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Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Monthly payment on a compounded daily car loan? [duplicate] | I would like to know how they calculated such monthly payment The formula is: Your values would come out to be: r = (1+3.06/(100*365))^31-1=0.002602 (converting your annual percentage to a monthly rate equivalent of daily compounded interest) PV = 12865.57 n = 48 Inserting your values into the formula: P = [r*(PV)]/[1-(1+r)^(-n)] P = [0.002602*(12865.57)]/[1-(1.002602)^(-48)] P = 285.47 |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | What does “/” and “^” mean in ticker symbols? How to translate these symbols into yahoo? | On NASDAQ the ^ is used to denote other securities and / to denote warrents for the underlying company. Yahoo maybe using some other designators for same. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Considering investing in CHN as a dividend stock | CHN is a Closed-End Fund. CHN actually pays out three types of distributions: In the case of CHN, they appear to be paying yearly. The most recent dividend, with exdate of 18 Dec 2014, consisted of $3.4669 of Long-term capital gains and $0.2982 cash dividend. Prior to that, the dividend with exdate of 19 Dec 2013 consisted of $2.8753 long-term capital gains and $0.4387 cash dividend. For a standard dividend yield you typically would not expect short-term and long-term capital events to be included in a yield calculation, as these events really only occur in relation to a fund rebalancing (changing its investments) and are not really due to the actual performance of the fund in any way. Most free sites that provide dividend information do not make a distinction on the dividend type. Data source: Premium Data Full Disclosure: I am a co-owner of Premium Data/Norgate. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Can someone explain the Option Chain of AMD for me? | "When you buy a put option, you're buying the right to sell stock at the ""strike"" price. To understand why you have to pay separately for that, consider the other side of the transaction. If I agree to trade stock for money at above market rates, I need to make up the difference somewhere or face bankruptcy. That risk of loss is what the option price is about. You might assume that means the market expects the price of AMD to fall to 8.01 from it's current price of 8.06 by the option expiration date. But that would also mean call options below the market price is worthless. But that's not quite true; people who price options need to factor in volatility, since things change with time. The price MIGHT fall, and traders need to account for that risk. So 1.99 roughly represents the probability of AMD rising to 10. There's probably some technical analysis one can do to the chain, but I don't see any abnormality of AMD here." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Figuring flood insurance into financing cost | We recently had a sump pump fail during a rainy weekend. Never had more than an inch or so of water on the floor. Total cost to remove the water, dry out the basement, and repair the damage to the paneling and wallboard: more than $7,000 plus the new sump pump. We are not in a flood zone. In a flood zone the cost of the loss could be total. A flood is also the type of hazard that can also destroy the value of land. No way I would want to self insure for this known hazard. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Financed medical expenses and tax deductions | You deduct expenses when you incur them (when you pay the hospital, for example). Medical expenses are deducted on Schedule A, subject to 7.5% AGI threshold. Financed or not - doesn't matter. The medical expense is deductible (if it is medically necessary), the loan interest is not. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Financing with two mortgages: a thing of the past? | I doubt it. I researched it a bit when I was shopping for a HELOC, and found no bank giving HELOC for more than 80% LTV. In fact, most required less than 80%. Banks are more cautious now. If the bank is not willing to compromise on the LTV for the first mortgage - either look for another bank, or another place to buy. I personally would not consider buying something I cannot put at least 20% downpayment on. It means that such a purchase is beyond means. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | How websites like Google have access to stock market data? | "At the bottom of Yahoo! Finance's S & P 500 quote Quotes are real-time for NASDAQ, NYSE, and NYSE MKT. See also delay times for other exchanges. All information provided ""as is"" for informational purposes only, not intended for trading purposes or advice. Neither Yahoo! nor any of independent providers is liable for any informational errors, incompleteness, or delays, or for any actions taken in reliance on information contained herein. By accessing the Yahoo! site, you agree not to redistribute the information found therein. Fundamental company data provided by Capital IQ. Historical chart data and daily updates provided by Commodity Systems, Inc. (CSI). International historical chart data, daily updates, fund summary, fund performance, dividend data and Morningstar Index data provided by Morningstar, Inc. Orderbook quotes are provided by BATS Exchange. US Financials data provided by Edgar Online and all other Financials provided by Capital IQ. International historical chart data, daily updates, fundAnalyst estimates data provided by Thomson Financial Network. All data povided by Thomson Financial Network is based solely upon research information provided by third party analysts. Yahoo! has not reviewed, and in no way endorses the validity of such data. Yahoo! and ThomsonFN shall not be liable for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Thus, yes there is a DB being accessed that there is likely an agreement between Yahoo! and the providers." |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How do I know if refinance is beneficial enough to me? | When evaluating a refinance, you need to figure out the payback time. Refinancing costs money in closing costs. The payback time is the time it takes to recover the closing costs with the amount of money you are saving in interest. For example, if the closing costs are $2,000, your payback time is 2 years if it takes 2 years to save that amount in interest with the new interest rate vs. the old one. To estimate this, look at the difference in interest rate between your mortgage and the new one, and your mortgage balance. For example, let's say that you have $100,000 left on your mortgage, and the new rate is 1% lower than your current rate. In one year, you will save roughly $1,000 in interest. If your closing costs are $2,000, then your payback time is somewhere around 2 years. If you plan on staying in this house longer than the payback time, then it is beneficial to refinance. There are mortgage refinance calculators online that will calculate payback time more precisely. One thing to watch out for: when you refinance, if you expand the term of your mortgage, you might end up paying more interest over the long term, even though your rate is less and your monthly payment is less. For example, let's say you currently have 8 years left on a 15-year mortgage. If you refinance to a new 15-year mortgage, your monthly payment will go down, but if you only pay the new minimum payment for the next 15 years, you could end up paying more in interest than if you had just continued with your old mortgage for the next 8 years. To avoid this, refinance to a new mortgage with a term close to what you have left on your current mortgage. If you can't do that, continue paying whatever your current monthly payment is after you refinance, and you'll pay your new mortgage early and save on interest. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Received a call to collect on a 17 year old, charged off debt. What do I do? | There are statutes of limitations on how long they can wait before coming after you. 14 years certainly exceeds it, which I believe means you are not legally required to pay. statutes of limitations by state The most likely scenario is that this is a scam. Second most likely is that this is a collections agency trying to trick you into paying even though they don't have legal authority to force you. In that case if you do pay them anything, then the statute of limitations restarts and they can legally start giving you trouble, so definitely don't do that. If they keep harassing you, you can probably take legal action against them. That's the worst case scenario, though. I'd just ignore them. At this point, if they are legally entitled to any money, which I highly doubt, they will need to take you to court. They are not going to do that over $1000. Blocking their number might be a reasonable idea. I would doubt whether they can even do anything to your credit rating over this issue. If you are worried about your credit, you can check your oustanding debts and negative incidents at www.annualcreditreport.com and see if you see anything. I would be surprised. Edit: You might read up about time-barred debts (assuming it's not a scam. I still think it is). FTC page on time-barred debt |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How to accurately calculate Apple's EPS | On closer look, it appears that Google Finance relies on the last released 10-k statement (filing date 10/30/2013), but outstanding shares as of last 10-Q statement. Using these forms, you get ($37,037M / 5.989B ) = $6.18 EPS. I think this is good to note, as you can manually calculate a more up to date EPS value than what the majority of investors out there are relying on. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Curious about Liverpool FC situation | AFAIK gillet and hicks received massive loans to fund their purchase and they have not been keeping up the repayments so now the creditors own the club. Its like getting a car on the never never, or a mortgage, i fyou don't keep up repayments the credit company take back the car or the bank repossess your house. I am sure it is a bit more complicated than that in this case, but tbh I would be surprised if it was fundamentally different. thats why RBS and the mill fininance are involved, they provided the loans, and are probably desperately keen to sell before going into administation, which would dock liverpool 9 points and reduce the value even more. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | What publicly available software do professional stock traders use for stock analysis? | Factset also provides a host of tools for analysis. Not many people know as they aren't as prevalent as Bloomberg. CapitalQ and Thomson Reuters also provide analysis tools. Most of the market data providers also provide analysis tools to analyze the data they and others provide. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | What does dividends passed mean in terms of stock? | "A ""covenant"" is a solemn promise to engage in or refrain from a specified action. Every company must do a balancing act while declaring the dividends in terms of companies interest (can it use the surplus cash to generate more revenue) to shareholders' interests, giving back to them the profits that due. Many countries have regulations governing as to when and how much the dividends may be given. It also lays out the policy about declaring dividends to protect everyones' interest. For example if the company has a huge suit pending against it, the company is not supposed to distribute the surplus cash as dividends and when the suit goes against it, its left when no money to pay ... or other such examples where the interests of one or the other party is compromised. The company law board ensures that all this is adhered to in a fair manner. So essentially ""these covenants include provisions about passing dividends"", means that due diligence has be exercised by the company in order to arrive at the dividends that are to be paid out." |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | What's the most correct way to calculate market cap for multi-class companies? | From their 10-K pulled directly from Edgar: As of October 22, 2015, there were 291,327,781 shares of Alphabet Inc.’s (the successor issuer pursuant to Rule 12g-3(a) under the Exchange Act as of October 2, 2015) (Alphabet) Class A common stock outstanding, 50,893,362 shares of Alphabet's Class B common stock outstanding, and 345,504,021 Alphabet's Class C capital stock outstanding. From here just do the math. The shares outstanding are listed on the first page of the 10-Q and 10-K reports. Edit: I believe Class B shares in this instance are not traded on the market and therefore would not be included. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Titles, Financing and Insurance. How do they work? | There is nothing illegal about a vehicle being in one person's name and someone else using it. An illegal straw purchase usually applies to something where, for example, the purchaser is trying to avoid a background check (as with firearms) or is trying to hide assets, so they use someone else to make the purchase on their behalf to shield real ownership. As for insurance, there's no requirement for you to own a vehicle in order to buy insurance so that you can drive someone else's vehicle. In other words, you can buy liability coverage that applies to any vehicle you're operating. The long and short of it here is that you're not doing anything illegal or otherwise improper,but I give you credit for having the good morals for wanting to make sure you're doing the right thing. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Why does Yahoo miss some mutual fund dividends/capital gains? | This looks more like an aggregation problem. The Dividends and Capital Gains are on quite a few occassions not on same day and hence the way Yahoo is aggregating could be an issue. There is a seperate page with Dividends and capital gains are shown seperately, however as these funds have not given payouts every year, it seems there is some bug in aggregating this info at yahoo's end. For FBMPX http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=FBMPX&b=2&a=00&c=1987&e=17&d=01&f=2014&g=v https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/fees-and-prices/316390681 http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=FBMPX |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Payroll question | Ask the company if they can make an adjustment for the next paycheck. If they can't then do the following: Increase the number of Federal exemptions by 1. In 2014 a personal exemption reduces your apparent income by $3950. If you are in the 10 % tax bracket and you are paid every two weeks you will see the amount of taxes withheld drop by ($3950*0.10/26) or ~$15. The 13 Paychecks later change it back. If you are in the 15 % tax bracket and you are paid every two weeks you will see the amount of taxes withheld drop by ($3950*0.15/26) or ~$23. Then 9 Paychecks later change it back If you are in the 25 % tax bracket and you are paid every two weeks you will see the amount of taxes withheld drop by ($3950*0.10/26) or ~$38. Then 5 paychecks later change it back. Remember the money isn't gone, it has just been transferred prematurely to the federal treasury. You could also wait until you complete your taxes this spring, then see if you needed to make an adjustment to your exemptions. If you normally get a large refund then you should be increasing your exemptions anyway. If you are always writing a check to the IRS then you weren't getting enough withheld. Also make sure that payroll has the correct numbers. Most companies include the number of federal and state exemptions on the paycheck stub, or the pdf of the stub. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Tracking the Madrid Interbank Offered Rate (MIBOR) and the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (EURIBOR) | You can find both here: http://www.bde.es/tipos/tipose.htm |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | What is “beta” for an investment or a portfolio, and how do I use it? | Beta is an indication of a Stock's risk with respect to the market. For instance if a stock had a beta of 1 it means it is in tandem with the S&P 500. If it is more than 1, the stock is volatile. If it is less than 1, it implies market movement doesn't affect this stock much. Tech stocks and small cap stocks have high beta, utilities have low beta. (In general, not always). Hope this helps - I've tried to explain it in very simple terms! |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | What is approximate tax deduction for this scenario? | House rent allowance:7500 House Rent can be tax free to the extent [less of] Medical allowance : 800 Can be tax free, if you provide medical bills. Conveyance Allowance : 1250 Is tax free. Apart from this, if you invest in any of the tax saving instruments, i.e. Specified Fixed Deposits, NSC, PPF, EPF, Tution Fees, ELSS, Home Loan Principal etc, you can get upto Rs 150,000 deductions. Additional Rs 50,000 if you invest into NPS. If you have a home loan, upto Rs 200,000 in interest can be deducted. So essentially if you invest rightly you need not pay any tax on the current salary, apart from the Rs 200 professional tax deducted. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How to calculate Price/Earnings - Price/Sales - Price/Free Cash Flow for given stock | To calculate you take the Price and divide it by the Earnings, or by the Sales, or by the Free Cash Flow. Most of these calculations are done for you on a lot of finance sites if the data is available. Such sites as Yahoo Finance and Google Finance as well as my personal favorite: Morningstar |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Fetching technical indicators from yahoo api | Still working on exact answer to question....for now: (BONUS) Here is how to pull a graphical chart with the required data: Therefore: As r14 = the indicator for RSI. The above pull would pull Google, 6months, line chart, linear, large, with a 50 day moving average, a 200 day exponential moving average, volume, and followed up with RSI. Reference Link: Finance Yahoo! API's |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | How can I find out what factors are making a stock's price rise? | A few days ago they launched Fannie Mae Guaranteed Multifamily Structures (link) but who knows? It's a penny stock now. Google Finance is pretty good at marking news right on the chart for a particular stock. That's how I tracked that piece of news down. Can't say that it precipitated a lot of people buying the stock, but Google Finance isn't a bad place to start looking. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Last trade is bought? or sold? | "When there is a trade the shares were both bought and sold. In any trade on the secondary market there has to be both a buyer and a seller for the trade to take place. So in ""lasttradesize"" a buyer has bought the shares from a seller." |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Evidence for Technical Analysis [duplicate] | To answer your original question: There is proof out there. Here is a paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that might be worth a read. It has a lot of references to other publications that might help answer your question(s) about TA. You can probably read the whole article then research some of the other ones listed there to come up with a conclusion. Below are some excerpts: Abstract: This article introduces the subject of technical analysis in the foreign exchange market, with emphasis on its importance for questions of market efficiency. “Technicians” view their craft, the study of price patterns, as exploiting traders’ psychological regularities. The literature on technical analysis has established that simple technical trading rules on dollar exchange rates provided 15 years of positive, risk-adjusted returns during the 1970s and 80s before those returns were extinguished. More recently, more complex and less studied rules have produced more modest returns for a similar length of time. Conventional explanations that rely on risk adjustment and/or central bank intervention do not plausibly justify the observed excess returns from following simple technical trading rules. Psychological biases, however, could contribute to the profitability of these rules. We view the observed pattern of excess returns to technical trading rules as being consistent with an adaptive markets view of the world. and The widespread use of technical analysis in foreign exchange (and other) markets is puzzling because it implies that either traders are irrationally making decisions on useless information or that past prices contain useful information for trading. The latter possibility would contradict the “efficient markets hypothesis,” which holds that no trading strategy should be able to generate unusual profits on publicly available information—such as past prices—except by bearing unusual risk. And the observed level of risk-adjusted profitability measures market (in)efficiency. Therefore much research effort has been directed toward determining whether technical analysis is indeed profitable or not. One of the earliest studies, by Fama and Blume (1966), found no evidence that a particular class of TTRs could earn abnormal profits in the stock market. However, more recent research by Brock, Lakonishok and LeBaron (1992) and Sullivan, Timmermann an d White (1999) has provided contrary evidence. And many studies of the foreign exchange market have found evidence that TTRs can generate persistent profits (Poole 6 (1967), Dooley and Shafer (1984), Sweeney (1986), Levich and Thomas (1993), Neely, Weller and Dittmar (1997), Gençay (1999), Lee, Gleason and Mathur (2001) and Martin (2001)). |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | What kinds of information do financial workers typically check on a daily basis? | I think it depends where you live in the world, but I guess the most common would be: Major Equity Indices I would say major currency exchange rate: And have a look at the Libors for USD and EUR. I guess the intent of the question is more to see how implicated you are in the daily market analysis, not really to see if you managed to learn everything by heart in the morning. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | My Co-Signer is the Primary Account Holder for my Car Loan - Does this affect my credit? | It sounds like your father got a loan and you are making the payments. If your name and SSN are not on the loan then you are not getting credit for making the payments your father is. So it will not affect your credit. If you are on the loan as a secondary borrower it will affect your credit but not substantially on the positive but could affect it substantially on the negative side. Since your father is named as the primary borrower you will probably need to talk with him about it first. If this is a mistake the 2 of you will need to work together with the bank to get it corrected. Since your father is currently listed first the bank is probably going to be unable(even if they are willing) to make a change to the loan now with out his explicit permission. In addition if the loan is in your fathers name, if it is a vehicle loan, then the car is most likely in your fathers name as well. Most states require that the primary signatory on a vehicle loan also be the primary owner on the title to the vehicle. If your fathers name is the primary name on the title then you would have to retitle the car to refinance in your name. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Why does financial investor bother to buy derivatives and then hedge the position? | Sometimes hedging is used if you have a position and you feel the market is going against your position, so one would hedge that position in order to protect their capital and possible profits instead of closing the position and incurring capital gains tax. Personally if the market was going against a position I had open I would get out of that position and protect my capital/profits instead of using more capital to hedge against my position. I would rather take a profit and pay some capital gains tax than watch my profits turn into a loss or use up more capital to try and protect a bad position. Hedging can be useful in certain circumstances but I think if you feel the market is going against your position/s for the medium to long term you should just get out of your positions instead of hedging against them. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Which brokerages offer the best streaming quotes (tick level) for the best price? | I have ScottradeElite on my desktop. I have played around with it but no longer use it. The transactions that I make through Scottrade are more dependent on my goals for the securities than what the market is doing at the moment. Keep in mind that there will always be others out there with better access to price changes than you. They also will have better hardware. We cannot beat them at their game. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Finding Debt/Equity Ratio with Market Value of Equity | In order to calculate the ratio you are looking for, just divide total debt by the market capitalization of the stock. Both values can be found on the link you provided. The market capitalization is the market value of equity. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | What's the point of Ford loosening financing requirements? | The article states their reasons pretty clearly, and indicates that some people won't qualify under the new requirements that would have previously, they're not courting people with bad credit, they're just looking beyond credit score at other factors. They aren't opening floodgates for anyone with a pulse to get a car loan, just shifting things a bit to cast a slightly wider net. This is not new in the world of secured debt, the FHA has methodology for establishing a non-traditional credit report based on things like rental history, utility payments, auto-insurance payments, a person can't be declined an FHA loan for lack for lack of traditional credit history. I look beyond credit score as a landlord, a tenant with poor credit but a stellar rental history is more appealing than someone with great credit but a bad rental history. Vehicles and housing are very important to people, so they are likely to prioritize them above credit card payments or hospital bills. Time will tell, but it seems like a solid move in my view, they can refine their model over time and likely find a solid customer base among those who wouldn't qualify on credit score alone. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Do governments support their own bonds when their value goes down? | Companies do not support their stock. Once the security is out on the wild (market), its price fluctuates according to what investors think they are worth. Support is a whole different concept, financially speaking: Support or support level refers to the price level below which, historically, a stock has had difficulty falling. It is the level at which buyers tend to enter the stock. So it is the lowest assumed price for that stock. Once it reaches its price, buyers will rush to the stock, raising its price. The company wants to keep the stock price at acceptable levels, as it can be seen as the general view of the company's health. Also several employees/executives in the company have stock or stock options, so it is in their interest to keep their stock price up. A bond that goes down in value may indicate a believe the bond issuer (government in this case) won't honor the bond when it matures. As for bonds, there is a wealth of reading in this site: Can someone explain how government bonds work? Who sets the prices on government bonds? Basic understanding of bonds, values, rates and yields |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Bond prices: Why is a high yield sometimes too good to be true? | "Looking at the list of bonds you listed, many of them are long dated. In short, in a rate rising environment (it's not like rates can go much lower in the foreseeable future), these bond prices will drop in general in addition to any company specific events occurred to these names, so be prepared for some paper losses. Just because a bond is rated highly by credit agencies like S&P or Moody's does not automatically mean their prices do not fluctuate. Yes, there is always a demand for highly rated bonds from pension funds, mutual funds, etc. because of their investment mandates. But I would suggest looking beyond credit ratings and yield, and look further into whether these bonds are secured/unsecured and if secured, by what. Keep in mind in recent financial crisis, prices of those CDOs/CLOs ended up plunging even though they were given AAA ratings by rating agencies because some were backed by housing properties that were over-valued and loans made to borrowers having difficulties to make repayments. Hence, these type of ""bonds"" have greater default risks and traded at huge discounts. Most of them are also callable, so you may not enjoy the seemingly high yield till their maturity date. Like others mentioned, buying bonds outright is usually a big ticket item. I would also suggest reviewing your cash liquidity and opportunity cost as oppose to investing in other asset classes and instruments." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Stock stopped trading, what does this mean? | It looks like JP Morgan can convert your holding to unsponsored ADRs until July.. In any event, you should not completely lose the equity. Volvo still exists as a public company, it's just not tradable on US exchanges. Q1: Yes, you'd need a JPM account. Your broker should have offered a similar service. If they didn't they are not a broker. Q2: You own 30 shares in Volvo. You need to get your broker to either sell them (off-exchange now) or tell you how to gain access to them. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Why GOOG is “After Hours” while FB is “Pre-market”? | It looks like GOOG did not have a pre-market trade until 7:14 am ET, so Google Finance was still reporting the last trade it had, which was in the after-hours session yesterday. FB, on the other hand, was trading like crazy after-hours yesterday and pre-market today as it had an earnings report yesterday. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | How to calculate PE ratios for indices such as DJIA? | The official source for the Dow Jones P/E is Dow Jones. Unfortunately, the P/E is behind a pay-wall and not included in the free registration. The easiest (but only approximate) solution is to track against an equivalent ETF. Here's a list of popular indexes with an equivalent ETF. Source |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Equity market inflow meaning | Suppose I purchase $10,000 worth of a particular share today. If the person(s) I am purchasing the shares from paid $9,000 for those shares, then I replacing their $9,000 investment with my $10,000 investment. This is a net inflow of $1,000 into the market. Similarly, if the person(s) I am purchasing the shares from paid $11,000 for those shares, then their $11,000 investment is being replace by my $10,000 investment. This is a net outflow of $1,000 out of the market. The aggregate of all such inflows and outflows in the net inflow/outflow into the market over a given period of time. (Here we are ignoring the effects of new share issues.) |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | what does “private equity structures” mean? | "Private equity firms have a unique structure: The general partners (GP's) of the firm create funds and manage the investments of those funds. Limited partners (LP's) contribute the capital to the funds, pay fees to the GP's, and then make money when the funds' assets grow. I believe the article is saying that ultra high net worth individuals participate in the real estate market by hiring someone to act as a general partner and manage the real estate assets. They and their friends contribute the cash and get shares in the resulting fund. Usually this GP/LP structure is used when the funds purchase or invest in private companies, which is why it is referred to as ""private equity structure,"" but the same structure can be used to purchase and manage pools of real estate or any other investment asset." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Where to find historical quotes for the Dow Jones Global Total Stock Market Index? | A number of places. First, fast and cheap, you can probably get this from EODData.com, as part of a historical index price download -- they have good customer service in my experience and will likely confirm it for you before you buy. Any number of other providers can get it for you too. Likely Capital IQ, Bloomberg, and other professional solutions. I checked a number of free sites, and Market Watch was the only that had a longer history than a few months. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Which online services offer logarithmic charts for equities such as index funds and ETFs? | "The charts on nasdaq.com are log based, if you look closely you can see that the spacing between evenly incremented prices is tighter at the top of the chart and wider at the bottom. It's easiest to see on a stock with a wide price range using candlestick where you can clearly see the grid. I'm also not seeing the ""absurdism"" you indicate when I look at google finance with the settings ticked to use log on the price axis. I see what I'd expect which is basically a given vertical differential on the price axis representing the same percentage change in price no matter where it is located. For example if I look at GOOG from the earliest date they have (Aug 20 2004) to a nice high point (dec 7 2007) I see a cart where the gap from the the bottom of the chart (seems to be right around 100) to the 200 point, (a 100% increase) is the same as from 200 to 400 (a 100% increase) is the same as 400 to 800 (a 100# increase) That's exactly what I expect from a 'log' chart on a financial site, each relative move up or down of the same distance, represents the same relative change in value. So I'm having difficulty understanding what your complaint is. (note: I'm using chrome, which is the browser I'd expect to work best with any google website. results with other browsers could of course vary) If you want to do some other wacky math with the axis then I humbly suggest that something like Excel is your friend. Goto the charts at nasdaq.com get the chart displaying the period you care about, click the chart to display the unlying data, there will be an option to download the data. cram it into excel and go wild as you want with charting it out. e.g. note that step 2 links to client side javascript, so you will need javascript enabled, if you are running something like noscript, disable it for this site. Also since the data opens in a new window, you may also need to enabled 'popups' for the site. (and yes, I sometimes get an annoying news alert advert popup and have to close it when the chart first appears.. oh well it pays the rent and nasdaq is not charging you so for access so such is the price for a free site. )" |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Is there a law or regulation that governs the maximum allowable interest amount that can be charged on credit cards or in agreements where credit is extended? | The word you're looking for is usury - the crime of lending money at rates above an amount set by law. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Mortgage loan plus home loan | You can be a co-borrower on the property that your father owns. Some Banks require that you also be part owner of the property, some banks do not require this. You can take a home loan for a new property, normally Banks will ask you of all your current loans [auto/other home/personal/ etc] to determine the amount they will be ready to lend. Edit: The first loan I believe your father already has a property in his name ... your father can apply for Loan against property ... if he does not have sufficient income, then you can guarantee the loan [ie co-sign on the loan, some banks allow this ... however there is no tax benefit on this loan] . The second is the Home Loan for the balance amount that you would get it … Both the loans can be taken from the same Bank, there would be a overall cap as to the amount of loan a Bank would give depending on your income, further the finance for this house will only be to the extent of 80% of the value. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Who are the real big share holders of $AMDA? | There are not necessarily large shareholders, maybe every other Joe Schmoe owns 3 or 5 shares; and many shares might be inside investment funds. If you are looking for voting rights, typically, the banks/investment companies that host the accounts of the individual shareholders/fund owners have the collective voting rights, so the Fidelity's and Vanguard's of the world will be the main and deciding voters. That is very common. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How can I transfer and consolidate my 401k's and other options? | The simplest way to consolidate the funds your old 401(k) plans is by doing what's called a Direct Rollover (whereby the funds go directly into the new plan and skips you completely) from each of the old plans into either an IRA that you establish with a provider of your choice or even into your current employer's 401(k) plan if that is available. That way, the funds are in one central account and available to invest. Plus it eliminates the mandatory 20% withholding if the rollover is indirect and is sent to you first before the deposit into the new plan. It is important to bear in mind that you have 60 calendar days from the date of distribution to get the full amount into the new plan and a rollover is considered a tax reportable, but not necessarily a taxable event provided you deposit the funds within the time frame allotted. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | total of all dividend payments for a particular company | No - there are additional factors involved. Note that the shares on issue of a company can change for various reasons (such as conversion/redemption of convertible securities, vesting of restricted employee shares, conversion of employee options, employee stock purchase programs, share placements, buybacks, mergers, rights issues etc.) so it is always worthwhile checking SEC announcements for the company if you want an exact figure. There may also be multiple classes of shares and preferred securities that have different levels of dividends present. For PFG, they filed a 10Q on 22 April 2015 and noted they had 294,385,885 shares outstanding of their common stock. They also noted for the three months ended March 31 2014 that dividends were paid to both common stockholders and preferred stockholders and that there were Series A preferred stock (3 million) and Series B preferred stock (10 million), plus a statement: In February 2015, our Board of Directors authorized a share repurchase program of up to $150.0 million of our outstanding common stock. Shares repurchased under these programs are accounted for as treasury stock, carried at cost and reflected as a reduction to stockholders’ equity. Therefore the exact amount of dividend paid out will not be known until the next quarterly report which will state the exact amount of dividend paid out to common and preferred shareholders for the quarter. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Canada: New mortgage qualification rules, 2010: Why, what, & when in effect? | The new mortgage qualification rules were introduced to cool a hot Canadian housing real estate market. The rules are a pre-emptive measure intended to avoid a bubble (and later crash) in real estate. The government wants to make sure anybody buying a house can handle higher interest rates. Those rates, currently at record lows, are expected to go up later this year and into the future. The tighter mortgage rules include: Borrowers will need to qualify against a minimum standard 5-year fixed rate mortgage, even if they'll contract their mortgage at a lower or variable rate. Previously, the 3-year fixed rate mortgage was used as the minimum qualification standard. The amount a homeowner can borrow in a refinanced mortgage drops to 90% of the home value, down from 95% of the home value. A home is not meant to be an ATM machine. Anybody wanting to borrow to buy an investment property – i.e. a property that won't be their principal residence – will need a 20% downpayment instead of a 5% downpayment. The new rules go into effect April 19th, 2010. However, according to the backgrounder (see below): Exceptions would be allowed after April 19 where they are needed to satisfy a binding purchase and sale, financing, or refinancing agreement entered into before April 19, 2010. Definitive information about the new rules can be found at the Department of Finance of Canada. Specifically, refer to: Some additional news media sources: |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Am I liable for an auto accident if I'm a cosigner but not on the title, registration, or insurance policy? | You can be sued if some random stranger that you never had any interaction with gets in an accident. There is really no barrier to people suing you if they get it in their head that they want to. Winning that lawsuit is another matter entirely. Whether you would be held liable and lose the lawsuit depends on whether someone can convince a court that you are partially responsible for a financial loss. Not sure how anyone could possibly successfully argue that in this situation. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Are junk bonds advisable to be inside a bond portfolio that has the objective of generating stable income for a retiree? | Corporate bonds have gotten very complicated in the last 20 years to the point where individual investors are at significant disadvantages when lending money. Subordinated debentures, covenants, long maturities with short call features, opaque credit analysis, etc. Interest rates are so low now that investors (individual & professionals) are forced further out the risk & maturity spectrum for yield. It's a very crowded and busy street.....stay out of the traffic. Really you are better off owning a low cost bond fund that emulates the Barclays Corp/Gov index, or similar. That said, junk bonds may be useful to you if you can tolerate losing money when companies default....you've got to look in the mirror. Choose a fund that is diverse, Treasuries, agencies, corps both high and low.....and don't go for the highest yield. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Is there a free, online stock screener for UK stocks? | Yes, http://shares.telegraph.co.uk/stockscreener/ has what you're looking for. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Which account type to use for claimable expense I pay upfront for my employer? | "I used Quicken, so this may or may not be helpful. I have a Cash account that I call ""Temporary Assets and Liabilities"" where I track money that I am owed (or that I owe in some cases). So if I pay for something that is really not my expense, it is transferred to this account (""transferred"" in Quicken terms). The payment is then not treated as an expense and the reimbursement is not treated as income--the two transactions just balance out." |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Can I borrow against my IRA to pay off debt or pay for a car? | No. Borrowing is not allowed, but if you take a withdrawal, you have 60 days to deposit into another IRA account. This effectively creates a 60 day loan. Not what you're really looking for. If you take this withdrawal and re-deposit to new account within 60 days, no problem. If not, you owe tax on the untaxed amount as well as a 10% penalty. This comes from IRS' Publication 590, I have the document memorized by substance, not page number. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | What does a stock's quoted value represent? | The quote price is simply the last price at which a trade completed. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Why are big companies like Apple or Google not included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) index? | That is a pretty exclusive club and for the most part they are not interested in highly volatile companies like Apple and Google. Sure, IBM is part of the DJIA, but that is about as stalwart as you can get these days. The typical profile for a DJIA stock would be one that pays fairly predictable dividends, has been around since money was invented, and are not going anywhere unless the apocalypse really happens this year. In summary, DJIA is the boring reliable company index. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How does a TFSA work? Where does the interest come from? | "A TFSA is a tax free savings account. It is a type of account where you can buy various investments like stocks, bonds, or funds (mutual, exchange traded, and money market). There are some other options but it's best to see what your bank or broker will allow. You probably specified the type of investment when you opened the account. You can look at your statements or maybe online to see what you're invested in. My guess is some kind of HISA (high interest savings account). This is kind of the default option for banks. The government created these accounts for a variety of reasons. The main stated reason was to encourage people to save. Obviously they also do things to get votes. There was an outcry after the change to a type of investment called ""investment trusts"". This could be seen as a consolation prize. These can be valuable to seniors for many reasons and they tend to vote more often. There was also an election promise to eliminate capital gains taxes in some fashion. It's not profitable for the government, in fact it supposedly cost the federal government $410 million in 2013. Banks make money by investing your deposit or by charging fees. You can see what every tax break 'costs' the government in lost revenue here http://www.fin.gc.ca/taxexp-depfisc/2013/taxexp1301-eng.asp#toc7" |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How to calculate lump sum required to generate desired monthly income? | The product you seek is called a fixed immediate annuity. You also want to be clear it's inflation adjusted. In the US, the standard fixed annuity for a 40year old male (this is the lowest age I find on the site I use) has a 4.6% return. $6000/ yr means one would pay about $130,000 for this. The cost to include the inflation adder is about 50%, from what I recall. So close to $200,000. This is an insurance product, by the way, and you need to contact a local provider to get a better quote. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Why does ExxonMobil's balance sheet show more liabilities than assets? | "You are reading the balance sheet wrong. Everything Joe says is completely correct, but more fundamentally you have missed out on a huge pile of assets. ""Current assets"" is only short term assets. You have omitted more than $300B in long-term assets, primarily plant and equipment. The balance sheet explicitly says: Net tangible Assets (i.e. surplus of assets over liabilities) $174B" |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Understanding stock market terminology | Opening - is the price at which the first trade gets executed at the start of the trading day (or trading period). High - is the highest price the stock is traded at during the day (or trading period). Low - is the lowest price the stock is traded at during the day (or trading period). Closing - is the price at which the last trade gets executed at the end of the trading day (or trading period). Volume - is the amount of shares that get traded during the trading day (or trading period). For example, if you bought 1000 shares during the day and another 9 people also bought 1000 shares each, then the trading volume for the day would be 10 x 1000 = 10,000. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | What assets does the term “security” encompass? | "A good reference to what encompasses ""securities"" are detailed in the Securities Act of 1933, which was enacted by the United States federal government. One main exception, which I would still consider securities for your purposes, would be ""commercial paper"". These are exempt from the securities act because they mature in 270 days of less, but they function much like bonds or promissory notes Therefore though, it would not encompass currencies and commodities. It really comes down to the structure of the agreement for transferring or holding the particular kind of underlying asset." |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Analyze stock value | "A Bloomberg terminal connected to Excel provides the value correcting splits, dividends, etc. Problem is it cost around $25,000. Another one which is free and I think that takes care of corporate action is ""quandl.com"". See an example here." |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | What could be the cause of a extreme high/low price in after hours market? | "Often these types of trades fall into two different categories. An error by broker or exchange. Exchange clearing out part of their books incorrectly is an example. Most exchanges make firms reopen their positions for after market hours. There may have been an issue doing so or exchange could incorrectly cancel positions. I was in the direct feed industry for years and this was a big issue. At the same time the broker can issue a no limit buy on accident (or has software that is prospecting and said software has a bug or written poorly). unscrupulous parties looking to feign an upswing or downswing in market. Let's say you hold 500k shares in a stock that sells for $11. You could possibly buy 100 shares for $13. Trust me you will find a seller. Then you are hoping that people see that trade as a ""norm"" and trade from there, allowing you to rake in $1M for spending an extra $200 - NOTE this is not normal and an extreme example. This was so common in the early days of NASDAQ after hours that they discontinued using the after hours trades as part of historical information that they keep like daily/yearly high or closing price. The liquidity allows for manipulation. It isn't seen as much now since this has been done a million times but it does still happen." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How to calculate the number of months until a loan is paid off (given principal, APR and payment amount)? | The formula for determining the number of payments (months) you'll need to make on your loan is: where i=monthly interest rate (annual rate / 12), A=loan amount (principal), and P=monthly payment. To determine the total interest that you will pay, you can use the following formula: where P=monthly payment, N=number of payments (from above formula), and A=loan amount (principal). A quick example: using the numbers in the screenshot above ($10,000 loan, $500 monthly payment, 10% APR), the number of payments ends up to be 21.97 (which means that payment number 22 is slightly less than the rest). In the second formula, you take that number times your $500 payment and determine that you have paid $10,984.81 over the course of the entire loan period. Subtracting the principal, you have paid $984.81 in total interest. On your spreadsheet, the function you are looking for is NPER: NPER(rate, payment_amount, present_value, [future_value, end_or_beginning]) rate - The interest rate. (This should be the monthly rate, or the annual rate divided by 12.) payment_amount - The amount of each payment made. (For a loan payment, this should be a negative number.) present_value - The current value of the annuity. (The initial principal of the loan) future_value - [ OPTIONAL ] - The future value remaining after the final payment has been made. (This should be 0, the default if omitted.) end_or_beginning - [ OPTIONAL - 0 by default ] - Whether payments are due at the end (0) or beginning (1) of each period. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Do options always expire on third Friday of every month | Prior to 2005, the only SPY options that existed were the monthly ones that expire on the third Friday of every month. But in 2005, the Chicago Board Options Exchange introduced SPY weekly options that expire every Friday (except that there is no weekly option that expires on the same day as a monthly option). These weekly options only exist for 8 days - they start trading on a Thursday and expire 8 days later on Friday. The SPY options that expire on Friday October 31 are weekly options, and they started trading on Thursday October 23. Sources: Investopedia |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | How to calculate interest payments without EBIT | The actual financial statements should always be referenced first before opening or closing a position. For US companies, they are freely available on EDGAR. Annual reports are called 10-Ks, and quarterly reports are called 10-Qs. YHOO and GOOG do a great job of posting financials that are quickly available, but money.msn has the best. These should be starting point, quick references. As you can see, they may all have the same strange accounting. Sometimes, it's difficult to find the information one seeks in the consolidated financial statements as in this case, so searching through the filing is necessary. The notes can be helpful, but Ctrl-F seems to do everything I need when I want something in a report. In AAPL's case, the Interest expense can be found in Note 3. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Financial implications of purchasing a first home? | Congrats! Make sure you nail down NOW what happens to the house should you eventually separate. I know lots of unmarried couples who have stayed together for decades and look likely to do so for life; I've also seen some marriages break up that I wouldn't have expected to. Better to have this discussion NOW. Beyond that: Main immediate implications are that you have new costs (taxes, utilities, maintenance) and new tax issues (mortgage interest and property tax deductability) and you're going to have to figure out how to allocate those between you (if there is a between; not sure whether unmarried couples can file jointly these days). |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Should I use Mint.com? Is it secure / trusted? [duplicate] | Yes, there is such possibility. Also, there's a possibility people made your computer, your operation system, your browser, etc. put there some code there that would intercept your communications and steal your money. So could bank clerks (and unlike all other examples, this really happened in real world, numerous times, though usually at smaller banks), ATM makers, etc. In the modern world, you rely on things made by thousands of people, this is a part of modern world's conveniences. You don't have to use it - you can store all your money in a big jar in your basement and nobody but occasional thief breaking in could take it. However, fraudulent unauthorized transactions in most banks can be rolled back, and any transaction is reported to you. So fraud from mint.com people would be quite low on my list of risks. Much bigger risk is that somebody could break into mint.com servers and steal information about your accounts from there or install some malicious code. I believe they have good protections, but no security system is perfect. You need to evaluate how the convenience of using mint.com compares to your personal feeling about this risk. If you feel you couldn't sleep at night knowing somewhere out there there is information about your money - don't use it. I don't worry about it too much as I know the chance of it happening is low and the chance of getting the money back if it happens is high, but if you feel differently - don't do it. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How will Hello Wallet benefit me? Is it worth the cost? | CreditKarma review I don't personally use HelloWallet, but I have also heard very good things about it. Independence from financial products is a HUGE thing in the field because so many investment advisers place the firm before the customer (c.f. Too Big To Fail), so having an independent resource is a huge benefit. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | What is the correct term to describe (shares owned * share value)? | "This is typically referred to as the ""market value"" of your holdings--it is the revenue you would generate if you sold your holdings at that moment (less any transaction costs, of course)" |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Car financed at 24.90% — what can I do? | If you are a subprime borrower, that may not be an unreasonable rate given the risk they are accepting. In any case, it's what you agreed to. As others have said, you could/should have shopped elsewhere for the loan. In fact, you can still shop elsewhere for a loan to refinance that vehicle and thus lower the rate, unless the existing loan has equally obnoxious rules about that. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | What happens if I get approved for financing, but don't make the purchase? | Nothing will happen. It will not affect your credit score. You are not in trouble. :) Assuming that you didn't already agree to a purchase contract, you are not obligated to purchase simply because you had a pre-approval credit check done. However, even if you did, since they aren't shipping yet, you could probably cancel. If you are in doubt, talk to customer service to ensure that they aren't planning on shipping one to you. They did check your credit report (known as a hard pull), and this does temporarily affect your credit score. However, it affects it the same whether you complete the purchase or not. If you have another credit check done with another seller, it will result in another hard pull, affecting your credit score a little more. But I wouldn't worry about a few hard pulls if you need to do some shopping. Just don't go overboard, and you'll be fine. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Where can I find historical United States treasury note volume? | "The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) publishes these and other relevant data on their Statistics page, in the ""Treasury & Agency"" section. The volume spreadsheet contains annual and monthly data with bins for varying maturities. These data only go back as far as January 2001 (in most cases). SIFMA also publishes treasury issuances with monthly data for bills, notes, bonds, etc. going back as far as January 1980. Most of this information comes from the Daily Treasury Statements, so that's another source of specific information that you could aggregate yourself. Somewhere I have a parser for the historical data (since the Treasury doesn't provide it directly; it's only available as daily text files). I'll post it if I can find it. It's buried somewhere at home, I think." |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | (Arizona) Bought a car with financing, do I take it to DMV/DOT? | Based on your description of what you were given, then you should not need to contact DMV/DOT However if you are not comfortable with that answer then contact/visit the dealer, you can ask them how long it normally takes, and do you pick up the real plates at the dealer, DMV, or will they be mailed to you. Also call them if the temporary plates will run out in a few days, to make sure everything is good to go. One other note. If the dealer is in one state, and you live in another they can give you temporary plate for their state but may not be able to file for the real plates in your state. Once everything is finalized go online to DMV and make sure that the car registration is OK. A few years ago the dealer gave me real plates, they gave me a registration good for two years. But the info sent to DMV was corrupted: the VIN was in the system, but the description was wrong and the plates were listed as none. This was only noticed when I tried to re-register the car two years later. In fact according to DMV the plates on the car were listed as never issued. If I had ever been pulled over it would have taken hours to resolve. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Calculate price to earning and price to sale value for given dataset | Too calculate these values, information contained in the company's financial statements (income, balance, or cashflow) will be needed along with the price. Google finance does not maintain this information for BME. You will need to find another source for this information or analyze another another symbol's financial section (BAC for example). |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | NYSE & NASDAQ: Mkt Cap: $1 billion+ | Try Google Finance Screener ; you will be able to filter for NASDAQ and NYSE exchanges. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Where can one download or subscribe to end of day price data for Tokyo stocks? | "Google Finance certainly has data for Tokyo Stock Exchange (called TYO on Google) listings. You could create a ""portfolio"" consisting of the stocks you care about and then visit it once per day (or write a script to do so)." |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How and Where can I easily pull data for the Dow 30? | The current Dow divisor is in Historical Divisor Changes. The OpenOffice GetQuote function offers fields for current dividend either in dollars or yield. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Free Historical Commodity Prices in txt? | At indexmundi, they have some historical data which you can grab from their charts: It only has a price on a monthly basis (at least for the 25 year chart). It has a number of things, like barley, oranges, crude oil, aluminum, beef, etc. I grabbed the data for 25 years of banana prices and here's an excerpt (in dollars per metric ton): That page did not appear to have historical prices for gold, though. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Who sets the price and provides the quoted price values for stocks? | "The ""price"" is the price of the last transaction that actually took place. According to Motley Fool wiki: A stock price is determined by what was last paid for it. During market hours (usually weekdays from 9:30AM-4:00PM eastern), a heavily traded issue will see its price change several times per second. A stock's price is, for many purposes, considered unchanged outside of market hours. Roughly speaking, a transaction is executed when an offer to buy matches an offer to sell. These offers are listed in the Order Book for a stock (Example: GOOG at Yahoo Finance). This is actively updated during trading hours. This lists all the currently active buy (""bid"") and sell (""ask"") orders for a stock, and looks like this: You'll notice that the stock price (again, the last sale price) will (usually*) be between the highest bid and the lowest ask price. * Exception: When all the buy or sell prices have moved down or up, but no trades have executed yet." |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Owner-Financed home sale or Land Contract — how to handle the transaction and the ongoing entity? | I've done this, but on the other side. I purchased a commercial property from someone I had a previous relationship with. A traditional bank wouldn't loan me the money, but the owner was willing to finance it. All of the payments went through a professional escrow company. In our case it was a company called Westar, but I'm sure there are plenty out here. They basically serve as the middle-man, for a fee (something like $5 a payment, plus something to set it up). They have the terms of the loan, and keep track of balances, can handle extra principle payments and what that does to the term of the loan, etc. You want to have a typical mortgage note that is recorded with the local clerk's office. If you look around, you should be able to find a real estate lawyer who can set all this up for you. It will cost you a bit up front, but it is worth it to do this right. As far as taxes, my understanding is that the property itself is taxed the same as any other property transfer. You would owe taxes on the difference between the value of the property when you inherited it and when you sold it. The interest you get from the loan would be taxed as regular income. The escrow company should send you tax forms every year listing the amount of interest that you received. There are also deductions you can take for expenses in the process. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Why does a real estate seller get to know the financing arrangements of the buyer? | The buyer discloses the financing arrangements to the seller because it makes his offer more attractive. When a seller receives and accepts an offer, the deal does not usually close until 30 to 60 days later. If the buyer cannot come up with the money by closing, the deal falls apart. This is a risk for the seller. When a seller is considering whether or not to accept an offer, it is helpful to know the likelihood that the buyer can actually obtain the amount of cash in the offer by the closing date. If the buyer can't acquire the funding, the offer isn't worth the paper it is printed on. The amount of the down payment vs. the amount of financing is also relevant to the seller. Let me give you a real-world example that happened to me once when I was selling a house. The buyer was doing a no-money-down mortgage and had no money for a down payment. He was even borrowing the closing costs. We accepted the offer, but when the bank did the appraisal, it was short of the purchase price. For most home sales, this would not be a problem, as long as the appraisal was more than the amount borrowed. But in this case, because the amount borrowed was more than the appraisal, the bank had a problem. The deal was at risk, and in order to continue either the buyer had to find some money somewhere (which he couldn't), or we had to lower the price to save the deal. Certainly, accepting the offer from a buyer with no cash to bring to the table was a risk. (In our case, we got lucky. We found some errors that were made in the appraisal, and got it redone.) |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Credit card interest calculator with grace period & different interest rate calculation methods? | I thought it was such a useful suggestion that I went ahead and created them. I'm sure you're not the only one who could derive some benefit from them, I know I will. http://www.investy.com/tools When I have some additional time, I will add the option for grace-periods, but for now I wanted to get them up so you could use the calculations as-is from the article. Enjoy. (Disclosure: I'm the founder of the site they are hosted on and I wrote the code for the calculators) |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | What is a 401(k) Loan Provision? | "Congratulations on the job offer! That type of matching sounds good if you plan to stay at a company for more than a year. My experience has been that 401k matching can range from 2% up to 8% for your typical starting job, so a total of 6% is good. You would definitely want to contribute at least 5% to take advantage of the ""Free"" money. Loan provision could mean that loans from 401k are allowed. I did some research and found that not all company 401ks allow for you to take a loan out of your 401k. Typically this is bad practice since you are robbing your 401k of it's major advantage - tax free compound interest. Source" |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Confused about google portfolio chart | You bought 1 share of Google at $67.05 while it has a current trading price of $1204.11. Now, if you bought a widget for under $70 and it currently sells for over $1200 that is quite the increase, no? Be careful of what prices you enter into a portfolio tool as some people may be able to use options to have a strike price different than the current trading price by a sizable difference. Take the gain of $1122.06 on an initial cost of $82.05 for seeing where the 1367% is coming. User error on the portfolio will lead to misleading statistics I think as you meant to put in something else, right? |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How can I find a list of all North American ETF's including symbols? | You can use www.etfdb.com and search on geography. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Will a Barclaycard Visa help me in building up credit score? | Payment history is probably the most significant contributor to your credit score. Having a solid history of making, at least the minimum, payments on time will have a positive impact on your credit score. Whether or not this specific transaction means anything to that equation is up for debate. If you have no credit lines now and 0% for 18 months on a computer makes sense to you, then yes, making this purchase this way and paying on time will have a positive impact on your credit score. Paying interest doesn't help your credit score. Repay this computer before the 18 month period ends, then be sure to pay your balance in full every month thereafter. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Loan for car buy “cash” (third party) or bank loan | The car dealership doesn't care where you get the cash; they care about it becoming their money immediately and with no risk or complications. Any loan or other arrangements you make to raise the cash is Your Problem, not theirs, unless you arrange the loan through them. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Negative properties of continuously compounded returns | What you're missing is the continuous compounding computation doesn't work that way. If you compound over n periods of time and a rate of return of r, the formula is e^(r*n), as you have to multiply the returns together with a mulitplicative base of 1. Otherwise consider what 0 does to your formula. If I get a zero return, I have a zero result which doesn't make sense. However, in my formula I'd still get the 1 which is what I'm starting and thus the no effect is the intended result. Continuous compounding would give e^(-.20*12) = e^(-2.4) = .0907 which is a -91% return so for each $100 invested, the person ends up with $9.07 left at the end. It may help to picture that the function e^(-x) does asymptotically approach zero as x tends to infinity, but that is as bad as it can get, so one doesn't cross into the negative unless one wants to do returns in a Complex number system with imaginary numbers in here somehow. For those wanting the usual compounding, here would be that computation which is more brutal actually: For your case it would be (1-.20)^12=(0.8)^12=0.068719476736 which is to say that someone ends up with 6.87% in the end. For each $100 had in the beginning they would end with $6.87 in the end. Consider someone starting with $100 and take 20% off time and time again you'd see this as it would go down to $80 after the first month and then down to $64 the second month as the amount gets lower the amount taken off gets lower too. This can be continued for all 12 terms. Note that the second case isn't another $20 loss but only $16 though it is the same percentage overall. Some retail stores may do discounts on discounts so this can happen in reality. Take 50% off of something already marked down 50% and it isn't free, it is down 75% in total. Just to give a real world example where while you think a half and a half is a whole, taking half and then half of a half is only three fourths, sorry to say. You could do this with an apple or a pizza if you want a food example to consider. Alternatively, consider the classic up and down case where an investment goes up 10% and down 10%. On the surface, these should cancel and negate each other, right? No, in fact the total return is down 1% as the computation would be (1.1)(.9)=.99 which is slightly less than 1. Continuous compounding may be a bit exotic from a Mathematical concept but the idea of handling geometric means and how compounding returns comes together is something that is rather practical for people to consider. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Working abroad in Australia, what is involved financially and administratively? | If you think there is no complication in your application and you can easily satisfy all criteria you can do the process yourself without using any agent and save few thousand dollars. I have done myself. Another cost Chris forgot to mention is the medical examination cost which is mandatory. If your certificates and docs are non-English translation fees are quite high as well. The immigration process is very bureaucratic and requires lot of supporting documents. As for living in Australia, Rent, Car and living expenses are high compared to US. But in Sydney and Melbourne you can rent near public transport, which isn't too bad (well not like Europe ). So having a car is not essential. Rent for a decent flat in these cities will be $300 - $350 p/w and you may have to pay 4-6 weeks as advance. You can get a lot of information from the dept. of immingration website. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Get free option quotes | "A number of sites provide delayed option chains online. Yahoo Finance is one example: I linked to Apple's chain, but to get one yourself, put the ticker you want in the search box, then click the ""options"" link in the sidebar that I called out in the image." |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | I gave an incorrect account number to pay my income taxes | They will not send a bill, though there's a chance they will eventually send an accusatory letter. You must proactively pay your taxes. The simplest route is to send a check to each taxing authority with the respective full amounts due. I wouldn't bother calling them. You could also file amended returns with each containing the correct information. As a general rule, tax advisors tend to counsel against giving bank account information to the IRS for payment purposes (as opposed to refund purposes), both to protect the timing of payment and to make it slightly more difficult for them to seize or lien your account. If you choose to send a check, you can use Form 1040-V and NY Form IT-201-V. Please triple check your Social Security Number matches your tax return SSN, so they correctly credit you for payment. You may include an explanation of the closed account if you are feeling either fearful or contrite, but if the amount due is paid in full, then neither taxing authority should really care about your error. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Tax brackets in the US | "Yes, your tax bracket is 25%. However, that doesn't mean that your take home pay will be 75% of your salary. There is much more that goes into figuring out what your take home pay will be. First, you have payroll taxes. This is often listed on your pay stub as ""FICA."" The Social Security portion of this tax is 6.2% on the first $118,500 of your pay and the Medicare portion is another 1.45% on the first $200,000. (Your employer also has to pay additional tax that does not appear on your stub.) So 7.65% of your salary gets removed off the top. In addition to the federal income taxes that get withheld, you may also have state income taxes that get withheld. The amount varies with each state. Also, the 25% tax bracket does not mean that your tax is 25% of your entire salary. You step through the tax brackets as your income goes up. So part of your salary is taxed at 10%, part at 15%, and the remainder is at 25%. The amount of federal income tax that is withheld from your paycheck is really a rough estimate of how much tax you actually owe. There are lots of things that can reduce your tax liability (personal exemptions, deductions, credits) or increase your tax (investment income, penalties). When you do your tax return, you calculate the actual tax that you owe, and you either get a refund if too much was taken out of your check, or you need to send more money in if too little was taken out." |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | View asset/holdings breakdown within fund | according to the SEC: Shareholder Reports A mutual fund and a closed-end fund respectively must provide shareholders with annual and semi-annual reports 60 days after the end of the fund’s fiscal year and 60 days after the fund’s fiscal mid-year. These reports contain updated financial information, a list of the fund’s portfolio securities, and other information. The information in the shareholder reports will be current as of the date of the particular report (that is, the last day of the fund’s fiscal year for the annual report, and the last day of the fund’s fiscal mid-year for the semi-annual report). Other Reports A mutual fund and a closed-end fund must file a Form N-Q each quarter and a Form N-PX each year on the SEC’s EDGAR database, although funds are not required to mail these reports to shareholders. Funds disclose portfolio holdings on Form N-Q. Form N-PX identifies specific proposals on which the fund has voted portfolio securities over the past year and discloses how the fund voted on each. This disclosure enables fund shareholders to monitor their funds’ involvement in the governance activities of portfolio companies. which means that sixty days after the end of each quarter they will tell you what they owned 60 days ago. This makes sense; why would they want to tell the world what companies they are buying and selling. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How do I get a list of the top performing funds between two given dates? | The closest I can think of from the back of my head is http://finviz.com/map.ashx, which display a nice map and allows for different intervals. It has different scopes (S&P500, ETFs, World), but does not allow for specific date ranges, though. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Organizing finances and assigning a number to each record type | "What you are describing is a Chart of Accounts. It's a structure used by accountants to categorise accounts into sub-categories below the standard Asset/Liability/Income/Expense structure. The actual categories used will vary widely between different people and different companies. Every person and company is different, whilst you may be happy to have a single expense account called ""Lunch"", I may want lots of expense accounts to distinguish between all the different restaurants I eat at regularly. Companies will often change their chart of accounts over time as they decide they want to capture more (or less) detail on where a particular type of Expense is really being spent. All of this makes any attempt to create a standard (in the strict sense) rather futile. I have worked at a few places where discussions about how to structure the chart of accounts and what referencing scheme to use can be surprisingly heated! You'll have to come up with your own system, but I can provide a few common recommendations: If you're looking for some simple examples to get started with, most personal finance software (e.g. GnuCash) will offer to create an example chart of accounts when you first start a session." |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Average Price of a Stock | Edit3: Regarding the usefulness of the bare number itself, it is not useful unless, for example, an employer uses that average in the computation of how many options the employer grants to the employee as part of the compensation paid. One of my employers used just such an average. What is far more common is to use two or more moving averages, of different periods, plotted on a chart. My original response continues below... Assuming there are 252 trading days a year, the following chart does what you have done but with a moving average: AAPL on Stockcharts.com Edit: BTW, I looked up the number of Federal holidays, there are 9. The average year has 365.2422 days. 365.2422 × 5/7 = 260.8873. Subtract 9 and you get 251.8873 trading days in the average year. So 252 is a better number for the SMA than 250 if you want to average a year. Edit2: Here is the same chart with more than one average included: AAPL chart w/indicators |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Selling stocks - capital gains | In the US you specify explicitly what stocks you're selling. Brokers now are required to keep track of cost basis and report it to the IRS on the 1099-B, so you have to tell the broker which position it is that you're closing. Usually, the default is FIFO (i.e.: when you sell, you're assumed to be closing the oldest position), but you can change it if you want. In the US you cannot average costs basis of stocks (you can for mutual funds), so you either do FIFO, LIFO (last position closed first), or specify the specific positions when you submit the sale order. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | When a fund drops significantly, how can I research what went wrong? [duplicate] | "Usually there are annual or semi-annual reports for a mutual fund that may give an idea for when a fund will have ""distributions"" which can cause the NAV to fall as this is when the fund passes the taxable liabilities to shareholders in the form of a dividend. Alternatively, the prospectus of the fund may also have the data on the recent distribution history that is likely what you want. If you don't understand why a fund would have a distribution, I highly suggest researching the legal structure of an open-end mutual fund where there more than a few rules about how taxes are handled for this case." |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | T-mobile stock: difference between TMUSP vs TMUS | "The difference between TMUSP and TMUS is that the ""with P"" ticker is for a TMobile Preferred Stock offering. The ""without P"" ticker is for TMobile common stock. The difference between the apparent percentage yields is due to Yahoo! Stock misreporting the dividend on the preferred stock for the common stock, which has not paid a dividend (thanks Brick for pointing this out!) Preferred stock holders get paid first in the event of liquidation, in most scenarios they get paid first. They sometimes get better returns. They typically lack voting rights, and after a grace period, they may be recalled by the company at a fixed price (set when they were issued). Common stock holders can vote to alter the board of directors, and are the epitome of the typical ""I own a trivial fraction of the company"" model that most people think of when owning stocks. As the common stock is valued at much less, it appears that the percent yield is much higher, but in reality, it's 0%." |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Some questions about investing [duplicate] | What is the best form of investment? It only depends on your goals... The perfect amount of money depends also on your particular situation. The first thing you should start getting familiar with is the notion of portfolio and diversification. Managing risk is also fundamental especially with the current market funkiness... Start looking at index based ETFs -Exchange Traded Funds- and Balanced Mutual Funds to begin with. Many discounted online brokerage companies in the USA offer good training and knowledge centers. Some of them will also let you practice with a demo account that let you invest virtual money to make you feel comfortable with the interface and also with investing in general. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Is it possible to buy UK Consols (perpetuities)? | Selftrade does list them. Not sure if you'll be able to sign up from the US though, particularly given the FATCA issues. |
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