market accounts (through a bank), certificates of deposit (through a bank), and money market mutual funds (through a mutual fund provider) are probably the next easiest thing to understand. This could take a few hours to a few weeks of research depending on the learner. Equities, corporate bonds, and government bonds are another step up in complexity, and could take weeks or months of schooling to understand well enough to try. Equity or bond mutual funds -- or the ETF versions of those, which is what you asked about -- are another level after that. Also important to understand along the way are the financial institutions and market infrastructure that exist to provide these products: banks, credit unions, public corporations, brokerages, stock exchanges, bond exchanges, mutual fund providers, ETF providers, etc. |
Is there a benefit, long term, to life insurance for a youngish, debt, and dependent free person? | For most situations the "no need" answers are 100% correct. The corner case to think about depends on your health and your family history. Not to be morose, but if folks in your family who died young from heart issues, clusters of cancer or other terminal illnesses, you may want to consider getting medically qualified for a modest amount of insurance when you are young. Then, when you have children, you usually have the option of incrementally upgrading your coverage over time. |
Was this bill forgotten by a medical provider, and do notices need to be sent before collections? | check the DATE OF SERVICE on all your invoices carefully. It's possible you actually DID pay already. Sometimes when a medical provider gets "mostly" paid by a third party insurer, they just drop the (small) remainder, as it's more cost than it's worth if it is a trivial amount. Alternatively, they wait until you show up for another office visit, and "ding" you then! |
Do retailers ever stock goods just to make other goods sell better? | Use of this is demonstrated in this video: https://youtu.be/Ip5jG3djdyk Stocking products that you have no intention of selling can be used to make other products look more appealing by comparison. It's more psychological than anything but it isn't an uncommon practice. |
What is the best way to make a bet that a certain stock will go up in the medium term? | Specific stock advice isn't permitted on these boards. I'm discussing the process of a call spread with the Apple Jan 13 calls as an example. In effect, you have $10 to 'bet.' Each bet you'd construct offers a different return (odds). For example, If you bought the $750 call at $37.25, you'd need to look to find what strike has a bid of $27 or higher. The $790 is bid $27.75. So this particular spread is a 4 to 1 bet the stock will close in January over $790, with a $760 break even. You can pull the number from Yahoo to a spreadsheet to make your own chart of spread costs, but I'll give one more example. You think it will go over $850, and that strike is now ask $18.85. The highest strike currently listed is $930, and it's bid $10.35. So this spread cost is $850, and a close over $930 returns $8000 or over 9 to 1. Again, this is not advice, just an analysis of how spreads work. Note, any anomalies in the pricing above is the effect of a particular strike having no trades today, not every strike is active so 'last trade' can be days old. Note: My answer adds to AlexR's response in that once you used the word bet and showed a desire to make a risky move, options are the answer. You acknowledged you understand the basic concept, but given the contract size of 100 shares, these suggestions are ways to bet under your $1000 limit and profit from the gain in the underlying stock you hope to see. |
Is there a NY tax form to use when one is missing a K-1 (or 1065) from an LLC? | Form 10-K is filed by corporations to SEC. You must be thinking of form 1065 (its schedule K) that a partnership (and multi-member LLC) must file with the IRS. Unless the multi-member LLC is legally dissolved, it must file this form. You're a member, so it is your responsibility, with all the other members, to make sure that the manager files all the forms, and if the manager doesn't - fire the manager and appoint another one (or, if its member managed - chose a different member to manage). If you're a sole member of the LLC - then you don't need to file any forms with the IRS, all the business expenses and credits are done on your Schedule C, as if you were a sole propriator. |
Analyze stock value | It seems like you want to compare the company's values not necessarily the stock price. Why not get the total outstanding shares and the stock price, generate the market cap. Then you could compare changes to market cap rather than just share price. |
Are stories of turning a few thousands into millions by trading stocks real? | Warren Buffett pointed out that if you set 1 million monkeys to flipping coins, after ten flips, one monkey in about 1,000 (1,024) actually, would have a "perfect" track record of 10 heads. If you can double your money every three to five years (basically, the outer limit of what is humanly possible), you can turn $1,000 into $1 million in 30-50 years. But your chances of doing this are maybe those of that one in 1,000 monkeys. There are people that believe that if Warren Buffett were starting out today, "today's version" could not beat the historical version. One of the "believers" is Warren Buffett himself (if you read between the lines of his writings). What the promoters do is to use the benefit of hindsight to show that if someone had done such-and-such trades on such-and-such days, they would have turned a few thousand into a million in a few short years. That's "easy" in hindsight, but then challenge them to do it in real time! |
How can a freelancer get a credit card? (India) | I don't know about India, but here in the US banks, and more friendly institutions such as credit unions, use to offer the option of a 'secured' credit card where the card was secured by placing a lock on money in a savings account equal to the credit limit on the card. So for example, if you had $1500 in savings, you could have them lock say $1000, which you would not be able to withdraw from savings, in return for a credit card account with a credit limit of $1000. Typically you still earned interest on the full amount of the savings, you were just limited to having to maintain a minimum balance in that account of $1000. |
How does compounding of annual interest work? | Here's how I have worked it out. Different answer to the one expected. Pretty sure it's right though. |
H&R Block says form 1120 not finalized? IRS won't take it yet? | This form is due March 15. This year, the 15th is Saturday, so the deadline is Monday March 17th. Keep in mind, the software guys would have two choices, wait until every last form is finalized before releasing, or put the software out by late November when 80%+ are good to go. Nothing is broken in this process. Keep in mind that there are different needs depending on the individual. I like to grab a copy in early December, and have a preliminary idea of what my return with look like. I'll also know if I'll owe so much that I should send in a quarterly tax payment. The IRS isn't accepting any return until 1/31 I believe, so you've lost no time. When you open the program, it usually ask to 'phone home' and update. In a couple weeks, all should be well. (Disclosure - I have guest posted on tax issues at both TurboTax and H&R Block's blogs. The above are my own views.) |
Is there such a thing as a deposit-only bank account? | Do you write checks? You are giving your bank account and routing number to anybody you have ever given a check to. Your employer is paying taxes on your behalf, so they need your social security number so they can pay your social security taxes. Account and routing numbers are how deposits are made. If you are concerned, create a free checking account, collect the direct deposit and each payday go to the bank and withdraw your money to put it where you like. Nothing is deposit only because you will want your money back. Finally, you would be shocked at how little it takes to make a draft on your account in the US. Certainly not your SSN, Address, or even your name. |
I earn $75K, have $30K in savings, no debt, rent from my parents who are losing their home. Should I buy a home now or save? | Plus, there's the feeling my parents want me to have a house in case we can't save the one we (my mom and brothers) all live in. First, you should not be forced to buy a home because your parents are telling you to. You should have your own life. Period. That said, while you are doing well from a salary perspective, your savings are somewhat borderline for a purchase if you ask me. Meaning your savings would essentially be the full downpayment & then your whole paycheck basically becomes payments on the mortgage. Not a good situation to be in. My advice would be that if you can invest in something smaller—like a small apartment for yourself—that is what you should purchase. That would allow you to invest in something but not be completely financially drained by the prospect. And then in a few years, you can sell that apartment & move onto something else. Perhaps a house at that stage? But right now, a full home purchase would be a fairly massive risk. |
How can put options be used to buy shares at a lower price? | Cart's answer describes well one aspects of puts: protective puts; which means using puts as insurance against a decline in the price of shares that you own. That's a popular use of puts. But I think the wording of your question is angling for another strategy: Writing puts. Consider: Cart's strategy refers to the buyer of a put. But, on the transaction's other side is a seller of the put – and ultimately somebody created or wrote that put contract in the first place! That first seller of the put – that is, the seller that isn't just selling one they themselves bought – is the put writer. When you write a put, you are taking on the obligation to buy the other side's stock at the put exercise price if the stock price falls below that exercise price by the expiry date. For taking on the obligation, you receive a premium, like how an insurance company charges a premium to insure against a loss. Example: Imagine ABC Co. stock is trading at $25.00. You write a put contract agreeing to buy 100 shares of ABC at $20.00 per share (the exercise price) by a given expiration date. Say you receive $2.00/share premium from the put buyer. You now have the obligation to purchase the shares from the put buyer in the event they are below $20.00 per share when the option expires – or, technically any time before then, if the buyer chooses to exercise the option early. Assuming no early assignment, one of two things will happen at the option expiration date: ABC trades at or above $20.00 per share. In this case, the put option will expire worthless in the hands of the put buyer. You will have pocketed the $200 and be absolved from your obligation. This case, where ABC trades above the exercise price, is the maximum profit potential. ABC trades below $20.00 per share. In this case, the put option will be assigned and you'll need to fork over $2000 to the put buyer in exchange for his 100 ABC shares. If those shares are worth less than $18.00 in the market, then you've suffered a loss to the extent they are below that price (times 100), because remember – you pocketed $200 premium in the first place. If the shares are between $18.00 to $20.00, you're still profitable, but not to the full extent of the premium received. You can see that by having written a put it's possible to acquire ABC stock at a price lower than the market price – because you received some premium in the process of writing your put. If you don't "succeed" in acquiring shares on your first write (because the shares didn't get below the exercise price), you can continue to write puts and collect premium until you do get assigned. I have read the book "Money for Nothing (And Your Stocks for FREE!)" by Canadian author Derek Foster. Despite the flashy title, the book essentially describes Derek's strategy for writing puts against dividend-paying value stocks he would love to own. Derek picks quality companies that pay a dividend, and uses put writing to get in at lower-than-market prices. Four Pillars reviewed the book and interviewed Derek Foster: Money for Nothing: Book Review and Interview with Derek Foster. Writing puts entails risk. If the stock price drops to zero then you'll end up paying the put exercise price to acquire worthless shares! So your down-side can easily be multiples of the premium collected. Don't do this until and unless you understand exactly how this works. It's advanced. Note also that your broker isn't likely to permit you to write puts without having sufficient cash or margin in your account to cover the case where you are forced to buy the stock. You're better off having cash to secure your put buys, otherwise you may be forced into leverage (borrowing) when assigned. Additional Resources: The Montreal Exchange options guide (PDF) that Cart already linked to is an excellent free resource for learning about options. Refer to page 39, "Writing secured put options", for the strategy above. Other major options exchanges and organizations also provide high-quality free learning material: |
What tax software automatically determines the best filing status, etc? | Rob - I'm sorry your first visit here has been unpleasant. What you are asking for is beyond the capability of most software. If you look at Fairmark.com, you find the standard deduction for married filing joint is $12,200 in 2012, and $12,400 in 2013. I offer this anecdote to share a 'deduction' story - The first year I did my MIL's taxes, I had to explain that she didn't have enough deductions to itemize. Every year since, she hands me a file full of paper substantiating medical deductions that don't exceed 7.5% of her income. In turn, I give her two folders back, one with the 5 or so documents I needed, and the rest labeled "trash". Fewer than 30% of filers itemize. And a good portion of those that do, have no question that's the right thing to do. e.g. my property tax is more than the $12K, so anything else I have that's a deduction adds right to the number. It's really just those people who are at the edge that are likely frustrated. I wrote an article regarding Standard Deduction vs Itemizing, in which I describe a method of pulling in one's deductible expenses into Odd years, reducing the number in Even years, to allow a bi-annual itemization. If this is your situation, you'll find the concept interesting. You also ask about filing status. Think on this for a minute. After pulling in our W2s (TurboTax imports the data right from ADP), I do the same for our stock info. The stock info, and all Schedule A deductions aren't assigned a name. So any effort to split them in search of savings by using Married Filing Separate, would first require splitting these up. TurboTax has a 'what-if' worksheet for this function, but when the 'marriage penalty' was lifted years ago, the change in status had no value. Items that phaseout over certain income levels are often lost to the separate filer anyway. When I got married, I found my real estate losses each year could not be taken, they accumulated until I either sold, or until our income dropped when the Mrs retired. So, while is respect your desire for these magic dials within the software, I think it's fair to say they would provide little value to most people. If this thread stays open, I'd be curious if anyone can cite an example where filing separately actually benefits the couple. |
Are the stocks of competitor companies negatively correlated? | In theory, say we had two soft drink companies, and no other existed. On Jan 1, they report they each had 50% market share for the past year. Over the next year, one company's gain is the other's loss. But over the year, for whatever reason, the market has grown 10% (all the stories of bad water helped this), and while the market share ends at 49/51, the 49 guy has improved his margins, and that stock rises by more than the other. In general, companies in the same industry will be positively correlated, and strongly so. I offer my "spreadsheets are your friend" advice. I took data over the last 10 years for Coke and Pepsi. Easy to pull from various sites, I tend to use Yahoo. In Excel the function CORREL with let you compare two columns of numbers for correlation. I got a .85 result, pretty high. To show how a different industry would have a lower correlation, I picked Intel. Strangely, enough, Intel and Pepsi had a .94 correlation. A coincidence, I suppose, but my point is that you can easily get data and perform your own analysis to better understand what's going on. |
Dollar-cost averaging: How often should one use it? What criteria to use when choosing stocks to apply it to? | How often should one use dollar-cost averaging? Trivially, a dollar cost averaging (DCA) strategy must be used at least twice! More seriously, DCA is a discipline that people (typically investors with relatively small amounts of money to invest each month or each quarter) use to avoid succumbing to the temptation to "time the market". As mhoran_psprep points out, it is well-suited to 401k plans and the like (e.g. 403b plans for educational and non-profit institutions, 457 plans for State employees, etc), and indeed is actually the default option in such plans, since a fixed amount of money gets invested each week, or every two weeks, or every month depending on the payroll schedule. Many plans offer just a few mutual funds in which to invest, though far too many people, having little knowledge or understanding of investments, simply opt for the money-market fund or guaranteed annuity fund in their 4xx plans. In any case, all your money goes to work immediately since all mutual funds let you invest in thousandths of a share. Some 401k/403b/457 plans allow investments in stocks through a brokerage, but I think that using DCA to buy individual stocks in a retirement plan is not a good idea at all. The reasons for this are that not only must shares must be bought in whole numbers (integers) but it is generally cheaper to buy stocks in round lots of 100 (or multiples of 100) shares rather than in odd lots of, say, 37 shares. So buying stocks weekly, or biweekly or monthly in a 401k plan means paying more or having the money sit idle until enough is accumulated to buy 100 shares of a stock at which point the brokerage executes the order to buy the stock; and this is really not DCA at all. Worse yet, if you let the money accumulate but you are the one calling the shots "Buy 100 shares of APPL today" instead of letting the brokerage execute the order when there is enough money, you are likely to be timing the market instead of doing DCA. So, are brokerages useless in retirement fund accounts? No, they can be useful but they are not suitable for DCA strategies involving buying stocks. Stick to mutual funds for DCA. Do people use it across the board on all stock investments? As indicated above, using DCA to buy individual stocks is not the best idea, regardless of whether it is done inside a retirement plan or outside. DCA outside a retirement plan works best if you not trust yourself to stick with the strategy ("Ooops, I forgot to mail the check yesterday; oh, well, I will do it next week") but rather, arrange for your mutual fund company to take the money out of your checking account each week/month/quarter etc, and invest it in whatever fund(s) you have chosen. Most companies have such programs under names such as Automatic Investment Program (AIP) etc. Why not have your bank send the money to the mutual fund company instead? Well, that works too, but my bank charges me for sending the money whereas my mutual fund company does AIP for free. But YMMV. Dollar-cost averaging generally means investing a fixed amount of money on a periodic basis. An alternative strategy, if one has decided that owning 1200 shares of FlyByKnight Co is a good investment to have, is to buy round lots of 100 shares of FBKCO each month. The amount of money invested each month varies, but at the end of the year, the average cost of the 1200 shares is the average of the prices on the 12 days on which the investments were made. Of course, by the end of the year, you might not think FBKCO is worth holding any more. This technique worked best in the "good old days" when blue-chip stocks paid what was for all practical purposes a guaranteed dividend each year, and people bought these stocks with the intention of passing them on to their widows and children. |
When's the best time to sell the stock of a company that is being acquired/sold? | I'm not sure what you expect in terms of answers, but it depends on personal factors. It pretty well has to depend on personal factors, since otherwise everyone would want to do the same thing (either everyone thinks the current price is one to sell at, or everyone thinks it's one to buy at), and there would be no trades. You wouldn't be able to do what you want, except on the liquidity provided by market makers. Once that's hit, the price is shifting quickly, so your calculation will change quickly too. Purely in terms of maximising expected value taking into account the time value of money, it's all about the same. The market "should" already know everything you know, which means that one time to sell is as good as any other. The current price is generally below the expected acquisition price because there's a chance the deal will fall through and the stock price will plummet. That's not to say there aren't clever "sure-fire" trading strategies around acquisitions, but they're certain to be based on more than just timing when to sell an existing holding of stock. If you have information that the market doesn't (and assuming it is legal to do so) then you trade based on that information. If you know something the market doesn't that's going to be good for price, hold. If you know something that will reduce the price, sell now. And "know" can be used in a loose sense, if you have a strong opinion against the market then you might like to invest based on that. Nothing beats being paid for being right. Finally, bear in mind that expected return is not the same as utility. You have your own investment goals and your own view of risk. If you're more risk-averse than the market then you might prefer to sell now rather than wait for the acquisition. If you're more risk-prone than the market then you might prefer a 90% chance of $1 to 90c. That's fine, hold the stock. The extreme case of this is that you might have a fixed sum at which you will definitely sell up, put everything into the most secure investments you can find, and retire to the Caribbean. If that's the case then you become totally risk-averse the instant your holding crosses that line. Sell and order cocktails. |
Apartment lease renewal - is this rate increase normal? | What happened in the past, the rent you paid last year, is in the past. You shouldn't be concerned with the percentage increase, but with whether you want that apartment at the new rent for the coming year. If your rent had been half what it was last year and the new proposal were to double it, you would be outraged at the doubling, but really you got a steal last year. Going forward, you have three options. You can accept the new rent, you can decline it and move, or you can try to negotiate a better rate. It sounds like the landlord is hoping you will find the hassle of moving enough to accept the new rent. If you do negotiate, you should know what your preferred alternative is, which you should use to set your walkaway point. If you make a counterproposal, it is often useful to show what a comparable apartment is renting for to justify the rent you suggest. |
Funding an ira or roth ira | No, you don't have to have the money deducted from your paycheck. The IRS doesn't get a copy of your paycheck anyway. When you file your annual tax return (form 1040), there's a line there to write down the amount you contributed to the IRA. In fact, you can contribute to the IRA after the year ended, until the Tax Day of the next year, so that you can make sure your contribution will actually be deductible (not always they are). The IRA custodian (the brokerage firm/bank where you opened the IRA account) will provide you with a deposit confirmation and form 5498. A copy of form 5948 is also sent to the IRS. |
Why do some people say a house “not an investment”? | The below assessment is for primary residences as opposed to income properties. The truth is that with the exception of a housing bubble, the value of a house might outpace inflation by one or two percent. According to the US Census, the price of a new home per square foot only went up 4.42% between 1963 and 2008, where as inflation was 4.4%. Since home sizes increased, the price of a new home overall outpaced inflation by 1% at 5.4% (source). According to Case-Shiller, inflation adjusted prices increased a measly .4% from 1890-2004 (see graph here). On the other hand your down payment money and the interest towards owning that home might be in a mutual fund earning you north of eight percent. If you don't put down enough of a down payment to avoid PMI, you'll be literally throwing away money to get yourself in a home that could also be making money. Upgrades to your home that increase its value - unless you have crazy do-it-yourself skills and get good deals on the materials - usually don't return 100% on an investment. The best tend to be around 80%. On top of the fact that your money is going towards an asset that isn't giving you much of a return, a house has costs that a rental simply doesn't have (or rather, it does have them, but they are wrapped into your rent) - closing costs as a buyer, realtor fees and closing costs as a seller, maintenance costs, and constantly escalating property taxes are examples of things that renters deal with only in an indirect sense. NYT columnist David Leonhart says all this more eloquently than I ever could in: There's an interactive calculator at the NYT that helps you apply Leonhart's criteria to your own area. None of this is to say that home ownership is a bad decision for all people at all times. I'm looking to buy myself, but I'm not buying as an investment. For example, I would never think that it was OK to stop funding my retirement because my house will eventually fund it for me. Instead I'm buying because home ownership brings other values than money that a rental apartment would never give me and a rental home would cost more than the same home purchase (given 10 years). |
Relation between inflation rates and interest rates | I haven't read the terms here but the question may not have a good answer. That won't stop me from trying. Call the real rate (interest rate - inflation) and you'll have what is called negative real rates. It's rare for the overnight real rate to be negative. If you check the same sources for historical data you'll find it's usually higher. This is because borrowing money is usually done to gain an economic benefit, ie. make a profit. That is no longer a consideration when borrowing money short term and is IMO a serious problem. This will cause poor investment decisions like you see in housing. Notice I said overnight rate. That is the only rate set by the BoC and the longer rates are set by the market. The central bank has some influence because a longer term is just a series of shorter terms but if you looked up the rate on long Canadian real return bonds, you'd see them with a real rate around 1%. What happens when the central bank raise or lowers rates will depend on the circumstances. The rate in India is so high because they are using it to defend the rupee. If people earn more interest they have a preference to buy that currency rather than others. However these people aren't stupid, they realize it's the real rate that matters. That's why Japan can get away with very low rates and still have demand for the currency - they have, or had, deflation. When that changed, the preference for their currency changed. So if Canada hast forex driven inflation then the BoC will have to raise rates to defend the dollar for the purpose of lowering inflation from imports. Whether it works or not is another story. Note that the Canadian dollar is very dependant on the total dollar value of net oil exports. If Canada has inflation due too an accelerating economy this implies that there are profitable opportunities so businesses and individuals will be more likely to pay a positive real rate of interest. In that scenario the demand for credit money will drive the real rate of return. |
Is it legal if I'm managing my family's entire wealth? | I transfer all their funds to my bank account Are they paying tax on that transfer? Gifts under $14,000 are excluded from taxation in the US, but they're going going to have a hard time arguing that it is a gift (since they expect it back). The taxes are almost certainly going to exceed the amount you can make from your investments in the short term, and if they aren't paid then your "clients" are going to be in hot water with the IRS. You need to have something set up that establishes you as merely managing the funds, and not receiving them personally as a transfer. The other answers have good suggestions. |
Why pay estimated taxes? | While the US tax code does not directly impose an obligation to pay estimated taxes, it does impose a penalty on individuals for failure to pay enough taxes either through withholding or estimated tax. USMTG Anyone can choose how s/he wants to pay their taxes but they better deal with any consequences of not paying them instead of just complaining about it like most people do. Most people get the hatred towards the IRS but most complaints are misdirected and should be directed towards Congress who creates and messes around with the US Tax Code. Some people actually do not make estimated payments and pay any possible taxes with their returns knowing that there may be underpayment penalty. For those people, the penalty is relatively small compared to what they can do with the cash over a year's time (i.e. investing or paying down debt). It's their choice! |
UK - How to receive payments in euros | See my comment below about the official exchange rate. There is no "official" exchange rate to apply as far as I'm aware. However the bank is already applying the same exchange rate you can find in the forex markets. They are simply applying a spread (meaning they will add some amount to the exchange rate whichever way you are exchanging currency). You will almost certainly not find a bank that doesn't apply a spread. Of course, their spread might be large, so that's why it is good to compare rates. By the way, 5 GBP/month seems reasonable for a foreign currency (or any) acct. The transaction fees might be cheaper in a different "package" so check. You should consider trying PayPal. Their spread is quite small - and publicly disclosed - and their per-transaction fees are very low. Of course, this is not a bank account. But you can easily connect it to your bank account and transfer the money between accounts quickly. They also offer free foreign currency accounts that you can basically open and close in a click. Transfers are instantaneous. I am based in Germany but I haven't had a problem with clients from various English-speaking countries using PayPal. They actually seem to prefer it in many instances. |
What can cause rent prices to fall? | In Memphis, Tn., rents were stabilized from falling in the recession because all the foreclosed on home owners added to the rental market, increasing demand and thus stabilizing pricing. |
How can rebuilding a city/large area be considered an economic boost? | You are not wrong. This is called the "Broken Window" fallacy in economics. Imagine if 20% of a population was employed to go around breaking windows. This would stimulate the economy as many people would have to be employed to make new windows, repair the broken windows, etc.. The problem is that everyone would have been better off if they didn't have to spend their valuable resources on repairing a perfectly functioning window. Although many people will be employed to rebuild Japan, this doesn't improve the standard of living for the folks in Japan. |
Highest market cap for a company from historical data | Adjustments can be for splits as well as for dividends. From Investopedia.com: Historical prices stored on some public websites, such as Yahoo! Finance, also adjust the past prices of the stock downward by the dividend amount. Thus, that could also be a possible factor in looking at the old prices. |
What should I do with $4,000 cash and High Interest Debt? | If your credit is good, you should immediately attempt to refinance your high rate credit cards by transferring the balance to credit cards with lower interest rates.You might want to check at your local credit union, credit unions can offer great rates. Use the $4000 to pay off whatever is left on the high rate cards. If your credit is bad, I suggest you call your credit card company and try to negotiate with them. If they consider you a risk they might settle your account for fraction of what you own if you can send payment immediately. Don't tell them you have money, just tell them your are trying to get your finances under control and see what they can offer you. This will damage your credit score but will get you out of depth much sooner and save you money in the long term. Also keep in mind that if they do settle, they'll close your account. That way, you leverage the $4000 and use it as a tool to get concessions from the bank. |
What is the ticker symbol of the mini Google stock? | Google will be issuing Class C shares (under the ticker symbol GOOCV) to current GOOG holders in the beginning of April. The Class C shares and Class A shares will then change symbols, with the Class C shares trading under GOOG. This was announced on January 30th. Details are in this benzinga article: Projected Trading Timeline March 27 - April 2 Record Date - Payment Date Class C shares commence trading on March 27 as GOOCV on a when issued basis Class A shares continue to trade as GOOG, with entitlement to Class C shares Class A shares will also trade on an ex-distribution basis, without entitlement to the Class C shares, as GOOAV April 3 EX Date The ticker for the Class A shares will change from GOOG to GOOGL The ticker for the Class C shares will change from GOOCV to GOOG and commence regular way trading The ticker for the Class A shares that traded on an ex-distribution basis - GOOAV - will be suspended |
Are REIT worth it and is it a good option to generate passive income for a while? | 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. |
When people say 'Interest rates are at all time low!" … Which interest rate are they actually referring to? | I would say people are generally talking about the prime lending rate. I have heard the prime lending rate defined as "The rate that banks charge each other when they borrow money overnight." But it often defined as the rate at which banks lend their most creditworthy customers. That definition comes with the caveat that it is not always held to strictly. Either definition has the same idea: it's the lowest rate at which anyone could currently borrow money. The rate for many types of lending is based upon the prime rate. A variable rate loan might have an interest rate of (Prime + x). The prime rate is in turn based upon the Federal Funds Rate, which is the rate that the Fed sets manually. When the news breaks that "the Fed is raising interest rates by a quarter of a point" (or similar) it is the Federal Funds Rate that they control. Lending institutions then "fall in line" and adjust the rates at which they lend money. So to summarize: When people refer to "high" or "low" or "rising" interest rates they are conceptually referring to the prime lending rate. When people talk about the Fed raising/lowering interest rates (In the U.S.) they are referring specifically to the Federal Funds Rate (which ultimately sets other lending rates). |
Can paying down a mortgage be considered an “investment”? | Your mortgage represents a negative cash flow of $X for N months. The typical mortgage prepayment doesn't reduce your next payment, but does reduce the length of the mortgage. If you look at the amortization table of a 30 year loan, you might see a payment of $1000 but only $50 going to principal. So if on day one you send an extra $51 or so to the bank, you find that in 30 years you just saved that $1000 payment. In effect, it was a long term bond or CD, yielding the post tax rate of the mortgage. Say your loan were 7%. At 7%, money doubles every 10 years or so. 30 years is 3 doubles or 8X. If I were to offer you $1000 and ask for $7500 in 30 years, you might accept it, with an agreement to buy me out if you refinanced. For me, that would be an investment. Just like buying a bond. In fact, there is a real return, as you see the cash flow at the end. The payments 'not made' are your payback. Those who insist it's not an investment are correct in the strict sense of the word's definition, but pedantic for the fact in practice, the prepayment is a choice to be considered alongside other investment choices. When I have a mortgage, I am the mortgagor, the bank, the mortgagee. Same as a company issuing a bond, the Bank holds my bond and I'm making payments to them. They hold my bond as an investment. There is no question of that. In fact, they package these and sell them as CMOs, groups of mortgages. A pre-payment is me buying back the last coupon on my mortgage. I fail to see the distinction between me 'buying back' $10K in future coupons on my own loan or me investing $10K in someone else's loans. The real question for me is whether this makes sense when rates are so low. At 4%, I'd say it's a matter of prioritizing any high rate debt and any other investments that might yield more. But even so, it's an investment yielding 4%. Over the years, I've developed the priorities of where to put new money - The priorities are debatable. I have my opinion, and my reasons to back them up. In general, it's a balance between risk and return. In my opinion, there's something wrong with ignoring a dollar for dollar match on the 401(k) in most circumstances. Others seem to prefer being 100% debt free before saving at all. There's a balance that might be different for each individual. As I started, the mortgage is a fixed return, with no chance to just get it back if needed. If your cash savings is pretty high, and the choice is a .001% CD or prepay a 4% mortgage, I'd use some funds to pay it down. But not to the point you have no liquid reserves. |
Why would a bank take a lower all cash offer versus a higher offer via conventional lending? | A bank selling a foreclosed property would negotiate a lower cash deal, I doubt it would be that extreme, 130 vs 100. An individual seller may give up $10K to save time and get his next home closed as well, but again, I suspect it would be rare to find that large a delta. |
Can signing up at optoutprescreen.com improve my credit score? | Unsolicited credit checks like that don't affect your credit score. Those checks only count if they result from you applying for credit somewhere. So No. |
Why are Rausch Coleman houses so cheap? Is it because they don't have gas? | In northwest Arkansas, most of the houses this company offers do cost about 90 - 110 dollars per square foot. The exceptions use the Whitney plan, which has the following design features (and/or problems) which happen to save the builder a lot of money: One very nice feature is the U-shaped stairway in the center of the house. It is easy to find, and has an angled landing. It might be a bit narrow, though. Does the builder bother to put rebar in the brickwork? Arkansas is in earthquake country. What are the floors like? Is the first floor a slab concrete floor with vinyl flooring (and/or carpet on thin pad) immediately above the concrete? Is the second floor bouncy, due to using long-span joists of code-minimum size? Does the builder bother to make the rear windows look as nice as the front windows? As mentioned earlier, the builder only bothers to have one side window. Where to learn more: Fernando Pagés Ruiz is a Nebraska homebuilder who wrote a book on Building the Affordable House: Trade Secrets for High-Value, Low-Cost Construction (The Taunton Press, 2005). He has also written many articles in Fine Homebuilding, including "Building Affordable Houses". True North Consulting specializes in helping builders eliminate waste and "value-engineer" their designs. True North often works with Tim Garrison, the self-proclaimed "builder's engineer". |
What should I be aware of as a young investor? | nan |
Is there a law or regulation that governs the maximum allowable interest amount that can be charged on credit cards or in agreements where credit is extended? | In the U.S., each state has its own local usury law. This website has a separate page for each state summarizing the local usury law and provides a reference to the local statute. The rules aren't simple: some set absolute limits, some appear to be pegged to something like the Prime Rate, some states don't have a general usury limit, the rules don't apply to certain loans because of the type of loan or lender, etc. There are US Federal laws dealing with usury, primarily in the context of racketeering -- the RICO Act lets the Feds go after racketeers that violate local usury laws beyond certain parameters. |
How does a change in market cap affect a company's operational decisions? | In practical terms, it shouldn't. Market cap changes every day (assuming public trading, of course) or even second-by-second, and focusing on investor sentiment toward your company's stock is not the wisest way to make strategic decisions. That being said, company execs do need to be mindful of unusual swings in their company's share prices because it can sometimes be an indicator of news/information of which they're unaware. At the same time, you can't just disregard your shareholders, especially the big institutional players who may have large voting blocks with which to replace you if they feel you're not responsive to events. They are the ones who make strategic decisions based on your company's share price, right? (grin) The issue around swings in market cap is more about public perception than reality, so it is important for companies to have a good public relations strategy ready to go that can address questions/concerns in case of some market event. After all, consumers who hear that a company's share price has suddenly fallen by, say, 30% might be more hesitant to do business with that company because there's a (perhaps irrational) fear the company's not doing well and may not be around much longer. Investors are, by their very nature, emotional rather than rational. Any kind of news can cause a stampede toward or away from a stock for no reason that an investment professional could ever explain. That's why it's impossible to spend any real time focusing on market cap (leave that to your P.R. department to worry about). IF, as a company executive, you focus on doing the right things to make your company successful then any questions/concerns about market cap will resolve themselves. Good luck! |
How to calculate tax amounts withheld on mixed pre-tax and Roth 401(k) contributions, and match? | Its easier than that: employer matching contributions are always pre-tax. While your contribution is split between the pre-tax and the Roth post-tax parts, matching contributions are always pre-tax. Quote from the regulations I linked to: For example, matching contributions are not permitted to be allocated to a designated Roth account. So the tax you pay is only on the Roth portion of your contribution. One of the reasons for that is the complexity you're talking about, but not only. Matching is not always vested, and it would be hard to determine what portion to tax and at what rate if matching would be allowed to go to Roth. |
Pros & cons in Hungary of investing retirement savings exclusively in silver? What better alternatives, given my concerns? | To be honest, I think a lot of people on this site are doing you a disservice by taking your idea as seriously as they are. Not only is this a horrible idea, but I think you have some alarming misunderstandings about what it means to save for retirement. First off, precious metals are not an "investment"; they are store of value. The old saying that a gold coin would buy a suit 300 years ago and will still buy a suit today is pretty accurate. Buying precious metals and expecting them to "appreciate" in the future because they are "undervalued" is just flat-out speculation and really doesn't belong in a well-planned retirement account, unless it's a very small part for the purposes of diversification. So the upshot to all of this is the most likely outcome is you get zero return after inflation (maybe you'll get lucky or maybe you'll be very unlucky). Next you would say that sure, you're giving up some expected return for a reduction in risk. But, you've done away with diversification which is the most effective way to minimize risk... And I'm not sure what scenario you're imagining that the stock market or any other reasonable investment doesn't make any returns. If you invest in a market wide index fund, then the expected return is going to be roughly in proportion with productivity gains. To say that there will be no appreciation of the stock market over the next 40 years is to say that technological progress will stop and/or we will have large-scale economic disruptions that will wipe out 40 years of progress. If that happens, I would say it's highly questionable whether silver will actually be worth anything at all. I'd rather have food, property, and firearms. So, to answer your question, practically any other retirement savings plan would be better than the one that you currently outlined, but the best plan is just to put your money in a very low-cost index fund at Vanguard and let it sit until you retire. The expense ratios are so stupidly small, that it's not going to meaningfully affect your return. |
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