Question: What is the stock warrant's expiration date here?

"These warrants do not have a fixed expiration date, rather their expiration date is dependant upon the company completing an acquisition.  Thirty days after the acquisition is complete the warrants enter their exercise period.  The warrants can then be exercised at any time over the next five years.  After five years they expire. From the ""WARRANT AGREEMENT SOCIAL CAPITAL HEDOSOPHIA HOLDINGS CORP."": A Warrant may be exercised only during the period (the “Exercise Period”) (A) commencing on the later of: (i) the date that is thirty (30) days after the first date on which the Company completes a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination, involving the Company and one or more businesses (a “Business Combination”), and (ii) the date that is twelve (12) months from the date of the closing of the Offering, and (B) terminating at the earliest to occur of (x) 5:00 p.m., New York City time on the date that is five (5) years after the date on which the Company completes its initial Business Combination, (y) the liquidation of the Company in accordance with the Company’s amended and restated memorandum and articles of association, as amended from time to time, if the Company fails to complete a Business Combination, and (z) 5:00 p.m., New York City time on, other than with respect to the Private Placement Warrants, the Redemption Date (as defined below) as provided in Section 6.2 hereof (the “Expiration Date”); provided, however, that the exercise of any Warrant shall be subject to the satisfaction of any applicable conditions, as set forth in subsection 3.3.2 below, with respect to an effective registration statement Source : lawinsder.com"

Their headquarters are just north of Sioux City, Iowa, across the river in South Dakota.  They located there for tax reasons, same as Gateway Computers back in the 1990s.   Much of the area's wealth is located just across the river in South Dakota and starves Sioux City of the taxes it needs to serve the overall population. It's one of the quirks of being in a three-state metro area (source: this is my hometown).  I could tell you more about Beef Processing Inc (BPI) around here.  They're one of the biggest sources of wealth in the area, the owners are heavily involved in the charitable scene here, too.

No, at least not noticeably so. The majority of what HFT does is to take advantage of the fact that there is a spread between buy and sell orders on the exchange, and to instantly fill both orders, gaining relatively risk-free profit from some inherent inefficiencies in how the market prices stocks. The end result is that intraday trading of the non-HFT nature, as well as speculative short-term trading will be less profitable, since HFT will cause the buy/sell spread to be closer than it would otherwise be. Buying and holding will be (largely) unaffected since the spread that HFT takes advantage of is miniscule compared to the gains a stock will experience over time.  For example, when you go to buy shares intending to hold them for a long time, the HFT might cost you say, 1 to 2 cents per share. When you go to sell the share, HFT might cost you the same again. But, if you held it for a long time, the share might have doubled or tripled in value over the time you held it, so the overall effect of that 2-4 cents per share lost from HFT is negligible. However, since the HFT is doing this millions of times per day, that 1 cent (or more commonly a fraction of a cent) adds up to HFTs making millions. Individually it doesn't affect anyone that much, but collectively it represents a huge loss of value, and whether this is acceptable or not is still a subject of much debate!

A trust is a financial arrangement to put aside money over a period of time (typically years), for a specific purpose to benefit someone. Two purposes of trusts are 1) providing for retirement and 2) providing for a child or minor. There are three parties to a trust: 1) A grantor, the person who establishes and funds a trust. 2) A beneficiary, a person who receives the benefits. 3) a trustee, someone who acts in a fiduciary capacity between the grantor and beneficiary. No one person can be all three parties. A single person can be two of out those three parties. A RETIREMENT trust is something like an IRA (individual retirement account). Here, a person can be both the grantor (contributor) to the IRA, and the beneficiary (a withdrawer after retirement). But you need a bank or a broker to act as a fiduciary, and to handle the reporting to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service). Pension plans have employers as grantors, employees as beneficiaries, and (usually) a third party as trustee. A MINORS' trust can be established under a Gift to the Minors' Act, or other trust mechanisms, such as a Generation Skipping Trust. Here, a parent may be both grantor and trustee (although usually a third party is a trustee). A sum of money is put aside over a period of years for the benefit of a minor, for a college education, or for the minor's attaining a certain age: a minimum of 18, sometimes 21, possibly 25 or even older, depending on when the grantor feels that the minor is responsible enough to handle the money.

One thing is for sure, no matter how you look at it, Obama's 8 years will prove to be lost years in America. Gridlocked congress, Health Care Reform, and the inevitable double dip recession/ depression will be the blame, and most of it will be directed towards the policies of the last 16 years.  I used to be a stone cold republican. Super Conservative. That is when I thought I had the entire world ahead of me. Now, with having to work a minimum wage job, and paying back my student loans to clear my debt, my views have changed a little   I want to believe that America will take their eyes away from Fox News and MSNBC and look outside of both the Dems and GOP point of view, and invite a third party into the discussion. I believe the Libertarians may be able to bridge the gap. Most Americans would fit their beliefs and political platform, and they do raise some great questions. I just hope it does not get sabotage by the extremest like the tea party did.  But in short, if their is no unity, and a split in America, things could get ugly by 2018.

Keep in mind this is a great primer on *macro*economics, or how the economies and money supplies of societies as a whole work.  It's equally fascinating and important to learn about the basics of *micro*economics, the other side of that coin (pun intended), or how individual people and businesses make decisions about production and consumption. You've probably heard of the laws of supply and demand which are really important for understanding things like how and why prices change and why some businesses and industries are more successful than others.

"Thank goodness you replied again before i did i completely forgot to respond and that notification was a good reminder. Im genuinely enjoying the conversation and sorry about the name calling most of my political and economic debates happen with family where name calling is not only accepted but expected lol.    > Too many people walk into the emergency room uninsured, or under-insured. They get emergent care that they are not covered for, and the hospitals jack up the prices greatly in the hopes of getting a larger portion reimbursed by Medicare  [this link] (https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/who-bears-the-cost-of-the-uninsured-nonprofit-hospitals) seems to contradict that statment. i dont know enough about the system to say youre wrong but it doesnt sound very real to me.   >Again, Switzerland has lower tax rates than the US, but they don't even crack the top 20 when it comes to countries with low taxes.  Youre obviously not wrong but there are many places on that list id love to retire in. Amongst the developed world from what im seeing [here] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates) has the 27th lowest individual income tax rate when it applies to there highest bracket. now i use the term ""developed"" very loosely here as there are countries ahead of them on that list that clearly arent part of the developed world but its not up to me to decide what the swiss rank is.  >So you work in construction, an industry in which commercial is notorious for underbidding a contract (whether to government or to private), and then running into unexpected overages that cause the job to go over schedule, over budget.  This is dangerously false. The industry isnt known for underbidding and going over budget. Only really really really bad contractors do that. What a lot of good contractors do is, when you know a general contractor for a long time or youre trying to to build a relationship you do eachother favors so they will say for instance ""hey man i dont have the budget to pay you what you need so take a loss on this one and we'll take care of you on the next one"" or they will find some money unaccounted for in the budget and throw it your way in the form of extra work done.   >Its not like the government just sits around and takes it. I know of at least one federal contractor who went to federal prison for fraudulently winning contracts in my part of the country.  In my line of work they really do just sit back and take it, from what ive experience you have to be super greedy and really fuck up to get their attention. 1 job i did, i was only there for 3 weeks total and in that 3 week period i saw all types of osha violations, rescource waste, time waste and plenty of govenrment workers who didnt really know what they were doing ""checking"" on the job to make sure progress was being made.   >It is because government has tremendous resources that they can throw at a problem.  This is where we really do differ, i see this as a bad thing. I see it as them not spending money efficiently money that they got from me and my hard work. Look at the f22 raptor for instance it is now 3 times over budget from the projections for how much of an upgrade? Whats the point of a contract if someone can just go over budget 3 times over without anyone blinking an eye. Why not just say ""get it done and bill us"". I understand your point of view completely i just vehemently disagree with it especially because i think the government source of revenue is based around theft."

You should read the provisions in your offer and any counteroffer that was signed before paying the earnest money, but generally if the appraisal comes in low, the price has to be adjusted. If you can't get a mortgage (because the appraisal is too low) the next guy usually can't either. Unfortunately without more information (the documents that were signed and the locale, to know which laws might be applicable) I can't tell you with certainty that you'll get your earnest money back.


Question: Self Employed, but not required to pay estimated taxes?

"The annualized method allows you to take a look at each quarter independently and pay the tax in the quarter that you earned it. -- According to Linda Durand, a certified public accountant with Drolet & Associates PLLC in Washington, D.C., from the Bankrate article ""Paying quarterly estimated taxes""  And after paying annualized quarterly estimates, you can still owe up to $1000 at tax time without penalty."

Well, yeah.  Costco sells items in bulk, Whole Foods does not.  A better comparison would be Whole Foods against Aldi, Albertson's, Smith's, Vons, WinCo, etc.  These are the companies that sell groceries in similar sizes, but perhaps of lower quality.

Jobs don't mean anything by themselves. If you are increasing part time positions but not full time there may be no gain in income/productivity. Also if wages aren't increasing but debt is that means the portion of average take home wage that goes towards interest is increasing as well.

maybe it would turn into an Oligopoly on it's own, but regulation as that pervasive is what I'm trying to avoid here.  I advocate Worker Co-ops as the best examples for these firms because they actually allow a sense of welfare taken up by the workers who can self provide with actual trades (and because their co-ownership allows a voluntary loophole in minimum wage laws, you get a real chance to vindicate/prove Adam Smith's theory of flexible prices and wages based on economic activity.).  With self-provided welfare, the Government can pull out of both transfer payments as well as financial regulations because these markets have become more differentiated to a diversity of opinions, so Government can step back and focus on its more important role of Researcher and Developer, which it tends to do better at than other roles.  Firms can't do this if they are breaking even, like they would in perfect competition.

> (1) The value of the MBA is in the network  Really?  That's the value?  No, it's the letters behind your name that people look at when you submit an application / resume.  If it's not there they pass you by.  Furthermore, an MBA isn't the only way to build a network.  Also, congrats on finding some great entry level jobs.  When this kid is thinking about his 1st promotion and his peers already have an MBA, he's screwed.  Great for the kids at your school... they're not eligible for anything other than entry level jobs without one.  You're behind the trend.  Sorry, you're giving the kid bad advice.  It will not do him any harm to get it right away.

> Amazon used steep discounts to turn its Echo speaker line into a best-seller. Even if Amazon loses money on the device sales, it gets a toehold for its Alexa digital voice-assistant platform to become more connected to shoppers who can use it to check the weather, stream music, hail an Uber, order pizza -- and of course buy more from Amazon -- by voice command.

I'll repost a [comment I posted the other day](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/6pmtzr/askuk_weekly_what_makes_0_sense_to_you/dkv8qg6/?context=2) regarding Snapchat, as it fits just as well here....  > > Ah, snapchat before it got monetised.  > I don't even think it's that.  > Tech companies that become popular tend to go on hiring sprees and all those new developers feel compelled to justify their existence within the company. As such they start churning out additional 'features' that nobody asked for and which only serve to complicate their service and turn their product into the very thing people were trying to get away from when they started using the service in the first place.  > ...then the 'next big thing' comes along and the cycle repeats.

It's called correlation. I found this: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/school/tabid/426/ID/437424/currency-pair-correlations it looks a good place to start Similar types of political economies will correlate together, opposite types won't. Also there are geographic correlations (climate, language etc)


Question: Sell or keep rental Property?

Sell the house, in the scenario you describe he is using the property as an investment with a $250 per month buy-in. This investment doesn't make a return right now and when you add in the cost of dealing with the tenant (even if he doesn't have those cost now, he will when they move out)he is out of more than $250 a month and he has no direct knowledge that the value will definitely increase. He would be better spent selling the house and putting the funds into an investment, even a risky investment. It will have less maintenance cost associated with the risky investment than the rental property.  Besides sitting on the property for 10-15 years would cost him 30-45k plus the cost of re-renting the house when empty.Not to mention the inevitable increases in taxes over that time which will either increase his deficit or eat up the rent increase he is able to charge. Don't take the loss on the sale, just short sale it and take the money and invest! One last thought... An alternative is to creatively finance a sale (take payments from a buyer until they can buy outright) that will cover the FULL mortgage and get him the price he needs. You can look up owner financing to find out more on how to do this. Hope this helps!

Yes,  if you choose to live within the benefits provided by a system *and* choose to illegally not pay for your part, then yes expect armed men to show up at your door - and rightfully so.  Try joining a family you don't know at a restaurant, start helping yourself to their food and see what happens...

A couple things. First of all, most people's MAIN source of income is from their job, but they have others, such as bank interest, stock dividends, etc. So that income has to be reported with their wage income. The second thing is that most people have deductions NOT connected with their job. These deductions reduce income (and generate refunds). So it's in their interest to file.

"What do you mean by 'make'?  I am in the US, but I'm sure it's typical that any business has a ""bottom line"", the profit after all costs including paper losses for things like depreciation. This is then taxed, either at the business level or to the individual. The individual's person expenses don't come into play, unless those expenses are tied to the business, e.g. Some kind of function at their house which includes clients/customers."

Programmer here. Getting into business is more than just tech knowledge. It's great that you were able to get some money for what you did. But setting up a business requiring figuring out a solution to a problem. When it's easy to identify a problem, it's not easy to come up with a viable solution (otherwise someone else would have already solved it). At other times, you figure out a very limited scoped problem and figure out a solution, but it's not very scalable.   My advice to you. Keep learning. You are very young and there is a lot of fun things you can do. If you think you are already standing out with your skills, get an online profile going. Get popular. Try all channels. Should be fun.

We all live in a smart world and this technically smart world is operated on mainly two operating systems that are always working hard to outshine each other in more than one ways to mention. These two operating systems are Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS system predominantly used in smart phones and tablets.

"Actually, banks do issue their own money, it's just not embodied as a piece of paper, it's called checkbook money and in the US, it's backed by 3$ per every 100$ promised, that's the magic of ""fractional reserve banking."""

"In the US, stocks are listed on one exchange but can be traded on multiple venues.  You need to confirm exactly what your data is showing: a) trades on the primary-listed exchange; or b) trades made at any venue. Also, the trade condition codes are important.  Only certain trade condition codes contribute towards the day's open/high/low/close and some others only contribute towards the volume data.  The Consolidated Tape Association is very clear on which trades should contribute towards each value - but some vendors have their own interpretation (or just simply an erroneous interpretation of the specifications). It may surprise you to find that the majority of trading volume for many stocks is not on their primary-listed exchange.  For example, on 2 Mar 2015, NASDAQ:AAPL traded a total volume across all venues was 48096663 shares but trading on NASDAQ itself was 12050277 shares. Trades can be cancelled.  Some data vendors do not modify their data to reflect these busted trades.   Some data vendors also ""snapshot"" their feed at a particular point in time of the data.  Some exchanges can provide data (mainly corrections) 4-5 hours after the closing bell.  By snapshotting the data too early and throwing away any subsequent data is a typical cause of data discrepancies.   Some data vendors also round prices/volumes - but stocks don't just trade to two decimal places. So you may well be comparing two different sets of trades (with their own specific inclusion rules) against the same stock.  You need to confirm with your data sources exactly how they do things. Disclosure: Premium Data is an end-of-day daily data vendor."


Question: Can a retail trader do bid-ask spread scalping through algo-trading?

"In US public stock markets there is no difference between the actions individual retail traders are ""permitted"" to take and the actions institutional/corporate traders are ""permitted"" to take.  The only difference is the cost of those actions.  For example, if you become a Registered Market Maker on, say, the BATS stock exchange, you'll get some amazing rebates and reduced transaction prices; however, in order to qualify for Registered Market Maker status you have to maintain constant orders in the book for hundreds of equities at significant volumes.  An individual retail trader is certainly permitted to do that, but it's probably too expensive. Algorithmic trading is not the same as automated trading (algorithmic trading can be non-automated, and automated trading can be non-algorithmic), and both can be anywhere from low- to high-frequency.  A low-frequency automated strategy is essentially indistinguishable from a person clicking their mouse several times per day, so: no, from a legal or regulatory perspective there is no special procedure an individual retail trader has to follow before s/he can automate a trading strategy.  (Your broker, on the other hand, may have all sorts of hoops for you to jump through in order to use their automation platform.) Last (but certainly not least) you will almost certainly lose money hand over fist attempting bid-ask scalping as an individual retail trader, whether your approach is algorithmic or not, automated or not.  Why?  Because the only way to succeed at bid-ask scalping is to (a) always be at/near the front of the queue when a price change occurs in your favor, and (b) always cancel your resting orders before they are executed when a price change occurs against you.  Unless your algorithms are smarter than every other algorithm in the industry, an individual retail trader operating through a broker's trading platform cannot react quickly enough to succeed at either of those.  You would have to eschew the broker and buy direct market access to even have a chance, and that's the point at which you're no longer a retail trader. Good luck!"

No. The value of the dollar will continue to decline, in turn adding to the value of gold. The current prices are not high for metals, although not rock bottom prices. Especially given what central banks are going to do. (QE).  We are nowhere near a gold bubble.

But the notes are always called at par, no? So you have a fixed yield which depends on the coupon and price you bought it at. I still don't see how the company doing better than expected changes the yield on your investment.

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What if you do need to fly for business? Also, what if you want to get to Europe in less than a few days?  Regardless, TSA has intentions to find their way to all types of transportation as well. End the TSA. Let the airports handle security.

I think your understanding is correct as far as you describe, but you don't mention a critical detail to me.  You also imply some penalty details for early withdrawal / cancellation but you don't state those terms in detail. Where and when is the interest paid?  Does it go into the same CD for compounding?  Does it get paid to another account?  The description does say that it is priced at par, so we at least know that the interest doesn't have to be stuck unpaid within the CD until maturity, but it also means you don't necessarily get compounding at the CD rate. Without knowing where the interest goes, and if it's available for compounding, be careful in how you compare it to other CDs / savings accounts.  A compoundable structure might be a better option, even at a lower APY.

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.

"I worked one summer at WalMart.  The company song was a complete shock to me and I found it to be one of the creepiest things ever devised.  (there are ""moves"" that go along with the song/chant).  Some people actually seemed to be into it.    The song was just the beginning of the meeting though, where they would discuss how much revenue/profit the store made in the previous day (or week maybe I don't remember).  All I could think about was a) at least I don't actually have to do any work while I'm over here b) why to hell do I care what this fucking dump made yesterday?  I'm making minimum wage and I'll be making minimum wage tomorrow."


Question: How should I decide whether to buy more shares of a stock when its price drops?

"A key principle of economics is: Sunk costs are irrelevant. You bought the stock at 147 and it has now fallen to 144. That's too bad. This has nothing to do with whether it is wise or foolish to buy shares at 144. The only relevant thing to consider is: Do I expect the stock to go up or down from 144? You have lost $3 per share on the original buy. Buying more shares will not ""reduce your loss"" in any way. Suppose you bought 100 shares at 147. The price then drops to 144. You have lost $3 per share, or $300 total. You buy another 50 more shares at 144. The price stays at 144. So your average purchase price is now (147 x 100 + 144 x 50) / 150 = 146. So I guess you could say that your ""average loss per share"" is now only $2. But it's $2 x 150 shares instead of $3 x 100 shares. You still lost $300. You didn't reduce your loss by a penny. Maybe it made you feel better that you reduced your average loss per share, but this is just an arithmetic game. If you believe that the stock will continue to drop, than buying more shares just means you will lose even more money. Your average loss per share may go down, but you're just multiplying that average by more and more shares. Of course if you believe that the stock is now at an unjustifiably low price and it will likely go back up, then sure, buy. If you buy at 144 and it goes back up to 147, then you'll be making $3 per share on the new shares you purchased. But I repeat, whether or not you buy more shares should have nothing to do with your previous buy. Buy more shares if you think the price will go up from the present price; don't buy more shares if you don't think it will go up. The decision should be exactly the same as if you had never previously bought shares. (I'm assuming here that you are a typical small investor, that you not buying enough shares to have any significant effect on the market, nor that you are in a position to buy enough shares to take control of the company.)"

I'm confused. Are you asking why or telling us that you're bullish? Yes the stock will go up for a merger at a premium, but buying in now only gives you ~0.5% gain if it closes at $21.50. They won't trade over 21.50 unless a competing bid comes in or the bid is increased.

Having separate savings account for your kids college fund, retirement fund, holiday fund etc is one way to compartmentalise savings. Downside to this is the management of these funds especially if you have them with different banks. Like others here have pointed out, keeping track via spreadsheet is relatively easy and especially most banks now like OCBC, HSBC , DBS, POSB etc offer online banking, however from a financial standpoint, spreading your funds doesn't allow you to get as much interest as you would from one account that has the highest interest rate.

Retirement calculation, in general, should be based on the amount of money needed per year/month and the expected life expectancy. Life expectancy, if calculated to 90 years (let's say) indicates that post retirement age (60 yrs.) your accumulated/invested money should generate adequate income to cover your expenses till 90 years. The problem in general is not how long you shall live but what would be your expected spending from retirement to end of life expectancy. The idea is at the minimum your investments should generate income that is inflation adjusted. One way to do this is to consider your monthly expense now i.e. the expense that is absolute minimum for carrying on (food, electricity, water, medicines, household consumables, car petrol, insurance, servicing, entertainment, newspaper etc.) this does not contain the amortizable liabilities (home loan, child's education, other debts). It is better to take this amount per family rather than per person and yearly rather than monthly (as we tend to miss a lot of yearly expenses). This amount that you need today will increase at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of the average inflation. For example, if today you spend 100 per year in 7 years you will need to spend appx. 200 at 10% inflation. Now, your investments will not increase post your retirement, so your current investment needs to do two things (1) give you your yearly requirement (2) grow by a fixed amount so that next year it can give you CAGR adjusted returns. In general, this kind of investment grows by high net amounts initially and slowly the growth decrease. The above can be calculated by Net Present value (NPV) formulae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value). The key is to remember that the money that is invested when you retire should be able to give you inflation adjusted returns to cover your yearly expenses. How much money you need depends on your life style/expectation and how much return is received depends on the instruments that you invest on. As for your question above on the difference between the age of you and your spouse, it better to go with the consolidated family requirement and get an idea of how much investment is necessary and provision the same as soon as possible from your as well as your spouse's income. Hope this helps.- thanks

Yeh I agree with amazon I would own only 2 shares. But what do u think about Nvidia? 196$. plus gpus are needed for  self driving cars, cryptocurrency mining, ai, and vr. So stock I think would go up. And it's not as expensive as google and and microsoft. Do you think that price is good? Or to high for my available money.

The health specs is actually our cooking techniques and cleaning procedures of the restaurant. I'm not 100% certain, but I think they tracked that the E. Coli was from a distributor defect and not as much the restaurant. And GMO is not bad at all, I never said that, just that the non-GMO ingredients are obviously different, so they're gonna taste different than GMO produce and food.

And that's the rub, you didn't win a fucking thing. You are not part of a team. You are just brainwashed by the politics you choose to isolate yourself with. Trump won, not you, and he won on accident and on lying to people that supported him foolishly.  He was expecting to lose, and the day before and day of election Tuesday his campaign was pushing a narrative that democrats cheated to win.  We all fucking lost. You lost worse that I did, because you continue to put your hope in a lying scumbag who has no morals, scruples, or sense of decency whatsoever, and it is too painful to admit your monumental fuckup.

"Oh sorry maybe I misread your question. The article didn't have anything concrete. I just watched the video to see the there was some clear examples or data but I didn't really catch anything. He said something about Trump not wanting to create jobs and said ""Chinese are working on AI"" because the gov't announced a plan. But he offered no real data for his views at all from what I heard. I'm not a specialist in economics so maybe I missed something obvious that someone else can clue us in on"


Question: Is it true that if I work 6 months per year, it is better than to work for 1 calendar year and take a break for 1 year?

In many cases spanning across years will indeed be beneficial. Deductions: You get to take twice as much in deductions (twice the standard deduction, or itemizing - if you can) when you span over two years than in one.  IRA: You can only contribute in years when you have earned income. You have all the income in year 1 and none in year 2 - you can only contribute in year 1. You have half of the income in year 1 and half of the income in year 2 - you can contribute in both years (up to the limit/earned income, whichever is less). Social Security: You get 4 credits for each year you earned ~16K in. You earned 32K in year 1, and nothing in year 2 - you get 4 credits. You split it in half for each year - you get 8 credits. The list can go on. If you can do the planning ahead of time and can chose the time periods of your work freely (which is not something most people can do), you can definitely plan ahead with taxes in mind. This is called Tax Planning.

Seriously, I get downvoted every time I point out that he is in fact a convicted criminal multiple times over.   People don't even know anything about him despite his wikipedia article being readily available and listing out charges and convictions.  But his new scam, I mean service, will be totally awesome!

Oh yes! My policy is 5 stars unless something awful happened then detract based on how I feel. For example, a driver who was 10 minutes away to 35 minutes to get to me and called me a liar over the phone because I was at 1st ave N and not 1st ave W like he thought because he only knew W. He got 1 star...

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Note that the formula for Price to Book ratio is:  Stock Price / {[Total Assets - (Intangible Assets + Liabilities)] / Stock Outstanding}  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-to-bookratio.asp  http://www.investopedia.com/articles/fundamental/03/112603.asp  There's a number of factors that could lead to a lower than 1. The primary reason, imho, could be the company is in a state of retiring stock with debt. The company is selling penny stocks (only to get people more interested in it's later development) which are inherently undervalued. There may be other reasons, but definitely check out both articles.

To your first question: YES. Capital gains and losses on real-estate are treated differently than income. Note here for exact IRS standards.  The IRS will not care about percentage change but historical (recorded) amounts.   To your second question: NO  Are you taxed when buying a new stock? No. But be sure to record the price paid for the house. Note here for more questions. *Always consult a CPA for tax advice on federal tax returns.

This is surprising, I'm not sure if they do this anymore. I got an overdraft fee a couple months when they tried to pay the balance on my CC. I had plenty in savings to cover it. I called and argued with them because they re-ran the draft to pay the CC the next day too, when they should have been well aware there weren't funds in the checking account, but they wouldn't do anything about it.  The first time I've ever had a gripe with them.

For the financial year 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015 as you have / will be spending more than 182 days outside of India, you are Non-Resident from tax point of view. For the period 1 April 2014 to Aug 2014, any salary / income you have earned in India is taxable and tax need to be paid. For the period Aug 2014 to 31 March 2015 the income you have earned in Saudi is not taxable in India. You can transfer money to India or keep in Saudi, it has no effect on the taxes. Any interest income you earn, or rental income you earn, or any other source of income in India is taxable. You would need to file returns accordingly. An NRE Accounts allows you to transfer funds out of India without any questions. So if you intend at some point in time in future to move funds out of India [say settling down in Saudi or UK or US etc] it is advisable to have NRE account. If you are sure you don't want to transfer funds out of India, you should open an NRO account.


Question: Recommended education path for a future individual investor?

"For a job doing that kind of stuff, what is PREFERRED is 4 year undergrad at ivy league school + 2 year MBA at ivy league school, and then several more years of experience, which you can sort of get by interning while in school this will of course saddle you with debt, which is counterintuitive to your plans basically, the easy way up is percentage based compensation. without knowing the right people, you will get a piss poor salary regardless of what you do, in the beginning. so portfolio managers earn money by percentage based fees, and can manage millions and billions. real estate agents can earn money by percentage based commissions if they close a property and other business venture/owners can do the same thing. the problem with ""how to trade"" books is that they are outdated by the time they are published. so you should just stick with literature that teaches a fundamental knowledge of the products you want to trade/make money from. ultimately regardless of how you get/earn your initial capital, you will still need to be an individual investor to grow your own capital. this has nothing to do with being a portfolio manager, even highly paid individuals on wall street are in debt to lavish expenditures and have zero capital for their own investments. hope this helps, you really need to be thinking in a certain way to just quickly deduce good ideas from bad ideas"

Also, people who come for golf aren't going to want to go native. They can build a self-contained resort on the cheap and locals will work in support jobs just like when resorts are built in shithole countries.

As you own a company, you need to know what your role is. You can never just move money into or out of the company, you have to identify the role in which you are doing it, and do it properly.  There is Company, and there is You, in three different roles. You are the sole shareholder and director of Company. You are the sole employee of Company. You are also just a private person. You need to keep these three roles separate. As the sole shareholder, you own the company. However, you don't own any assets of the company. The company is yours, but the money in its bank account isn't.  As a private person, you give a loan to your company. You write on a sheet of paper that You personally, give a loan to the company, how much a loan is, what interest is paid, and when the loan will be paid back (that could be 'whenever You demands the money paid back'). Then you move the money from your private bank account to the company bank account, and the company has the money it needs to fund its operation. Assume it wasn't you who loaned the money, but I gave the loan to the company. You can imagine that I would have this loan written down and signed before I hand over the cash. And you must have exactly the same papers that I would have.  How do you get money from the company? The company can pay back your loan. That should be written down again, in the same way as the loan itself was written down. Other than that, there are three ways how you can get money out of the company: The company can pay You, in your role as its employee, a salary, which it can deduct from its profits. The company can pay money into a pension of the company director (that's You in your role as company director) up to £40,000 or so a year; that money is deducted from its profits again. The company pays 20% tax on its remaining profits. Then the company can pay You, in your role as company director, a dividend, usually twice a year. Each of these payments has to be written down and given to HMRC properly.  Best by far to use an accountant to do all the paper work for you and advice you what to do. You can lose a lot of money by just not getting the paperwork right, by filing late etc., which the accountant will get right. The accountant will also tell you what are the optimal amounts for salary and dividend (best is a small salary, about £10,000 a year, dividend of about £30,000 a year, pension as much as the company can afford, which is then all tax free to you). You can't pay more dividend then the company can afford (paying a dividend and then not being able to pay your suppliers is criminal), and if you want higher dividends, then you will have to pay taxes on them.

There are 2 schools of thought in determining the price of a future contract in a day prior to expiration.  The cost of carry model, states that the price of a future contract today is the spot price plus the cost of carrying the underlying asset until expiration minus the return that can be obtained from carrying the underlying asset.  FuturePrice = SpotPrice + (CarryCost - CarryReturn)  The expectancy model, states that the price of the futures contract depends on the expectation about the spot market's price in the future. In this case, the price of the future contract will diverge from the spot price depending on how much the price is expected to rise or fall before expiration.  A few glossary terms: cost of carry For physical commodities such as grains and metals, the cost of   storage space, insurance, and finance charges incurred by holding a   physical commodity. In interest rate futures markets, it refers to the   differential between the yield on a cash instrument and the cost of   funds necessary to buy the instrument. Also referred to as carrying   charge. spot price  The price at which a physical commodity for immediate   delivery is selling at a given time and place. The cash price.

Keep in mind a good lawyer will have the contract cover the five D's: Its really best to lay these things out ahead of time.  I watched, first hand, two friends start a business.  When they were broke and struggling the worked very well together.  Then the money started rolling in.  Despite exceeding their dreams they were constantly at each other's throats fighting and bickering over stupid stuff.  In the end, because they had decent legal docs, they both were able to pull money out of the business.   Had that not been worked out they would have destroyed the business so that no one would have profited.

"The issues are larger than taxes.  If one of you receives the check, then breaks off 25% of it for themselves and sends three checks out to each of you that will be indicated on that person's taxes.  You three will then all recognize your portion of the income on your taxes and it's all settled.  It's no big deal, it's a bit rag-tag but it'll get the job done.  I've done little ad-hoc partnership work with people this way and it's not a problem. This is why you should really be more formal.  What if this entity contracting you guys sues you?  Who has the liability, if only one of you was paid?  What if the money is sent to one of you and that person dies before paying you?  What if you all get another client?  What if this contracting entity has another project?   The partnership needs to have the liability.  The partnership needs to receive the money.  The partnership needs to be named on whatever contract you all sign.  The partnership can be a straight partnership, or maybe the four of you take a 25% stake in an LLC or Inc arrangement.  Minimally, you should sit down with your partners so everyone knows everyone else's responsibilities, and you should write it all down.  It probably sounds like overkill, and I'm sure your partners are you buddies and ""we're tight and nothing bad could come between us.""  I've done some partnership work with more than one friend, we've always been fine.  Some ventures are successful, some aren't; I'm still very good friends with all of them.  Writing things down manages expectations and when money starts moving around, everyone is happier when everyone has a solid expectation of who gets what."

I interned at GS last summer and I am returning fulltime after graduation. In my experience and those I've encountered, it is very much dependent on where, front vs back, in the bank you work. Most software development jobs at GS seem to be 9-5. If you write software in front-office parts of the bank like trading, though, hours generally get worse (but pay is better!).

>This buildup of excessive debt started so long ago -- Levy dates it to the 1980s in the U.S. -- that people no longer know what's prudent.  This is echoed elsewhere.  At this time, people that use capital don't truly know how much it's worth because it's so abundant.  Consequently, creates difficult in making business decisions.


Question: Stocks taxed just for selling, or just when withdrawing?

Outside of a tax sheltered IRA or 401(k) type of account your transactions may trigger tax liability.  However, transactions are not taxed immediately at the time of the transaction; and up to a certain limits capital gains can be offset by capital losses which can mitigate your liability at tax time.  Also, remember that dividend receipts are taxable income as well. As others have said, this has nothing to do with whether or not money has been moved out of the account.

I can't tell if it's very clever marketing or very foolish; I'd settle on a combination, especially since the former chief executive admitted that it is due to cases like this, where people were encouraged to live beyond their means, that took a needle to the property bubble in 2008.   It's quite dangerous, as you say, to present adverts as news. What's slightly more insidious in my eyes is in the way in which it's presented as a blog piece, which comes with connotations of informality and honesty, constructed to leave a feel-good affect on the reader.   The advert seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people, who were very vocal in their disappointment. Critiques of the article were leads in two of Ireland's biggest newspapers, The Irish Times and the Irish Independent. Either way it's great publicity for Bank of Ireland, I guess.

If a business owner works for no salary, put time and effort into the   business, can those hours be considered a capital investment? No.

"What do I mean by infrastructure? Well, if you're doing algorithmic trading, you have to have something monitoring data and making decisions on its own, presumably. How do you set that up? There are many ways, and some are better than others.  First is a problem of scale. If you're a newbie starting out with some small set of equity tick data, perhaps just trades for instance, you can whip together something that can handle that pretty easily. Check out http://www.marketdatapeaks.com/ though. That's your messaging rates you have to deal with once you go full data feeds direct from all the exchanges. 6.65 million messages/events per second. That's a lot. And if you fall behind, you lose your lunch.  Building a robust system that allows you to easily backtest and deploy strategies is crucial as well. The speed at which you're able to conduct the backtest matters a lot. Doing that rapidly, and accurately is not easy. For a broad market-data handling algo design (and now, clearly, for very specific things you can design one that'll handle stuff better for that one corner case, but this is for general algo trading), optimally you have some sort of setup where you have a:  [feed handlers] -> [tickerplant] -> [mkt data subscribers/CEP] -> [order management system] -> [broker]   in this setup you have feed handlers that are taking the raw exchange feeds and pushing them to a consolidated tickerplant, where CEP subscribers can come through and sub to the data they want (perhaps I just want ES futures on one, and only want to arb CMCSA and CMCSK on another -- you dont want each CEP subscriber getting your full feed for all tickers all the time, its a waste). so more or less, each independent strategy is its own subscriber to the tickerplant, taking whatever data it wants and only that data (could be ""give me all the trades and quotes for all nasdaq stocks, but not book depth"" for instance).  your CEP does whatever maths it has to do to figure out trading decisions, and when it does, it sends it to your order management system which does your risk checks, etc (""do you have enough money to place this trade?"" ""do you already have a position in this?"" ""are you trading against yourself?"" ... million other things). your OMS knows how to talk to your broker/directly to the exchange depending on your setup. Assuming all your risk checks pass, off the order goes to the exchange, and it deals with the fill msgs, etc.  Now, as far as speed is concerned - try to do all of this at 6.5 million events/second. It's hard. Some strats/cep subscribers will run faster than others, some are slower, some need to keep a full book to work while some work on just trades. Your OMS depending on if youre using only market data sources may need to keep its own book to place orders on behalf of your subscribers if they lack information about various markets (think all the twitter trading bots these days for instance), etc.  If you look back at the above setup as well, you'll notice some interesting things. [tickerplant] -> [cep subscriber] portion can stay the same for live trading or backtesting. This is huge. The only thing that changes here for backtesting is that if you're trying to backtest, you can take historical data (query it out of your hopefully column-store database) and push it into your tickerplant rather than having it come from a live feed through the feed handler. Your tickerplant and cep subscriber will never know the difference, so you can use the same exact code for backtesting as you can for live. On the other end, you obviously cant send historical orders to your live broker, so you need to code a simulated OMS that does the backtest simulation (another huge piece of software to code that is hard to do well). But, for backtesting, your setup is staying largely the same except those two end pieces. This means that testing/deving/deploying strats can be pretty rapid, and uses the same code base for live and historical, which helps you eliminate bugs and have to code everything twice.  Backtesting design: [historical mkt data db] -> [tickerplant] -> [mkt data subscribers/CEP] -> [order management system simulator/backtester]  These are just a few of the many problems that you hit when trying to dev good infra. There are like a million more. Point was simply, it's complicated. And C++ is a good lang. I use a wide variety of languages depending on exactly whats going on and how fast the code needs to be. With a proper tickerplant design, youre using some ipc protocol so a subscriber can be coded in any language. Check out http://www.zeromq.org/ -- thats an excellent piece of software to use to make a tickerplant out of, think they even have a design for one in the docs if I recall. With that, your CEP subscribers can be in any language - perhaps pure C if you need the speed, perhaps .NET or Java if you dont (check out http://esper.codehaus.org/ for a Java implement of a CEP subscriber, nEsper for the C# port of that I believe). But I use C, C++, C#, python, R, x86 asm for a few very minor things, and a lang or two I can't mention here."

Idk why Banks are so opposed to holding just a bit more capital. It helps them avoid becoming suddenly insolvent should something happen. It's like they only care about personal short term gain and care little about being in the game for the long term.

If I was you I would not borrow from my 401K and shred the credit card offer.  Both are very risky ventures, and you are already in a situation that is risky.  Doing either will increase your risk significantly. I'd also consider selling the rental house.  You seem to be cutting very close on the numbers if you can't raise 17K in cash to refi the house.  What happens if you need a roof on the rental, and an HVAC in your current home?   My assumption is that you will not sell the home, okay I get it.  I would recommend either giving your tenant a better deal then the have now, or something very similar.  Having a good tenant is an asset.

"I cannot definitively say this is illegal, but we'll apply some cold hard logic to it: If this were as easy as it sounds, why aren't they using their own account/card instead of yours? Ask them this question directly.  They will probably say something along the lines of ""I don't have a card"" or try to guilt you into doing it. You should do two things:  Tell them no. Report them to the police/the bank/etc. In all likelihood, they will end up doing something illegal or they are laundering money.  When push comes to shove, you will be the one the police come after asking questions.  They have complete deniability as it is your card.  This is no different than the ""Cash this big check and send me half of it"" scams that are common."

ML is a brokerage firm. Tell them to sell. If you can't or don't know how to do it on-line - call them and do it over the phone. Your citizenship might come in effect when tax are withheld, you need to fill form W8-BEN if you haven't done so yet. If US taxes are withheld, you can file 1040NR to request refund, or get it credited against your local tax liabilities.


Question: Investment for young expatriate professionals

That's a broad question, but I can throw some thoughts at you from personal experience.  I'm actually an Australian who has worked in a couple of companies but across multiple countries and I've found out first hand that you have a wealth of opportunities that other people don't have, but you also have a lot of problems that other people won't have. First up, asset classes. Real estate is a popular asset class, but unless you plan on being in each of these countries for a minimum of one to two years, it would be seriously risky to invest in rental residential or commercial real estate. This is because it takes a long time to figure out each country's particular set of laws around real estate, plus it will take a long time to get credit from the local bank institutions and to understand the local markets well enough to select a good location. This leaves you with the classics of stocks and bonds. You can buy stocks and bonds in any country typically. So you could have some stocks in a German company, a bond fund in France and maybe a mutual fund in Japan. This makes for interesting diversification, so if one country tanks, you can potentially be hedged in another. You also get to both benefit and be punished by foreign exchange movements. You might have made a killing on that stock you bought in Tokyo, but it turns out the Yen just fell by 15%. Doh. And to top this off, you are almost certainly going to end up filling out tax returns in each country you have made money in. This can get horribly complicated, very quickly. As a person who has been dealing with the US tax system, I can tell you that this is painful and the US in particular tries to get a cut of your worldwide income. That said, keep in mind each country has different tax rates, so you could potentially benefit from that as well. My advice? Choose one country you suspect you'll spend most of your life in and keep most of your assets there. Make a few purchases in other places, but minimize it. Ultimately most ex-pats move back to their country of origin as friends, family and shared culture bring them home.

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> “**It is important that we get our economy growing again through savings and investment, not more debt and deficit spending**. But we can’t turn the economy around until we fix the root of the problem: an unaccountable Federal Reserve. A complete and thorough audit of the Fed will finally allow the American people to know exactly how their money is being spent by Washington.”   Why don't the US people get this simple fact is beyond me ><

Those compensated by commission, not your moneyed elite. Those types are going to get out of taxes anyway.  Capital gains crush the middle and upper middle class like no other. BTW, now you sound even less like you know what you're talking about.

"Assuming U.S. law, there are ""safe harbor"" provisions for exactly this kind of situation. There are several possibilities, but the most likely one is that if your withholding and estimated tax payments for 2016 totaled at least as much as your tax bill for 2015 there's no penalty. For the full rules, see IRS Publication 17."

>How will making energy cheaper help?  Cheaper energy is equivalent to a pay raise, only it's also good for business interests.  That (theoretically) can allow more competitive pricing of other products, since businesses aren't trapped by high energy costs forming a price floor.  That part depends on how competitive each individual market is.

Yup. I scrutinize the income statement I receive from my employer every year. What I make vs what the company actually invests in me as an employee is really astounding. Beyond my hourly wage, the company pays for my health insurance premium (all but $10/check), and pays for a medical flex-spending account. On top of this (I know this isn't taxes but it's still an expense and government sanctioned) if I do some dumbass thing to get myself hurt at work, they'd pay all medical bills since it happened on their property.   We recently had a bit of a wake-up call this summer, as the board of directors warned everyone that the current medical plan our company provides to us is not sustainable, and will have to undergo changes (we're going to either start paying for our premiums, decrease our flex accounts, or charge smokers additional fees) beginning Jan 1st. Lots of people are complaining about this. I don't think they're aware of the horde of expenses and fees that the company swallows for them in other ways.  There's property taxes, business income taxes, excise taxes, customs/duty taxes, state taxes... along with meeting the restrictions and standards of certain governmental agencies (like OSHA). I don't know how a small business owner could ever maintain control over all of this financial mess and be able to help their customers or other employees.   There's OSHA, a profit-seeking (through citations) business now, instead of a partner and ally to businesses. A typical 'violation' is $70K, and a 'repeat' violation is $140K. Imagine running a small grocery store, and having to pay this fine because you accidentally had a piece of styrofoam lying on top of a cooler not built to withstand overhead weight. Or because someone wasn't wearing safety shoes in the store. You'd simply go out of business.

Your ETF will return the interest as dividends.  If you hold the ETF on the day before the Ex-Dividend date, you will get the dividend.  If you sell before that, you will not.  Note that at least one other answer to this question is wrong.  You do NOT need to hold on the Record date.  There is usually 2 days (or so) between the ex-date and the record date, which corresponds to the number of days it takes for your trade to settle.  See the rules as published by the SEC: http://www.sec.gov/answers/dividen.htm


Question: What is the dividend if yield is 3.04?

From the hover text of the said screen; Latest dividend/dividend yield Latest dividend is dividend per share paid to shareholders in the most   recent quarter. Dividend yield is the value of the latest dividend,   multiplied by the number of times dividends are typically paid per   year, divided by the stock price. So for Ambev looks like the dividend is inconsistantly paid and not paid every quarter.

"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."

HSBC exchange spread between HKD and USD was 483 bps (1 bps is 0.0001) on their 24 hours exchange network a few weeks ago when I checked. It is very high for a pair of linked currencies which has very little fluctuation. One should expect less than 5 bps or even 1 bps. I did my currency conversion at a US brokerage which can take HKD currency and then I was able to pick the time/rate and amount I like to make the conversion. Basically, the currency pair runs within a tight band and you just need to buy USD with HKD at the time when it is near the edge of the band to your advantage. There is usually no fee on currency conversion. They make money through the spread. HSBC premier allows you to wire free among countries. I forget whether they offer tighter spread or not.  Rob was right on about the cost of transferring money overseas. The majority of the cost is in the conversion, not the wiring.

"Well if they offer free shipping that would be one thing and regardless if they raise the total cost that will likely result in fewer sales.  Of course, I'm not sure what the alternatives are for ""elderly people who live hundreds of miles from a pharmacy."""

"Why does the article, which refers to the 2006-2008 boom as a gilded age use the same time period as a basis for labor participation calculation? Should they not use a more wise approach and make the basis around 2005 or 2004 and then calculate the amount of labor participating in order to account for the ""false high"" of 2007? Maybe I missed something in my education but if a specific time counts as an anomaly, then it should not be the base calculation when deriving a hypothesis about that time period. For example wage growth between 2005 and 2007 increased x% but between 2007 and 2009 decreased 3x% so we are really in for it now. It should be the base period of 2005 shows a growth of x% to 2007 and from 2005 to 2009 shows a growth of only one tenth x%.   Of course this would make for much less sensationalist journalism and may not sell as many news stories as a sensationalist story would."

"The amount of ""if they don't like it, they shouldn't work there"" in this thread is fucking appalling. People have a right to decent wages. In this case, I think we all understand that simple boycotting and educating won't work.   Someone in the upper chain of command in the US needs to come out and say something, as well as re-haul a disgusting system that lets people live so distraught while others live so comfortably."

One big advantage that the 529 plan has is that most operate like a target date fund. As the child approaches college age the investment becomes more conservative. While you can do this by changing the mix of investments, you can't do it without capital gains taxes. Many of the issues you are concerned about are addressed: they are usable by other family members, they don't hurt financial aid offers, they address scholarships, they can be used for books or room and board.  Many states also give you a tax break in the year of the contribution.

Mr. Raphael Lilla is a business enthusiast, a philanthropist and an honoured member of the International Society of Business Leaders. He comes with over 20 years of experience working in the Swiss and International financial markets and is currently operating as the Executive Director of SBC Group AG, Switzerland, and as Managing Director of Swiss Bullion Company International LLC, Dubai.


Question: Investing in low cost index fund — does the timing matter?

If you're worried about investing all at once, you can deploy your starting chunk of cash gradually by investing a bit of it each month, quarter, etc. (dollar-cost averaging).  The financial merits and demerits of this have been debated, but it is unlikely to lose you a lot of money, and if it has the psychological benefit of inducing you to invest, it can be worth it even if it results in slightly less-than-optimal gains. More generally, you are right with what you say at the end of your question: in the long run, when you start won't matter, as long as you continue to invest regularly.  The Boglehead-style index-fund-based theory is basically that, yes, you might save money by investing at certain times, but in practice it's almost impossible to know when those times are, so the better choice is to just keep investing no matter what.  If you do this, you will eventually invest at high and low points, so the ups and downs will be moderated. Also, note that from this perspective, your example of investing in 2007 is incorrect.  It's true that a person who put money in 2007, and then sat back and did nothing, would have barely broken even by now.  But a person who started to invest in 2007, and continued to invest throughout the economic downturn, would in fact reap substantial rewards due to continued investing throughout the post-2007 lows.  (Happily, I speak from experience on this point!)

"Confused on amortization of intangibles.   Let's say I'm running a DCF on a firm that has lots of valuable customer contracts. Those contracts are amortized over 10 years. The annual intangible amortization amount is pretty high.  However, nowhere in their 10K do I see a correspondingly high CapEx number. Based on the footnotes, it seems that the contracts are ""cheap"" to acquire (just sales people salary) and don't have high CapEx.  Fundamentally I don't understand how they can amortize something at a rate higher than its cost basis (in terms of upfront cash out the door)."

"Construction loans are typically short term that then get rolled into conventional mortgages at the end of the construction period. Since the actual construction loan is short term, you cannot combine it with a long-term land loan as well. You could do the two separate loans up front to buy the land and finance the construction, then at the end roll both into a conventional mortgage to close out the land and construction loans. This option will only work if you do all three through the same lender. Trying to engage various lenders will require a whole new refinance process, which I very much doubt you would want to go through. These are sometimes called combo loans, since they aggregate several different loan products in one ""transaction."" Not a lot of places do land loans, so I would suggest first find a lender that will give you a land loan and set an appoint with a loan representative. Explain what you are trying to do and see what they can offer you. You might have better luck with credit unions as well instead of traditional banks."

Many economists think that in a free market there would be more insider trading as they're able to more efficiently transmit pricing signals to the rest of the market.  Can you come up with an argument how insider trading makes markets less free? What exactly is your definition of a free market?

When all you have is a hammer...  It's not the marketers fault that the margins on their industry have been pushed to the point that cheesy planned obsolescence, 'value size' repackaging and other gimmicks are the go-to fads embraced by the product management teams.  They've no choice but to polish and rack the consumer-mindset-exploiting turds they're paid to shill.  What gets me is the generational divide in response to advertising.  The older generation can't help but trust it it seems.  Whereas, most younger folk I know simply cannot conceive why anyone would trust a product marketed to them- all the incentives seem fundamentally geared towards rip-off and exploitation.  Why play a rigged game if you can avoid it?

I'm an idiot. Certainly not worthy of all this fancy formatting and linking you've done.   I confused the Gen X cut-off with Baby Boomers.   I implied that Gen X, as middle managers, had direct operational control over decisions that led to financial crisis. You chose to ignore that point entirely.

"This answer is to supplement the answers about what CD laddering is and what its benefits are. I'm going to talk about its risks. CD ladders are subject to risk. They are not subject to very much credit risk and investment risk (they're federally insured! Barring the dissolution of the United States government as we know it, you will get all your money back!). However, they are subject to inflation risk and a little bit of interest rate risk. A CD is basically a promise for a certain amount of money after a certain amount of time. Inflation risk happens when there's inflation and the money that you've been promised isn't worth as much anymore, because everything's gotten more expensive. Interest rate risk happens when you buy a CD in a very low interest rate environment (like, oh, the year 2010) and rates subsequently rise. You might have been somewhat better off waiting for rates to rise before buying the CD. (Also, if you were to try and re-sell it, you would get an inferior price - enough to make up for the interest rate difference.) Note that interest rates tend to rise if there is a significant amount of inflation, so these two risks go together. Interest rate risk and inflation risk are higher for longer-term CDs (at least right now) because there's more opportunity for inflation and interest rates to rise. 2010 has been marked by the extraordinarily low interest rate environment which prevails, and the Federal Reserve has announced that it is trying to bring about a higher rate of inflation (you may have heard something about a ""second round of quantitative easing""). A quick look at interest rates show that 2-5 year CDs yield about 1.50% these days. You could, alternatively, get a savings account that yields 1.4%, preserves your liquidity, and will raise the rate it pays you on savings in the event that inflation and interest rates rise (or, if they don't raise it, you can move the account, unlike a CD). In summary, as of right now (October 2010), fixed-income investments like CDs don't pay you very much and have elevated levels of risk, especially for long-term investment. This is one of the worst times possible to invest in a CD ladder."

It is definitely legal and will be accounted by the IRS as earned income.


Question: Why do employers require you to spread your 401(k) contributions throughout the year to get the maximum match?

If one makes say, $10K/mo, and the company will match the first 5% dollar for dollar, a 10%/mo deposit of $1K/mo will see a $500/mo match. If the employee manages to request 90% get put into the 401(k), after 2 months, he's done.  If the company wished, they could continue the $500/mo match, I agree. They typically don't and in fact, the 'true up' you mention isn't even required, one is fortunate to get it. Many companies that match are going the other way, matching only after the year is over. Why? Why does any company do anything? To save money. I used to make an attempt to divide my deposit over the year to max out the 401(k) in December and get the match real time, not a true up.

>The only explanation I can imagine is that production costs are too high.    I think this is precisely it.  It costs too much to produce in the us, so production is outsourced.  Given that many people are payed based on working in production jobs, outsourcing leads to less money.  So eventually, the US will lose money until the point where production in the US is cheap enough to bring it back.    But anyway, my point was that interpretation of Keynesian economics by a few people does not mean that Keynesian economics are wrong.  These people may simply have an interest in not mentioning the exporting of production jobs.  In which point they would be willfully manipulating the paradigm.

And who said high finance isn't criminal half the time? Did any one important go to jail for inflating the housing market and defrauding people in 2008? Of course not...  But back to your point about paying people a lot of money to save lives which is repeated ad nauseam. It isn't relevant because it assumes smart people only discover things to make a lot of money. Ya go tell that to academics who spend their lives in labs etc discovering things and building science from the ground up, I wonder how much they get paid vs. pharma execs.   And even if it proves true to some people I think most would agree that say doctors and drug inventors who actually save lives should be paid well but that's not the people we are dealing with here. We are dealing with financial vultures who just make money off of this because they can and nobody is there to regulate them.

"Volume is measured in the number of shares traded in a given day, week, month, etc. This means that it's not necessarily a directly-comparable measure between stocks, as there's a large difference between 1 million shares traded of a $1 stock ($1 million total) and 1 million shares traded of a $1000 stock ($1 billion total). Volume as a number on its own is lacking in context; it often makes more sense to look at it as an overall dollar amount (as in the parentheses above) or as a fraction of the total number of shares in the marketplace. When you see a price quoted for a particular ticker symbol, whether online, or on TV, or elsewhere, that price is typically the price of the last trade that executed for that security. A good proxy for the current fair price of an asset is what someone else paid for it in the recent past (as long as it wasn't too long ago!). So, when you see a quote labeled ""15.5K @ $60.00"", that means that the last trade on that security, which the service is using to quote the security's price, was for 15500 shares at a price of $60 per share. Your guess is correct. The term ""institutional investor"" often is meant to include many types of institutions that would control large sums of money. This includes large banks, insurance companies, pooled retirement funds, hedge funds, and so on."

No. Current account is not a requirement. You can use savings account. You would need to pay taxes on interest. Savings account have limitation on number of withdrawal in a quarter, hence most sole proprietorship have current account.

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"It won't hurt your credit score, but it may hurt your ChexSystems score. ChexSystems is another consumer reporting agency that doesn't keep track of your debts, but of your bank accounts. Banks (most but not all) check ChexSystems before you open an account to see if you bounce checks, overdraft, make a lot of teller visits, lose ATM cards, etc. They use this to estimate your profitability. Banks aren't allowed to discriminate against a protected class, but ""unprofitable"" is not a protected class. BTW, most banks don't make much money on checking accounts; they view them as ""get-you-in-the-door"" inducements so they can sell you the things they really want to like mortgages and investments."

Haven't read this but will, thanks.  I would agree with you that there are certain aspects and forms of private equity that could be considered reprehensible. First, carried interest probably isn't the fairest thing in the world. But that's not going to last much longer. I think you could also argue that SOME hostile takeovers approach the reprehensible. An example off the top of my head would be Carl Icahn and TWA. I would argue on the whole, however, that most hostile takeovers are accretive in the sense that you're taking out management that is either being tremendously negligent, or destroying value all together.   In both of those instances you can make succinct and well thought out arguments. But this isn't what's happening with Bain. On the whole I would disagree and argue that PE backed restructurings are accretive to the economy as a whole.


Question: Is Real Estate ever a BAD investment? If so, when?

"No, it can really not. Look at Detroit, which has lost a million residents over the past few decades. There is plenty of real estate which will not go for anything like it was sold. Other markets are very risky, like Florida, where speculators drive too much of the price for it to be stable. You have to be sure to buy on the downturn. A lot of price drops in real estate are masked because sellers just don't sell, so you don't really know how low the price is if you absolutely had to sell. In general, in most of America, anyway, you can expect Real Estate to keep up with inflation, but not do much better than that. It is the rental income or the leverage (if you buy with a mortgage) that makes most of the returns. In urban markets that are getting an influx of people and industry, however, Real Estate can indeed outpace inflation, but the number of markets that do this are rare. Also, if you look at it strictly as an investment (as opposed to the question of ""Is it worth it to own my own home?"") there are a lot of additional costs that you have to recoup, from property taxes to bills, rental headaches etc. It's an investment like any other, and should be approached with the same due diligence."

The affordability of homes pales in comparison to the cluster fuck that would come about with a drop in population, who’s going to pay for your pension and all the other things that prop up modern society’s. The current pensioners have spent all our wealth, and we in turn have heavily indebted the next generation(s). It’s a ticking time bomb in Europe, Germany is just ahead of the game... as usual.

To start with, I should mention that many tax preparation companies will give you any number of free consultations on tax issues — they will only charge you if you use their services to file a tax form, such as an amended return. I know that H&R Block has international tax specialists who are familiar with the issues facing F-1 students, so they might be the right people to talk about your specific situation. According to TurboTax support, you should prepare a completely new 1040NR, then submit that with a 1040X. GWU’s tax department says you can submit late 8843, so you should probably do that if you need to claim non-resident status for tax purposes.

If you were going to pay off an 18% credit card and had no hope otherwise, I might agree you should do this. 5.5% student loan, I wouldn't do it.  You have multiple issues going on. I would find a bank or broker that will keep the IRA with no fee. Zero. If you buy stocks, there might be a commission, but I'd stick with a low cost index mutual fund. At 10%, the account might double every 7 years, even 35 years till retirement offers 5 doubles or 32X your money. Literally, $100K more for retirement. As a semi-retired old guy, I thank my younger self for putting aside the $3000, so we have over $100K more now.  Your student loan is manageable. Save, enjoy yourself, but don't let $7500 at 5.5% keep you up at night.

"No stock is risk-free. Some of the biggest companies in the country, that seemed incredibly stable and secure, have suffered severe downturns or gone out of business. Twenty or thirty years ago Kodak ruled the camera film market. But they didn't react quickly enough when digital cameras came along and today they're a shadow of their former self. Forty years ago IBM owned like 90% of the computer market -- many people used ""IBM"" as another word for computer. Sears used to dominate the retail department store market. Etc."

Don't borrow money to buy a car. That is just stupid.  People who save, then buy what they want, spend a very much larger amount of money over their lifetime, compared to a person with the exact same income, who borrows to buy things.  The only difference between the two, is the time it takes to save up that first amount of money. After that there is no difference, except the savers spend a shit-ton more money, and get better stuff.

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"For equities, buy direct from the transfer agent. You have to buy one full share at a minimum but after that dividend reinvestment is free.  There are others like share builder and foliofn that let you buy fractional shares. As the other poster said their roster is limited so you cannot buy every ETF out there.  With your example of not wanting to spend $200 I agree with the others that you should invest in a mutual fund. Vanguard will have every index fund you need and can invest as little as $50, as long as you sign up for a systematic investment draft from your bank. Plus vanguard typically has the lowest fees in the industry.  The most important thing is to start investing as soon as possible and as regular as possible. ""Pay yourself first"""


Question: How to rebalance a passive portfolio if I speculate a war is coming?

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

MBA here. I had a relatively well-paying job with great benefits and tuition reimbursement. I ended up leaving it for a much lower-paying job though.  Why did I do that? I was miserable. The job was to do only as I was told. Also, they changed my project scope to something completely different after 4 months. I also was in a terrible city with no friends. I hated my job and eventually I hated my life.  I've since moved back to where I went to college.  I hate that business publications talk about MBA's like we're all mindless robots looking for the highest paycheck at Goldman Sachs. I'll gladly take friends, a better location, and a comfortable salary over anything else.

You can't pay your bills with equity in your house. Assuming you paid off the mortgage, where would the money come from that you plan to live off of? If that is your whole retirement savings I'd say do neither. Maybe an annuity (not variable) for SOME of the money, keep the rest invested in conservative investments some of it in cash for emergencies.

When you ask people to differentiate between a condominium and an apartment, they usually base their answers on the structure itself. A condominium is, more often than not, a high-rise building filled with dozens of living spaces while an apartment is usually two to three stories high with only a handful of units.

**[Julian Rinaldi](http://www.swspar.com/about/newspage.php?newsid=64)**, who owns Musbury Garage near Axminster, has been elected to the Wessex Guild of **[SPAR.](http://www.swspar.com/)**  Julian joins 11 other Retailers from throughout the South and West on the Wessex Guild. He is pictured here (left) being welcomed by Wessex Guild Chairman Nick Kenworthy.  Each committee member represents a designated area throughout the Guild and Julian will represent an area covering South Somerset and East Devon. “I see the Guild as an important link between the Retailer and Appleby Westward,” he said.  Julian joined SPAR three years ago when he converted his garage shop into a 1,000 sq.ft. SPAR forecourt store serving the local community.  He took over Musbury Garage when his parents Frank and Barbara retired in 2008. They had originally acquired the site in April 1981. It originally opened as a garage in the 1930s under the ownership of a Mr. Snell who later sold the business on to Jim Hendin before he in turn sold it to Frank and Barbara.

First off, you have done very well to be in your financial position at your age. Congratulations.  I first started investing seriously about 10 years ago, and when I started, I had a similar attitude to you. Learning how to invest is a journey, and it will take you a while to learn both the intellectual and emotional sides of investing. First off, there is nothing wrong with having a chunk of cash that you aren't investing effectively. It is far better to be losing earning power WRT inflation that it is to make a bad investment, where you can lose all your money quite quickly. I have perhaps 15% of my capital just sitting around right now because I don't have any place where I'm excited to put it. For your IRA, I would look at the options you have, and choose one that is reasonably well diversified and has low costs. In most cases, an index fund is a reasonable choice. My 401K goes into an S&P 500 index fund, and I don't have to worry about it. Beyond that, I suggest spending some time learning about investing, and then making some small and conservative investments. I've learned a lot from the Motley Fool web site.

If you can make the trip to BC yourself, I'd recommend opening an account with TD Canada Trust.  They allow non-citizens to make accounts — apparently the only Canadian bank to do so.  The customer service is great and they have a good online banking site that will allow you to manage it from the US. If you have an account with TD Bank in the US, it's also very easy to set up a TD Canada account through them that will be linked on their online site (though you will still have separate logins for both and manage them separately).  I've done the reverse as a Canadian living in the US.  You can set it up over the phone; their Cross-Border Banking number is listed here.  They also offer better currency conversion rates than their standard ones when you do a cross-border transfer. You could also look into HSBC as well.  They operate in Washington as well as across the border in BC.  If you can't open a CAD account locally, they can help you open and manage one in Canada from the US.  It may or may not require having a small business account instead of a personal account.

Yes, the US dollar is the standard for all global trade - IMF driven  And China has been going for that title for the past decade and this is a very smart and tactical way to do it  If this goes through, gold & oil might become really good place to be. The US has been in a supply run and kept the price of oil low.  Things are changing quick...


Question: Do people tend to spend less when using cash than credit cards?

"I found the study ""The irrationality of payment behaviour"" accidentally while searching on the term ""DNB Study"" instead of ""D&B Study"".  This study, which, when I followed the link, went to the web site dnb.nl (Dutch National Bank), instead of dnb.com (Dun & Bradstreet).  It mentions all the salient points that I hear Dave Ramsey and others mention when they talk about studies on this subject of credit vs cash.  Also, it cross references to many other studies by various researchers, banks, and universities.  Is this the ""missing mythical DNB study?""  I'll let you decide.  Relevant ""coincidental"" points from the study: To be fair and complete, I should mention that clearly the relevant parts of this DNB study are talking about discretionary spending.  Auto-paying your mortgage with a card is clearly not going to cost you more (unless you somehow forget to pay off the card or some other silliness)."

"I mean, best of luck for this company, but there are empirical reasons why many companies do not strongly favor very old employees.  From a business perspective, it doesn't make sense to hire someone unless they are the best for their job. Anything else is not really ""business"" and is more on the charity/socialism side of things."

Yep.  Like I said, I'm riding it out while it lasts.  No skin off my nose if they go under.  That being said, this guy is a cofounder of Netflix, and with all the press this thing is getting, nobody is calling it a scam.  I have to believe that they have something up their sleeve.

A 401(k) is an investment just like any other investment. You generally get two types of return lumped into that number, but there can be more and you should read your funds prospectus carefully. If you aren't investing in direct companies, you're using mutual funds for instance, then you should read the funds prospectus to see how they handle these situations for the underlying securities they hold for you. Although I think this is the basic answer to the question as you asked.

It would be unusual but it is possible that the expenses could be very high compared to your income. The IRS in pub 529 explains the deduction. You can deduct only unreimbursed employee expenses that are: Paid or incurred during your tax year, For carrying on your trade or business of being an employee, and Ordinary and necessary. An expense is ordinary if it is common and accepted in your trade,   business, or profession. An expense is necessary if it is appropriate   and helpful to your business. An expense doesn't have to be required   to be considered necessary. The next part lists examples. I have cut the list down to highlight ones that could be large. You may be able to deduct the following items as unreimbursed employee   expenses. Damages paid to a former employer for breach of an employment contract. Job search expenses in your present occupation. Legal fees related to your job. Licenses and regulatory fees. Malpractice insurance premiums. Research expenses of a college professor. Rural mail carriers' vehicle expenses. Tools and supplies used in your work. Work clothes and uniforms if required and not suitable for everyday use. Work-related education. If the term of employment was only part of the year, one or more of the these could dwarf your income for the year. Before deducting something that large be sure you can document it. I believe the IRS computers would flag the return and I wouldn't be surprised if they ask for additional proof.

">I'm playing devil's advocate mostly  I should hope so, because it seems disingenuous to suggest that viewing ""tons of photos"" is equivalent to seeing and touching something in real life, particularly shoes or clothes.  Also, say, for example, you go to your local shoe store and try on a pair of shoes. Your usual size is 9.5, so you try that on first. But it feels big, and a 9 fits you better. If you'd gone to Amazon without going to the store first, even though they offer free exchanges, you'd still have to deal with the costs of printing out a return label, boxing them up, going to the post office, waiting two days for them to arrive at Amazon, and waiting two days for the new pair. But going to the store first saved you that cost, and the store doesn't get any reward for it.  I'm not condemning you or anyone else for doing this. But I would feel guilty about it, and I'm trying to explain why."

"Such a ""duh"" article, but depressingly this happens in reality too much.  Years ago I was called into an EVP office who asked why my projects continued much longer than the average in the company (good thing - my projects kept going to get more results).  I was flummoxed by the very question.  Um, I answer questions, I deliver, I talk with the client, I'm above board.  What's the freaking magic?  Nothing - I am a person and so are the clients."

It depends on the broker. The one I use (Fidelity) will allow me to buy then sell or sell then buy within 3 days even though the cash isn't settled from the first transaction. But they won't let me buy then sell then buy again with unsettled cash. Of course not waiting for cash to settle makes you vulnerable to a good faith violation.