I can't believe no one has mentioned Detroit yet!   Amazon already pulls a huge percentage of their MBA hires from 40 miles away at the University of Michigan. The state is filled with good schools pumping out smart, qualified STEM, engineering, and computer science majors. We're also surrounded by great schools in Chicago and Pennsylvania.   Detroit has an exploding urban core but also lots of space for new development right downtown. It has a quickly diversifying economy, though the auto industry is still a significant player which is assisting with Detroit's thriving tech sector and driving autonomous vehicle research and development.  Detroit is 20 minutes away from Canada (across a bridge or through a tunnel - and a second bridge is in the process of being built). Depending on how the US emigration policy continues, having access to an international workforce via Canada at a US HQ could be a game changer.  There is a lot that Detroit can offer that is unique to this city.


> my only argument is that the degree alone doesn't define competence.  Of course! But degrees determine interests.  And it seems that you are trying extremely hard to not understand what I said: if someone has degrees in music and has proven skill and knowledge in security, I will hire them.  But not as Chief Information Security Officer. For this, you need someone who took many specialized training and got their end dirty working, designing, planning and setting security systems.  So we BOTH agree, mainly based on the stupid things that Susan said, that Susan was not qualified for her job.  > I also never agreed that she got the job due to connections:   So give me a possible way how Susan got her job.  > HR ...  Contractors, on the other hand, perfectly fine.  OMG! Contractor, or temps, or outsourcing is not fine, especially by the HR department, because it all means trying to save money on workers, not giving any benefits or security and shoddy work.  Contractors, except IT, are paid less than permanent employees.  All I can wish for you that you will work as a Contractor all your life and you will see how great it is yourself.


"Is he affiliated with the company charging this fee? If so, 1% is great. For him. You are correct, this is way too high. Whatever tax benefit this account provides is negated over a sufficiently long period of time. you need a different plan, and perhaps, a different friend. I see the ISA is similar to the US Roth account. Post tax money deposited, but growth and withdrawals tax free. (Someone correct, if I mis-read this). Consider - You deposit £10,000. 7.2% growth over 10 years and you'd have £20,000. Not quite, since 1% is taken each year, you have £18,250.  Here's what's crazy. When you realize you lost £1750 to fees, it's really 17.5% of the £10,000 your account would have grown absent those fees. In the US, our long term capital gain rate is 15%, so the fees after 10 years more than wipe out the benefit.  We are not supposed to recommend investments here, but it's safe to say there are ETFs (baskets of stocks reflecting an index, but trading like an individual stock) that have fees less than .1%.  The UK tag is appreciated, but your concern regarding fees is universal. Sorry for the long lecture, but ""1%, bad."""


>UPDATE II: Thanks to @world_first for spotting that the Drachma has now *been taken **of** Bloomberg*.  I see this on reddit on every comment page. Often, multiple times. Is this some new non-standard version of English? Or does the author not even know what he's writing?


I have no problem with H1-Bs, though if prefer the government open immigration up more generally all these folks wouldn't have to essentially be indentured servants. That said, having worked for years as a consultant doing tech-related projects at many of the world's/America's largest corporations, they are all using H1-B tech workers as cheap labor. This isn't being done in small pockets here and there. It is on a massive scale. In some companies, there are probably 5x more H1-B tech workers than there are citizens and permanent residents. These H1-B workers don't have any skills that are impossible to find otherwise (in fact, much of the time they are lower skilled). They are simply cheaper.


The fact that your credit card has seen the payment is strong evidence that the transaction did in fact take place.  But it's not unusual for there to be a delay of one or two business days before transactions show up in your online banking records.  Saturday and Sunday are not business days.   I bet you will see it on Monday.  If it's not there by Tuesday, you could call the bank.


What you have to remember is you are buying a piece of the company. Think of it in terms of buying a business. Just like a business, you need to decide how long you are willing to wait to get paid back for your investment.  Imagine you were trying to sell your lemonade stand. This year your earnings will be $100, next year will be $110, the year after that $120 and so on.  Would you be willing to sell it for $100?


Gold and Silver have gone up massively as the dollar has devalued.   Roosevelt actually did confiscate gold, you were required to sell it to the federal Reserve.   I would stay away from nusimatics or other overpriced vehicles for gold but the underlying statements are true.


> apps that listen to you speak and then you see ads  FYI, this has never been verified by anyone.   Here's an article: http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-listens-2015-02/  The rumor got started on reddit, what many of these people probably didn't realize is that they were simply the victim of high-end marketing.   The capability technically exists, but it wouldn't make any sense to run advertising based upon someone's conversation. You'd need some context to run that advertising. Plus, voice recognition isn't great for things like brand names.


If it's a legitimate cost of doing business, it's as deductible as any other cost of doing business. (Reminder: be careful about the distinctions between employee and contractor; the IRS gets annoyed if you don't handle this correctly.)


Overall, I strongly recommend cashing out your savings and becoming debt free today, and then never borrowing again except for a house. Advantages: Disadvantages: My wife and I paid of all of my grad school debt last year, and we’re paying off all of her grad school debt this year.  To pay that aggressively, we’ve had to learn to live on a much tighter budget.  But when we’re done, if we simply invest what we have been paying toward debt into the stock market, our nest egg will compound to over $10 million by the time we retire.  According to Dave Ramsey, when the Forbes 400 were polled, 75% of them cited becoming and staying debt-free as the single best way to build wealth: http://www.daveramsey.com/article/three-steps-to-wealth-building-for-young-adults/lifeandmoney_college/text4/


"The other answer has mentioned ""factual resident"", and you have raised the existence of a U.S./Canada tax treaty in your comment, and provided a link to a page about determining residency. I'd like to highlight part of the first link: You are a factual resident of Canada for tax purposes if you keep   significant residential ties in Canada while living or travelling   outside the country. The term factual resident means that, although you left Canada, you   are still considered to be a resident of Canada for income tax   purposes. Notes If you have established ties in a country that Canada has a tax treaty   with and you are considered to be a resident of that country, but you   are otherwise a factual resident of Canada, meaning you maintain   significant residential ties with Canada, you may be considered a   deemed non-resident of Canada for tax purposes. [...] I'll emphasize that ""considered to be a resident of Canada for income tax purposes"" means you do need to file Canadian income tax returns. The Notes section does indicate the potential treaty exemption that you mentioned, but it is only a potential exemption. Note the emphasis (theirs, not mine) on the word ""may"" in the last paragraph above. Please don't assume ""may"" is necessarily favorable with respect to your situation. The other side of the ""may"" coin is ""may not"". The Determining your residency status page you mentioned in your comment says this: If you want the Canada Revenue Agency's opinion on your residency   status, complete either Form NR74, Determination of Residency Status   (Entering Canada) or Form NR73, Determination of Residency Status   (Leaving Canada), whichever applies, and send it to the International   and Ottawa Tax Services Office. To get the most accurate opinion,   provide as many details as possible on your form. So, given your ties to Canada, I would suggest that until and unless you have obtained an opinion from the Canada Revenue Agency on your tax status, you would be making a potentially unsafe assumption if you yourself elect not to file your Canadian income tax returns based on your own determination. You could end up liable for penalties and interest if you don't file while you are outside of Canada. Tax residency in Canada is not a simple topic. For instances, let's have a look at S5-F1-C1, Determining an Individual’s Residence Status. It's a long page, but here's one interesting piece:  1.44 The Courts have stated that holders of a United States Permanent Residence Card (otherwise referred to as a Green Card) are   considered to be resident in the United States for purposes of   paragraph 1 of the Residence article of the Canada-U.S. Tax   Convention. For further information, see the Federal Court of Appeal's   comments in Allchin v R, 2004 FCA 206, 2004 DTC 6468.   [...] ... whereas you are in the U.S. on a TN visa, intended to be temporary. So you wouldn't be exempt just on the basis of your visa and the existence of the treaty. The CRA would look at other circumstances. Consider the ""Centre of vital interests test"": Centre of vital interests test [...] “If the individual has a permanent home in both Contracting States, it   is necessary to look at the facts in order to ascertain with which of   the two States his personal and economic relations are closer. Thus,   regard will be had to his family and social relations, his   occupations, his political, cultural or other activities, his place of   business, the place from which he administers his property, etc. The   circumstances must be examined as a whole, but it is nevertheless   obvious that considerations based on the personal acts of the   individual must receive special attention. If a person who has a home   in one State sets up a second in the other State while retaining the   first, the fact that he retains the first in the environment where he   has always lived, where he has worked, and where he has his family and   possessions, can, together with other elements, go to demonstrate that   he has retained his centre of vital interests in the first State.” [emphasis on last sentence is mine] Anyway, I'm acquainted with somebody who left Canada for a few years to work abroad. They assumed that living in the other country for that length of time (>2 years) meant they were non-resident here and so did not have to file. Unfortunately, upon returning to Canada, the CRA deemed them to have been resident all that time based on significant ties maintained, and they subsequently owed many thousands of dollars in back taxes, penalties, and interest. If it were me in a similar situation, I would err on the side of caution and continue to file Canadian income taxes until I got a determination I could count on from the people that make the rules."


Some credit card rewards programs will not give you rewards for balances paid off early. I have a Capitol One Platinum card, and once paid off the full balance; both the full amount due for the recently ended billing period, and the amount that had accrued for the current billing period. I never received any reward points for the additional amount. Though this sounds like it's paying even earlier than you're talking about.


">If we could provide medicine, food, clothing, shelter, and internet access to every person in the country, then it hardly matters how callous and Randian the employment market is.  We can already provide medicine, food, clothing, shelter and internet access to every person in the country, for your implied price of more-or-less free.  Our GDP per capita versus our prices is high enough that a basic income program and a universal health-care program could pretty much *solve* the fundamental economic problems of life (in the ""how do I not die on the street?"" sense).  Capitalism in the Randian sense *is what stops us from doing so*."


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2016/q3-4/profession) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot) ***** > A 2014 working paper by several German and Swiss researchers, &quot;Happiness of Economists,&quot; concluded on the basis of a large-scale survey that economists are &quot;Highly happy with life&quot;; moreover, those in North America are the happiest.  > If working as an economist is so much fun, why do they retire at all? Although mandatory retirement at age 70 was once nearly universal in universities, where most research economists are employed, Congress abolished mandatory retirement for faculty starting in 1994.  > Even if a retired economist no longer participates in the profession in any form - no research, no writing, no consulting, no advising students - he or she may well continue to be an economist.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6zjx0h/do_economists_ever_really_retire/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~208272 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*: **economist**^#1 **retirement**^#2 **retire**^#3 **economic**^#4 **work**^#5"


Good. A free press is not an excuse to blatantly lie and panick monger based on public irrationality and ignorance. PepsiCo et al. could/should take the lesson to heart with GMOs, stupid consumers and lying media companies should lead companies to stand up for their products, now cower and back down.


Millions of Americans are affected by this. Millions of Americans live in debt, through credit cards and other sources that depend on these scumbaggers. Yet, the media picks it up, due to necessity, and drops it faster than a wide receiver with no hands.


If you are in a position to have information that will impact the shares of a stock or index fund and you use that information for either personal gain or to mitigate the losses that you would have felt then it is insider trading.  Even if in the end your quiet period passes with little or no movement of the stocks in question.  It is the attempt to benefit from or the appearance of the attempt to benefit from inside information that creates the crime.  This is the reason for the quiet periods to attempt to shield the majority of the companies employees from the appearance of impropriety, as well as any actual improprieties. With an index you are running a double edged sword because anything that is likely to cause APPLE to drop 10% is likely to give a bump to Motorola, Google, and its competitors.  So you could end up in jail for Insider trading and lose your shirt on a poor decision to short a Tech  ETF on knowledge that will cause Apple to take a hit.  It is certainly going to be harder to find the trade but the SEC is good at looking around for activity that is inconsistent with normal trading patterns of individuals in a position to have knowledge with the type of market impact you are talking about.


Trump is two months away from saying that 9/11 was an inside job and that Clinton tried to use chem-trails on him.   He is a paranoid, deluded, sick man.   If we go to war because of this asshole, and millions die, Congress will have to be tried for treason for crimes against humanity for not stopping this and choosing to further their agendas instead.


I know it is ran by humans, that is why we elect them, after a campaign where get to know them a little bit better.   You're focused on one aspect of a government's task and ignore the rest.   Removing the government altogether wouldn't not solve the problem, probably the govt would be replaced by something else, very likely even worse.


Being a native app, it can basically do anything on your computer, be it reading documents and sending it to a server or participating in a botnet. The scope is huge and I don't think any individual can be expected to read the source code and audit it fully, but the hope is that enough interested parties will provide enough eyeballs looking through the code to spot any suspicious behavior.


Planned my grocery shopping better.  You can't just wake up on Saturday hungry go to the grocer and buy what looks good. Take the time to clip some coupons and more importantly make a shopping list.


Thank you for this. Very grounding advice. I'm about 30 years from retirement and I am indeed trying to time the market. Your advice was just what I needed. Thanks for telling me what I should have already known (stay calm and bugger on).   Also, a good night sleep and a run helped clear my head. But seriously, thx.


Indeed you are correct sir. But my response would be: does the customer/regulator not also have a model? And can a financial company exist without these two stakeholders explicit endorsement? Models always have assumptions: the key is figuring out what they are and why they should or shouldn't be made. I would argue that any investor sophisticated enough to be stooging around with leveraged ETFs, CDS index tranches, or illiquid long dated interest rate swaps better have a damn good reason to buy 'em...and if their model breaks is that the fault of the bank or the customer?


You haven't said why you think you will gain at $41, but the graph never lies. Take it one piece at a time: At $41, your stock will lose a big chunk of value.  Your short calls will expire.  Your puts will gain a bit of value.  The stock's loss outweighs the option gains.


You still haven't explained it.  I'm actually a theoretical physicist and many things (in fact, many more than in the financial world) can be done with pen and paper.  Also, I have a friend who works in risks management for a bank and the things he describes can't be done with pencil and paper. Everyone in his department uses either matlab or C. Not a single person uses spreadsheets. So unless you can give me a specific example of anything meaningful that in this day and age can be done with spreadsheets, you haven't contributed anything to a conversation that had nothing to do with you.


Can a company not bargain with a dying company for example and buy a   falling stock at lower than market value? Of course. If the shareholders agree to it. But why would they, if the market value is higher, agree to sell to someone who offers less? If there's a compelling reason - it can happen. It might happen during a hostile takeover, for example. In the case of buying the company for more than market value, are the   stocks bought for significantly more, or slightly more than the   current market value? Again, depends on how valuable the shareholders think the company is. If the shareholders think that the company has a potential which has not yet affected the stock price, they'll want a higher premium (and they'd think that, otherwise why would they hold the stock?). How much higher? Depends on the bargaining abilities of the sides.


"The article keeps quoting ""this study"" without linking it, but actively links to other studies which it labels ""left-leaning"" that argue different results.   I could just be blind though if anyone can spot it for me."


"> This is an idea that was actually put into place more than a 100 years ago, in 1896 and even before, when the first electric cars were introduced and they even built ""service stations"" for them so you can swap the batteries. [read it here]  > Even electric cars made by Tesla are nothing new.  > And recently, a company called ""Better Place"", in Israel, produced modern electric cars with automated and robotic service stations that will swap the batteries for them. Read about ""Better Place"".  > Bottom line: nothing new here for more than 100 years."


"Once upon a time (not all that long ago), British cheques used to say something like ""Pay to the order of ..,,,, or bearer the sum of ...,..""  (emphasis added) and could be cashed by anyone unless the cheque-writer drew two parallel lines in the upper left corner of the cheque. These lines converted the instrument into a crossed cheque which could only be deposited into a bank account of the payee; a bearer of the cheque could not walk into the bank and waltz out with the cash equivalent. Perhaps British banks no longer use this styling (Indian banks still do) but if that cheque for 60k is not a crossed cheque, it better be sent securely with lots of insurance. An uncrossed cheque is the same as cash since it can be cashed by anyone. That being said, I am with @mhoran_psprep in thinking that all this is just a scam with the OP (mug) being asked to send 3600 bucks to ""girlfriend""  (scammer) to cover the cost of sending the check with full insurance, and when the check arrives and is deposited by OP into his bank, it will turn out to be a dud, and ""girlfriend"" will be long gone.  The description of how the girlfriend signed a contract for 90k and received 60k of this amount upfront, but in the form of a check payable to boyfriend (!) OP reeks of scam; is this scenario realistic?  In the past, I  have received offers (usually from Nigeria) from ""women"" wanting to be my girlfriend, and I am sure that such offers will continue to come in the future...."


Yeah. If you set sales goals on an AI such that it cannot reach them legitimately, there are no morals holding it back.  IANAL, but iirc dodging culpability is one of the main reasons YouTube uses pure blackbox AI to do its DRM / brand management stuff.  This is why, seriously, I think we need to get moral philosophers involved in AI projects, so we can embed some ethics at the core.


Try downloading a finance app like yahoo finance. Follow a few stocks, read through the articles - look up terms you don’t understand. Search them on YouTube, Investopedia, - note book recommendations. Learn some economics as well.  Even if you’re not interested in trading, this should help you learn the language enough to get an idea of what’s out there - how money is thought of in different time periods, etc.  Finance can be very opaque when you first dip your feet in. You’ll find you only understand 75% - 25% of what you’re reading but that’s ok just keep looking things up. I guarantee your understanding of what “finance” means will slowly evolve as you keep learning.   Expect to spend maybe a few years to a lifetime figuring this stuff out.


"The short answer is that the exchange of the stock in exchange for the elimination of a debt is a taxable exchange, and gains or losses are possible for the stock investor as well as the bank.   The somewhat longer answer is best summarized as noting that banks don't usually accept stocks as collateral, mostly because stock values are volatile and most banks are not equipped to monitor the risk involved but it is very much part of the business of stock brokers.   In the USA, as a practical matter I only know of stock brokerages offering loans against stock as part of the standard services of a ""margin account"". You can get a margin account at any US stock broker. The stockholder can deposit their shares in the margin account and then borrow around 50% of the value, though that is a bit much to borrow and a lower amount would be safer from sudden demands for repayment in the form of margin calls. In a brokerage account I can not imagine a need to repay a margin loan if the stocks dividends plus capital appreciation rises in value faster than the margin loan rate creates interest charges...  Trouble begins as the stock value goes down.  When the value of the loan exceeds a certain percentage of the stock value, which can depend on the stock and the broker's policy but is also subject to federal rules like Regulation T, the broker can call in the loan and/or take initiative to sell the stock to repay the loan.   Notice that this may result in a capital gain or loss, depending on the investor's tax basis which is usually the original cost of the stock.  Of course, this sale affects the taxes of the investor irregardless of who gets the money."


"I'm not a tax professional, but as I understand it, you are not expected to commute from San Francisco to Boston.  :) If your employer has not provided you with an external office, then yes, you have very likely met the ""convenience of the employer"" test. However, to take the home office deduction, there are many requirements that have to be met. You can read more at the Nolo article Can You Deduct Your Home Office When You're an Employee? (Thanks, keshlam) The home office deduction has many nuances and is enough of an IRS red flag that you would be well-advised to talk to an accountant about it.  You need to be able to show that it is exclusively and necessarily used for your job. Another thing to remember: as an employee, the home office deduction, if you take it, will be deducted on Schedule A, line 21 (unreimbursed employee expenses), among other Miscellaneous Deductions.  Deductions in this section need to exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income before you can start to deduct.  So it will not be worth it to pursue the deduction if your income is too high, or your housing expenses are too low, or your office is too small compared to the rest of your house, or you don't itemize deductions."


If you don't have any voting rights then you don't have much say in the direction of the company.  Of course, if the majority of voting rights are held by 1 or 2 people/institutions then you probably don't have much say regardless. That said, 0.1% isn't a whole lot of a voice anyway.


I did this about 8 years ago with a buddy in Chicago for the reasons specified in the original post.  As other posters have suggested, we discussed  a lot of the same questions listed above, figured out the possible scenarios, and then had a lawyer draw up a contract.  We bought a 3 bedroom house, and rented out the 3rd bedroom.  Overall, it was a great experience.  We both built equity while having a renter pay a third of the mortgage.  Plus the property tax and interest on the loan were tax deductible.  Compared with renting an apartment, it made us  a lot more money.  In the end, we sold the house, and split the profits.  Assuming you have the personalities to make it work, I say go for it.


"The term ""tailwinds"" describes some condition or situation that will help move growth higher. For example, falling gas prices will help a delivery company be more profitable. Lower gas prices is said to be a tailwind for the freight services industry. ""Headwinds"" are just the opposite. Its a situation what will make growth more difficult. For example, if the price of beef goes much higher, McDonald's is facing headwinds. It's a nautical term. If the wind is at your back (tailwind), that will help you move forward more quickly. If you are moving into a headwind, that will only make progress more difficult."


Every 401(k) has managers to make the stock choices.  They all have different rates.   You want to see that fidelity or Vangard is handling your 401(k).(and I am sure others)   If you have a mega bank managing your funds or an insurance company odds are you are paying way to high management fees. So find out, the management fees should be available should be less than 1%.  They can get as high as 2%...Ouch


I know this isn't the topic at hand, but this kind of threat is exactly why net neutrality is so important. Imagine if the story continued thusly:  > In response, Amazon has contacted all of the major American ISPs and offered to pay them several million dollars to block or significantly throttle all traffic to www.walmart.com


Several years ago a study found that US healthcare was so bad that a very large number of people died unnecessarily who would not have died if they were in one of the more advanced countries.  [New Study: U.S. Ranks Last Among High-Income Nations on Preventable Deaths, Lagging Behind as Others Improve More Rapidly](http://www.commonwealthfund.org/News/News-Releases/2011/Sep/US-Ranks-Last-on-Preventable-Deaths.aspx)


That sounds pretty fishy to me.  I'm an IT professional - I can determine more about him if I have full access to the email headers.  Just give me your email and your password so I can log in and check the email he's using to contact you.


Remember both sides of the isle are playing the American public against each other. Don't let them win! Most Americans want the same things.   Random Quote:  *I used to say that Politics is the second oldest profession [prostitution being the oldest], but I have come to realize that it bears a gross similarity to the first.* - **Ronald Reagan**


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From my own personal experience, you cannot trade spreads in RRSP or TFSA accounts in Canada. You can only buy options (buy a call or buy a put) or you can sell calls against your stock (covered call selling). You will not be able to sell naked options, or trade any type of spread or combo (calendars, condors, etc). I am not sure why these are the rules, but they are at least where I trade those accounts.


A wealth tax would help a lot more. Also, equalizing the rate on earned and unearned income would help.  Combine the two and there would be no revenue problem.  Next, dismantle the standing army. Problem solved. We've created a problem with a very easy solution. We're dumb.


"Despite Buffett's nearly perfect consistent advice over the past few decades, they don't reflect his earliest days.  His modern philosophy seemed to solidify in the 1970s. You can see that Buffett's earliest days grew faster, at 29.5 % for those partners willing to take on leverage with Buffett, than the last half century, at 19.7%. Not only is Buffett limited by size, as its quite difficult to squeeze one half trillion USD into sub-billion USD investments, but the economy thus market is far different than it was before the 1980s.  He would have to acquire at least 500 billion USD companies outright, and there simply aren't that many available that satisfy all of his modern conditions. The market is much different now than it was when he first started at Graham-Newman because before the 1960s, the economy thus market would collapse and rebound about every few years.  This sort of variance can actually help a value investor because a true value investor will abandon investments when valuations are high and go all in when valuations are low.  The most extreme example was when he tried to as quietly as possible buy up an insurance company selling for something like a P/E of 1 during one of the collapses.  These kinds of opportunities are seldom available anymore, not even during the 2009 collapse. As he became larger, those investments became off limits because it simply wasn't worth his time to find such a high returner if it's only a bare fraction of his wealth.  Also, he started to deviate from Benjamin Graham's methods and started to incorporate Philip Fisher's. By the 1970s, his investment philosophy was more or less cemented.  He tried to balance Graham's avarice for price with Fisher's for value. All of the commentary that special tax dodges or cheap financing are central to his returns are false.  They contributed, but they are ancillary. As one can see by comparing the limited vs general partners, leverage helps enormously, but this is still a tangent. Buffett has undoubtedly built his wealth from the nature of his investments.  The exact blueprint can be constructed by reading every word he has published and any quotes he has not disavowed.  Simply, he buys the highest quality companies in terms of risk-adjusted growth at the best available prices.  Quantitatively, it is a simple strategy to replicate.  NFLX was selling very cheaply during the mid-2000s, WDC sells frequently at low valuations, up and coming retailers frequently sell at low valuations, etc. The key to Buffett's method is emotional control and removing the mental block that price equals value; price is cost, value is revenue, and that concept is the hardest for most to imbibe.  Quoting from the first link: One sidelight here: it is extraordinary to me that the idea of buying dollar bills for 40 cents takes immediately to people or it doesn't take at all. It's like an inoculation. If it doesn't grab a person right away, I find that you can talk to him for years and show him records, and it doesn't make any difference. They just don't seem able to grasp the concept, simple as it is. A fellow like Rick Guerin, who had no formal education in business, understands immediately the value approach to investing and he's applying it five minutes later. I've never seen anyone who became a gradual convert over a ten-year period to this approach. It doesn't seem to be a matter of IQ or academic training. It's instant recognition, or it is nothing. and I'm convinced that there is much inefficiency in the market. These Graham-and-Doddsville investors have successfully exploited gaps between price and value. When the price of a stock can be influenced by a ""herd"" on Wall Street with prices set at the margin by the most emotional person, or the greediest person, or the most depressed person, it is hard to argue that the market always prices rationally. In fact, market prices are frequently nonsensical. and finally  Success in investing doesn’t correlate with I.Q. once you’re above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing. There is almost no information on any who has helped Buffett internally or even managed Berkshire's investments aside from Louis Simpson. It is unlikely that Buffett has allowed anyone to manage much of Berkshire's investments considering the consistent stream of commentary from him claiming that he nearly does nothing except read annual reports all day to the extent that he may have neglected his family to some degree and that listening to others will more likely hurt performance than help with the most striking example being his father's recommendation that he not open a hedge fund after retiring from Graham-Newman because he believed the market was topping, and he absolutely idolized his father."


Fundamentally these are my opinions I am expressing. Even though I try to remain as factual as possible, and have significantly modified my opinion over the years as a result of apparently factual information, it's still technically just opinion.  > My view is not so much that labour and finance capital returns need to be balanced (although that is probably a great thing to aim for), but that creation of wealth/capital needs to be intrinsically linked with the creation of real value.  By the way, when I say capital it's not generally just finance capital, but all operational capital goods. Which includes factories and all means of production. A certain amount of financing is needed to keep it operational, and more is needed to increase the means of production to grow overall wealth.  Have you ever heard of the [Bowley's law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowley%27s_law)? Basically you can't really push this ratio very far. If consumer demand dries up then production will get cut back to meat demand. Overproduction of stuff they can't sell is not what they are in business for. Likewise, is demand exceeds the capacity of production to keep up it pushes inflation, which drives up cost to reduce demand. So this ratio remains very nearly a constant. Even though this ratio was at historic highs in the 1970s, and historic lows today.  What happens when you artificially dry up labor returns, through excessive supply side policies, is that demand for production falls. Hence production is cut back to meet that demand. This of course reduces employment and increases job competition, which puts more downward on wages exacerbating the situation. Only once labor cost fall low enough it effectively subsidizes inefficient production methods which limits the falling wages at a reduced overall productivity. Note that this is under present circumstances, not those of the 1970s. This adaptive matching between production and demand insures that the Bowley ratio is never too far off of its historical averages, even if productivity is driven well below its potential.  More or less the same effect occurs for the opposite reason if capital return ratios are too low. Though with opposite effects on the inflation rate and such. When consumer demand is high enough capital will pay whatever labor cost is required to meet that demand, so long as it remains profitable enough, i.e., they get a reasonable ratio of the market return. Consumer demand with sufficient capital profit margins is what drives full employment, not the sheer volume of capital returns as present policies essentially assume. Yet you can't have a broad based consumer demand, to drive employment, without sufficient labor returns, as those labor returns is what finances that demand needed to drive employment.  So not only does labour and capital returns need to be balanced. Economics does NOT allow it to be unbalanced, at least for long. Even if balancing requires the economy to shrink, productivity to fall, etc., that is exactly what it will do to remain balanced. No choice given, no matter how draconian the regulations to force it. This is true under purely agrarian economies of the past, pure communism, and even ecology. This is why I am a capitalist, because nature gives me no choice. But acceptance of that fact does not require me to have an ounce of tolerance for cronyism.  The only thing we can do is not push this balance in either direction to destructive levels. Because destruction is what will happen for the balance to remain. Because so much of our productive capacity has been in productivity gains since the 1990s, and wages and demand have as yet not matched these productivity gains, we have a huge latent wealth capacity that continues to grow as we fail to take advantage of it. So far our supply side policies haven't so much destroyed wealth and productivity. Rather it has prevented us from seeing the potential gains from the latent productivity growth from technologies over the few decades.  ---  The last part you mention about wealth/capital needing to be intrinsically linked with the creation of real value. You are absolute 100% entirely correct. Perhaps even more than you know. Ever heard of planned obsolescence, or [The Light Bulb Conspiracy](http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/light-bulb-conspiracy/)? That link is a documentary on the issue that will make you mad. We could almost certainly pay a flat 90% tax rate on everything and still not come close to what this issue cost us. That's not the only means this issue imposes cost, but it is extreme.   Of course just because an appliance still works doesn't mean people will not replace it with newer better models. But the trash pile insures there is a much more limited secondary market for poorer people. Consumption debt cost is also a far bigger issue than people recognize. Debt to finance capital goods for production is fine, as this feeds productivity and wealth in a manner that sustains itself even as the debt is paid. Consumption debt is an entirely different beast. Creating a significant section of the population that feeds on peoples income without producing a thing. Only to let allow people to consume income they haven't earned yet.  This generally falls under the category of rent seeking behavior. Yeah, the lack real value creation turns my stomach. That people will knowingly spend money on temporary non-essential novelties and such is all fine and dandy, but underhandedly renting our base appliances for a certain number of uses is outrageous in my book.


"I found this great resource at MarketWatch.com - a listing on online games that help parents teach kids about saving and finance, set up by age group. Here's an example of some of the content: For children six to nine: www.fleetkids.com, sponsored by the Fleet Bank, has great games -- like ""Buy lo, Sell hi"" and ""Chunka Change"" -- that teach kids about spending and saving. Kids can compete for prizes such as computers and backpacks for their schools."


Article was about insurers not liking the uncertainty. Some insurers want Obamacare repealed, some of them want it to stay. But they all don't want to political climate of uncertainty. A situation where people wouldn't be mandated to buy insurance because they don't fear the IRS actually requiring them, but where the actual regulations haven't been changed yet is a nightmare for insurers.


I still don't understand this, you have an option between two cars, they are exactly the same except for one is cheaper and has less battery capacity, that means the company who built it is making less money on the cheaper one, and you have the choice between the two cars. You could very easily just buy the more expensive one if you have the money then, or you can afford it now until you have the money later, always your choice. If you don't like it, buy the more-expensive bigger battery, not the cheaper car that costs the same net price after the upgrade. What's wrong with that?


In the question you cited, I assumed immediate exercise, that is why you understood that I was talking about 30 days after grant. I actually mentioned that assumption in the answer. Sec. 83(b) doesn't apply to options, because options are not assets per se. It only applies to restricted stocks. So the 30 days start counting from the time you get the restricted stock, which is when you early-exercise. As to the AMT, the ISO spread will be considered AMT income in the year of the exercise, if you file the 83(b). For NQSO it is ordinary income. That's the whole point of the election. You can find more detailed explanation on this website.


"Ah, I just read a fascinating comparison between *gambling, investing, and trading* on either /r/foodforthought, /r/depthhub or maybe /r/truereddit. It reminded me a lot of the ""investors"" in Trump's projects.   My take on it is anyone putting money into one of his projects does so with the awareness of his track record, and is simply playing the game at that level. If they somehow haven't protected themselves against the possible loss of their ""investment"", that would be as silly as failing to carry health/homeowner/vehicle insurance.   One obvious response is to sue, alleging that Trump is evil, and that he intentionally stole money from his hapless investors. Finance at that level is a strategy game. He happens to be a skilled player, and especially adapt at extracting himself from seemingly losing positions. Personally, I wouldn't play at his table."


All rules have unintended consequences.  The more complex the ruleset, the more difficult it is to predict the outcome.  The choice is fundamentally to constantly change the rules, and pile rules on top of rules, or simplify the rules and make them more permanent.   If what the MP was suggesting was tax-code simplification in order to reduce the unintended side-effects then I would call this smart.  However adding extra rules and making the tax-code denser and more difficult to follow I believe makes the 'intent' of the law _harder_ to follow, undermining the purpose of creating the new rules.


Oanda.com is a very respectable broker. They don't offer ridiculous leverage options of 200 to 1 that prove the downfall of people starting out in Forex. When I used them a few years back, they had good customer service and some nice charting tools.


Union Electricians make an average of $60-$80k depending on your area. Some can make less, but typically that would be non union workers. Some states are right to work, and by definition they will pay less than unions. Union Floor Layers/Carpenters/Painters all make way more than you can believe. Again, non union will take a small hit, but all clear $25/$30 and hour without second thought. There can be ups and downs in the market, work can get scarce, but if you save - there is not a problem. No college is required for the trades. Hard work is necessary, getting dirty as fuck is necessary, early start times/long days are a must, and the most obvious is working around many dipshit motherfuckers who shit in glue and paint buckets.


Short term: ask for a raise or look for a new job that pays more. Longer term:


Canadian here: the US is our biggest customer, so we were impacted economically. I expected that within a year or two of the US housing collapse, we would also be hit, but something else happened: when the US dropped interest rates like a stone, we were also forced to drop interest rates. This meant that suddenly, money was being handed out for very very cheap, so cheap it was almost free if you had a decent job and good credit. The housing market here paused for a brief moment, and then continued climbing. It never stopped until some new rules were implemented, aimed mostly at foreign buyers and investors, and put in place this year. It appears however that this current drop in prices may be a temporary dip. The average cost of a home in Toronto is still around $1m CAD, and our real estate is still among the most expensive in the world if you look at how much we pay compared to our incomes.  In some places, houses have basically tripled over the past decade.  My point here is that Canadian home owners were not impacted negatively by the 2008 crisis. In fact, once the free money started flowing and prices went up accordingly, Canadian home owners were enriched as a direct result of the 2008 US housing crisis. The situation is clearly unsustainable, and the market is irrational. It's easy to say that we are in a bubble but it is  impossible to tell when it will crash. In Canada, it's harder to walk away from mortgage debt; if you're underwater on your home, and the bank forecloses on you and sells the house for less than you owe, you still owe the bank the remainder of the money (in most provinces).


I don't look down on poor people at all.  I've been there.  I'm just trying to describe the correct attitude that will help one rise up out of poverty. Blaming others, blaming 'the system', blaming your parents, blaming minimum wage, blaming your boss, blaming social media, blaming the news, blaming the Russians, blaming immigrants ----  NONE of that shit is going to help YOU get out of poverty.  Taking responsibility for your own life is the only way out.  Luckily we live in a system that allows you do to that.  There are other systems.  You could have been assigned a job at birth, because that's what you father did.  Do you like that system better?    What are you even so worked up about?  What have I said that is factually incorrect?  What do you think should happen in Society?  Should the wealthy just give money to the poor?  Would that make you happy?  Like, what are you even arguing for?


> Get them into coding and they will never need a degree. I'm 20 years old in college and I strongly believe that is where it is all going  Don't you think that you should at least get your first job before declaring how the industry works?


Explain that you are looking for work that is more fast paced than what you are currently doing.   You are obviously very smart and probably good with people as you are on a leadership type career path.   If you find you don't have the network to talk to people in the industry, or are concerned about your lack of financial background, you may want to look at the CFA. Although not really quantitative, it would show your commitment to the investment profession, and you could join your local CFA Chapter.


Well, once you get a distillation column going, you'll find that the results of refining is quite a bit more than just [gasoline](http://www.globalization101.org/uploads/Image/Energy/picture-refinery.jpg). Even then, the octane level of the gasoline you produce will probably be too low without some additives.


"Options are generally viewed as having two types of value: ""Intrinsic value"" and ""time value.""  The intrinsic value is based on the difference between the strike price on the option and the spot price of the underlying.  The time value is based on the volatility of the underlying and the amount of time left until expiration.  As the days pass toward expiration, the time value generally decreases, and the intrinsic value may move up or down depending on the spot price of the underlying. (In theory, time value could increase at some points if the volatility is also rising.) In your case, it looks like the time value is decreasing faster than the intrinsic value is increasing. This may happen because the volatility is also going down (as suggested in the answer by CQM) or may just happen because the time to expiration is getting shorter at equal volatility. As noted by DumbCoder in a comment to the original question, the Black-Scholes formula will give you more analytical insight into this if you're interested."


Being in the zone sounds like fun, but educators talk about how finding it is key to deeper learning and mastery of skills. Later in life, skilled professionals describe this feeling of flow, whether they are scientists, composers or professional ball players.


Problems do not arise from small individual acts of kindness. Problems arise when you attempt to construct a government and a society around false economic morality.  People very successfully navigate their own internal altruism and greed because they are allowed by society to make the calculation for how much they can give on their own. Once you start mandating altruism, all bets are off.  You mean they aren't paid to build monuments or do science? You mean scientists don't earn patents for their work? You mean science in general has no selfish commercial motive?  What a load of crap, dude. There are plenty of self motivated individualistic rationalizations for someone to work in cooperation with others. Namely, pay.


Truth is, doctors are paid too much. Why a doctor in India is paid $10000/year, relocates to USA, and magically becomes a wizard worth x20 more? Anyone can be a doctor, you don't need any special talents, creativity or out of the charts IQ. All you need is to memorize all the organs and all the drugs. Even this is questionable in the age of Google and Dr. Watson. But no politician will touch the subject with a 10-foot pole.


"You're making the assumption that a person would be aware, in advance, that they'd have enough resources to pay the costs of anything that might happen. Second, you're assuming the cost of insurance would outweigh what the person would have to pay out of pocket if they didn't have insurance.  In other words as an example, if the insurance premiums on my car are so high that it would be cheaper for me to replace it myself in cash then it might make sense, but how likely is that to be the case?   There's a gambling adage that I think applies here - ""Always bet with the house's money"".  Why would I put my own money on the line in the event of some event rather than pay for an insurance policy that takes care of it for me?  That way, my costs are predictable and manageable - I pay the premiums and perhaps a deductible, and that's it."


It doesn't sound fishy at all to me. Just seems like you may be dealing with a company that has relatively light trading volume to begin with, meaning that small trades could easily make the price drop 8% (which isn't much if you're talking about a stocks in the $5 or less range. If someone sells at the bid and the bid happens to be 8% lower than the current price, that bid is now the price, hence the drop. The bid moving up afterward, just means that someone is now willing to place a higher order than what the last trade was, to try to get in.


Obviously China whispered to NK to chill. But the tweetmaster had been bullhorning about China being the control in that area of the world and not being active in that role while also sending the fleet. And it finally happened, after the UN tightened their trade down. So thats actually 3 things. UN action, China co-operation, NK standdown.


A Credit Balance means that you overpayed. That's nothing to worry about; it will just be used up by your next charges. Note that this can have two reasons - either you really paid too much; or you paid off a charge that is still 'pending' - meaning it has not yet posted and is not considered in the amount you owe: Most charges in restaurants for example are pending for a day or more, because the original charge is your bill without tip (they don't know the tip when the run the card!), and the merchant spends his weekends or evenings to type in the final amount (including tip) and post the pending charge. If this is the case, it will settle ('get posted') in a day or two, and then it will match up.


"I somehow doubt there's any ""cast-iron"" reservation. Like airline carriage contracts, I bet in those multi page, tiny font legalese that actually is the rental car contract that everyone agreed to when they book (but few will read in its entirety I imagine)...there are clauses in there that probably say your reservation is not guaranteed and the rental company reserves the right to cancel cars for any reason.   Obviously if you're one of those frequent rental program person/top tier member you will likely be not nearly as likely to be cancelled on as opposed to some rando guy renting..."


"You're acting like my comments are inconsistent. They're not.  I think bitcoin's price is primarily due to Chinese money being moved outside of China. I don't think you can point to a price chart and say ""Look, that's the Chinese money right there, and look, that part isn't Chinese money"". That's what I said already."


You can look the Vanguard funds up on their website and view a risk factor provided by Vanguard on a scale of 1 to 5.  Short term bond funds tend to get their lowest risk factor, long term bond funds and blended investments go up to about 3, some stock mutual funds are 4 and some are 5. Note that in 2008 Swenson himself had slightly different target percentages out here that break out the international stocks into emerging versus developed markets. So the average risk of this portfolio is 3.65 out of 5.  My guess would be that a typical twenty-something who expects to retire no earlier than 60 could take more risk, but I don't know your personal goals or circumstances. If you are looking to maximize return for a level of risk, look into Modern Portfolio Theory and the work of economist Harry Markowitz, who did extensive work on the topic of maximizing the return given a set risk tolerance.  More info on my question here.  This question provides some great book resources for learning as well. You can also check out a great comparison and contrast of different portfolio allocations here.


"Yesterday I was reading in the travel StackExchange about an Indian guy who was about to hand his passport over to his Employer in Africa. His problem was that he had taken an unauthorized trip back to India against orders, but still - he was about to hand over his passport to his foreign employer. And he had nothing on his mind other than how to please his employer to keep his job.   This is the reality for a lot of people. They either don't have leverage, or don't know what leverage they do have. I'm a programmer, and I know because I've been told - reading, engaging in the community, and gaining real experience.    Remember that other people can be younger, less skilled, more naive, more easily intimidated, and it doesn't make them stupid or worse people.   Why would anyone let their employer stick a chip in their body? Because they don't know any better. Because the employer is an authority, or they want the job, or the are scared of the consequences if they don't.   Posting that it's a bad idea is a good step to helping people. They can google ""Should I let my Employer Stick A Microchip Into My Body?"" and find this. Call out Three Square Market, and their stupid idea."


"How is it rhetorical? Of course it can be answered, it's based on an actual concern and actual research done by other economists and it invokes discussion.  Being called a ""Debbie Downer"" is just an ad hominem that translates to: I don't like the way question you're making cause it's sad, so I'm just not going to answer it"


"When C did their 10-1 reverse split in 2011 all the fractional shares were aggregated and then sold with the proceeded going back to the fractional shareholders.     From their press release: ""No fractional shares were issued in connection with the reverse stock split. Instead, Citi’s transfer agent will aggregate all fractional shares that otherwise would have been issued as a result of the reverse stock split and those shares will be sold into the market. Shareholders who would otherwise hold a fractional share of Citigroup common stock will receive a cash payment from the net proceeds of that sale in lieu of such fractional share. ""  While there was selling, it didn't cause a ""sell off"" so to speak.   I have also come across instances where the company buys the fractional shares and retires them."


This is a daily paper released by 1lamp1. It contains all current news events relative to Business but not the ones you would usually expect. Once you have read it you will not want to be without it You can follow 1lamp1 on Twitter – 1lamp1


"Silicon Valley sexism explained? ""And then there are things like the ""brilliant jerk"" phenomenon, the idea that the smarter you are, the less nice you have to be. Engineering culture is notorious for verbal abuse. It's common for engineers to personally attack each other's intelligence, especially in environments where multiple people are contributing code to a project and other people are reviewing that code...So, many of these male engineers rise up through tech companies and become managers. And when they do, they may bring with them a sense of entitlement, and a hostile work culture. """


Is this a reasonable goal or will it be impossible to get a loan with   my almost non-existent income? I know I can put estimated rental revenue as income, but I'm not sure   if I would qualify. Banks typically only count rental income after you've been collecting it for two years, and at that point the banks will count 75% of it as income for loan qualification purposes.  You'd have to qualify for the mortgage without the potential rental income. Currently that means a 43% debt (including proposed mortgage) to gross income ratio. Even if you qualify, you have to be prepared to handle repairs, HVAC/water-heater could fail on day 1, and tenants have a right to withhold rent if some repairs aren't made. You also have to be able to weather non-payment/eviction of a tenant. You could find a co-signor, maybe go in on a house with a friend, but there are risks and complications that can arise there if a party becomes unable to pay, or deciding how to split equity and expenses.  If you had the income/capital to comfortably pull it off without tenants, then that'd be a great situation, college rentals tend to be lucrative (I'd recommend getting tenants with parental co-signers to reduce risk). If you qualify but would be in trouble quickly if one tenant stopped paying, or a major appliance needed to be replaced, then it's probably not worth the risk.


I just listened to a podcast on this topic this week, and Satanicpuppy is pretty much correct. If you are interested, here is a link to the podcast on Legal Lad: Can Businesses Refuse to Accept Cash?


"A stock split can force short sellers of penny stocks to cover their shorts and cauuse the price to appreciate.  Example:  Someone shorts a worthless pump and dump stock, 10,000 shares at .50.  They have to put up $25,000.00 in margin ($2.50 per share for stocks under $2.50).  The company announces a 3 to 1 split.  Now the short investor must come up with $50,000.00 additional margin or be be ""bought in"". The short squeeze is on."


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/cold-war-espionage-paid-until-it-backfired-east-german-spy-records-reveal) reduced by 87%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Deep in debt and struggling to provide for his family, Hans Rehder got an offer he couldn&#039;t refuse: to steal key files from his employer, West German electronics firm Telefunken, for a monthly payoff from East German agents.  > After controlling for the effects of trade and research and development, the team found that economic espionage boosted TFP growth in East Germany, helping it close the gap with West Germany by some 8.6% in 1989, they report in a working paper published by the Institute of Labor Economics, an economics research institute in Bonn, Germany.  > &quot;They basically quantified what I did [already] in a qualitative way.&quot; Macrakis, who has argued that East German industrial espionage was ultimately a failure, says the next step is to look at how the stolen technology was integrated into individual East German firms, who often requested-and received-the stolen information.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6qykhk/cold_war_espionage_paid_offuntil_it_backfired/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~180676 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*: **East**^#1 **espionage**^#2 **economic**^#3 **Germany**^#4 **German**^#5"


No, YOU made it about me.  > If we were both to start our own companies,  > people like you   I'll talk to my employees and the other 100's of people I interact with daily.    You should try it some time.


Hey I used to do this for a job.          having two separate policies is a bad idea. If you decide you need more life insurance just increase the one you currently have. There are usually discounts for having higher levels of cover. Not only that but if you have multiple policies all you're getting is the task of doing multiple claims and maybe some additional policy fees depending on which companies you're looking at.        What did you consider when deciding how much life insurance to take?


>I would much rather have my money in an up-trend.       Damn right.    Or at least have it liquid. We couldn't sell this house now, even though it's one of the best in the neighborhood. (The nice, but smaller, house across the street has been on the market for over a year.) A few other houses in the neighborhood didn't seem to have any problems being rented, though, so we could likely get rental income from this one if we wanted.


There would have to be regulations for a variety of issues involving driverless cabs.  But that is ignoring the fact that the main reason that most cabs aren't awash in bodily fluids at the end of a weekend night is that there is a human present to both prevent and deal with everything that happens in a cab.


The reason the article recommends a Roth 401k for those who have a long time until retirement is based on your salary, marginal tax rates, and effective tax rates and some assumptions. You want to contribute to Roth IRAs when your marginal tax rate now is better than your effective tax rate at the time of withdrawal.  That is most likely to be true when your salary is smaller (for you) and your salary is most likely to be smaller (compared to your future salaries) when you have more years until retirement. The article is presenting a rule of thumb.   It won't hold true for everyone in every situation.


Where can publicly traded profits go but to shareholders via dividends? They can be retained by the company.


Bank of America NA had over $101 billion in revenue 2013.  A $16 billion fine represents 15.7% of BOA's annual revenue.  The median family income in the US is $53,046.   15.7% of that is $8,346.  If I spent more than a decade defrauding individuals, businesses, government agencies and investors and wound up having to pay an $8 thousand dollar fine and not serve a single day in jail ... I would be planning a long and prosperous criminal career for the next decade.


"First, you are not exactly ""giving"" the brokerage $2000. That money is the margin requirement to protect them in the case the stock price rises. If you short 200 shares as in your example and they are holding $6000 from you then they are protected in the event of the stock price increasing to $30/share. Sometime before it gets there the brokerage will require you to deposit more money or they will cover your position by repurchasing the shares for your account. The way you make money on the short sale is if the stock price declines. It is a buy low sell high idea but in reverse. If you believe that prices are going to drop then you could sell now when it is high and buy back later when it is lower. In your example, you are selling 200 shares at $20 and later, buying those at $19. Thus, your profit is $200, not counting any interest or fees you have paid. It's a bit confusing because you are selling something you'll buy in the future. Selling short is usually considered quite risky as your gain is limited to the amount that you sold at initially (if I sell at $20/share the most I can make is if the stock declines to $0).  Your potential to lose is unlimited in theory. There is no limit to how high the stock could go in theory so I could end up buying it back at an infinitely high price. Neither of these extremes are likely but they do show the limits of your potential gain and loss.  I used $20/share for simplicity assuming you are shorting with a market order vs a limit order. If you are shorting it would be better for you to sell at 20 instead of 19 anyway. If someone says I would like to give you $20 for that item you are selling you aren't likely to tell them ""no, I'd really only like $19 for it"""


Bonus: Contribute to (or start!) your IRA for 2010.  This doesn't have to be done have to be done by the end of the year; you can make your 2011 contribution in 2010, before you file your tax return (by Apr. 15 at the latest, even if you get an extension.)


Ten year auto loans. Think about that for a moment. I paid off my house in 13 years and people are having problems paying off a car in 6, 8 or 10 years.   I never buy new and then drive them until they fall apart. My sister buys new every four years. In the past twenty years, she has paid at least $100,000 in autos. I know it is actually a lot more since one of her SUVs cost $35k, but I was going for the easy math for illustrative purposes. I bought two used vehicles for a total of $14,000.   People ask how I was able to pay off my house and buy rental properties.


"Here's the story of EDI:   EDI is between a Vendor and Customer. Despite EDI being about standards, the truth is that the Customer is the bully and the Vendor is the wimp. So, for every trading partner, you need a unique EDI process.  In this particular case, inbound invoices from a supplier, the Supplier is huge, and despite us being the ""Customer"", we had to comply with their ""standard"".  And when it comes to inbound invoices, they have to be handled differently depending on what is purchased. In this case, office supplies, the details of the invoice have to be saved into a table besides in addition to 2 simple invoice created in A/P."


I think the IRS doc you want is http://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2010_publink100010601 I believe the answers are:


Developing content, in an age where there are an estimated 3.5 billion searches made on Google every day, can be challenging. Increasingly studies point that visitors spend an approximate 15 seconds on an internet page; this much less for micro-blogging sites. So, what can be done to keep your audience’s attention and write content that deserves such attention? If you’re planning to do your own content instead of hiring an online marketing agency in India.


> To clarify, I meant the general field of finance and investment banking.  This is still a wide field. Accounting? Product control? Quants? Equity Research? FX Sales? Trading? Compliance? Technology?  I know a sales person that majored in History if that's the kind of quirk you're looking for.


But it's the fact the company calls it a material concern, and hasn't disclosed material information to investors that puts this into a potential SEC issue.  So yes, author hangs a lot on that line, but that line is what makes it most interesting to investors.


Oh so you've done the math then? Would you mind showing your work?   Newsflash: good luck isn't unique to rich people no more than bad luck is unique to poor people. To suggest there is an economic system that eliminates bad luck is to suggest you believe Huggy-lovee-feefee Land is an actual place.


I'm more of a free market man myself. BUT, I do understand the balance of regulations, the problem is heavily regulating can actually cause market failure as well. There is a balance some where, as to what the laws say today? I'm not sure, but I think they should be altered. Commercial military isn't a bad thing they pay good wages to ex rangers and SF guys as far as I'm concerned. There's always going to be good business decisions that aren't good for humans, look at how people are massively advertised to, Companies pay psychologist just to figure out better ways to market. It's about getting people more informed, so that those negative companies die out from demand declining. This is how you keep an economy stable, when you are changing laws left and right it causes more speculation.


Please point to the known, reliable, and credible fact checkers who show a high number of “fake news articles trying to slander him” because objective reality has this nasty habit of proving explicit/implicit Trump defenders, such as yourself, wrong.


What's easy? Debt, personal, marketing related finance.   What we look for in hires is simple though - modeling skills (everyone thinks they're better than they actually are) and case analysis (same story). If you can get those two under your belt, and a good school under your name you should be good.


"I would add to the other excellent answers that another factor besides just high unemployment numbers is the fear people have regarding the ""financial"" aspects of the country, that is the value of stocks and the value of the dollar.  When the economy is sluggish it means people aren't buying enough, therefore companies aren't making enough, therefore their profits are too low and people start to divest from them, and stock prices drop.  Or even the fear of this happening can induce people to sell off shares.   The point is, people are worried ""in this economy"" because if--due to unemployment, low spending/consumer confidence--the stock market crashes again as it did in 2008/09, that represents a lot of savings lost, e.g. 40-50% of what one was counting on to retire with, particularly if you panic sell at the bottom.  Now suddenly it's as if you had a huge robbery, and you will have to work longer into your retirement years than you'd planned.  Similarly, if, due to monetary policy, the U.S. inflates the dollar, what one saved for retirement may not be sufficient.  (These arguments are true for shorter periods than just one's retirement, but just taking that as an example). So it's not just unemployment that is worrisome ""in this economy"".  This said, I agree with George Marian that one ought to be careful and plan well regardless of the winds of the economy.  I guess for most people (and companies), though, ""in this economy"" means they can't get away with the kind of carelessness they might have during a boom."


Another possibly more flexible option is Yahoo finance here is an example for the dow.. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=%5EDJI&a=9&b=1&c=1928&d=3&e=10&f=2012&g=d&z=66&y=0 Some of the individual stocks you can dl directly to a spreadsheet (not sure why this isn't offer for indexs but copy and paste should work). http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=ACTC.OB+Historical+Prices


">I didn't get mad about it.  ""IDC you little twerp.""  Ya you did get mad over being downvoted.  The fact you even made a point to bring it up says all that needs to be said.    >I pointed out abuse of subreddit rules to undermine the contrarian's credibility.  Despite having zero proof of such a thing happening."


"The ""$1000 is no money at all"" people are amusing me. Way back in the mists of time, a very young me invested on the order of ~$500 in a struggling electronics manufacturer I had a fondness for. An emotional investment, not much money, but enough that I could get a feel for what it was like owning stock in something. That stock's symbol was AAPL. This is admittedly a rare outcome, but $1000 invested over the long term isn't not worth doing. If for no other reason then when the OP has ""real"" money, he'll have X+$1000 invested rather than X, assuming 0% return, which I doubt. It's a small enough amount that there are special considerations, but it's a solid opportunity for learning how the market works, and making a little money. Anyway, my advice to the OP is as follows:"


"I think you should evaluate the value of these so-called ""penny auction"" websites very carefully.  Going to a random site, madbid .com, (which is British with UK prices, but it works just the same with US prices) they claim that someone has bought an iPod Touch 64GB for £21.18. It is £249 directly from Apple. Sold for £21.18 means there were 2118 ""bids"". I'd have to log in to their site to find the cost of a ""bid"" for packages, but you can multiply the cost of a single ""bid"" by 2,118, add another £21.18, and you'll know what all ""bidders"" trying to receive this item paid - I'll bet the total is substantially more than £249.  People taking part in these scams obviously convince themselves that they are the ""clever"" ones who will get an item cheaply. Apart from the possibility that a single ""bidder"" can easily make more bids than the value of the item, if you think you are more clever than everyone else, you are kidding yourself. (If you think you are indeed more clever than everyone else, go ahead and donate your money to these companies).  The ""packages"" are most likely designed to give you the false impression that you get some value for money. Years ago when I checked a single bid was £1, but in bigger packages the bids would cost say 50 pence. They also want many bidders to make sure the number of bids will be high (although there is nothing other than the website's honesty that prevents them from automatically adding bids if an item would otherwise sell too cheap).  Just to clarify: These are not auction sites. In an auction, the highest bidder pays the price they bid, usually plus some commission (on eBay, the commission is paid by the seller), and gets the goods, while everyone else keeps their money. In this ""auction"", every bid costs money, and by increasing the bid by one penny each time they make sure there are usually thousands of bids. (They also offer the products at a ""reduced"" price if you don't ""win"" the auction; the reduced price is substantially higher than buying from the manufacturer or any reputable retailer directly)."


Consider the mechanic which actually drives the 'price' of a stock. In simplest terms, the 'price' of a stock is the price at which the most recent trade occurred. ie: if the price of IBM is $100/share, that means the last time someone bought IBM stock, they paid $100. Above and below the 'spot price', are dozens/hundreds/thousands of buyers and sellers who have placed orders that no one is yet willing to match. ie: if IBM's spot price is at $100, there could still be 10,000 people willing to sell for $101 (called the 'ask' price, for the lowest price someone is currently willing to sell at), and 15,000 willing to buy for $99 (called the 'bid' price, for the highest price someone is currently willing to buy for).  Until someone is willing to buy for $101, then no one will be able to sell at $101. Until someone is willing to sell for $99, no one will be able to buy for $99. Typically orders are placed in the market at a particular limit. Meaning that those orders to buy at $99/sell at $101 are already in the 'system', and will be matched immediately as soon as someone is willing to meet the price on the other side. Now consider general market economics: high demand drives up price, and high supply drives down price. If the details above for IBM were yesterday, and today some news came out that IBM was laying off employees, imagine that another 10,000 people who held shares wanted to sell. Now there would be 20,000 sellers and only 15,000 buyers. If those new sellers were aggressive about wanting to sell, they would have to drop their price to $99, to match the highest buyers in the market. Put together, this means that as more sellers enter the market, supply of shares increases, driving down price. Conversely, as more buyers enter the market, demand for shares increases, driving up share price. As a result of the above, you can say that (all else being equal) if price for a stock goes up, there were more buyers that day, and if price goes down, there were more sellers that day. On the face of it, that is not necessarily true, because you could have the same number of buyers and sellers, one side could have simply decreased/increased their acceptable price to match the other side.


Standard deduction is $6300, and exemption is $4050, totaling $10,350. (For 2016) Twice this for a couple ($20,700). The tax on money just above this is 10%, so the few thousand above will be taxed at a few hundred dollars. Where are you getting the number you showed? Can you edit your question to clarify exactly what you are asking?


"This is clearly a scam, and you should stay away from it. Anyone reading this knew that from the title alone - and it seems that you know it too. Don't ""test"" whether something is a scam by putting your own money in it. That is exactly how these scammers make money, and how you lose it. How their scam works is irrelevant. The simple fact is that there is no way you can safely earn 20% return over the course of a year, let alone in 1 day*. You know this is true. Don't bother trying to figure out what makes it true in this case. There is no free lunch. Best case scenario, this is a hyper-risky investment strategy [on the level of putting your money down at a roulette wheel]. Worst case scenario, they simply steal your money. Either way, you won't come out ahead. Although I agree with others that this is likely a Ponzi scheme, that doesn't really matter. What matters is, there is no way they can guarantee those returns. Just go to a casino and throw your money away yourself, if you want that level of risk.  *For reference, if you invested $100 for a year, earning 20% returns every day, you would have 6 million trillion trillion dollars by the end of the year. that's $6,637,026,647,624,450,000,000,000,000,000. that number doesn't even make sense. It's more money than exists on earth. So why would they need your $100?"


>Subsiding green and taxing pollutants seems to be the only way to mitigate climate change.  Actually, Elon Musk has shown there are alternatives.  >Businesses are required by law to maximize profit  Actually, no they aren't. This myth survives for many reasons too numerous to explain, so here is a [link.](https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/)  >which means polluting if it makes you more money.  Not really how it works, as most pollution came from a lack of regulation, not purposeful intent. Avoiding costly regulation and/or cleanup after is both unethical and immoral, but perfectly legal.  >Or I guess the fundamental nature of businesses could change.  Good luck with that.


Transfers are defined to arrive on a specific number of business days, nearly always one business day (if you submit it before the cutoff time). The exact number of days depends on the receiver bank, but when you try to create a transfer, it will tell you when it will arrive, before you send it out.


Will there be a scenario in which I want to sell, but nobody wants to buy from me and I'm stuck at the brokerage website? Similarly, if nobody wants to sell their stocks, I will not be able to buy at all? Yes, that is entirely possible.


It's going to depend entirely on your tax situation, its complexity, and your willingness/interest in dealing with tax filings.  Personally I find that not only do I not enjoy dealing with figuring out my taxes, but I don't know even a fraction of the possible deductions available and all the clever ways to leverage them.  Plus the tax code is changing constantly and staying on top of that is not something I'm ever going to attempt. I am of the philosophy that it is my duty to pay only the absolute minimum tax legally required, and to utilize every possible exemption, deduction, credit, etc. that is available to me.  Plus my business activities are a bit on the non-traditional side so it requires some unorthodox thinking at times.  For me, a trained professional is the only way to go.  What it costs me, I way more than make up in savings on my tax bill.  I also go out of my way to never get a refund because if I get one, it just means I gave the government a free loan. The last time I computed my own taxes (used TurboTax if memory serves) was I think in the late 90s.


Years ago I hired someone part time (not virtual however) to help me with all sorts of things.  Yes it helps free up some time. However particularly with finances, it does take a leap of faith.  If you have high value accounts that this person will be dealing with you can always get them bonded.  Getting an individual with a clean credit history and no criminal background bonded usually costs < $600 a year (depending on $ risk exposure). I would start out small with tasks that do not directly put that person in control of your money.  In my case I didn't have an official business, I worked a normal 9-5 job, but I owned several rental units, and an interest in a bar.  My assistant also had a normal 9-5 job and worked 5-10 hours a week for me on various things. Small stuff at first like managing my calendar, reminding me when bills were due, shipping packages, even calling to set up a hair cut. At some point she moved to contacting tenants, meeting with contractors, showing apartments, etc... I paid her a fixed about each week plus expenses. I would pay her extra if I needed her more (say showing an apartment on a Saturday, or meeting a plumber). She would handled all sorts of stuff for me, and I gave her the flexibility when needed to fit things in with her schedule. After about a month I did get her a credit card for expenses. Obviously a virtual assistant would not be able to do some of these things but I think you get the point.   Eventually when the trust had been built up I put her on most of my accounts and gave her some fiduciary responsibilities as well. I'm not sure that this level of trust would be possible to get to with a virtual assistant. However, with a virtual assistant you might be able to avoid one really big danger of hiring an assistant.... You see, several years later when I sold off my apartment buildings I no longer needed an assistant, so I married her. Now one good thing about that is I don't have to pay her now.   ;)


Lifecycle costs, opportunity costs, rate of returns, net present value, internal rate of return, etc are all business terms taught to business professionals because those very ideas are a product of the business profession.   Saying all bean counters don't understand the very basic principles that their craft has been built upon because you work with people who think are sub-par is a little generalizing. Like me saying that all engineers are self important assholes because I read your comment.


Considering I'm in a nearly identical situation, I'll speak to my personal strategy and maybe there's some value for you as well.   You have ~$22k in loans, which you say you could pay off today.  So, what I read is that you're sitting there with a $22k investment and want to know which investment to make: pay down debt, invest in yourself/start up, or some variation between those options.  Any investor worth his salt will ask a couple of questions: what is my risk, and what is my gain? Paying off your student loans offers no financial risk at the cost of opportunity risk, and gains you returns of 3.4%, 6.8%, 3.4%, 4.5%, and 6.8%.  Those percentage gains are guaranteed and the opportunity risk is unknown. Investing in a startup is inherently risky, with the potential for big payoffs. But with this investment, you are accepting a lot of risk for potentially some gain (it could be the next Apple, it could also fail).  So, with your situation (like mine), I'd say it's best to accept the easy investment for now and fully vet out your tech start up idea in the meantime.


There are several insurance products that I buy for legal reasons: Both of these protect me from lawsuits and fines. Many people buy similar products to protect their business operations. (e.g. medical malpractice insurance) There are some insurance products I buy for tax planning and financial planning purposes: I have a large amount of savings available, so I have several tricks to reduce my insurance costs, and I have several products that I avoid. Several of these reasons are mentioned in other answers, but I thought I would collect them into a single answer to demonstrate that there are reasons other than the rational calculation of what the payout will be for the insurance products vs. the premium paid. If I gain access to a tax advantaged Health savings account, that is a bigger benefit to me than avoiding the premium, especially when my employer is paying the majority of the premium. Perhaps it makes no sense to buy insurance given sufficient savings (like the products I listed that make no sense for me given my finances) but not everyone can self-insure; it does require a certain level of wealth.


"It was bound to happen, it's just happening sooner because they can use the excuse of minimum wage rising. After McD's does it other places are soon to follow to ""stay competitive"".  We can address the situation now and start training people for jobs that will be available in 20 years or we can argue about entitled people/bad businesses and everyone will suffer sooner or later."


First, realize that Wikipedia is written by individuals, just like this board has thousands of members. The two definition were written and edited by different people, most likely.  Think Venn diagram.  The definition for financial instruments claims that it's the larger set, and securities is contained in a subset.  Comparing the two, it seems pretty consistent.  Yes, Securities include derivatives.  Transferable is close to tradable, although to me tradable implies a market as compared to private transfers.  I don't believe there's an opposite, per se, but there's 'other stuff.' My house has value, but is not a security. My coffee cup has no value. Back to the concept of Venn. There aren't really opposites, just items falling outside the set we're discussing.  I'd caution, this is a semantic exercise. If you know what you're buying, a stock, a bond, a gold bar, etc, whether it's a financial instrument or security doesn't matter to you.


While there are lots of really plausible explanations for why the market moves a certain way on a certain day, no one really knows for sure.  In order to do that, you would need to understand the 'minds' of all the market players.  These days many of these players are secret proprietary algorithms.  I'm not quibbling with the specifics of these explanations (I have no better) just pointing out that these are just really hypotheses and if the market starts following different patterns, they will be tossed into the dust bin of 'old thinking'. I think the best thing you can explain to your son is that the stock market is basically a gigantic highly complex poker game.  The daily gyrations of the market are about individuals trying to predict where the herd is going to go next and then after that and then after that etc. If you want to help him understand the market, I suggest two things.  The first is to find or create a simple market game and play it with him.  The other would be to teach him about how bonds are priced and why prices move the way they do.  I know this might sound weird and most people think bonds are esoteric but there are bonds have a much simpler pricing model based on fundamental financial logic.  It's much easier then to get your head around the moves of the bond markets because the part of the price based on beliefs is much more limited (i.e. will the company be able pay & where are rates going.)  Once you have that understanding, you can start thinking about the different ways stocks can be valued (there are many) and what the market movements mean about how people are valuing different companies. With regard to this specific situation, here's a different take on it from the 'priced in' explanation which isn't really different but might make more sense to your son: Pretend for a second that at some point these stocks did move seasonally.  In the late fall and winter when sales went up, the stock price increased in kind.  So some smart people see this happening every year and realize that if they bought these stocks in the summer, they would get them cheap and then sell them off when they go up.  More and more people are doing this and making easy money.  So many people are doing it that the stock starts to rise in the Summer now.  People now see that if they want to get in before everyone else, they need to buy earlier in the Spring.  Now the prices start rising in the Spring.  People start buying in the beginning of the year... You can see where this is going, right?  Essentially, a strategy to take advantage of well known seasonal patterns is unstable.  You can't profit off of the seasonal changes unless everyone else in the market is too stupid to see that you are simply anticipating their moves and react accordingly.


"I work in the casino industry. We overbook tickets to concerts/events every single time, and 99% of the time we get enough cancels to not have to worry about it. But that 1% of the time where we have more players than tickets, we bend over backwards to make sure everyone gets a ticket.  I've purchased tickets from ""ticket brokers""(scalpers) for like 5x the face value to make sure no one is unhappy.   Of course I don't expect a car rental place to go buy a car so I have one to rent, but at least if they overbooked (which I understand), they better freaking find an alternative even if its a competitor."


I have spoken to a lot of people that are in the workforce, that have a CFA, and the consensus I have gotten from a lot of them is that it *can't hurt* to get your CFA, but it also sometimes isn't extremely relevant to have, or may put you above a different candidate.  I would suggest figuring out what you want to do within the workforce first and see whether or not a CFA is going to be a requirement and or a necessity for wherever you would like to work, I also would recommend on not waiting too long to get it.


If you read the fine print in the Pricing & Terms section of that card, you'll see: By becoming a Visa Business Card cardmember, you agree that the card is being used only for business purposes and that the card is being issued to a public or private company including a sole proprietor or employees or contractors of an organization. So that card is a Chase-branded Visa card, and should be accepted anywhere other Visa cards are. Credit cards are normally either MasterCard or Visa, although many of them make that rather inconspicuous.  The only major exceptions I know of are American Express and Discover.  (And store cards that are only good at one particular store.)


Depending on how much you drive, they might be in the same range as far as cost of ownership goes.   I've seen a few salesman for which it was cheaper to get a Tesla than a mid size car like the Fusion of the Camry.


"chapter 8 page 154:  >""My point is that it's doubts and cynicism that keep most people poor and playing it safe...only a person's doubts keep them poor...'Cynics criticize and winners analyze' was one of [Rich Dad's] favorite mottos""  -from chapter 8 page 154 of Robert Kiyosaki's first print edition of *Rich Dad Poor Dad*  The whole page is about abandoning cynicism and has nothing to do with that Glenn-Beck-style rant/editorial you've linked to."


Yes, I am currently an undergrad student majoring in Finance. I have a strong interest in Accounting and Economics (Macro).  I have learned earlier today that due to the fact that people now live longer, our government spending increases (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc). But unfortunately, the funding that it draws from does not increase at a similar rate so the funding for other major aspects such as R&D, Education, etc are being cut to offset the increase in government transfers.   Granted the Feds never spent much on education, why is it that the funding for R&D in terms of percentage is so minuscule? Would it not be in each government's best interest to funnel money towards education, infrastructure, research & development, etc? I'm sorry, when I learn one thing, about twenty billion other questions pop up (could be related or unrelated to what I had just learned)


Ok, so disregarding passivity, could you help me through a simplified example?   Say I only had two assets, SPY and TLT, with a respective weight of 35 and 65% and I want want to leverage this to 4x.  Additionally, say daily return covar is:  * B/B .004% * B/S -.004% * S/S .02%   Now, if I read correctly, I should buy ATM calls xxx days in the future.  Which may look like: Ticker, S, K, Option Price, Delta, Lambda  * TLT  $126.04  $126.00  $4.35  0.50  14.5 * SPY  $134.91  $134.00  $6.26  0.55  11.8  ^ This example is pretty close but some assets are far off.   I feel like I'm on the wrong track so I'll stop here.    I just want to lever up my risk-parity. Margin rates are too high and I'm docked by Reg-T.


Depends on the reason you were issued the credit -- rebates aren't income, remuneration for value you provide to them is. In other words, exactly the same as it they gave you money.


In general  What does this mean? Assume 10 holidays and 2 weeks of vacation. So you will report to the office for 240 days (48 weeks * 5 days a week).  If you are a w2 they will pay you for 260 days (52 weeks * 5 days a week). At $48 per hour you will be paid: 260*8*48 or $99,840. As a 1099 you will be paid 240*8*50 or 96,000. But you still have to cover insurance, the extra part of social security, and your retirement through an IRA. A rule of thumb I have seen with government contracting is that If the employee thinks that they make X,000 per year the company has to bill X/hour to pay for wages, benefits, overhead and profit. If the employee thinks they make x/hour the company has to bill at 2X/hour. When does a small spread make sense: The insurance is covered by another source, your spouse; or government/military retirement program.  Still $2 per hour won't cover the 6.2%  for social security. Let alone the other benefits. The IRS has a checklist to make sure that a 1099 is really a 1099, not just a way for the employer to shift the costs onto the individual.


Well i needed an english source and as i mentioned Migrant attacks on Germans is not that big of a topic it is the other way around. Think about 10 crimes a day.... how much attacks can you mention per day from migrants ??? And we are talking major crimes not illegal job activity.