I think you raise a very good point here.   It is a very well-known fact that the US is not a leader in automated manufacturing. Europe has traditionally been the place that consumes the majority of the automated manufacturing equipment that, in turn, comes out of Japan.   Japan specializes in the manufacture of automated manufacturing equipment and has since the US ceded this market to them in the 1950s offering the Japanese access to the technology created at General Motors called ladder logic and programmable logic controllers. These technologies were created from scratch on the shop floor at General Motors at a time when there was a saying that what is good for General Motors is good for the America.  This was back before semiconductor transistors were affordable. Those early manufacturing robots actually used arrays of electromechanical relays and ladder logic which is still used till this days in the robots that come out of Japan is still based on metaphorical relays although they are now virtual constructs.   The Japanese ran with the tech and now many people believe that the Japanese invented it. Certainly they refined it over the years but the early work was handed to them in part as an effort to win them over from their potential allegiance with the Soviets. Japan was always a much larger lynch-pin than either Korea or Vietnam where the actual military battles went down. What was really scary to America was losing Japan and the transfer of robotics technology to the Japanese was part of the arrangement to keep them cozy with the US military empire.   But the largest customer was not within Japan. The actual sales of equipment went to the Europeans. That's where automated manufacturing is currently at its peak. However, things have been rapidly changing and for over a decade the fastest rising automation market has been China.   Currently Foxconn or HongHai the large contract manufacturer famous for their Apple contracts is in the process of building an automation base in the middle of Taiwan.   If you want jobs in automated manufacturing technology you should be studying Chinese as well as microcontrollers.


I am going to read the article now; but first I wanted to say that the Cisco platform is very old and that it is not impossible for another company to make switches that hedge new technology. It seems only natural that Huawei would be able to give them a good run.


NN/ES based approaches are much more non-transparent compare to traditional statistical learning approaches.     Worse are the RL algos (i.e., actual learning instead of just classification), most dont have closed form formuli and are not optimal.     Machine learning 1.0/big data was limited by data and compute. Machine learning 2.0 is only limited by compute.


"> There are way more than ""some successful ones from millions."" Nearly all my close friends are employed professionals (I'm talking about doctors, lawyers, university professors, software developers, business owners, government employees, working artists, you name it) who use marijuana. Same goes for my parents' friends. If anything, they smoke much more than my generation. Yet they all seem to have had decent careers and are now retiring happily.  Yeah but they go to work high. The millennial smokers I see often smoke a few times a day. Come to LA where I live and TONS of them have the stupid fake ass marijuana cards. Medical use my ass, loser use is what it should be called.  I wouldn't call daily smokers happy or successful. Someone that is happy or successful can unwind without the use of drugs whether its weed or alcohol.   > More than half of Americans have used marijuana. If what you were saying were true, there would be a huge underclass of people wasting away in basements, doing nothing more with their lives than eating Pringles and playing video games. But that's just a derisive stereotype that does not represent most people who smoke pot.  HAVE used is different than use daily, you do understand that, right?   Most aren't successful at all actually. u/garlicdeath has some numbers for us and I'll quote him:   ""NPR had a statistic that about 1 in 3 Millenials live at home with their parents, 1 in 3 live with a friend or relative and the rest have their own place or live with their SO"""


Life is a lot more difficult if you accept the constraints that are sold to you. 80 hours per week for a $90k salary is completely unacceptable, imo, unless you're absolutely in love with your job and it's all you want to do anyway.  You can earn money in proportion to how much value you create for people if you offer something of value.  A degree in isolation, even from the best school in your field, is completely worthless though.


Dịch vụ phục hồi trần thạch cao SMY đã được áp dụng trong nhiều thập kỷ qua đối với các tòa nhà thuộc mọi loại, kích thước và điều kiện và từ các tòa nhà. Trả ít hơn và có được dịch vụ thạch cao hấp dẫn hơn với chất lượng khác nhau. Chúng tôi đang ở tuyến đầu của availing sự phân chia tuyệt vời mà tran thach cao có thể đảm bảo hoạt động kinh doanh dễ dàng, bổ sung giá trị và tăng cường tính riêng tư. Đội ngũ nhân viên của chúng tôi sẽ ủng hộ bạn ở nhiều lựa chọn thay thế có sẵn theo ý của bạn và bạn sẽ hoàn toàn được thông báo thêm và am hiểu.


> But their strategy is not debt spending to increase demand.  They deficit spend.  They increase prosperity and thus demand.  They do it consistently and repeatedly.  Claims that it's effects are unintentional don't hold up. Starve the beast is political cover.  What they are doing is pushing profits up for the rich by cutting their taxes.  Why has as many answers as there are politicians pursuing these policies, but the deficit spending is fairly obviously designed to make the economy appear to be doing better.  The interesting side effect is, that they *are* making the economy do better.   > Deficit spending does drive demand short term. But as this debt rises so does the rent seeking cost of that debt.  This is not where rent seeking occurs. The net cost of national debt is negative.   > Most such debt spending is a complete waste.  Only if you don't understand that people having money is a prerequisite for people spending money.   > Your tax rate is not determined by how much money the government takes from you.  The government gives you more income than it takes from you in taxes.  Every bit of cut spending removes income from the population.  Since we all work for each other and one person's income becomes another's relatively quickly, it's an appropriate approximation to average that income out over the population and when you do that you quickly see that government taxes and spending have a net positive effect on how much money we have.  This is why we can dump so much into defense spending and still have a viable economy and why removing that spending would do more harm than good.    Our economic trouble has nothing to do with efficiency and how much work needs to be done, and everything to do with how much money people have to spend.  Government taking on more debt thus creating more money and handing it to it's population makes that problem better and thus the economy gains strength.  Fixing the core problem that is causing the population to run out of money is a harder task, but piling on the debt in the meantime alleviates the symptoms.


"You should probably call the travel agency and complain. Not that they will care, but if by any chance they do - they can ask PayPal to remove the block. This is what is called ""authorization pending"". Usually, a credit card transaction has two stages: The merchant requests its payment processor to authorize the transaction. The processor will contact the card issuer with the transaction details and will get the authorization code which will be passed to the merchant. At that stage the transaction enters the ""pending"" stage on your account. The merchant submits the transaction and gets the money from its payment processor, who forwards the transaction to the card issuer and gets the money from there. The card issuer charges the card owner. The transaction should have the same authorization code received in step #1, and by matching it to the pending transaction, the card issuer removes the pending transaction, and posts the actual transaction. However, if the transaction in step #2 doesn't include the code from step #1, the match doesn't occur and you see the situation you have now: both the actual transaction and the pending are active. In this case the merchant should contact its merchant processor and request the revocation of the authorization code. The processor will then forward the request to the card issuer, who will then remove the pending transaction. As you can see - multiple parties have to actually care for that to happen, and many times they don't, because they don't have to. As to the period - it's up to the card issuer (PayPal in your case), but 1 month is a very long time. Usually it's about a week or two, unless it's a hotel/car rental. In any case - once it expires, it will go away on its own and if you don't mind for the amounts to be blocked until then - just let it expire. The fact that you used a debit card for this transaction is irrelevant. Unless it was a pin transaction, debit card transactions are processed as credit card transactions by processors. For pin transactions, there process is different and you shouldn't see doubles. If it was a pin transaction - contact PayPal and check with them what's going on. Generally, PayPal is not to be used as a ""bank account"", it is merely a payment processor, and it is advised to remove the money from there as soon as possible."


Coinciding with a complete turnover of ocean currents since the industrial revolution started. The ocean has been saturated with CO2 which has been absorbing it like mad for the last 200+ years. Now the water that was on the surface during the industrial revolution absorbing CO2 has gone down to lower underwater currents, flowed back to the start of the current, and popped back up at the surface. It isn't fresh clean water that can absorb more CO2, it is already saturated. This is were most of the 'missing' climate change has gone, into carbonating the water. Now it is being oversaturated with the combined effects of making the ocean more acidic and less fit to support life. We should be seeing CO2 levels rise exponentially the next couple decades above what we have in the past with similar CO2 output levels, there aren't as many places left for it to go.


No. PayPal payments are credited to a PayPal account. PayPal doesn't let you pay arbitrary banks or credit cards, that defeats the purpose of PayPal and there are other services which can do that cheaper or with less hassle. You need to find another mutually available and satisfactory option with your client.


Well, the problem with putting a group of people in charge of something so substantial is that man is corruptible.  The individuals in charge will change over time and eventually corrupt people will be in charge.  It's inevitable.  > If you were in charge, what action would you take?  If I were in charge of the Fed or if I were in charge of designing a brand new monetary system?  If I were in charge of the Fed, I would immediately stop the creation of this funny money, make all of the Fed's account books, publications, meeting minutes and all other info public information.  I would invite a full audit of the entire organization.  I would then hold the people accountable for any fraud that turns up.  Then I would simply abolish the organization.  I believe local banks can better set lending rates just as local store owners can set better prices than a single federal organization.  Interest rates would reflect actual demand for loans, not reflect the secret personal agenda of some arrogant, elitist bureaucrat.  If I were designing a new monetary system, I would combine the obvious benefits of a gold/silver standard with the openness and decentralized nature of a currency like bitcoin.  I would create a published and predictable increase to the money supply that could not be changed, and would grow just enough to avoid constant deflation as economies expanded.  Most importantly, I would advocate and encourage the creation of alternate currencies to allow honest competition.


You could think of points 1 and 3 combined to be similar to buying shares and selling calls on a part of those shares. $50k is the net of the shares and calls sale (ie without point 3, the investor would pay more for the same stake). Look up convertible debt, and why it's used. It's basically used so that both parties get 'the best of both world's' from equity and debt financing.   Who is he selling his share to in point 2 back to the business or to outside investors?


Even if Tesla ends up breaking even or taking a small loss on their cars, they will still end up in the black selling batteries. Tesla wants people to believe they're a car company, and people have fallen for it. They are not though; they're a battery company. They will be making loads selling their batteries, not only to auto makers, but though Solar city as well.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.nber.org/papers/w23839) reduced by 55%. (I'm a bot) ***** > There is strong persistence over time in the bottom tail of the wealth distribution, but the probability of having low wealth increases slowly with age after age 65.  > Those with low lifetime earnings are much more likely to report low wealth at retirement, and to die with little wealth, than their higher-earning contemporaries.  > The onset of a major medical condition and the loss of a spouse increase in the probability of falling into the low wealth category at advanced ages, although these factors appear to contribute to wealth decline for only a small fraction of those who had modest wealth at age 65 but low wealth at the time of death.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/72efsa/this_is_why_people_make_fun_of_economists_those/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~216369 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **wealth**^#1 **age**^#2 **low**^#3 **little**^#4 **Retirement**^#5"


From my experience you don't need knowledge of accounting to pick good stocks. The type of investing you are referring to is fundamental. This is finding out about the company, this websites should help you start off: http://en.tradehero.mobi/how-to-choose-a-stock-fundamental-analysis/ Investopedia will also be a useful website in techniques. A bit of knowledge in economics will be helpful in understanding how current affairs will affect a market, which will affect stock prices. However you need neither economics or accounting knowledge if you were to learn technical analysis, many doubt the workings of this technique, but in my experience it is easier to learn and practise. For example looking at charts from previous years it shows the last time there was a huge recession the dollar did well and commodities didn't. In this recession we are entering you can see the same thing happening. Read about the different techniques before limiting yourself to just looking at financial statements you may find a better technique suited to you, like these technical analysts: http://etfhq.com/blog/2013/03/02/top-technical-analysts/ Hope this helps.


Technically a hedge fund is nothing more than a private investment partnership.  I was my own full time employee, with investment partners.  I traded for years, and own(ed) another business which was already more than paying all my bills, so why not start a hedge fund, doing something else I loved to generate additional income, and hopefully, someday, make it to the big leagues?


"What you are describing sounds a lot like the way we handle our household budget.  This is possible, but quite difficult to do with an Excel spreadsheet.  It is much easier to do with dedicated budgeting software designed for this purpose. When choosing personal budgeting software, I've found that the available packages fall in two broad categories: Some packages take what I would call a proactive approach: You enter in your bank account balances, and assign your money into spending categories.  When you deposit your paycheck, you do the same thing: you add this money to your spending categories.  Then when you spend money, you assign it to a spending category, and the software keeps track of your category balances.  At any time, you can see both your bank balances and your spending category balances.  If you need to spend money in a category that doesn't have any more money, you'll need to move money from a different category into that one.  This approach is sometimes called the envelope system, because it resembles a digital version of putting your cash into different envelopes with different purposes.  A few examples of software in this category are You Need a Budget (YNAB), Mvelopes, and EveryDollar. Other packages take more of a reactive approach: You don't bother assigning a job to the money already in your bank account.  Instead, you just enter your monthly income and put together a spending plan.  As you spend money, you assign the transactions to a spending category, and at the end of the month, you can see what you actually spent vs. what your plan was, and try to adjust your next budget accordingly.  Software that takes this approach includes Quicken and Mint.com. I use and recommend the proactive approach, and it sounds from your question like this is the approach that you are looking for.  I've used several different budgeting software packages, and my personal recommendation is for YNAB, the software that we currently use.  I don't want this post to sound too much like a commercial, but I believe it will do everything you are looking for.   One of the great things about the proactive approach, in my opinion, is how credit card accounts are handled.  Since your spending category balances only include real money actually sitting in an account (not projected income for the month), when you spend money out of a category with your credit card, the software deducts the money from the spending category immediately, as it is already spent.  The credit card balance goes negative.  When the credit card bill comes and you pay it, this is handled in the software as an account transfer from your checking account to your credit card account.  The money in the checking account is already set aside for the purpose of paying your credit card bill. Dedicated budgeting software generally has a reconcile feature that makes verifying your bank statements very easy.  You just enter the date of your bank statement and the balance, and then the software shows you a list of the transactions that fall in those dates.  You can check each one against the transactions on the statement, editing the ones that aren't right and adding any that are missing from the software.  After everything checks out, the software marks the transactions as verified, so you can easily see what has cleared and what hasn't. Let me give you an example to clarify, in response to your comment.  This example is specific to YNAB, but other software using the same approach would work in a similar way. Let's say that you have a checking account and a credit card account.  Your checking account, named CHECKING, has $2,000 in it currently.  Your credit card currently has nothing charged on it, because you've just paid your bill and haven't used it yet this billing period.  YNAB reports the balance of your credit card account (we'll call this account CREDITCARD), as $0. Every dollar in CHECKING is assigned to a category.  For example, you've got $200 in ""groceries"", $100 in ""fast food"", $300 in ""rent"", $50 in ""phone"", $500 in ""emergency fund"", etc.  If you add up the balance of all of your categories, you'll get $2,000. Let's say that you've written a check to the grocery store for $100.  When you enter this in YNAB, you tell it the name of the store, the account that you paid with (CHECKING), and the category that the expense belongs to (groceries).  The ""groceries"" category balance will go down from $200 to $100, and the CHECKING account balance will go down from $2,000 to $1,900. Now, let's say that you've spent $10 on fast food with your credit card.  When you enter this in YNAB, you tell it the name of the restaurant, the account that you paid with (CREDITCARD), and the category that the expense belongs to (fast food).  YNAB will lower the ""fast food"" category balance from $100 to $90, and your CREDITCARD account balance will go from $0 to $-10. At this point, if you add up all the category balances, you'll get $1,890.  And if you add up your account balances, you'll also get $1,890, because CHECKING has $1,900 and CREDITCARD has $-10.  If you get your checking account bank statement at this time, the account balance of $1,900 should match the statement and you'll see the payment to the grocery store, assuming the check has cleared.  And if the credit card bill comes now, you'll see the fast food purchase and the balance of $-10. When you write a check to pay this credit card bill, you enter this in YNAB as an account transfer of $10 from CHECKING to CREDITCARD.  This transfer does not affect any of your category balances; they remain the same.  But now your CHECKING account balance is down to $1,890, and CREDITCARD is back to $0. This works just as well whether you have one checking account and one credit card, or 2 checking accounts, 2 savings accounts, and 3 credit cards.  When you want to spend some money, you look at your category balance.  If there is money in there, then the money is available to spend somewhere in one of your accounts.  Then you pick an account you want to pay with, and, looking at the account balance, if there isn't enough money in that account to pay it, you just need to move some money from another account into that one, or pick a different account.  When you pay for an expense with a credit card, the money gets deducted from the category balances immediately, and is no longer available to spend on something else."


That's a serious threat, a lot of people keep saying this but the Chinese are really the ones who need us.  Their economy is a house of cards, based on an ever worse and more corrupt version  of the Japanese 70-80s model, and their trade is the only thing injecting enough money into the system to barely pay for the government to prop up all of its important industries. Unfortunately their trade demands the US Dollar/debt to manipulate their currency to stay cheap. To lose access to US finances is more or less an existential threat to China. On the other hand the US really could find replacements or live without whatever we lose from Chinese trade. For this specific nunber, I don't know how he came to it, but Peter Zeihan says the US' GDP from trade is only about 14%, and only about 4% when you discount NAFTA and energy imports.


That's very true, but there are companies that have business models which would be viable if that gun were taken off the table. These are the good companies.  Our focus should be on diminishing the power of Washington to play favorites, as that will clear the way for the deserving to succeed and the undeserving to fail.


"You say: To clarify, my account is with BlackRock and the fund is titled ""MID   CAP GROWTH EQUITY-CLASS A"" if that   helps. Not totally sure what that   means. You should understand what you're investing in.  The fund you have could be a fine investment, or a lousy one.  If you don't know, then I don't know. The fund has a prospectus that describes what equities the fund has a position in.  It will also explain the charter of the fund, which will explain why it's mid-cap growth rather than small-cap value, for example.  You should read that a bit.  It's almost a sure thing that your father had to acknowledge that he read it before he purchased the shares! Again: Understand your investments."


Sure.  Here it is in its deadly simplicity:  Bank of Too Big  123 Fake St  City State Zip   Date   To whom it may concern:  Please let this letter serve as formal instruction for Bank of Too Big to close the following accounts held under my name, [your name],  [your social security number], listed below  Checking: 00000000  Savings    00000000  Please remit the remaining balances in the form of an official check made payable to me and mail that check for deposit to my account at:  Your Awesome New Bank  c/o the new manager  Address  Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.  If you wish to reach me, you may do so at [telephone number] *pro tip: they **never** call you.*  Sincerely,   Newly empowered consumer, you.     **Here are the important parts:**  1. You HAVE to get this notarized.  It will not work otherwise.  But guess where there are always notaries - banks - especially your new one.  2. Make sure all your automatic payments and things attached to that old account have been switched or cancelled first.  3. Don't leave too much money in there or there is a slim chance they might call you, and you'll have to deal with that nonsense.  Just leave a nominal amount like $10 and they'll just do it to get it over with.  4. Keep a copy.  Just in case.   I have been using this letter for my entire career in banking (a little over 10 years) and it has worked EVERY SINGLE TIME.   Enjoy!


"I mean that is disjointed, are you implying the financial collapse of Hoover and Coolidge was the result of government entitlement programs and that the New Deal was other than that? You've got things reversed, the stock market collapse was financial deregulation and speculation with hands off free market principals you seem to root for. The New Deal and Truman Doctrine expanded entitlements and have avenues for access to education, trade skills, work digging and filling holes, publicly funded infrastructure and technology. Truman in fact wanted a single payer system. ""Concrete"" economics work, the hand of the free market cannot fill the void left by withdrawal of public funding."


This guy is doing you a *huge* favor by taking his time out to talk to you. These people are under enormous time constraints and you need to act accordingly. Don't babble on about what you're doing as an intern; the company could have hundreds of interns doing this exact same thing, and it's probably boring as hell.   Focus on asking high level questions about his career, his lessons learned, and his vision for the company. This man is going to be a treasure trove of advice and knowledge. Don't waste it talking about the LBO model you cranked out last week.


If you are able to buy a 150K home for 50K now that would be a good deal!  However, you can't you have to borrow 100K in order to make this deal happen.  This dramatically increases the risk of any investment, and I would no longer classify it as passive income.   The mortgage on a 150K place would be about 710/month (30 year fixed).  Reasonably I would expect no more than 1200/month in rent, or 14,400.  A good rule of thumb is to assume that half of rental revenue can be counted as profit before debt service.  So in your case 7200, but you would have a mortgage payment of 473/month.  Leaving you a profit of 1524 after debt service.  This is suspiciously like 2K per year.  Things, in the financial world, tend to move toward an equilibrium. The benefit of rental property you can make a lot more than the numbers suggest.  For example the home could increase in value, and you can have fewer than expected repairs.  So you have two ways to profit:  rental revenue and asset appreciation. However, you said that you needed passive income.  What happens if you have a vacancy or the tenant does not pay?  What happens if you have greater than expected repairs?  What happens if you get a fine from the HOA or a special assessment?  Not only will you have dip into your pocket to cover the payment, you might also have to dip into your pocket to cover the actual event! In a way this would be no different than if you borrowed 100K to buy dividend paying stocks.  If the fund/company does not pay out that month you would still have to make the loan payment.  Where does the money come from?  Your pocket.  At least dividend paying companies don't collect money from their shareholders. Yes you can make more money, but you can also lose more.  Leverage is a two edged sword and rental properties can be great if you are financial able to absorb the shocks that are normal with ownership.


I don't believe most do it on purpose. Its a function of two things.  1) Markets are relatively efficient, so generating profits off of publicly available information is rare.  2) Analysts cannot ethically nor legally make  recommendation based on material non-public information.  That leaves them with using public information and building out s model to estimate earnings and therefore share price as best as possible. The problem is that estimating earnings is notoriously difficult. Every model is subject to garbage-in-garbage-out. All analysts start with some of the same basic assumptions and then tweak them based on their best guess. Take enough analysts and you've now replicated roughly what all investors are doing in the marketplace, meaning as a whole analysts won't be more accurate than the market.  The only way to generate above market returns is for you to consistently pick the analyst with the right recommendation. If only it were so easy...  Furthermore, analysts tend to make similar recommendations due to biases. Their initial model may have said 'buy' for GE, but they realize no other analysts have a buy rating on the stock. They're more likely to go back and revise their guesses to something more inline with their peers - its less risky to be with the crowd!  TL;DR  Security selection is hard and outperformance without MNP is unlikely over the long term.  I am no longer in the industry. After 2.5yrs as an analyst and going through the CFA curriculum I've learned that there are VERY few opportunities for out performance, especially so on a risk adjusted basis.


The only way this suggestion works is if you can realize a higher rate of return on the investment than the payoff of the loan.  There's no guarantee of that, so it can be a risky strategy from the standpoint that you'll end up paying more for the car when all is said and done.


That has nothing to do with my statement. My point is that the moves in Bitcoin value are not even *discussed* in the same way as other currencies.   When the Japanese yen rises in value, everyone realizes there is simultaneously a fall in some other currency or currencies. And you can look at the other cross-currency prices to see what the real story is. A huge rise in Bitcoin means there is a huge drop in the U.S. dollar value, but that is not matched by any other dollar valuation.


Declare it illegal, and make it a crime to exchange it for legal currency.  That may not kill bitcoin itself, but if you can't exchange it for dollars it's useless.  If you don't think they can just ban whatever they want, read up on online poker in the US.


At a risk of stating the obvious: a passive portfolio doesn't try to speculate on such matters.


"It's likely that the main reason is the additional currency risk for non-USD investments. A wider diversification in general lowers risk, but that has to be balanced by the risk incurred when investing abroad.  This implies that the key factor isn't so much the country of residence,  but the currency of the listing. Euro funds can invest across the whole Euro zone. Things become more complex when you consider countries whose currency is less trusted and whose economy is less diversified. In those cases, the ""currency risk""  may be more due to the national currency, which justifies a more global investment strategy."


"As ApplePie discusses, ""tax bracket"" without any modifiers refers to a single jurisdiction's marginal tax rate.  In your case, this is either your California's ""tax bracket"" or your Federal ""tax bracket"" (not including marginal Social Security and Medicare taxes).  But if someone says ""combined state and federal tax bracket"", they probably mean the combination of your state and federal income tax brackets (again, lot including sales taxes, business and occupational taxes, social security taxes, and medicare taxes).  The math to combine the state and federal marginal tax rates is a bit tricky, because most people can deduct either their state and local income taxes, or their state and local general sales taxes when computing their income for federal income tax purposes.  (The federal ""alternative minimum tax"" restricts this deduction for some people.) For a single person earning $ 100,000 of salaries and wages in California, whose state income taxes are close to their standard deduction, the calculations for the combined marginal income tax rate look something like this: As mentioned above, this understates the tax bite on marginal ""earned income"".  To find the true marginal rate, we need to add in Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, sales taxes, and business & occupation taxes.  The Social Security and Medicare taxes are sometimes called ""self employment taxes"".  This math omits unemployment insurance and workers' compensation insurance, because those taxes are typically capped well below $ 100,000 per year of income.  This math also omits B & O taxes, because this question is California specific. If an employer wishes to increase an employee's pay by $ 1,076.50, the first $ 76.50 will go to the employer's share of Social Security and Medicare taxes.  The remaining $ 1,000.00 will be subject to the combined marginal income tax rate discussed above, plus will have $ 76.50 go to the employee's share of Social Security and Medicare taxes.  The employee might buy some extra things with some of their extra money, and pay sales tax on them. In 2016, a 9 % sales tax rate was common in California's largest cities. The IRS estimated that (for a single person with no dependents making $ 100,000 per year who did not buy a boat, RV, motor vehicle, or major home construction), about 9 % of their marginal gross income was subject to sales tax."


The simplest way to consolidate the funds your old 401(k) plans is by doing what's called a Direct Rollover (whereby the funds go directly into the new plan and skips you completely) from each of the old plans into either an IRA that you establish with a provider of your choice or even into your current employer's 401(k) plan if that is available. That way, the funds are in one central account and available to invest. Plus it eliminates the mandatory 20% withholding if the rollover is indirect and is sent to you first before the deposit into the new plan. It is important to bear in mind that you have 60 calendar days from the date of distribution to get the full amount into the new plan and a rollover is considered a tax reportable, but not necessarily a taxable event provided you deposit the funds within the time frame allotted.


The requirement is to report the highest balance on the account, it has nothing to do with your income.


One implication is the added fees if you are investing in something with a trading cost or commission, such as your stock purchase. If you pay low costs to trade (e.g. with a discount broker) and don't switch your investments often, then costs overall should remain reasonable .. but always be aware of your costs and seek to minimize them.


So what? Everybody knows that labor statistics go well beyond a single metric (funny how the article ends up focusing only on one). The US Bureau of Labor statistics already provides different measurements of unemployment.  The 23.3% figure comes from shadowstats, which is well know to be entirely bullshit.


Fair point, but I'd submit to you that the European system has demonstrated its flaws. You claim it is better than the U.S. system, which in terms of ease, quality or value, is probably the case.   But, the unsustainable costs in the Eurozone are driven by healthcare and entitlement programs, similar to the U.S. and other developed nations. What happens when Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal are forced to default or leave the Euro? Do you think the healthcare quality, ease and value will remain as it has been?


Costco only builds in areas with enough people that have a high enough average income, disposable income and other demographics. If the poor side of KC still meets those requirements, or is close enough to those areas, they will still build there. For example the location they are putting up in the Quad Cities is not right next to the richest area, but close enough.  Try to find a Costco in Western Illinois, or Iowa, as there are two right now.  https://www.google.com/maps/search/Costco/@41.6732793,-90.7208837,7.75z  Walmart has 61 stores in Iowa according to their store search. They have about 100,000 items per store, Costco has 4000.   https://www.cnbc.com/id/47175492  https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/02/06/the-key-difference-between-costco-and-walmart/#66036dcb4306  http://www.thedailybeast.com/why-cant-walmart-be-more-like-costco  Different business models mean different strategies, including pay.


I wrote a detailed answer about variable annuities on another question, but I want to include one specific situation where a variable annuity may be the right course of action. (For the sake of simplicity, I'm quoting directly from that answer): Three-quarters of US states protect variable annuity assets from creditors. Regular IRA's don't benefit from protection under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and may therefore be more vulnerable to creditors. If you're a potential target for lawsuits, e.g. a doctor worried about medical malpractice suits, variable annuities may be an option for you. As always, you should consult a legal/tax professional to see if this might be a good option for you to consider. The SEC also has a fantastic publication on variable annuities that provides a great deal of information. It's not directly related to this question because it doesn't necessarily focus on the circumstances in which they might be a good fit for you, but it's educational nevertheless and should give you more than enough information to properly evaluate any policy you're looking to buy.


I quit the company during the Nadella transition.  I was a Site Reliability Engineer, and my entire discipline was gutted and tossed at the company, as were the testers. Maybe it's been good for consumers, but the way it was handled internally, with an indefinite stream of reorganizations and middle management competition, just made it a terrible place to work.  When I left, I had been through 9-10 reorganizations in as many months. Every time I'd get a project or a service to work on, we'd get moved. Most of my coworkers left for Amazon, some left the field entirely. I hope it's better now, nobody deserves that.  Windows Server 2016 was one of the worst builds I've ever worked with, and I have been really happy to stop supporting the OS entirely. The docker gaps in particular in the windows ecosystem seem pretty significant, and languages that don't run on Linux seem antiquated and useless because of pressures from cloud platforms.


I don't at all agree that it violates Square terms of service.  But having said that, it's a bloody expensive way to do things.  Square charges beaucoup fees, that more than obliterate any kind of points you might earn. Only for emergencies, should one do this.


"You come off as a douchebag when you start a post, but I hadn't heard of duress in contract law. Does this apply to your average dental patient looking for a cleanup? There are other dentists and he didn't make any threats for them to sign the contact.  I knew vaguely of the concept of duress, and was implicitly ignoring that. I meant contracts for goods or services of an ""everyday"" nature.  But if you were making fun of me for being a kid or being naive or my lack of knowledge of the law, it came off like you were a total dick."


[I appreciate the attitude that you wrote back in, seriously!]  Look I'm not against some form of help if they are working 60-85+ hours a week (we can discuss exactly what should be done).   However my whole issue is that this women has been working at a minimum wage job for a long time (I forgot the exact number). Why isn't she trying to advance away from that? (Maybe she is, but the article didn't talk about that).  Look I know it's tough, living in the Greater Seattle Area is very expensive and it's hard. But I'd not only do what I have to to support my family (which she is trying wry hard to do, props for her), but I'd also try to educate myself (not talking university) and try to develop/enhance my abilities so they are attractive to employers. She has tons of years of experience, why not try to move up in management?


"You withdrew the 'cash' portion, and will pay tax on it. How was the check ""another for move remaining to B"" issued? Was it payable to you? If so, it's too late, it's your money and the whole account was cashed out.  If it was payable to B, you should have had it sent directly to their custodian, are you saying you still have that check? You might need to ask A to reissue the check to you, since you are no longer in the US. I'm not sure if you can roll it to an IRA at this point."


I would agree this is probably a battery factory.   Tesla gets much of its battery components from the Congo where women and children work in mines for pennies a day. They develop iron lung because there’s no ventilation.   Then the minerals are processed in China. By doing so, Tesla is abstracted from any of the unethical practices going on in the Congo and pretends they know nothing about the hellish conditions.  https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/Child-labour-behind-smart-phone-and-electric-car-batteries/


That's technically true but there will still be a max level they can hit before the signal clips. Part of why commercials are so jarring is because they are heavily compressed (eliminating those peaks and  valleys and basically making the entire commercial blare at just below the max volume) vs a movie or tv show that would use more dynamic range of volume levels.


"When you buy a put on a stock, you buy the right to sell the stock at fixed price, F, that his usually different from the market price, M. You paid a price, P, for the put.  Your potential profit, going forward, is represented by the DIFFERENCE you get to collect between your fixed price F, and that market price M, plus the price you paid for the put, or F-(M+P). (This assumes that F>(M+P). P is fixed, but the smaller M gets, the larger the term F-(M+P), and therefore the higher your potential profit from owning the put. So when M ""tanks,"" the put goes higher.  The $395 put is already in the money. If it were settled today, the value would be $395-$376 or $19. This, minus the cost of the put itself, represents your profit. The $365 put is ""out of the money."" The stock has to fall $11 more before the put is exercised. But if the stock went down 8 points today, that is less than the $19 difference at the start of the day. Because there is time between now and October, there is a chance for the stock to go down further, thereby going into the money. The current value of the put is represented by this ""chance."" Obviously, the chances of the stock going down $11 more (from today) is greater than the chance of it going down $19 more. On the other hand, the closer it gets to the expiration date, the less an out of the money put is worth. It's a race between the stock's fall, and the time to expiration."


Unless you have insider information (ILLEGAL!!!) don't go high risk over this time frame.  It makes about as much sense as betting on the horses. Stick it in a 3 or 6 month GIC at the pathetic rates the banks are giving.


An instant 15% profit sounds good to me, so you can't go wrong selling as soon as you are able. Here are a couple other considerations: Tax implications: When you sell the stock, you have to pay taxes on the profit (including that 15% discount). The tax rate you pay is based on how long you wait to sell it. If you wait a certain amount of time (usually 2 years, but it will depend on your specific tax codes) before you sell, you could be subject to lower tax rates on that profit. See here for a more detailed description. This might only apply if you're in the US. Since you work for the company, you may be privy to a bit more information about how the company is run and how likely it is to grow. As such, if you feel like the company is headed in the right direction, you may want to hold on the the stock for a while.  I am generally wary of being significantly invested in the company you work for. If the company goes south, then the stock price will obviously drop, but you'll also be at risk to be laid off. As such you're exposed much more risk than investing in other companies. This is a good argument to sell the stock and take the 15% profit.*  * - I realize your question wasn't really about whether to sell the stock, but more for when, but I felt this was relevant nonetheless.


"I have some money invested on Merrill Edge. 2 days ago I purchased some mutual funds with most of the rest of my money in my account. I logged in today to see how it did, and noticed that there are 3 sections: Priced Investments, Cash & Money Accounts, and Pending Activity. In the Cash & Money section, there shows a negative balance of Cash (let's say -$1,000) and a positive ""Money Account Value"" (let's say +$1,100).  The ""Money Account"" appears to be made up of $1 shares of something called ""ML Direct Deposit Program"". However, even though the mutual fund purchase was made 2 days ago, and the shares of the mutual funds are officially in my account, I'm still showing all of my ""Money Account"" shares ($1000). The balance sheet effectively makes it look like I somehow needed to have ""sold"" back my money account shares, converted them to cash, and then bought the funds. I'm hoping that isn't the case, and for some reason, there is a multiday lag between me buying stock and money getting deducted from my ""Money Account"". Hope that all makes sense.  TLDR: what's the diff between a Cash account and Money Account that's filled with shares of "" ML Direct Deposit Program""?  Edit: Today the cash and money account offset by equal values equal to one of my mutual fund purchases."


whether the consecutive wins have any statistical significance could yield a whole reddit thread imho (same with MaxDD). if you bootstrap your OS results, or just randomize them, the observed out of sample MaxDD or the Max consecutive wins could be very different from what you experience in real life...maybe we should work on some particular algo examples... test them out here, compare and criticize.  scoring/utility functions are an interesting thread as well.


"The only thing I do not like about USPS is how so many customers complain complain and complain endlessly.  ""line is too long""  ""why are costs going up"" blah blah blah.  if you dont fucking like USPS go over to FEDEX and pay 3 times more assholes.  fucking people just wanna fucking complain complain complain!"


Why the fuck would someone ever, in a million years, go to a place like BWW to watch a sporting event?  I'm trying really hard and failing to come up with a reason for it.  I know sports bars are a thing, and plenty apparently do okay, but BWW is setup such that you may or may not be able to see a screen and the sit down service means you can't really just park yourself there for a 3+ hour game.  It seems like they have a sports bar theme, but you can't legit use it like a sports bar.


They're still behind on Model 3 numbers. China would be about taking all the money they've hemoraged to get where they are here and duplicate it over there, so while it's possibly a wildly lucrative market, it won't be for quite some time and after a lot more spending. They just trimmed the fat on their workforce, which is probably a good move, but so many at once says that they needed to cut spending.   Once the 3 is cranking out faster and AP2.5 is getting updates, the stock will probably make a good run, but for now it's going to flounder about close to where it is.


You will have to write it off as an offset of capital gains or as bad debt against personal income, limited to $3k/ yr. Write off 3k this year, 2k next. Here's the tax code, you'll need to file a form 8949, link below. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc450/tc453 So, this requires that it is a loan, acknowledged by both you and the borrower, with terms of repayment and stated interest, as well as wording for late payments and time for delinquency.  The loan document doesn't have to be fancy, but it must show a reasonable intention of repayment to distinguish it from a gift.  Then send out a 1099c for cancellation of debt. This is a starting point, it's a good idea to run everything by your tax processional to make sure you're meeting the requirements for bad debt with your contact and payment communication.


"On a side note, was CNN always this sensationalist? The headline makes a bold statement, which is then pretty much invalidated right in the first paragraph of the article.  I have neither watched nor read CNN a whole lot, but I used to respect them. Until this year, when their reporting on various issues (Fukushima, the Arab spring, recently the Moscow protests) have caused me to put them in the ""do not trust under any circumstances"" category. Is CNN becoming a less funny version of the Onion?"


This thing actually does exist (in a slightly different form): https://turo.com/  I used to rent out my car that way, but people seem to expect that you're a rental car company, when you aren't. It's annoying to have your car left particularly dirty or broken.


"The second part of your question is the easiest to answer, how much manual work is involved in settlement processes? Payment systems which handle low value (i.e. high volume) transactions work on the basis of net settlement. Each of the individual payments are netted across all of the participant banks, so that only one ""real"" payment is made by each bank. Some days banks will receive money, others they will pay money. This is arbitrary and depends on whether their outbound payments exceed their inbound payments for that day.   The payment system will notify each Bank how much it owes/will receive for the day. The money is then transferred between all of the banks simultaneously by the payment system to remove the risk that some pay and others don't. If you're going to make or receive a very large payment, you're going to want to make certain that its correct. This means that if there's a discrepancy, you need operations people available to find out why its wrong.   When dealing with this many payments, answering that question can be hard. Did we miss a payment? Is there a duplicate? Etc.  The vast majority of payments will process without any human involvement, but to make the process work, you always need human brains there to fix problems that occur. This brings me to your first question. On every day that settlement happens, a bank will receive (or pay) a very large sum of money. As a settlement bank you must settle that money - the guarantee that every bank will pay is one of the main reasons these systems exist. For settlement to happen, every bank has to agree to participate, and be ready to verify the data on their side and deliver the funds from their account. So there is no particular reason that this doesn't happen on weekends and holidays other than history. But for any payment system to change, it would require the support of (at least) a majority of participants to pay staff to manage the settlement process on weekends. This would increase costs for banks, but the benefits would only really be for you and me (if at all). That means it's unlikely to happen unless a government forces the issue."


Pool Maintenance Avalon NJ - We strive to provide all our customers with the most reasonable prices and get our jobs done as scheduled, which is why we have so many referrals. PM Pools will build you a swimming pool that you and your family will be satisfied with for years to come.


I doubt they can create enough renewable energy to sustain their current spending and GDP levels. So in my opinion, I see even more unrest in the Middle East as the world transitions away from crude oil based fuels.


"In the United States, the Fair Credit Reporting Act allows companies to buy your credit information for ""legitimate business needs."" The legitimate use of credit scores and credit reporting varies state to state, but like it or not, you can expect a lot more non-lending use of your credit information in the future. Companies and individuals use credit reports as an assessment of general behavior because, unfortunately, they work. You've seen the disclaimers about ""past performance…"", but unfortunately in this case… past performance really has been shown to be a pretty reliable indicator of future behavior. So…"


You're right, but you also probably know a lot about technology. You are in the minority when it comes to the average e-book user. Most people don't know how to do anything else on an e-book reader other than read e-books.


> In Europe we act as if workers are people not a commodity to be prices as low as possible.  It works both ways. Regulating workers wages can decrease the number of small companies starting up. This is because entrepreneurs starting up might not be starting off with many millions in the bank so they may be fearful of paying too much. Same goes for job security. Regulation and wage minima are generally bad for small innovative companies and not so bad for big established firms who just want to protect their market share (and for whom compliance costs peanuts as a percentage of their revenue).   My two cents on this are: Much better to create a redistributive system whereby the state pays everybody a basic level of income. Then the market can be freed up and people's entrepreneurship can be fully leveraged.


Key point here is to remember that GBP isnt falling a lot, it has fallen a lot already.  If you havent liquidated your position in pounds by now at a higher rate I would personally not bother switching to another currency right now.  The pound is near its 10 year low(nearing 2008 capital 'C' Crisis levels) and despite what fear mongers may short the market for, the sun will shine after Brexit as well. Britain has a solid economy and that hasnt fundamentally changed, so even if the pound hasnt seen the absolute periodic lowest point yet(which may still come as brexit talks become more prevalent/near their end), it will eventually pull back up.  In essence, you have more to lose acting in panic now than waiting to exchange for a better than today's rate at some point until the eventual Brexit(probably in March 2019) or at any point afterwards(if you wont be needing those savings when you move).


I wondered about this problem too, so I looked into the maths and made this app :- http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/BuyOrRentInvestmentReturnCalculator/ (It uses the free Wolfram computable-document format (CDF) Player.) If you try it out you can see what conditions favour renting vs buying.  My own conclusion was to aim to buy a property outright upon reaching retirement age, if not sooner. Example This example compares buying a £400,000 house with renting for £1,000 a month while depositing equivalent amounts (in savings) to total the same monthly outgoings as the buyer.  Mortgage rate, deposit rate, property appreciation and rent inflation can be variously specified.  The example mortgage term is 20 years.  As you can see the buyer and renter come out about even after the mortgage term, but the buyer comes off better after that, (having no more mortgage to pay).  Of course, the rent to live in a £400,000 house would probably be more than £1,000 but this case shows an equivalence point.


Other answers here explain very well the intent of your question. However, a word should be said about why people make different choices at all. So to directly answer your question, yes there is a theory but it does not say inaction is worse/better and instead explains why different people make different choices and how this information can be used to construct optimal portfolios for a specific individual. And that theory is called the Risk Aversion Theory. You can visit the following URLs to discover more about this theory:


Sorry to necro this thread but you were totally right - I found this study that confirms buying puts loses money at a faster rate than is predicted by CAPM. Conversely, writing puts earns superior risk-adjusted returns compared to the market portfolio. The study is about writing straddles but it's a similar concept. I'm just posting here in case someone searches this thread in 6 months https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/74142/0022-1082.00352.pdf?sequence=1


You left out the part where I said cities use it as a source of revenue, meaning there are two factors at play. The city limiting the number of medallions drives up their auction price because there's high demand and the cab companies trying to extract enough profit from the medallion to be worth it. The city decides how many medallions to release, just like in NYC they auction off permits for hot dog vendors which are ironically similarly priced. Imagine for a moment they gave vendor licenses to everyone who wanted to open a stand in central park, you wouldn't even be able to see the park.  I wouldn't really say it's fair to call it a stranglehold, more of wringing the last drop out of washcloth because you're dying of thirst.  Personally, I think the medallion model is bullshit. In that sense, I'm all for a *regulated* free market, where supply and demand find an equilibrium within the rules. In reality, you only find the medallion model in large markets which isn't really representative of the taxi industry as a whole.


.INX (the S&P 500 index itself) does not include reinvested dividens.  You can figure total return by going to Yahoo finance, historical data. Choose the start year, and end year. You should find that data for SPY (going back to 1993) will show an adjusted close, and takes dividends into account. This isn't perfect as SPY has a .09% expense ratio, but it's better than just the S&P index. One of the more popular Dow ETF is DIA, this will let you similarly track the Dow while accounting for dividends.


This.  If the dollar wasn't the reserve currency we'd probably be in inflation hell, but it's undeniable that QE had a positive (and yes, somewhat superficial) impact. As another commenter in this thread alluded it's poor policy to continually kick the can down the road via another government put, but it's worse policy to let an entire class get economically crippled worse than what happened.


Price in the US are more expensive than Germany when you include tax and when you take into account paying the same in pounds versus kilos. Bread is not even a fair fight since the price is jacked up in the states. Germany has great bread at very reasonable prices.


gnasher729's answer is fundamentally correct and deserves the checkmark, but I'd like to give an economic explanation for how this economically functions. The key point from gnasher729's answer's that the interest rate is 49.9% for one company. While this may be much higher than the equilibrium rate, the true market interest rate, it is not completely unreasonable because of the risk. For credit to be continually produced, default risk must be compensated because this is a cost to the lender.  Most are not in business to lose money, so making loans to borrowers that default 40% of the time would make this interest rate reasonable. For UK citizens, this would not be such a problem because the lender can usually pursue the borrower for the balance, but if the borrower can disavow the loan and leave the legal reach of the UK creditors, the collection rate is 0%. The guarantee by the foreign persons not present in the UK is incidental and probably more of a regulatory requirement since the inability to collect from them is just as unlikely. One should always look for the lowest price with at least minimum quality when shopping for anything, but you are right to be apprehensive legally.  Read every line and be sure that you yourself understand every clause before signing. If alternative cheaper financing is available, it is probably superior.


"A multiplex is a concession stand which happens to show movies in order to lure you into range of the smell of their popcorn. It has nothing to do with movie theater monopolies.  As it was explained to me by my manager, back when I worked in a movie theater in a small Midwestern chain, for every movie, the studios take some percentage cut of gross ticket sales, varying from movie to movie.  Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in 1999 was the first film for which the studio demanded 90% of gross ticket price — continuing a long-standing trend of raising the take which possibly began with the original first Star Wars movie.  The other studios quickly followed suit and raised their take to 90%, especially for the big blockbusters — the textbook term is ""oligopoly pricing"" — and since then the percentage has inched ever closer to 100%.  I forget exactly what it was on the second Matrix movie or Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, both of which premiered while I was at the theater, but the number that sticks in my head is 94%.  Obviously the studios can't directly capture any revenue from the sale of popcorn — unlike the movie, it's not their product — so every time they raise their take, the theater compensates for lost revenue by raising the price of popcorn. This trend hasn't reversed with 3D and IMAX and all the new technologies coming down the pike.  The only reason they're attractive to the theaters is that the theater can charge $15 a ticket rather than $10.  Even on a small percentage share, that's a 50% jump in revenue, and covers the not insignificant cost of the projection equipment.  3D is also currently getting more butts in seats than 2D was, leading to somewhat more concessions sales — going to the movies is an outing and an event again — though that's tapering off as it becomes less and less of a novelty.  The ticket prices aren't coming down, though. Moral of the story: like razors or printers, theaters lose a ton of money to show you movies due to studio oligopoly pricing, and make it up on popcorn."


Sorry for this late reply.  I currently live in Iceland (I am a United Statesian). People here told me they thought checks were just something that were in movies. I was amazed by this. So here are some reasons that I see to being why it works still in the usa. 1. Social Security system. Most Euro, Nordic countries have their lives, bank accounts, ect tied to their 'Social Security' number and that number is not top secret like it is in the USA. In fact here in Iceland you throw your number around to anyone who wants it because they cant do anything with it but pay you money really. 2. Banks. In the USA there are millions, MILLIONS of small town banks. That means that doing direct deposits or transfers is much much harder to achieve. Example: Iceland has two banks. The most common way of loaning a friend money or paying for that hotel room if you forgot to bring cash or your card is to say 'Give me your SSN and I will transfer to you'. It takes about 30 seconds to do a funds transfer. In the USA you can't do that. They would think you are lying or not want to give they bank info or because of the fees from small town banks it would be pointless. Also a lot of these small banks will not accept direct deposit (I had a bank growing up that still does not) These are some of the main reasons that I think cause the flow of checks in the usa.


Then why do countries with single payer health plans see the cost for medical services increase beyond the rate of inflation every year?   [Seriously, just look at these numbers.](http://www.towerswatson.com/assets/pdf/3585/Towers-Watson-Global-Medical-Trends-Svy-Rpt.pdf)  It doesn't matter that they spend less of apercent of GDP on health care than us, because the net effect of thier models cause cost inflation that increases that percentage, just like ours. You could transplant thier model to the US and still see the same upward momentum. It is mathematically unsustainable.


Burger.   King.   Fans.  What the fuck. I thought people only ate that garbage out of desperation of sheer laziness. I never would have guessed anyone actually considered themselves a fan, much less had anything less than mild queasiness.


"The statistics are misleading. The German autoworkers do not ""make"" $67/hour, that is basically a $140k job! Back in 2009, some sensationalist articles said that the average UAW worker ""made"" $75/hr sitting in the jobs bank. That is taking the total labor cost and dividing it by the number of existing employees. The most obvious example of why this number is so lopsided is through health care benefits and pensions. You get the illusion that the auto worker gets paid very high when labor cost per employee is very high, but the labor cost actually includes the current worker's cost as well as some past worker's costs, so it gets double counted.  So yes, GM went bankrupt because labor costs were $75/hr. No, the UAW auto worker did not make $75 per hour. And yes, labor costs for the German workforce is a lot higher than the US workforce. But no, they don't actually get paid 2-3x more."


And that is only if you start at Full Time, which is next to impossible. In a lot of cases, it can take employees 5-10 years to even get in a full time spot, especially in an older store where nobody leaves.


"You can't short a stock unless there is someone willing and able to ""lend"" shares to you. And there are several reasons why that might not be the case. First, BSFT is a ""new"" stock, which means that NO ONE has held it very long. It's much easier to short IBM or Exxon Mobil, where there are some long-term holders who would like to earn a little extra money lending you THEIR shares. But if ""everyone"" involved is busy buying or selling the stock, there won't be many people to lend it. That's not manipulation, that's just the market. Another reason may be a large ""short"" interest. That is many OTHERS have shorted it before you. That's dangerous for you, because if some lenders want to pull their shares off the market, they can cause a ""short squeeze"" that will drive the price much higher.  And stock shortages can be orchestrated by the company or large investors to artificially drive the price higher. Unless you have a lot of experience, don't try shorting small cap stocks. Try to gain some experience with large caps like IBM or Exxon Mobil first. Those are stocks that people at least can't ""play games"" with. YOu will win or lose based on the market itself."


"I think the ""right"" way to approach this is for your personal books and your business's books to be completely separate. You would need to really think of them as separate things, such that rather than being disappointed that there's no ""cross transactions"" between files, you think of it as ""In my personal account I invested in a new business like any other investment"" with a transfer from your personal account to a Stock or other investment account in your company, and ""This business received some additional capital"" which one handles with a transfer (probably from Equity) to its checking account or the like. Yes, you don't get the built-in checks that you entered the same dollar amount in each, but (1) you need to reconcile your books against reality anyway occasionally, so errors should get caught, and (2) the transactions really are separate things from each entity's perspective. The main way to ""hack it"" would be to have separate top-level placeholder accounts for the business's Equity, Income, Expenses, and Assets/Liabilities. That is, your top-level accounts would be ""Personal Equity"", ""Business Equity"", ""Personal Income"", ""Business Income"", and so on. You can combine Assets and Liabilities within a single top-level account if you want, which may help you with that ""outlook of my business value"" you're looking for. (In fact, in my personal books, I have in the ""Current Assets"" account both normal things like my Checking account, but also my credit cards, because once I spend the money on my credit card I want to think of the money as being gone, since it is. Obviously this isn't ""standard accounting"" in any way, but it works well for what I use it for.) You could also just have within each ""normal"" top-level placeholder account, a placeholder account for both ""Personal"" and ""My Business"", to at least have a consistent structure. Depending on how your business is getting taxed in your jurisdiction, this may even be closer to how your taxing authorities treat things (if, for instance, the business income all goes on your personal tax return, but on a separate form). Regardless of how you set up the accounts, you can then create reports and filter them to include just that set of business accounts. I can see how just looking at the account list and transaction registers can be useful for many things, but the reporting does let you look at everything you need and handles much better when you want to look through a filter to just part of your financial picture. Once you set up the reporting (and you can report on lists of account balances, as well as transaction lists, and lots of other things), you can save them as Custom Reports, and then open them up whenever you want. You can even just leave a report tab (or several) open, and switch to it (refreshing it if needed) just like you might switch to the main Account List tab. I suspect once you got it set up and tried it for a while you'd find it quite satisfactory."


Not a good idea.  When you form a partnership with someone that creates a legal connection between you two.  What if he racks up $50,000 on the company credit card?  Do you want to be responsible for that debt?   A better way to do this would be to either charge your clients $X for IT work and pay him half of $X which would get you the same 50% or simply have him agree to share 50% of any income he gets from people referred by you.   This can be done in a simple contract or agreement without force you both into a partnership.


this is absolutely correct.Take the very simplest of fast food - Subway - and try to automate it.  You will get some sort of 3D printer type device.  It makes no sense.. there is no way it can work. There is no way you can deliver made-to-order food with a computer right now, not even close.   Also, ask yourself, do you want a robot-made pizza in an era of farm-to-table organic free-range etc?


Sure, people should express dissent, but thoughtful dissent. It only takes a second to think about why your example doesn't hold water. By posting an alarmist unthoughtful comment, you cheapen the discussion and add no value, only noise. It's good to speak up, but think beforehand.


http://www.pacificrubiales.com/investor-relations/reports.html does have financial reports on their website for the example you list.  There is the potential for some data to not be easily imported into a format that Yahoo! Finance uses would be my guess for why some data may be missing though an alternative explanation for some companies would be that they may not have been around for a long enough time period to report this information,e.g. if the company is a spin-off of an existing company.


"As you know, the market is in turmoil today. At this moment, 11:45 am, the S&P is down 2.3%, 45 points. But, premarket, it was down 100 points.  Now, premarket, I heard Jim Cramer say, ""today is not the day to use market orders."" Yes, on Mad Money, he seems a bit eccentric, but he does offer some wise advice at times.  In my opinion, your stock had some people that did just that. A market order. And, regardless of the fundamentals of this company, buyers had no orders to buy. Except a couple wise guys (in both senses) that put in buys at crazy prices. And they filled. With an Apple, trading around $100, the book probably has millions of shares on order with a buy at $80 or higher. Just an example. I'd bet there were a number of stocks that had the profile of yours, i.e. a chart reflecting trades similar to a flash crash. There are some traders smiling ear to ear, and some crying in their beer.     (Note - I use the phrase ""in my opinion."" This is the only explanation I can imagine. Occam's Razor.)"


I was reading recently that of the top 10 closed-end funds with the highest premium to NAV like half of them were Pimco's. I also think its interesting and funny how Gross and El-Arian are basically espousing completely opposed viewpoints now when they go on shows.


As far as I know (I am not a tax professional or IFA!) there would be no tax implications or other burden on the recipient of the loan under UK law, even if it ended up being treated as a gift rather than a loan. There are no clauses about money being in the account for 90 days in UK housing transactions, however under money laundering rules your brother's solicitor might need sight of loan agreements to verify where the funds came from (I think it would depend on whether you paid the money to your brother direct, in which case there would be no problem, or if you paid it direct to the solicitor for the purchase). What Canadian law might say about capital gains / inheritance tax (if the Canadian IRS did decide the loan counted as a gift) I have no idea.


Well underwater means their property has lost value, so by definition its not their fault.   Neocons blame people who sign up for payments they cant afford which really is their own fault if they just didn't take into account the full term of their loan and just paid attention to the first months payment.


Situationally, deregulating things is shown to help. Uber broke the artificial markets for Taxis and both consumers and employees have benefitted. The reason why certain industries are regulated vary.   1. To foster and grow the industry.  2. To prevent monopolies from forming 3. For safety and consumer protection.   If we heavily deregulated the healthcare industry, prices would definitely fall but malpractice would rise.   On the otherhand, if we deregulated the insurance industry and broke the regional monopolies that exist, it would help the consumer without changing much (besides the profitability of insurance companies).   Its very situational.


"Nope, it's just relevant to point out that no additional credentials are required when some dipshit claims that the requirements for a job are somehow much higher than they actually are. My brother got a job at Boeing 2 or 3 years after leaving high school. He never attended college, he had no additional certs (welding, machinist, etc). Same goes for all the other people I know that are working at Boeing, except they have varying levels of college education (with the commonality that none of them actually have even a 2 year degree completed). You are just completely full of shit.  But hey, don't take it from me. Take it from the requirements section of their job postings:  http://jobs-boeing.com/st-louis/entry-level/jobid5850922-maintenance-mechanic-jobs  I would love to know what possesses a person who clearly does not have the knowledge required for a conversation on a specific topic to enter it so passionately and to make such fraudulent claims. I mean, did you not do the 2 minutes of research necessary? Whatever the case, it sure makes statements like this more hilarious:  >You know what the problem is with guys that ""started using a headhunter immediately after junior year ended"" is? They think they know about things they have no idea about."


You would be surprised how amazed people are when you can quickly make a pivot table and summarize their data in 15 seconds.  Same reaction with vlookup.  Also VBA is somewhat clunky but can be used effectively to automate repetitive Excel tasks or for creating formulas, loops, etc. that would be difficult to produce in Excel cells.  These sort of Excel tricks are good to know and utilize because the majority of people do not understand/want to understand so you would be in a good position to help


"When you invest in an S&P500 index fund that is priced in USD, the only major risk you bear is the risk associated with the equity that comprises the index, since both the equities and the index fund are priced in USD. The fund in your question, however, is priced in EUR. For a fund like this to match the performance of the S&P500, which is priced in USD, as closely as possible, it needs to hedge against fluctuations in the EUR/USD exchange rate. If the fund simply converted EUR to USD then invested in an S&P500 index fund priced in USD, the EUR-priced fund may fail to match the USD-priced fund because of exchange rate fluctuations. Here is a simple example demonstrating why hedging is necessary. I assumed the current value of the USD-priced S&P500 index fund is 1,600 USD/share. The exchange rate is 1.3 USD/EUR. If you purchase one share of this index using EUR, you would pay 1230.77 EUR/share:  If the S&P500 increases 10% to 1760 USD/share and the exchange rate remains unchanged, the value of the your investment in the EUR fund also increases by 10% (both sides of the equation are multiplied by 1.1):  However, the currency risk comes into play when the EUR/USD exchange rate changes. Take the 10% increase in the price of the USD index occurring in tandem with an appreciation of the EUR to 1.4 USD/EUR:  Although the USD-priced index gained 10%, the appreciation of the EUR means that the EUR value of your investment is almost unchanged from the first equation. For investments priced in EUR that invest in securities priced in USD, the presence of this additional currency risk mandates the use of a hedge if the indexes are going to track. The fund you linked to uses swap contracts, which I discuss in detail below, to hedge against fluctuations in the EUR/USD exchange rate. Since these derivatives aren't free, the cost of the hedge is included in the expenses of the fund and may result in differences between the S&P500 Index and the S&P 500 Euro Hedged Index.  Also, it's important to realize that any time you invest in securities that are priced in a different currency than your own, you take on currency risk whether or not the investments aim to track indexes. This holds true even for securities that trade on an exchange in your local currency, like ADR's or GDR's. I wrote an answer that goes through a simple example in a similar fashion to the one above in that context, so you can read that for more information on currency risk in that context.  There are several ways to investors, be they institutional or individual, can hedge against currency risk. iShares offers an ETF that tracks the S&P500 Euro Hedged Index and uses a over-the-counter currency swap contract called a month forward FX contract to hedge against the associated currency risk. In these contracts, two parties agree to swap some amount of one currency for another amount of another currency, at some time in the future. This allows both parties to effectively lock in an exchange rate for a given time period (a month in the case of the iShares ETF) and therefore protect themselves against exchange rate fluctuations in that period.  There are other forms of currency swaps, equity swaps, etc. that could be used to hedge against currency risk. In general, two parties agree to swap one quantity, like a EUR cash flow, payments of a fixed interest rate, etc. for another quantity, like a USD cash flow, payments based on a floating interest rate, etc. In many cases these are over-the-counter transactions, there isn't necessarily a standardized definition.  For example, if the European manager of a fund that tracks the S&P500 Euro Hedged Index is holding euros and wants to lock in an effective exchange rate of 1.4 USD/EUR (above the current exchange rate), he may find another party that is holding USD and wants to lock in the respective exchange rate of 0.71 EUR/USD. The other party could be an American fund manager that manages a USD-price fund that tracks the FTSE. By swapping USD and EUR, both parties can, at a price, lock in their desired exchange rates.  I want to clear up something else in your question too. It's not correct that the ""S&P 500 is completely unrelated to the Euro."" Far from it. There are many cases in which the EUR/USD exchange rate and the level of the S&P500 index could be related. For example: Troublesome economic news in Europe could cause the euro to depreciate against the dollar as European investors flee to safety, e.g. invest in Treasury bills. However, this economic news could also cause US investors to feel that the global economy won't recover as soon as hoped, which could affect the S&P500.  If the euro appreciated against the dollar, for whatever reason, this could increase profits for US businesses that earn part of their profits in Europe. If a US company earns 1 million EUR and the exchange rate is 1.3 USD/EUR, the company earns 1.3 million USD. If the euro appreciates against the dollar to 1.4 USD/EUR in the next quarter and the company still earns 1 million EUR, they now earn 1.4 million USD. Even without additional sales, the US company earned a higher USD profit, which is reflected on their financial statements and could increase their share price (thus affecting the S&P500). Combining examples 1 and 2, if a US company earns some of its profits in Europe and a recession hits in the EU, two things could happen simultaneously. A) The company's sales decline as European consumers scale back their spending, and B) the euro depreciates against the dollar as European investors sell euros and invest in safer securities denominated in other currencies (USD or not). The company suffers a loss in profits both from decreased sales and the depreciation of the EUR.  There are many more factors that could lead to correlation between the euro and the S&P500, or more generally, the European and American economies. The balance of trade, investor and consumer confidence, exposure of banks in one region to sovereign debt in another, the spread of asset/mortgage-backed securities from US financial firms to European banks, companies, municipalities, etc. all play a role.  One example of this last point comes from this article, which includes an interesting line: Among the victims of America’s subprime crisis are eight municipalities in Norway, which lost a total of $125 million through subprime mortgage-related investments. Long story short, these municipalities had mortgage-backed securities in their investment portfolios that were derived from, far down the line, subprime mortgages on US homes. I don't know the specific cities, but it really demonstrates how interconnected the world's economies are when an American family's payment on their subprime mortgage in, say, Chicago, can end up backing a derivative investment in the investment portfolio of, say, Hammerfest, Norway."


"Why does it have to be a long shot?  We're pulling in the better part of $300k/yr on TIME TRACKING. Long shot? Methinks not. If you educate yourself about what people pay for, there's no reason it has to be a ""long shot"" to begin with.  I *hate* wasting my time for no reward."


If the only jobs you have around you are manual labor, dead-end employment where there are no skills to be garnered, if you have other options you will take them.   Your 55 year old former mill worker that is broke isn't going to retrain himself, nor does he have the money to move to an area with higher wages. At that point, going on disability until you get SS is probably your best bet. You see this play out in tons of small towns around the country


Your prior earnings have absolutely no bearing on the taxes due on 401k disbursements.  Your 401k disbursements are considered income in the tax year in which they are received; whether or not you earn or otherwise acquire additional income.  There's no telling what tax brackets and rates will look like that far in the future.  But, if your total income including your 401k disbursements is $200,000 you'll likely owe more taxes than if your total was $30,000 including disbursements. I will say though, if you could choose to make $200,000 per year or $30,000 per year with all other factors being equal you choose $200,000 every time.  Even if you pay more in taxes, you will have more net income. Now, some pension plans will take in to account either your last year's income, or an average of some number of years income in determining your benefit amount.  That's a whole different discussion and will be specific to your pension plan.


No.   The US manufactures more goods than any other country, and only China is close. However, instead of making clothes, the US makes higher value items, like medical equipment. The impression that manufacturing is dead in the US is because of this, and because manufacturing has become highly automated, so there are far fewer manufacturing jobs than there were in the past.


The car has value, but it is still a depreciating asset. You're paying far more to rent a space to park the car than you are to own and drive it if you look beyond the initial term of your loan. You could buy a space to keep the car, but at $225,000 for a permanent spot, renting is a much better deal. Would you travel home as frequently if you didn't have the fixed cost of a parking space rental giving you incentive to make the most of the car since you're paying for it either way? My additional question is whether the freedom to travel home on a whim is worth more than the financial freedom you would gain by investing the money for the long term. I don't think it's irresponsible if the short term freedom contributes significantly to your sense of well-being, but even if it isn't entirely sunk cost, the majority of it is.  The only way you can really know whether it's worth it to you would be to park the car at home for a month or two to see if you can live without it. Fortunately you don't lose much money in this experiment, since you're only paying 1.9% interest.


No one is protesting BK either.   I used to work at BK. The customers are:  Groups of teenage boys People with demanding, manual labor jobs (probably the only way to get enough calories for that kind of work -- none of them were fat) Families with little or no English, or where the kids speak English and order for the parents. Obese people  I don't really see how any substantial segment of any of these people is really going to care about protesting BK's tax stuff, or even be aware of it.


Checks are on the way out. The liability for even sending someone a check is worrying. Banks really do not look at these things very closely before cashing them, it's insane. If you're defrauded you will usually get restitution but it can take a long time to get them to pay up.


Smallest risk of default would depend on where Alice and Bob live I suppose, but lets assume they are in a lower yielding nation where default is not a big concern.  Remember for instance that Greece was a lower yielding nation at one point and that the US has defaulted before. Let's start with Bob because he is easier to analyze.  Yield curves inversions generally pre-date recessions which is generally not so good for Bob as rates tend to drop during recessions and he will be at the short end of the curve so his bonds will be less sensitive.  However, he will generally get higher yields in good times to make up for this, but these higher yields come with a price in that he is generally much more sensitive to yield changes and can get much larger swings in portfolio value. First off as JB mentioned Alice would likely own inflation-linked (IL) bonds.  Which behave fairly differently from Bob's bonds. However, to keep this simple lets say they live in a place without IL bonds or IL bonds are not a consideration.  Then generally Alice has lower yielding bonds in good times but may do very well when the fed steps in during a crisis. So, who wins in the long run?  Likely Christi who owns a mix of a broad index of stocks and bonds in a risk mix where she wouldn't have to sell in downturns.  Especially, as Christi wouldn't have to pay the trading costs of moving her whole portfolio between long and short bonds.  Between Bob and Alice however Bob would likely win in the long run as the markets generally reward risk taking in the long run.  Still inflation (even without the IL bonds) and general rate trends (long-term rates are historically low right now) could have Bob losing for uncomfortably long periods.


"And that's a fine thing to say. It's fine to say he likely had some advantages that afforded him a greater chance of 'making it' than most people. But that is by and large not the tone of the comments in not only this thread but Reddit as a whole. The comment I replied to, and the tone of the others, holds the sentiment of ""he was born to a wealthy family, therefore he got this job without any effort on his part and there is nothing any of us could ever do to achieve that"". Which is lazy and total bullshit."


The 'appropriate' amount of cash/bonds to hold will be largely a matter of opinion, but here are the general reasons why having at least some is a good idea: Cash is very liquid, and bonds are often mostly liquid. This means you can access them very quickly, without taking on losses. To get the most liquidity out of your bonds, you can do what is called 'laddering'. This means that you take out different bond amounts with different maturity dates, and periodically renew them on a schedule, so that you always have some bonds maturing, which you can access without paying an interest penalty. You can look this term up online for more details. Cash and bonds are low risk. If you have absolutely no low-risk assets, then in the event of, say, a market crash, you may have no savings to fall back on. By owning some bonds, and some equities, you are able to earn a modest return, without being too risky. However, note that some bonds are just as risky as equities - any bond which pays an abnormally high interest rate does so because the entity backing the repayment (government, company, whomever) is thought to not be guaranteed to be able to do so. The 25% figure given by your author is his opinion on the appropriate mix of cash/bonds to equities, but there are many views on the matter. Consider that any 'rule of thumb' in personal finance should be for general consideration only.


Possibly living beyond her means but I assume that was the business gross and 300K in Utah is not that great. I have no idea what the margin is in the plant nursery business or how many employee's she had but I bet her personal income was closer to 100K. Once people stopped buying plants to fix up their homes to flip it was all over for her I'm sure.   The bigger problem is that this is playing out for millions of other people that relied on housing for an income from real estate sales people, loan brokers, builders, construction workers simply everything downstream of housing has been hit hard and many many people are in this same boat or soon will be.   The really bad thing is there is no quick fix for all these people as housing is not coming back for years if not decades. So basically we have a whole segment of the economy that has been decimated and these people have no where to turn. It's not going to be pretty any way you look at it.


>Think about charging cables on your phone. Is there one kind? No. No one can agree on the standard.   This is a bad example. There are a couple of different standards for phone charger cables, most use micro USB, Apple phones use lightning. Simple.  >If you are ok with 1 chip, why not 3? Why not 5?   There are a few different standards for RFID/NFC cards, the implantable chips are compatible with most of them.  Many people do have more than one implant, it's quite common for people to implant one in each hand.  >Do some of them track your location? Maybe?  It depends what you mean by 'track your location'. There is no way to implant a chip inside a person that will let you remotely tell where they are like a GPS tracking device.  They let you track someones location the same way any RFID door entry card does. Eg: Employee #372 entered lab 6F at 13:04.


Index funds are good for diversifying risk. For people who don't have a large sum of money to invest, holding all the different types of stocks in the index is both very expensive and not practical because you incur too many transaction costs. For an index funds, the main advantages are that costs are pooled, and investors can invest a smaller amount that they would if they bought all the different stocks individually. Naturally, if you wanted to figure out the percentage composition of the index and invest directly it would be possible, albeit tedious.


This might not be the right subreddit for this discussion, but what reason was there to buy Nintendo besides fanboyism?  They've had two solid years of poor performance and execution; and I don't think anyone would expect a pickup unless the Wii-U turns out to be a spectacular hit.


"> Put a touch-based Windows 7 OS on Surface and I believe you'd see an instant jump in sales.  A big part of windows 8 is just that.  The windows RT devices lacked the ""desktop"" part, which is basically windows 7."


If you don't like the cartel extorting you, you should just leave.  So cartels are moral, right?  A: I shouldn't have to leave just because thugs say they run land. They don't own the land I'm on, private persons do. Those people should be the ones saying whether or not I can be there.  B: I actually can't leave for free. The US government dictates the terms under which I can leave. Currently, it would cost me some 12k to repudiate my citizenship. Oh, and the government can and does change those terms *at any time* without me having the ability to asset or dissent. How is it voluntary if it's entirely unilateral?


He literally wrote a 1500 handbook on trusts and was a trust counsel at a huge bank for a long time so I definitely don't doubt his words. In one month I've learned what feels like an absolutely insane and mind blowing amount. I'll ask him after next class though to clarify what he meant. But he was also for sure talking about commercial purposes like mutual funds and stuff too.   Edit: Im only posting here because a lot of stuff he says goes over my head as I am still a student and learning about trusts lol


Food to your door is a problem nobody is asking to solve.   Food delivery has limited success for luxury or novelty food items (e.g., fruit baskets, steaks, coffee, snack food, etc.), but for general eating/family eating, it's not an everyday food shopping need.   I can already buy rice, cereal, pasta, etc. on Amazon and their prices are usually higher than what I can buy locally.   And that comparison is name brand products.  The price difference is laughable when it comes to store brands.  Remember when Amazon Diaper products were supposed to put Pampers and Huggies out of business.   Oh yeah.  Look where that got them...


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"The McDonald's affair was plain and simple petty politics, which Russian politics is full of. Only 4 branches were closed all in center Moscow, including the symbolic 1st and largest in Europe McD. This was a populist (and stupid) move intended to ""flip the bird"" at ""American Imperialism"" and ""avenge"" for their exit from the Crimean penninsual.  Economically speaking McDs hire over 35k people, besides being supplied almost exclusively by domestic (Russian) food manufacturers. Even if Russian unemployment rates are at record low (4.9%), 35k posts being lost overnight, besides suppliers and 3rd party service providers, the impact will be colossal.  >""About time they closed !"" - Gladly said 28-year-old Anton, just a few seconds before was trying in vain to open the door of the restaurant - ""If due to sanctions, even better then !""  >""Were you not about to go in ?""  >""No! That is - yes ... But just so I could chat with my friends"" - Anton embarrassed. And switched to friend:  >""Let's go to KFC""  [Food isn't the most important at McDonald's](http://www.kp.ru/daily/26271/3149400/) - This is a Russian tabloid (Komsamolskiy Pravda) but the idiosyncracy is very plausible."


Bloody Moron along with the mighty US military can't control more than 20% of his own country, wants to blame Pakistan.  Some body should ask this sock puppet if the Taliban control over 40% of Afghanistan, why the fuck do they need to go to Pakistan?


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This is very interesting, and I am fully in support of the US moving to a single-payer system such as we have here in the UK, but I am a little confused. US costs are markedly higher than the second most expensive country, that's clear. However, by my reading of the data presented, it seems as though no distinction is made between the government paying for health care, and the individual paying for health care. Much of that 1.4t is coming out of the individual's pocket, rather than the insurance company's, and that for me is the crux of the whole issue.