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Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Personal finance management: precise or approximately? | If you are off by coins, how can you be sure that you only made a typo and didn't miss a transaction? To start off, I would strongly you find a way to be precise. It doesn't matter so much in the accounting, but the habit of doing a thorough job will pay off in other dividends down the line. Basically, do the pennies now. Tryout some free online software to save the headache of data entry. But........ Since my primary goal is to get you to do the budgeting, and if you really hate the coins, just be consistent in how you fudge the debits and the credits. Always round down to the nearest whole in income, and always round up on expenses. You won't overspend this way, and your back account should have a little bit of padding because you will assume less money in and more money out. Honestly, I do tracking in both Quicken and Mint.com, so the transaction size is no big deal to me. If I did it all in Excel, I would round to whole notes. You didn't tag your question with a country, so I don't know if or similar is available to you. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Is there any “Personal” Finance app that allows 2 administrators? | We use YNAB to handle our household budget - their latest version allows cloud sync between Android/iOS devices and various desktop installs. I have the budget folder shared with my wife's Dropbox account so we both an view the budget, enter spending, and make changes. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Car finance (loan) insurance requirements (store car) | "Okay, definitive answer for this particular company (Toyota Finance) is (somewhat surprisingly, and glad I asked) it must be fully insured at all times, including liability, even if being stored. I asked at a dealership and they answered ""just fire and theft (of course)"" but I ended up calling their finance department and the answer was the opposite. So there you go. Thanks for the answers (and for trying to talk me out of wasting money)." |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Google Finance gain value incorrect because of currency fluctuation | You can easily build a Google Sheet spreadsheet to track what you want as Sheet has a 'googlefinance()' function to look-up the same prices and data you can enter and track in a Google Finance portfolio, except you can use it in ways you want. For example, you can track your purchase price at a fixed exchange rate, track the current market value as the product of the stock's price times the floating exchange rate, and then record your realized profit and loss using another fixed exchange rate. You don't have to record the rates either, as googlefinance() func is able to lookup prices as of a particular date. You can access Google Sheet through a web browser or Android app. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Specifically, what does the Google Finance average volume indicate? | I hovered over the label for trading volume and the following message popped up: Volume / average volume Volume is the number of shares traded on the latest trading day. The average volume is measured over 30 days. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Online Personal finance with QIF import | "Unfortunately I don't think any of the online personal finance applications will do what you're asking. Most (if not all) online person finance software uses a combination of partnerships with the banks themselves and ""screen scraping"" to import your data. This simplifies things for the user but is typically limited to whenever the service was activated. Online personal finance software is still relatively young and doesn't offer the depth available in a desktop application (yet). If you are unwilling to part with historical data you spent years accumulating you are better off with a desktop application. Online Personal Finance Software Pros Cons Desktop Personal Finance Software Pros Cons In my humble opinion the personal finance software industry really needs a hybrid approach. A desktop application that is synchronized with a website. Offering the stability and tools of a desktop application with the availability of a web application." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Finance car with or with out a balloon payment | That interest rate (13%) is steep, and the balloon payment will have him paying more interest longer. Investing the difference is a risky proposition because past performance of an investment is no guarantee of future performance. Is taking that risk worth netting 2%? Not for me, but you must answer that last question for yourself. To your edit: How disruptive would losing the car and/or getting negative marks on your credit be? If you can quantify that in dollars then you have your answer. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Is there any online personal finance software without online banking? | CashBase has a web app, an iPhone app and an Android app, all sync'ed up. It doesn't integrate with banks automatically, but you can import bank statements as CSV. Disclosure: Filip is CashBase's founder. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Best personal finance software for Mac for German resident | I haven't used it in years, but look at GnuCash. From the site, one bullet point under Feature Highlights: |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Personal finance web service with account syncing in Germany | "I don't think there is a law against it. For example comdirect offers multi banking so you can access your accounts from other banks through the comdirect website. My guess would be: Germans are very conservative when it comes to their money (preferring cash above cards, using ""safe"" low interest saving accounts instead of stocks) so there just might be no market for such a tool. There are desktop apps with bank syncing that offer different levels of personal finance management. Some I know are MoneyMoney, outbank, numbrs, GNUCash and StarMoney." |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How to save criteria in Google Finance Stock Screener? | "There is probably a better way, but you can do the following: (1) Right click on the right pointing arrow next to the ""1-20 of xx rows"" message at the bottom right of the table, and select ""Copy link location"" (2) Paste that into the location (3) At the end of the pasted text there is a ""&output=json"", delete that and everything after it. (4) hit enter What you get is a page that displays the set of securities returned by and in a very similar display to the ""stock screener"" without the UI elements to change your selections. You can bookmark this page." |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Return on asset (ROA) value for a stock is reported differently on Yahoo Finance and MarketWatch | "Why there is this huge difference? I am not able to reconcile Yahoo's answer of 5.75%, even using their definition for ROA of: Return on Assets Formula: Earnings from Continuing Operations / Average Total Equity This ratio shows percentage of Returns to Total Assets of the company. This is a useful measure in analyzing how well a company uses its assets to produce earnings. I suspect the ""Average Total Equity"" in their formula is a typo, but using either measure I cannot come up with 5.75% for any 12-month period. I can, however, match MarketWatch's answer by looking at the 2016 fiscal year totals and using a ""traditional"" formula of Net Income / Average Total Assets: I'm NOT saying that MatketWatch is right and Yahoo is wrong - MW is using fiscal year totals while Yahoo is using trailing 12-month numbers, and Yahoo uses ""Earnings from Continuing Operations"", but even using that number (which Yahoo calculates) I am not able to reconcile the 5.75% they give." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Retired, want to buy a mobile home; how to finance? | Do you think your 403b will earn more than the mortgage interest rate? If so, then mortgage seems the way to go. Conservative investment strategies might not earn much more than a 3-4% mortgage, and if you're paying 5-6% it's more likely you'll be earning less than the mortgage. From another point of view, though, I would probably take a loan anyway just from a security standpoint - you have more risk if you put a third of your retirement savings into one purchase directly, whereas if you do a 10-15 year loan, you'll have more of a cushion. Also, if you don't outlive the mortgage, you'll have had use of more of your retirement income than otherwise - though I do wonder if it puts you at some risk if you have significant medical bills (which might require you to liquidate your 403b but wouldn't require you to sell your house, so paying it off has some upside). Also, as @chili555 notes in comments, you should consider the taxation of your 403(b) income. If you pull it out in one lump sum, some of it may be taxed at a higher rate than if you pulled it out more slowly over time, which will easily overwhelm any interest rate differences. This assumes it's not a Roth 403(b) account; if it is Roth then it doesn't matter. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Where to start with personal finance in Canada? | There are some great answers on this site similar to what you asked, with either a non-jurisdictional or a US-centric focus. I would read those answers as well to give yourself more points of view on early investing. There are a few differences between Canada and the US from an investing perspective that you should also then consider, namely tax rules, healthcare, and education. I'll get Healthcare and Education out of the way quickly. Just note the difference in perspective in Canada of having government healthcare; putting money into health-savings plans or focusing on insurance as a workplace benefit is not a key motivating factor, but more a 'nice-to-have'. For education, it is more common in Canada for a student to either pay for school while working summer / part-time jobs, or at least taking on manageable levels of debt [because it is typically not quite as expensive as private colleges in the US]. There is still somewhat of a culture of saving for your child's education here, but it is not as much of a necessity as it may be in the US. From an investing perspective, I will quickly note some common [though not universal] general advice, before getting Canadian specific. I have blatantly stolen the meat of this section from Ben Miller's great answer here: Oversimplify it for me: the correct order of investing Once you have a solid financial footing, some peculiarities of Canadian investing are below. For all the tax-specific plans I'm about to mention, note that the banks do a very good job here of tricking you into believing they are complex, and that you need your hand to be held. I have gotten some criminally bad tax advice from banking reps, so at the risk of sounding prejudiced, I recommend that you learn everything you can beforehand, and only go into your bank when you already know the right answer. The 'account types' themselves just involve a few pages of paperwork to open, and the banks will often do that for free. They make up their fees in offering investment types that earn them management fees once the accounts are created. Be sure to separate the investments (stocks vs bonds etc.) vs the investment vehicles. Canada has 'Tax Free Savings Accounts', where you can contribute a certain amount of money every year, and invest in just about anything you want, from bonds to stocks to mutual funds. Any Income you earn in this account is completely tax free. You can withdraw these investments any time you want, but you can't re-contribute until January 1st of next year. ie: you invest $5k today in stocks held in a TFSA, and they grow to $6k. You withdraw $6k in July. No tax is involved. On January 1st next year, you can re-contribute a new $6K, and also any additional amounts added to your total limit annually. TFSA's are good for short-term liquid investments. If you don't know for sure when you'll need the money, putting it in a TFSA saves you some tax, but doesn't commit you to any specific plan of action. Registered Retirement Savings Plans allow you to contribute money based on your employment income accrued over your lifetime in Canada. The contributions are deducted from your taxable income in the year you make them. When you withdraw money from your RRSP, the amount you withdraw gets added as additional income in that year. ie: you invest $5k today in stocks held in an RRSP, and get a $5k deduction from your taxable income this year. The investments grow to $6k. You withdraw $6k next year. Your taxable income increases by $6k [note that if the investments were held 'normally' {outside of an RRSP}, you would have a taxable gain of only 50% of the total gain; but withdrawing the amount from your RRSP makes the gain 100% taxable]. On January 1st next year, you CANNOT recontribute this amount. Once withdrawn, it cannot be recontributed [except for below items]. RRSP's are good for long-term investing for retirement. There are a few factors at play here: (1) you get an immediate tax deduction, thus increasing the original size of investment by deferring tax to the withdrawal date; (2) your investments compound tax-free [you only pay tax at the end when you withdraw, not annually on earnings]; and (3) many people expect that they will have a lower tax-rate when they retire, than they do today. Some warnings about RRSP's: (1) They are less liquid than TFSA's; you can't put money in, take it out, and put it in again. In general, when you take it out, it's out, and therefore useless unless you leave it in for a long time; (2) Income gets re-characterized to be fully taxable [no dividend tax credits, no reduced capital gains tax rate]; and (3) There is no guarantee that your tax rate on retirement will be less than today. If you contribute only when your tax rate is in the top bracket, then this is a good bet, but even still, in 30 years, tax rates might rise by 20% [who knows?], meaning you could end up paying more tax on the back-end, than you saved in the short term. Home Buyer Plan RRSP withdrawals My single favourite piece of advice for young Canadians is this: if you contribute to an RRSP at least 3 months before you make a down payment on your first house, you can withdraw up to $25k from your RRSP without paying tax! to use for the down payment. Then over the next ~10 years, you need to recontribute money back to your RRSP, and you will ultimately be taxed when you finally take the money out at retirement. This means that contributing up to 25k to an RRSP can multiply your savings available for a down payment, by the amount of your tax rate. So if you make ~60k, you'll save ~35% on your 25k deposited, turning your down payment into $33,750. Getting immediate access to the tax savings while also having access to the cash for a downpayment, makes the Home Buyer Plan a solid way to make the most out of your RRSP, as long as one of your near-term goals is to own your own home. Registered Pension Plans are even less liquid than RRSPs. Tax-wise, they basically work the same: you get a deduction in the year you contribute, and are taxed when you withdraw. The big difference is that there are rules on when you are allowed to withdraw: only in retirement [barring specific circumstances]. Typically your employer's matching program (if you have one) will be inside of an RPP. Note that RPP's and RRSP's reduce your taxes on your employment paycheques immediately, if you contribute through a work program. That means you get the tax savings during the year, instead of all at once a year later on April 30th. *Note that I have attempted at all times to keep my advice current with applicable tax legislation, but I do not guarantee accuracy. Research these things yourself because I may have missed something relevant to your situation, I may be just plain wrong, and tax law may have changed since I wrote this to when you read it. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Getting live data from Yahoo! Finance for the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE)? | I wouldn't think so. If you read the list of features listed on the page you referred to, notice: Track Stocks It looks like it is restricted to the major U.S. stock markets. No mention of India's NSE. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | What time period is used by yahoo finance to calculate beta | Citing the Yahoo Finance Help page, Beta: The Beta used is Beta of Equity. Beta is the monthly price change of a particular company relative to the monthly price change of the S&P500. The time period for Beta is 3 years (36 months) when available. Regarding customised time periods, I do not think so. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Can one use Google Finance to backtest (i.e. simulate trades in the past)? | I've used yahoo to perform the exercise you're asking about. It allows you to download price data, month end if you wish, and by manipulating via a spreadsheet to add a column for purchases, you can easily see how your £100/mo would end after so long a time period. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Why does historical price data not go back all the way on Google Finance? | Google Finance and Yahoo Finance have been transitioning their API (data interface) over the last 3 months. They are currently unreliable. If you're just interested in historical price data, I would recommend either Quandl or Tiingo (I am not affiliated with either, but I use them as data sources). Both have the same historical data (open, close, high, low, dividends, etc.) on a daily closing for thousands of Ticker symbols. Each service requires you to register and get a unique token. For basic historical data, there is no charge. I've been using both for many months and the data quality has been excellent and API (at least for python) is very easy! If you have an inclination for python software development, you can read about the drama with Google and Yahoo finance at the pandas-datareader group at https://github.com/pydata/pandas-datareader. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Correct Ways of Importing Personal Finance Transaction Data | You'll need to find out in what format MoneyStrands expects the data. A .qif or an .ofx file may not be the answer. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Should I finance a used car or pay cash? | There are several factors here. Firstly, there's opportunity cost, i.e. what you would get with the money elsewhere. If you have higher interest opportunities (investing, paying down debt) elsewhere, you could be paying that down instead. There's also domino effects: by reducing your liquid savings to or below the minimum, you can't move any of it into tax advantaged retirement accounts earning higher interest. Then there's the insurance costs. You are required to buy extra insurance to protect your lender. You should factor in the extra insurance you would buy vs the insurance required. Given that you can buy the car yourself, catastrophic insurance may not be necessary, or you may prefer a higher deductible than your lender will allow. If you're not sufficiently capitalized, you may need gap insurance to cover when your car depreciates faster than your loan is paid down. A 30 percent payment should be enough to not need it though. Finally, there's some value in having options. If you have the loan and the cash, you can likely pay it off without penalty. But it will be harder to get the loan if you don't finance it. Maybe you can take out a loan against the car later, but I haven't looked into the fees that might incur. If it's any help, I'm in the last stretch of a 3 year car loan. At the time paying in cash wasn't an option, and having done it I recognize that it's more complicated than it seems. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Finance algebra | With the following variables the periodic (annual) repayment is given by The recurrence equation for the balance b at the end of month x is derived from b[x + 1] = b[x] (1 + r) - d where b[0] = s giving The interest portion of the final payment is b[n - 1] r and the total principal repaid at the end of period n - 1 is s - b[n - 1] Solving simultaneously n = 8.9998 and s = 7240 The principal repaid at the end of the first period is s - b[1] or d - r s = 479.74 |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Is it worth it to re-finance my car loan? | If you're a bit into the loan, then they're probably hoping that you'll take longer to pay off the loan. Is there a fee for refinancing the loan? If so, be sure to take that into account. A smart way to approach it (assuming that the fees are low or zero) would be to continue making the same payment you had been before the refinance. Then you'll end your loan ahead of schedule. (This assumes that there's no prepayment penalty.) |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | What's a good personal finance management web app that I can use in Canada? | Now, if you're still intrested, Mint.com works also for Canadian banks. Mint Canada |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Legal Financing | Find a lawyer or law firm who wants to represent you and talk to them. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How Should I Start my Finance Life and Invest? | The best way to start out is to know that even the experts typically under-perform the market, so you have no chance. Your best bet is to invest in diversified funds, either through something like Betterment or something like Vanguard's ETFs that track the markets. Buying individual stocks isn't typically a winning strategy. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Yahoo Finance - Data inconsistencies between historic and current data | You might have better luck using Quandl as a source. They have free databases, you just need to register to access them. They also have good api's, easier to use than the yahoo api's Their WIKI database of stock prices is curated and things like this are fixed (www.quandl.com/WIKI ), but I'm not sure that covers the London stock exchange. They do, however, have other databases that cover the London stock exchange. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Is the Canadian Securities Course (CSC) enough to get started in the finance industry in Canada? | "Wikipedia says ""The Canadian Securities Course (CSC) offered by the Canadian Securities Institute (CSI) is the initial course required for becoming licensed to work within the Canadian securities industry (outside Quebec) as a securities dealer or securities agent."" Src: Candian Securities Course EfficientMarket Canada adds "" You require it and further courses for other jobs in the investment industry. Generally some work experience is also required. All of this is governed by various self-regulatory agencies. The material in the course is strong on money making products, and fairly weak on material that would actually protect a consumer from harm. Passing the course is very little indication that you understand what's important about investing, for example, you won't be taught much of anything about the theory of investment, or the markets, or things like the efficient market hypothesis."" Src: EfficientMarket.ca on the CSC So it appears that the CSC is necessary to work as certain types of financial agencies. That being said, I doubt it will be enough to get your foot in the door. This seems more like a prerequisite rather than a true qualification, so you'll be competing with MBAs/Finance students and other people who either have experience or training in the financial industry. I'd recommend you look into the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) certification as that will provide you with a rigorous knowledge of financial theory as well as asset management, which seems more appropriate for what you'd like to do. From there you'll have to network like crazy and leverage your experience to get in at a Canadian financial firm and eventually wealth management. So yes, I suppose a CSC is a good first step but more will certainly be required and I doubt it will be enough to land you a full time position. Another important factor is age - nobody expects undergrads to have extensive certifications or experience, but it's harder for a 35 year old to enter a new industry, especially finance." |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | UK: Personal finance book for a twenty-something | Try this as a starter - my eBook served up as a blog (http://www.sspf.co.uk/blog/001/). Then read as much as possible about investing. Once you have money set aside for emergencies, then make some steps towards investing. I'd guide you towards low-fee 'tracker-style' funds to provide a bedrock to long-term investing. Your post suggests it will be investing over the long-term (ie. 5-10 years or more), perhaps even to middle-age/retirement? Read as much as you can about the types of investments: unit trusts, investment trusts, ETFs; fixed-interest (bonds/corporate bonds), equities (IPOs/shares/dividends), property (mortgages, buy-to-let, off-plan). Be conservative and start with simple products. If you don't understand enough to describe it to me in a lift in 60 seconds, stay away from it and learn more about it. Many of the items you think are good long-term investments will be available within any pension plans you encounter, so the learning has a double benefit. Work a plan. Learn all the time. Keep your day-to-day life quite conservative and be more risky in your long-term investing. And ask for advice on things here, from friends who aren't skint and professionals for specific tasks (IFAs, financial planners, personal finance coaches, accountants, mortgage brokers). The fact you're being proactive tells me you've the tools to do well. Best wishes to you. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | how does one see the CBOE VIX index on Google Finance? | For whatever reason, I don't believe they offer it. Yahoo does. A google for google finance VIX turns up people asking the question, but no quote on google. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Calculate Finance Rate, Interest Amount when we have below line Fees | The equation for the payment is This board does not support Latex (the number formatting code) so the above is an image, the code is M is the payment calculated, n is the number of months or periods to pay off, and i is the rate per period. You can see that with i appearing 3 times in this equation, it's not possible to isolate to the form i=.... so a calculator will 'guess,' and use, say, 10%. It then raises or lowers the rate until the result is within the calculator's tolerance. I've observed that unlike other calculations, when you hit the button to calculate, a noticeable time lag occurs. I hope I haven't read too much into your question, it seemed to me this was what you asked. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Why is financial data of some public companies not available on Yahoo Finance? | In general, the short answer is to use SEDAR, the Canadian database that compiles financial statements for Canadian companies. The financial statements for Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp can be found here. The long answer is that the data might be missing because in Canada, each province has their own agency to regulate securities. Yahoo might not compile information from such a wide array of sources. If other countries also have a decentralized system, Yahoo might not take the time to compile financial information from all these sources. There are a myriad of other reasons that could cause this too, however. This is why SEDAR is useful; it 's the Canadian equivalent of the SEC's EDGAR database, and it maintains a sizeable database of financial statements. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Comparing option data between yahoo finance and CBOE for SPY options | The CBOE site, as well as some other sites and trading platforms, will show the bid/ask and statistics for that option at each individual options exchange, in addition to statistics and the best bid/offer across all exchanges. cboe.com: Delayed Quote Help lists what the single-letter codes mean. A is for the AMEX options exchange, B is for BOX, X is for PHLX, etc. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Advantage of Financial Times vs. free news sources for improving own knowledge of finance? | "If you are interested in a career in algorithmic trading, I strongly encourage you to formally study math and computer science. Algorithmic trading firms have no need for employees with financial knowledge; if they did, they'd just be called ""trading"" firms. Rather, they need experts in machine learning, statistical modeling, and computer science in general. Of course there are other avenues of employment at an algorithmic trading firm, such as accounting, clearing, exchange relations, etc. If that's the sort of thing you're interested in, again you'll probably want a formal education in those areas as opposed to just reading about finance in the news. If you edit your question or add a comment below with information about your particular background, I could perhaps advise you in a bit more detail. ::edit:: Given your comment, I would say you have a fine academic background for the industry. When hiring mathematicians, firms care most about the ease with which you can explore and extract features from massive datasets (especially time series) regardless of what the dataset might represent. An intelligent firm will not care whether you arrive at their doorstep with zero finance knowledge; they will want to teach you everything from scratch anyway. Nonetheless, some domain knowledge could be helpful, but you're not going to get ""more"" of it from reading any mass market news source, whether you have to pay for it or not. That's because Some non-mass-market news sources in the industry are These are subscription-only and actually discuss real information that real professional investors care about. They are loaded with industry jargon, they're extremely opinionated, and (in my opinion) they're useless. I can't imagine trying to learn about the industry from them, but if you want to spend money for news in order to be exposed to the innards of the industry, then either of these is far better than the Financial Times. Despite requiring a subscription, the Financial Times still does not cover the technical details of professional trading. Instead of trying to learn from news, then, I would suggest some old favorites: and, above all else, Read everything in the navigation box on the right side under Financial Markets and Financial Instruments." |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Is it true that Income Tax was created to finance troops for World War I? | "The Income Tax was put into effect during the Civil War, but was later revoked because it was deemed ""Unconstitutional"". It was re-instated in 1913, just one year before World War 1. This is largely the reason why people think it was created ""for the war"", when it actually pre-dated World War 1. Edit: I don't have any sources, per-se. This is just what little information I remember from Grade 10 History class. I remember this because I had a real ethical problem with how the government instituted the Income Tax, since it is effectively a tax on Productivity. I find this absurd, since it motivates people to do less, in an effort to be taxed less. This in turn promotes workers doing ""cash jobs"" and other such things to get around it. I personally have refused a raise because it would put me into a higher tax bracket, and I wouldn't actaully see the new money. In exchange, I asked for other non-monetary perks instead. I personally think this situation should not exist. ...however, I don't have a better solution. So I suppose I can't really pass judgment. :)" |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Trustable, official sources on holdings, purchases and sales by finance academics/professionals? | You won't be able to know the trading activity in a timely, actionable method in most cases. The exception is if the investor (individual, fund, holding company, non-profit foundation, etc) is a large shareholder of a specific company and therefore required to file their intentions to buy or sell with the SEC. The threshold for this is usually if they own 5% or greater of the outstanding shares. You can, however, get a sense of the holdings for some of the entities you mention with some sleuthing. Publicly-Traded Holding Companies Since you mention Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway is an example of this. Publicly traded companies (that are traded on a US-based exchange) have to file numerous reports with the SEC. Of these, you should review their Annual Report and monitor all filings on the SEC's website. Here's the link to the Berkshire Hathaway profile. Private Foundations Harvard and Yale have private, non-profit foundations. The first place to look would be at the Form 990 filings each is required to file with the IRS. Two sources for these filings are GuideStar.org and the FoundationCenter.org. Keep in mind that if the private foundation is a large enough shareholder in a specific company, they, too, will be required to file their intentions to buy or sell shares in that company. Private Individuals Unless the individual publicly releases their current holdings, the only insight you may get is what they say publicly or have to disclose — again, if they are a major shareholder. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Google Finance: Input Parameters For Simple Moving Averages | The difference is that for the one year time frame the data is represented based on daily data and the SMA is 20 days, whilst for the 5 year timeframe the data is automatically represented as weekly data with the SMA represented by 20 weeks not 20 days anymore. This happens due to daily data on this chart being too much data to represent over a 5 year period so the data defaults to weekly data over such a long period. If the chart is represented as weekly data then any indicators will also have to be represented in weekly data. If you use a more sophisticated charting program you can actually select to see daily or weekly data over longer periods such as 5 years or more. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | How does Yahoo finance adjust stock data for splits and dividends? | For stock splits, let's say stock XYZ closed at 100 on February 5. Then on February 6, it undergoes a 2-for-1 split and closes the day at 51. In Yahoo's historical prices for XYZ, you will see that it closed at 51 on Feb 6, but all of the closing prices for the previous days will be divided by 2. So for Feb 5, it will say the closing price was 50 instead of 100. For dividends, let's say stock ABC closed at 200 on December 18. Then on December 19, the stock increases in price by $2 but it pays out a $1 dividend. In Yahoo's historical prices for XYZ, you will see that it closed at 200 on Dec 18 and 201 on Dec 19. Yahoo adjusts the closing price for Dec 19 to factor in the dividend. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Any Ubiquitous Finance App That is on Mac, iOS and Windows? | Mint.com is a web app with an iPhone (and Android) app. Also, You Need A Budget appears to support all three. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How does Google Finance calculate the Institution Owned metric for a stock | "Institutional ownership has nearly lost all meaning. It used to mean mutual funds, investment banks, etc. Now, it means pension funds, who hold the rest of the equity assets directly, and insiders. Since the vast majority of investors in equity do not hold it directly, ""institutions"" are approaching 100% ownership on all major equities. Other sites still segment the data." |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Why Google Finance puts to two decimal places for the trading volumes? | Many brokerages offer automatic dividend reinvestment. It is very infrequent that these dividends are exactly a whole share. So, if you have signed up for automatic dividend reinvestment, many brokerages will reinvest your dividends and assign to you a fractional share. I can't speak for how these shares work with regards to voting, but I can say that the value of these fractional holdings does change with stock price as if one genuinely could hold a fraction of a share. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Is there a Yahoo Finance ticker for NYMEX Crude Oil Front Month? | Yahoo Finance doesn't offer this functionality; I remember looking for this exact feature a couple of years ago for coffee futures. Your best option is to look at the futures chain. However, Yahoo Finance's future chains aren't always complete, since you'll notice that the futures chain for NYMEX crude oil omit the June contract. The contract still exists, but Yahoo doesn't list it in its own futures chain or in the future chain for May. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | What is the best cross-platform GPL personal finance tool available? | There isn't one. I haven't been very happy with anything I've tried, commercial or open source. I've used Quicken for a while and been fairly happy with the user experience, but I hate the idea of their sunset policy (forced upgrades) and using proprietary format for the data files. Note that I wouldn't mind using proprietary and/or commercial software if it used a format that allowed me to easily migrate to another application. And no, QIF/OFX/CSV doesn't count. What I've found works well for me is to use Mint.com for pulling transactions from my accounts and categorizing them. I then export the transaction history as a CSV file and convert it to QIF/OFX using csv2ofx, and then import the resulting file into GNUCash. The hardest part is using categories (Mint.com) and accounts (GnuCash) properly. Not perfect by any means, but certainly better than manually exporting transactions from each account. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Personal finance software for Mac that can track stocks and mutual funds? (Even manual updating of share prices will do.) | I'm using iBank on my Mac here and that definitely supports different currencies and is also supposed to be able to track investments (I haven't used it to track investments yet, hence the 'supposed to' caveat). |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Why does Yahoo! Finance report different prices for the same index? | "Are you sure you're using the same date range? If you're using Max, then you're not, as ^FTMC goes back to 12/1/1985 while ^GDAXI only goes back to 11/1/1990. If I enter a custom date range of 11/1/1990 through 10/24/2015, I get: and: which, other than the dates it chose to use as labels on the x-axes, look identical. (I tried to add the URLs of the charts, but it looks like the Yahoo! URLs don't include the comparison symbol, which makes them useless for this answer. They're easy enough to construct though, just add the secondary symbol using the Comparison button and set the date range using the calendar button.) On your PS, I don't know, as you can see by my charts it even chose different labels when the date ranges were identical (although at least it didn't scale different dates differently), so maybe it's trying to be ""smart"" and choose dates based on the total amount of data available for the primary symbol, which is different in the two cases." |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Money Saved on finance charges | Avoiding a cost (interest) isn't quite the same as income. There is no entry, nothing for you to consider for this avoided interest. What you do have is an expense that's no longer there, and you can decide to use that money elsewhere each month. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Is there a finance API of some kind to get all holdings for a specific mutual fund? | Generally, the answer to the availability of holdings of a given mutual fund on a daily basis is no. Thus, an API is non-existent. The reasons for the lack of transparency on a daily basis is that it could/would impact the portfolio managers ability to trade. While this information would not necessarily permit individuals from front running the fund manager's trades, it does give insight in to the market outlook and strategy the fund is employing. The closest you'll be able to get to obtaining a list of holdings is by reading the most recent annual report and the quarterly filings each fund is required to file with the SEC. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Relative Strength Index: Yahoo vs Google Finance | "Google's RSI is using a 10 period on 2 minute bars - i.e. it is based upon the last 20 minutes of data. Yahoo's RSI is using a 14 period lookback on an undetermined timeframe (you could maybe mouse-over and see what incremental part of the chart is giving) and given the ""choppier"" price chart, probably 30 second or 1 minute bars. Given the difference in both the period specified and the periodicity of the charts - you should expect different results." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Canadian personal finance software with ability to export historical credit card transactions? | Yodlee is the back-end which communicates with the banks, and Mint just provide a pretty layer on top. You can sign up for an account with Yodlee directly, which may give you the flexibility you need. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | US Dollar Index: a) where are long term charts; also b) is it available on Google Finance by any chance? | a) the quick answer to your correlation is quantitative easing. basically the central bank has been devaluing the US dollar, making the prices of all goods increase (including stocks.) the stock market appear to have recovered from 2009 lows but its mainly an illusion. anyway the QE packages are very known when the correlation is not there, that means other meaningful things are happening such as better corporate earnings and real growth. b) the thinkorswim platform has charts for dollar futures, symbol /dx |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | What is the value in using the “split transaction” feature present in some personal finance management tools? | "Split transactions are indispensable to anybody interested in accurately tracking their spending. If I go to the big-box pharmacy down the road to pick up a prescription and then also grab a loaf of bread and a jug of milk while there, then I'd want to enter the transaction into my software as: I desire entering precise data into the software so that I can rely on the reports it produces. Often, I don't need an exact amount and estimated category totals would have been fine, e.g. to inform budgeting, or compare to a prior period. However, in other cases, the expenses I'm tracking must be tracked accurately because I'd be using the total to claim an income tax deduction (or credit). Consider how Internet access might be commingled on the same bill with the home's cable TV service. One is a reasonable business expense and deduction for the work-at-home web developer, whereas the other is a personal non-deductible expense. Were split transaction capability not available, the somewhat unattractive alternatives are: Ignore the category difference and, say, categorize the entire transaction as the larger or more important category. But, this deliberately introduces error in the tracked data, rendering it useless for cases where the category totals need to be accurate, or, Split the transaction manually. This doesn't introduce error into the tracked data, but suffers another problem: It makes a lot of work. First, one would need to manually enter two (or more) top-level transactions instead of the single one with sub-amounts. Perhaps not that much more work than if a split were entered. Worse is when it comes time to reconcile: Now there are two (or more) transactions in the register, but the credit card statement has only one. Reconciling would require manually adding up those transactions from the register just to confirm the amount on the statement is correct. Major pain! I'd place split transaction capability near the top of the list of ""must have"" features for any finance management software." |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Why does Yahoo Finance and Google Finance not match historical prices? | The difference is that Yahoo is showing the unadjusted price that the security traded for on that date, while google is adjusting for price splits. This means that Google is showing how much you would have had to pay to get what is now one share. Since 1979, JNJ has split 3-for-1 once, and 2-for-1 four times. 3x2x2x2x2 = 48. If you bought 1 share at that time, you would now have 48 shares today. Yahoo is showing a price of $66 for what was then 1 share. $66/48 = 1.375, which Google rounds to 1.38. You can see this if you get the prices from May 14-21, 1981. The stock split 3-for-1, and the price dropped from 108 to 36.38. Yahoo's adjusted close column has not been accurate since they re-wrote the Finance website. It now just represents the closing price. The other relevant field on Yahoo is the Adj. Close. This adjusts for splits, but also adjusts for dividends. Hence why this doesn't match either the Google or Yahoo numbers. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | What are some good, easy to use personal finance software? [UK] | Update: I am now using another app called toshl and I am very satisfied with it. In fact, I am a paying customer. It is web based, but it has clients for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone as well. Another one, I tried is YNAB. Did you consider trying an online app? I am using Wesabe and I am happy with it. I found it much better these web-based ones because I can access my data from anywhere. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | According to yahoo finance, Vanguard's Dividend Growth Fund does not appear to have dividend growth. Why is that? | I think you are mixing up forward looking statements with the actual results. The funds objective The fund invests primarily in stocks that tend to offer current dividends. It focuses on high-quality companies that have prospects for long-term total returns as a result of their ability to grow earnings and their willingness to increase dividends over time Obviously in 1993 quite a few companies paid the dividends and hence VDIGX was able to give dividends. Over the period of years in some years its given more and in some years less. For example the Year 2000 it gave $ 1.26, 1999 it gave $ 1.71 and in 1998 it gave $ 1.87 The current economic conditions are such that companies are not making huge profts and the one's that are making prefer not to distribute dividends and hold on to cash as it would help survive the current economic conditions. So just to clarify this particular funds objective is to invest in companies that would give dividends which is then passed on to fund holders. This fund does not sell appreciated stocks to convert it into dividends. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | For a car, would you pay cash, finance for 0.9% or lease for 0.9%? | Dealer financing should be ignored until AFTER you have agreed on the price of the car, since otherwise they tack the costs of it back onto the car's purchase price. They aren't offering you a $2500 cash incentive, but adding a $2500 surcharge if you take their financing package -- which means you're actually paying significantly more than 0.9% for that loan! Remember that you can borrow from folks other than the dealer. If you do that, you still get the cash price, since the dealer is getting cash. Check your other options, and calculate the REAL cost of each, before making your decisions. And remember to watch out for introductory/variable rates on loans! Leasing is generally a bad deal unless you intend to sell the car within three years or so. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Organizing Expenses/Income/Personal Finance Documents (Paperless Office) | "If you're curious, here are my goals behind this silly madness You said it... The last two words, I mean...:-) If you're auditing your statements - why do you need to keep the info after the audit? You got the statement for last month, you verified that the Starbucks charge that appears there is the same as in your receipts - why keeping them further? Done, no $10 dripping, throw them away. Why do you need to keep your refrigerator owner's manual? What for? You don't know how to operate a refrigerator? You don't know who the manufacturer is to look it up online in case you do need later? Read it once, mark the maintenance details in your calendar (like: TODO: Change the water filter in 3 months), that's it. Done. Throw it away (to the paper recycle bin). You need the receipt as a proof of purchase for warranty? Make a ""warranty"" folder and put all of them there, why in expenses? You don't buy a refrigerator every months. That's it, this way you've eliminated the need to keep monthly expenses folders. Either throw stuff away after the audit or keep it filed where you really need it. You only need a folder for two months at most (last and current), not for 12 months in each of the previous 4 years." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Comprehensive tutorial on double-entry personal finance? | I had to implement a simplistic double-entry accounting system, and compiled a list of resources. Some of them are more helpful than others, but I'll share them all with you. Hope this helps! Simplifying accounting principles for computer scientists: http://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-computer-scientists.html See this excellent article on how Debits and Credits work: http://accountinginfo.com/study/je/je-01.htm See this article for an example Chart of Accounts with lots of helpful descriptions: http://www.netmba.com/accounting/fin/accounts/chart/ Excellent PDF by Martin Fowler on Accounting Patterns using an event-drive system: http://www.martinfowler.com/apsupp/accounting.pdf Additional useful resources by Martin Fowler: http://martinfowler.com/articles.html#ap Ideas on using Domain-Driven-Design (DDD): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5482929/how-to-use-object-oriented-programming-with-hibernate Double Entry Accounting in Relational Databases: http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~m-wigley/gc_wp_ded.html Double Entry Accounting in Rails: http://www.cuppadev.co.uk/dev/double-entry-accounting-in-rails/ Joda-Money: http://joda-money.sourceforge.net/ Joda-Money Notes: http://joda-money.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/joda-money/JodaMoney/trunk/Notes.txt?revision=75&view=markup Blog entry with good comments: http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/joda_money Related Blog Entry: http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/serialization_shared_delegates JMoney: http://jmoney.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page JMoney QIF Plugin: http://jmoney.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Qif_plug-in Ledger on GitHub: https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/tree/master/src/ Implementing Money class in Java: http://www.objectivelogic.com/resources/Java%20and%20Monetary%20Data/Java%20and%20Monetary%20Data.pdf Martin Fowler's implementation in Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture page 489, View partial content in Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=FyWZt5DdvFkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Patterns+of+Enterprise+Application+Architecture&source=bl&ots=eEFp4xYydA&sig=96x5ER64m5ryiLnWOgGMKgAsDnw&hl=en&ei=Kr_wTP6UFJCynweEpajyCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false XML based API for an accounting service, might get some ideas from it: http://www.objacct.com/Platform.aspx |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | New car price was negotiated as a “cash deal”. Will the price change if I finance instead? | There is no rule that says the dealer has to honor that deal, nor is there any that says he/she won't. However, if you are thinking of financing through though the dealership they are likely to honor the deal. They PREFER you finance it. If you finance it through the dealer the salesman just got TWO sales (a car and a loan) and probably gets a commission on both. If you finance it through a third party it makes no difference to the dealer, it is still a cash deal to them because even though you pay off the car loan over years, the bank pays them immediately in full. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | What does “Company Distribution” mean on Google Finance's stock screener? | "Company Distribution is attempting to show a histogram of how many companies fall within a given range so you can visualize the number of companies that meet a certain parameter. For example if you move the ""Market Cap"" sliders so the minimum slider is just before the large rise in the distribution and move the maximum slider so it is just after the fall off in distribution, you can see that most companies have a market cap between ~5700 and ~141B." |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How do I export or sync data from TD Ameritrade into Google Finance or another online Finance site? | "Mint is one alternative. If you want the raw data in CSV format, you can use ""Export"" feature under" |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Car dealers offering lower prices when financing a used car | "It is a legitimate practice. The dealers do get the loan money ""up front"" because they're not holding the loan themselves; they promptly sell it to someone else or (more commonly) just act as salesmen for a lending institution and take their profit as commission or origination fees. The combined deal is often not a good choice for the consumer, though. Remember that the dealer's goal is to close a sale with maximum profit. If they're offering to drop the price $2k, they either didn't expect to actually get that price in the first place, or expect at least $2k of profit from the loan, or some combination of these. Standard advice is to negotiate price, loan, and trade-in separately. First get the dealer's best price on the car, compare it to other dealer and other cars, and walk away if you don't like their offer. Repeat for the loan, checking the dealer's offer against banks/credit unions available to you. If you have an older car to unload, get quotes for it and consider whether you might do better selling it yourself. ========= Standard unsolicited plug for Consumef Reports' ""car facts"" service, if you're buying a new car (which isn't usually the best option; late-model used is generally a better value). For a small fee, they can tell you what the dealer's real cost of a car is, after all the hidden incentives and rebates. That lets you negotiate directly on how much profit they need on this sale... and focuses their attention on the fact that the time they spend haggling with you is time they could be using to sell the next one. Simply walking into the dealer with this printout in your hand cuts out a lot of nonsense. The one time I bought new, I basically walked in and said ""It's the end of the model year. I'll give you $500 profit to take one of those off your hands before the new ones come in, if you've got one configured the way I want it."" Closed the deal on the spot; the only concession I had to make was on color. It doesn't always work; some salesmen are idiots. In that case you walk away and try another dealer. (I am not affiliated in any way with CU or the automotive or lending industries, except as customer. And, yes, this touch keyboard is typo-prone.)" |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | online personal finance software that I can host myself | I generally concur with your sentiments. mint.com has 'hack me' written all over it. I know of two major open source tools for accounting: GNUCash and LedgerSMB. I use GNUCash, which comes close to meeting your needs: The 2.4 series introduced SQL DB support; mysql, postgres and sqlite are all supported. I migrated to sqlite to see how the schema looked and ran, the conclusion was that it runs fine but writing direct sql queries is probably beyond me. I may move it to postgres in the future, just so I can write some decent reports. Note that while it uses HTML for reporting, there is no no web frontend. It still requires a client, and is not multi-user safe. But it's probably about the closest to what you what that still falls under the heading of 'personal finance'. A fork of SQL Ledger, this is postgreSQL only but does have a web frontend. All the open source finance webapps I've found are designed for small to medium busineses. I believe it should meet your needs, though I've never used it. It might be overkill and difficult to use for your limited purposes though. I know one or two people in the regional LUG use LedgerSMB, but I really don't need invoicing and paystubs. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Best personal finance strategy to control my balance | The key to understanding where your money is going is to budget. Rather than tracking your spending after the fact, budgeting lets you decide up front what you want to spend your money on. This can be done with cash envelopes, on paper, or on Excel spreadsheets; however, in my opinion, the best, most flexible, and easiest way to do this is with budgeting software designed for this purpose. As I explained in another answer, when it comes to personal budgeting software, there are two different approaches: those in which you decide what to spend your money on before it is spent, and those that simply show you how your money was spent after it is gone. I recommend the first approach. Software designed to do this include YNAB, Mvelopes, and EveryDollar. My personal favorite is YNAB. You'll find lots of help, video tutorials, and even online classes with a live teacher on YNAB's website. Using one of these packages will help you manage spending, whether it is done electronically or with cash. When you pay for something with a credit card, you enter your purchase into the software, and the software adjusts your budget as if the money is already spent, even if you haven't technically paid for the purchase yet. As far as strategy goes, here is what I recommend: Get started on one of these, and set up your budget right away. Assign a category to every dollar in your account. Don't worry if it is not perfect. If you find later on that you don't have enough money in one of your categories, you can move money from another category if you need to. As you work with it, you'll get better at knowing how much money you need in each category. My other recommendation is this: Don't wait until the end of the month to download your transactions from the bank and fit everything into categories. Instead, enter your spending transactions into the software manually, every day, as you spend. This will do two things: first, you'll have the latest, up-to-date picture of where your accounts are in your software without having to guess. Second, it will help you stay on top of your spending. You'll be able to see early on if you are overspending in a particular category. YNAB has a mobile app that I use quite a bit, but if I don't get a chance to enter a purchase right when I spend it, I make sure to keep a receipt, and enter the transaction in that evening. It only takes a couple of minutes a day, and I always know how I stand financially. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Ticker symbols differences between Yahoo Finance and BestInvest | "BestInvest is a UK site looking at that URL, base on the ""co.uk"" ending. Yahoo! Finance that you use is a US-based site unless you add something else to the URL. UK & Ireland Yahoo! Finance is different from where you were as there is something to be said for where are you looking. If I was looking for a quarter dollar there are Canadian and American coins that meet this so there is something to be said for a higher level of categorization being done. ""EUN.L"" would likely denote the ""London"" exchange as tickers are exchange-specific you do realize, right?" |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | How to read Google Finance data on dividends | The dividend is for a quarter of the year, three months. 80 cents is 3.9% of $20.51. Presumably the Div/yield changes as the stock price changes. On Yahoo, they specify that the yield is based on a particular stated date. So it's only the exact number if the stock trades at the price on that date. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | What is the meaning of realization in finance? | Realization is, literally, when something is made real. For example, let's say that you own some stock. You bought the stock for $1000, and after many years the stock is worth $10,000. Your investment has gained $9,000. However, you don't actually have this $10,000; you just own stock that is supposedly worth $10,000 on paper. Tomorrow, the value of the stock could plummet and only be worth $8,000. But if you sell your stock today and obtain this $10,000, the gain has now become real. You have realized a $9,000 gain. In investing, realization of a gain or loss occurs when an asset that you own has been sold for more or less than what you purchased it for. Before the asset is sold, you only have a theoretical gain or loss based on what you might receive if you sold the asset today. And tomorrow, that theoretical gain or loss could change. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Multi-user, non-US personal finance and budget software | "My wife and I have been ridiculously happy with YNAB. It's not ""online,"" but syncs across our phones & computers using Dropbox. It supposedly supports different locales and currencies, but I have never needed to try that out." |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Free, web-based finance tracking with tag/label support? | hledger fits your criteria, have you tried it ? Here's the web interface. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | How to finance my trading strategy in foreign exchange trading? | "how can I get started knowing that my strategy opportunities are limited and that my capital is low, but the success rate is relatively high? A margin account can help you ""leverage"" a small amount of capital to make decent profits. Beware, it can also wipe out your capital very quickly. Forex trading is already high-risk. Leveraged Forex trading can be downright speculative. I'm curious how you arrived at the 96% success ratio. As Jason R has pointed out, 1-2 trades a year for 7 years would only give you 7-14 trades. In order to get a success rate of 96% you would have had to successful exploit this ""irregularity"" at 24 out of 25 times. I recommend you proceed cautiously. Make the transition from a paper trader to a profit-seeking trader slowly. Use a low leverage ratio until you can make several more successful trades and then slowly increase your leverage as you gain confidence. Again, be very careful with leverage: it can either greatly increase or decrease the relatively small amount of capital you have." |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Financing Education through Credit Card or Student Loans | If you are very sure, say 90%, that you'll pay the zero percent card off before paying interest, that would be my choice. Less certainty than that, I think the 6.8% over a longer term is less of a cash flow issue, and you can still pay it in full upon getting the job bonus. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Can I rely on my home equity to finance large home repairs? | Personally, I'd use my emergency fund first. It is unlikely (though possible, of course) that I will entirely lose my income at the same time I need to replace my roof or my furnace. I'd rather pay my emergency fund back with installment payments than pay off a HELOC to my bank. The lost interest on my emergency fund, which, after all, should be in cash, is much less than the cost of the loan. I could even set up an amortization schedule in a spreadsheet and charge myself interest when paying back into the emergency fund. That said, if I didn't have the cash in my emergency fund, I'd rather borrow against the house than finance with a contractor. If they'd even do that, which is unlikely--I've never dealt with a roofer or heating contractor that required anything but full payment at time of service. Home equity borrowing is generally the cheapest kind. I'm firmly in the camp of those who look at home ownership as a consumption decision rather than an investment. If the value goes up, great, but I just build in about 1% of the cost of building a new house (excluding the land price) into the housing budget each year, right along with mortgage interest, property taxes and basic utilities. Usually, that's enough to cover the major wear-and-tear related repairs (averaged over 3-5 year periods, anyway). |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Where to find LEAPS option quotes (full chain)? CBOE & Yahoo! Finance not working | "I'm familiar with and have traded U.S.-listed LEAPS and I've always used the CBOE quotes page you linked to. So, I too was surprised I couldn't find 3M (MMM) LEAPS quotes at that page, even after checking the ""List all options, LEAPS, Credit Options & Weeklys if avail."" radio button. Used to work! Fortunately, I was able to get access to the full chain of option quotes from the CBOE's other quotes page: Go to the ""Quotes & Data"" menu, then select Delayed Quotes - NEW! Here's how: I think the new interface is terrible: it's too many steps to get to the information desired. I preferred the all-in-one table of the Delayed Quotes Classic page, the one you linked to. As to why that classic page isn't yielding the full chain, I can only suggest it is a recently introduced bug (software defect). I certainly was able to get LEAPS quotes from that page before. On Yahoo! Finance option quotes: I don't know why their chain is incomplete – I can't see the logic, for instance, as to why MMM Jan 2012 60 calls are missing. I thought at first it may be lack of volume or open interest, but nope. Anyway, I don't trust Yahoo! to provide accurate, reliable quotes anyway, having seen too many errors and missing data in particular in the feed of Canadian stocks, which I also trade. I rely on the exchange's quotes, and my broker's real-time quotes. I check Yahoo! only for convenience sake, and when it actually matters I go to the other more reliable sources. For what it's worth, though, you can also get full chain option quotes at NASDAQ. See here for the 3M (MMM) example then click on the ""Jan 12"" link near the top. However, I would consider CBOE's quotes more definitive, since they are the options exchange." |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | What happened to Home Depot's Stock in 1988? | It's got to be a bad chunk of data on Google. Yahoo finance does not show that anomaly for 1988, nor does the chart from Home Depot's investor relations site: |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How do I add my income to my personal finance balance? | "Create an account called, say, ""Paycheck"". When you get paid, create an entry with your gross income as a deposit. For each deduction in your paycheck, create a minus (or expense) entry. After doing that, what will be left in the Paycheck account will be your net income. Simply transfer this amount to the real account your paycheck goes into (your checking account, probably). Almost all the time, the value of your Paycheck account will be 0. It will be nonzero only for a moment every two weeks (or however often you get paid). I don't know if this is the standard way of doing it (in the professional accounting world). It's a way I developed on my own and it works well, I think. I think it's better than just adding a deposit entry in your checking account for your net income as it lets you keep track of all your deductions. (I use Quicken for the Mac. Before they added a Paycheck feature, I used this method. Then they removed the Paycheck feature from the latest version of Quicken for the Mac and I now use this method again.)" |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | I have a 2008 HHR under finance it needs a new engine | "I know, this isn't a direct answer to your question about unloading a used car-- I've always donated it to charity and written off the price it got at auction on my taxes -- but I think the following might be useful to anyone facing a big repair bill: You know your car's condition. (If in doubt, pay your mechanic to evaluate it ""as if he was considering buying it for his daughter"".) If you were shopping for a used car, and you found one exactly like yours, in exactly the same condition, treated exactly as well as you treat yours (and with all the records to prove that), but with the repairs already done... how much would you be willing to pay for it? If that number is more than the repair cost, repairing is a good deal. If it's less than the repair cost, is it enough less to justify the hassle of car shopping? If so, unload it and use the repair money to buy something better. If it's in the middle... flip a coin, or pick whichever makes you feel better." |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Good habits pertaining to personal finance for someone just getting started? | |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How can I raise finance to build a home for my family | As I see it, there are 2 potential solutions - Joining with another person or 2, and buying a house with multiple bedrooms. I am in the US, and I've seen immigrants living in tight accommodations that would seem unacceptable to most of us. But, with the combined incomes, they were able to buy the house and quickly pay for it, and then buy another. $800/mo is about $5/hr. Below US minimum wage. Use your skills to take on additional work on line. A virtual assistant position can increase your income quite a bit. Keep in mind, as someone on the other side of the world, my advice may not be practical for you, these are just my thoughts. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Are there any dangers in publicly sharing my personal finance data? | "Status alone shouldn't be a problem. A fellow blogger publishes a blogger list at Rock Star Finance where he lists nearly 1000 personal finance bloggers web sites. You can see that many of them publicly offer their numbers. What you need to consider is whether you are anonymous, or if friends and family will know it's you. ""Hey Tev, you have no debt and already saved XXX francs? Can you lend me ZZ francs to buy....?"" That is the greater risk. The potential larger risk for the higher worth people is that of targeted theft. (Interesting you couldn't find this via search, the PF blogging community is large, mature, and continuing to grow.)" |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | What is the preferred way to finance home improvements when preparing to sell your house? | You should look into a home equity line of credit: A home equity line of credit (often called HELOC and pronounced HEE-lock) is a loan in which the lender agrees to lend a maximum amount within an agreed period (called a term), where the collateral is the borrower's equity in his/her house. Because a home often is a consumer's most valuable asset, many homeowners use home equity credit lines only for major items, such as education, home improvements, or medical bills, and choose not to use them for day-to-day expenses. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | How to handle Client Deposits in Xero (or any finance software, really) | I haven't worked with Xero before, but can't you just set it up as accounts payable? Put in an accounts payable for the contract. When the client makes a payment, the accounts payable goes down and the cash goes up. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Car finance, APR rates and per week in adverts; help understanding them | Easier to copy paste than type this out. Credit: www.financeformulas.net Note that the present value would be the initial loan amount, which is likely the sale price you noted minus a down payment. The loan payment formula is used to calculate the payments on a loan. The formula used to calculate loan payments is exactly the same as the formula used to calculate payments on an ordinary annuity. A loan, by definition, is an annuity, in that it consists of a series of future periodic payments. The PV, or present value, portion of the loan payment formula uses the original loan amount. The original loan amount is essentially the present value of the future payments on the loan, much like the present value of an annuity. It is important to keep the rate per period and number of periods consistent with one another in the formula. If the loan payments are made monthly, then the rate per period needs to be adjusted to the monthly rate and the number of periods would be the number of months on the loan. If payments are quarterly, the terms of the loan payment formula would be adjusted accordingly. I like to let loan calculators do the heavy lifting for me. This particular calculator lets you choose a weekly pay back scheme. http://www.calculator.net/loan-calculator.html |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Why do some services list an IPO date that is well after historical price data you can find elsewhere? | "The Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company was established in 1902 as a private company. It first raised public funds around 1903 but had a limited shareholder base. By around 1929, it was reported as being tradeable as an OTC (over-the-counter) stock but it's likely that shares were traded well before this. On 14 Jan 1946, the stock was listed on NYSE. On 26 Sep 1962 it became a constituent of the the S&P 500 index. On 9 Aug 1976 it became a constituent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In 2002, the company's name changed to 3M Co. It appears that the data on Crunchbase's ""IPO Date"" is wrong on this one. However, there are several companies that appear to do an ""IPO"" and have trading prices prior. This is quite typical of early-stage biotech companies that trade OTC prior to a major exchange listing and ""IPO"". An example of an IPO happening after a company became publicly tradeable is NASDAQ:IMRN (Immuron). They had an ""IPO"" on Nasdaq on 9 Jun 2017, yet they had been trading as an OTC/Pink Sheet stock for months prior. They also have been listed in Australia since 30 Apr 1999. http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/activity.aspx?tab=pricings&month=2017-06 Another example is NASDAQ:GNTY (Guaranty Banchshares Inc) which had an ""IPO"" and NASDAQ listing in May 2017. This was a Nasdaq stock in 1998, went OTC/pink sheet stock in 2005. It has been paying regular dividends since that time. Clearly the word ""Initial"" is subjective! http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/activity.aspx?tab=pricings&month=2017-05" |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | UK university student finance - should I use my sponsorship money to pay the debt? | "Let me run some simplistic numbers, ignoring inflation. You have the opportunity to borrow up to 51K. What matters (and varies) is your postgraduation salary. Case 1 - you make 22K after graduation. You pay back 90 a year for 30 years, paying off at most 2700 of the loan. In this case, whether you borrow 2,800 or 28,000 makes no difference to the paying-off. You would do best to borrow as much as you possibly can, treating it as a grant. Case 2 - you make 100K after graduation. You pay back over 7K a year. If you borrowed the full 51, after 7 or 8 years it would be paid off (yeah, yeah, inflation, interest, but maybe that might make it 9 years.) In this case, the more you borrow the more you have to pay back, but you can easily pay it back, so you don't care. Invest your sponsorships and savings into something long term since you know you won't be needing to draw on them. Case 3 - you make 30K after graduation. Here, the payments you have to make actually impact how much disposable income you have. You pay back 810 a year, and over 30 years that's about 25K of principal. It will be less if you account for some (even most) of the payment going to interest, not principal. Anything you borrow above 25K (or the lower, more accurate amount) is ""free"". If you borrow substantially less than that (by using your sponsorship, savings, and summer job) you may be able to stop paying sooner than 30 years. But even if you borrow only 12K (or half the more accurate number), it will still be 15 years of payments. Running slightly more realistic versions of these calculations where your salary goes up, and you take interest into account, I think you will discover, for each possible salary path, a number that represents how much of your loan is really loan: everything above that is actually a grant you do not pay back. The less you are likely to make, the more of it is really grant. On top of that, it seems to me that no matter the loan/grant ratio, ""borrow as much as you can from this rather bizarre source"" appears to be the correct answer. In the cases where it's all loan, you have a lot of income and don't care much about this loan payment. Borrowing the whole 51K lets you invest all the money you get while you're a student, and you can use the returns on those investments to make the loan payments." |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Do retail traders get any advantage from learning methods of mathematical of finance? | "If it could, it seems yet to be proven. Long Term Capital Management was founded by a bunch of math whizzes and they seem to have missed something. I'd never suggest that something has no value, but similar to the concept that ""if time travel were possible, why hasn't anyone come back from the future to tell us"" I'd suggest that if there were a real advantage to what you suggest, someone would be making money from it already. In my opinion, the math is simple, little more than a four function calculator is needed." |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Ongoing things to do and read to improve knowledge of finance? | "I'm another programmer, I guess we all just like complicated things, or got here via stackoverflow. Obligatory tedious but accurate point: Investing is not personal finance, in fact it's maybe one of the less important parts of it. See this answer: Where to start with personal finance? Obligatory warning for software developer type minds: getting into investing because it's complicated and therefore fun is a really awful idea from a financial perspective. Or see behavioral finance research on how analytical/professional/creative type people are often terrible at investing, while even-tempered practical people are better. The thing with investing is that inaction is better than action, tried and true is better than creative, and simple is better than complicated. So if you're like me and many programmers and like creative, complicated action - not good for the wallet. You've been warned. That said. :-) Stuff I read In general I hate reading too much financial information because I think it makes me take ill-advised actions. The actions I most need to take have to do with my career and my spending patterns. So I try to focus on reading about software development, for example. Or I answer questions on this site, which at least might help someone out, and I enjoy writing. For basic financial news and research, I prefer Morningstar.com, especially if you get the premium version. The writing has more depth, it's often from qualified financial analysts, and with the paid version you get data and analysis on thousands of funds and stocks, instead of a small number as with Motley Fool newsletters. I don't follow Morningstar regularly anymore, instead I use it for research when I need to pick funds in a 401k or whatever. Another caveat on Morningstar is that the ""star ratings"" on funds are dumb. Look at the Analyst Picks and the analyst writeups instead. I just flipped through my RSS reader and I have 20-30 finance-related blogs in there collecting unread posts. It looks like the only one I regularly read is http://alephblog.com/ which is sort of random. But I find David Merkel very thoughtful and interesting. He's also a conservative without being a partisan hack, and posts frequently. I read the weekly market comment at http://hussmanfunds.com/ as well. Most weeks it says the market is overvalued, so that's predictable, but the interesting part is the rationale and the other ideas he talks about. I read a lot of software-related blogs and there's some bleed into finance, especially from the VC world; blogs like http://www.avc.com/ or http://bhorowitz.com/ or whatever. Anyway I spend most of my reading time on career-related stuff and I think this is also the correct decision from a financial perspective. If you were a doctor, you'd be better off reading about doctoring, too. I read finance-related books fairly often, I guess there are other threads listing ideas on that front. I prefer books about principles rather than a barrage of daily financial news and questionable ideas. Other than that, I keep up with headlines, just reading the paper every day including business-related topics is good enough. If there's some big event in the financial markets, it'll show up in the regular paper. Take a class I initially learned about finance by reading a pile of books and alongside that taking the CFP course and the first CFA course. Both are probably equivalent to about a college semester worth of work, but you can plow through them in a couple months each if you focus. You can just do the class (and take the exam if you like), without having to go on and actually get the work experience and the certifications. I didn't go on to do that. This sounds like a crazy thing to do, and it kind of is, but I think it's also sort of crazy to expect to be competent on a topic without taking some courses or otherwise getting pretty deep into the material. If you're a normal person and don't have time to take finance courses, you're likely better off either keeping it super-simple, or else outsourcing if you can find the right advisor: What exactly can a financial advisor do for me, and is it worth the money? When it's inevitably complex (e.g. as you approach retirement) then an advisor is best. My mom is retiring soon and I found her a professional, for example. I like having a lot of knowledge myself, because it's just the only way I could feel comfortable. So for sure I understand other people wanting to have it too. But what I'd share from the other side is that once you have it, the conclusion is that you don't have enough knowledge (or time) to do anything fancy anyway, and that the simple answers are fine. Check out http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Simple-Financial-Strategies-People/dp/0743269942 Investing for fun isn't investing for profit Many people recommend Motley Fool (I see two on this question already!). The site isn't evil, but the problem (in my opinion) is that it promotes an attitude toward and a style of investing that isn't objectively justifiable for practical reasons. Essentially I don't think optimizing for making money and optimizing for having fun coexist very well. If investing is your chosen hobby rather than fishing or knitting, then Motley Fool can be fun with their tone and discussion forums, but other people in forums are just going to make you go wrong money-wise; see behavioral finance research again. Talking to others isn't compatible with ice in your decision-making veins. Also, Motley Fool tends to pervasively make it sound like active investing is easier than it is. There's a reason the Chartered Financial Analyst curriculum is a few reams of paper plus 4 years of work experience, rather than reading blogs. Practical investing (""just buy the target date fund"") can be super easy, but once you go beyond that, it's not. I don't really agree with the ""anyone can do it and it's not work!"" premise, any more than I think that about lawyering or doctoring or computer programming. After 15 years I'm a programming expert; after some courses and a lot of reading, I'm not someone who could professionally run an actively-managed portfolio. I think most of us need to have the fun part separate from the serious cash part. Maybe literally distinct accounts that you keep at separate brokerages. Or just do something else for fun, besides investing. Morningstar has this problem too, and finance.yahoo.com, and Bloomberg, I mean, they are all interested in making you think about investing a lot more than you ought to. They all have an incentive to convince you that the latest headlines make a difference, when they don't. Bottom line, I don't think personal finance changes very quickly; the details of specific mutual funds change, and there's always some new twist in the tax code, but the big picture is pretty stable. I think going in-depth (say, read the Chartered Financial Analyst curriculum materials) would teach you a lot more than reading blogs frequently. The most important things to work on are income (career) and spending (to maximize income minus spending). That's where time investment will pay off. I know it's annoying to argue the premise of the question rather than answering, but I did try to mention a couple things to read somewhere in there ;-)" |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Highest market cap for a company from historical data | In common with many companies, Microsoft has been engaging in share buyback programmes, where it buys its own shares in the market and then cancels them. It's often a more tax-efficient way to distribute profits to the shareholders than paying a dividend. So there were more Microsoft shares in circulation in 1999 than there are now. See here for information. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Clarify Microsoft's explanation of MIRR | The MIRR formula uses the finance rate to discount negative cash flows, but since the only negative cash flow in the example in in the current period, there's nothing to discount. It's meant to solve problems with IRR like when there are both positive and negative cash flows, which can result in multiple answers for IRR. The example they give isn't a good one for MIRR because it's a simple spend now, earn later scenario, which IRR is perfectly fine for. If you add a negative cashflow somewhere after the first one you'll see the answer change with difference financing rates. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Can I evaluate the performance of a company using just OHLC data? | No. The information you are describing is technical data about a stock's market price and trading volume, only. There is nothing implied in that data about a company's financial fundamentals (earnings/profitability, outstanding shares, market capitalization, dividends, balance sheet assets and liabilities, etc.) All you can infer is positive or negative momentum in the trading of the stock. If you want to understand if a company is performing well, then you need fundamental data about the company such as you would get from a company's annual and quarterly reports. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Do money markets fluctuate during market crashes? | As the commenters have already indicated, money market mutual funds are not guaranteed to maintain principal during all market conditions, and investments in mutual funds are not insured against loss due to market changes. That said, you can run a price search on Vanguard's website and see these results: So, despite all the economic problems since 1975, VMMXX has never traded at a price other than $1.00. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | First home buyer, financing questions | I think we would be good with paying around $1200 monthly mortgage fees (with all other property fees included like tax etc.) You probably can't get a $250k house for $1,200 a month including taxes and insurance. Even at a 4% rate and 20% down, your mortgage payment alone will be $954, and with taxes and insurance on top of that you're going to be over $1,200. You might get a lower rate but even a drop to 3% only lowers the payment $90/month. Getting a cheaper house (which also reduces taxes and insurance) is the best option financially. What to do with the $15k that I have? If you didn't have a mortgage I'd say to keep 3-6 months of living expenses in an emergency fund, so I wouldn't deplete that just to get a mortgage. You're either going to be Since 1) the mortgage payment would be tight and 2) you aren't able to save for a down payment, my recommendation is for you to rent until you can make a 20% down payment and have monthly payment that is 25% of your take-home pay or less. Which means either your income goes up (which you indicate is a possibility) or you look for less house. Ideally that would be on a 15-year note, since you build equity (and reduce interest) much more quickly than a 3-year note, but you can get the same effect by making extra principal payments. Also, very few people stay in their house for 30 years - 5 years is generally considered the cutoff point between renting and buying. Since you're looking at a 10-year horizon it makes sense to buy a house once you can afford it. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How exactly could we rank or value how “rich” a company brand is? | "Matt explains the study numbers in his answer, but those are the valuation of the brand, not the value of the company or how ""rich"" the company is. Presuming that you're asking the value of the company, the usual way for a publicly traded company to be valued is by the market capitalization (1). Market capitalization is a fairly simple measure, basically the total value of all the shares of stock in that company. You can find the market cap for any publicly traded company on any of the usual finance sites like Google Finance or Yahoo Finance. If by rich you mean the total value of assets (assets being all property, including cash, real property, equipment, and licenses) a company owns, that information is included in a publicly traded company's quarterly SEC filing and investor releases, but isn't usually listed on the popular finance sites. An example can be seen at Duke Energy's Investor Relation Site (the same information can be found for all companies on EDGAR, the SEC's search tool). If you open the most recent 8-K (quarterly filing), and go to page 8, you can see that they have $33B+ in assets, and a high level breakdown of those. Note that the numbers are given in millions of dollars For a privately held company this information may or may not be available and you'd have to track it down if it is available. I picked Duke Energy because it's the first thing that popped into my mind. I have no affiliation with Duke, and I don't directly own any of their stock." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Can I sell my home with owner financing when I still have an FHA loan? (and should I?) | You have to pay off the balance on the loan first. Also, FHA loans are not supposed to be used for rental properties. I don't know how you living there for a number of years changes things or how often is that rule enforced but you might need to refinance even if you rent it out. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Will ADR owner enjoy same benefit as common shares holders | The essential difference b/n ADR and a common share is that ADR do not have Voting rights. Common share has. There are some ADR that would in certain conditions get converted to common stock, but by and large most ADR's would remain ADR's without any voting rights. If you are an individual investor, this difference should not matter as rarely one would hold such a large number of shares to vote on General meeting on various issues. The other difference is that since many countries have regulations on who can buy common shares, for example in India an Non Resident cannot directly buy any share, hence he would buy ADR. Thus ADR would be priced more in the respective market if there is demand. For example Infosys Technologies, an India Company has ADR on NYSE. This is more expensive around 1.5 times the price of the common share available in India (at current exchange rate). Thus if you are able to invest with equal ease in HK (have broker / trading account etc), consider the taxation of the gains in HK as well the tax treatment in US for overseas gains then its recommended that you go for Common Stock in HK. Else it would make sense to buy in US. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How to do a direct cash flow statement given a stock ticker | "For US equities, Edgar Online is where companies post their government filings to the SEC. On Google Finance, you would look at the ""SEC filings"" link on the page, and then find their 10K and 10Q documents, where that information is listed and already calculated. Many companies also have these same documents posted on their Investor Relations web pages." |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How to compute real return including expense ratio | Returns reported by mutual funds to shareholders, google, etc. are computed after all the funds' costs, including Therefore the returns you see on google finance are the returns you would actually have gotten. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | How common are stock/scrip dividends (as opposed to cash dividends) in US equity markets? | Check out the NASDAQ and NYSE websites(the exchange in which the stock is listed) for detailed information. Most of the websites which collate dividend payments generally have cash payments history only e.g. Dividata. And because a company has given stock dividends in the past doesn't guarantee such in the future, I believe you already know that. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Where can I see the detailed historical data for a specified stock? | To see a chart with 1-minute data for a stock on a specific date: For example, here is the chart for TWTR on November 7, 2013 - the day of the IPO: Here is the chart for TWTR on November 8, 2013 - its second day of trading: Here is the chart for TWTR on November 11, 2013 - its third day of trading: |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Is it a good idea to teach children that work is linearly related to income? | I think that is the wrong approach. You certainly need to teach the value of work, but you cannot tie it to income levels as a hard and fast rule. If you do, how do you then explain athletes making millions per year and only 'working' half a year, at most. And, then comparing that person to a person working hard in a factory, 40-50 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, bringing home $50K per year? I've always taught my kids to work hard and with integrity. And, most importantly, you better enjoy the work you do because no matter how much money you make, if you dread getting up in the morning to go to work, your money won't make you happy. I've never focused on the amount of money they should be making. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How to find historical stock price for a de-listed or defunct company? | http://www.euroinvestor.com/exchanges/nasdaq/macromedia-inc/41408/history will work as DumbCoder states, but didn't contain LEHMQ (Lehman Brother's holding company). You can use Yahoo for companies that have declared bankruptcy, such as Lehman Brothers: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=LEHMQ&a=08&b=01&c=2008&d=08&e=30&f=2008&g=d but you have to know the symbol of the holding company. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Can I use balance transfer to buy car? | "It really depends on the exact wording of that zero rate offer. Some specifically state they are to be used for paying other debt. Others will have wording such as ""pay other debt or write yourself a check to pay for that next vacation, or new furniture."" Sorry, it's back on you to check this out in advance." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | German stock exchange, ETR vs FRA | I still can't understand why there is a price discrepancancy. There isn't. It's the same stock and price differences between such major exchanges will always be minimal. I think you simply haven't paid attention to the date range. It seems Google finance only has data for FRA:BMW reaching back to 2011, so if you try to look at the development of your investment since 2009, you're not getting comparable data. |
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