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Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise.
What is market capitalization? [duplicate]
Market Capitalization is the equity value of a company. It measures the total value of the shares available for trade in public markets if they were immediately sold at the last traded market price. Some people think it is a measure of a company's net worth, but it can be a misleading for a number of reasons. Share price will be biased toward recent earnings and the Earnings Per Share (EPS) metric. The most recent market price only reflects the lowest price one market participant is willing to sell for and the highest price another market participant is willing to buy for, though in a liquid market it does generally reflect the current consensus. In an imperfect market (for example with a large institutional purchase or sale) prices can diverge widely from the consensus price and when multiplied by outstanding shares, can show a very distorted market capitalization. It is also a misleading number when comparing two companies' market capitalization because while some companies raise the money they need by selling shares on the markets, others might prefer debt financing from private lenders or sell bonds on the market, or some other capital structure. Some companies sell preferred shares or non-voting shares along with the traditional shares that exist. All of these factors have to be considered when valuing a company. Large-cap companies tend to have lower but more stable growth than small cap companies which are still expanding into new markets because of their smaller size.
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How many warrants do I need to exercise to get a stock?
No, you trade the warrant and the warrant price of $11.50 for one stock. The warrant is a little like an option, but with a longer term. If you buy a IPOA.WS warrant then that warrant gives you the option to buy one share of class A stock at $11.50 at a future date. If in the future, the stock is worth $20, then you make $20 - $11.50 - per share. If you buy one IPOA.U, then you get 1/3 of a warrant and 1 share of stock, the warrants will be useless unless you buy in groups of 3 for the IPOA.U. I didn't see the timeframe of the warrant, they're usually good for 10+ years, and they're currently trading in the $1.5-1.8 range. To confirm, here's a decent article about how warrants work: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/04/021704.asp
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See list of stock trades for day
"You can see all the (millions) of trades per day for a US stock only if you purchase that data from the individual exchanges (NYSE, NASDAQ, ARCA, ...), from a commercial market data aggregator (Bloomberg, Axioma, ...), or from the Consolidated Tape Association. In none of that data will you ever find identifying information for the traders. What you are recalling regarding the names of ""people from the company"" trading company stock is related to SEC regulations stating that people with significant ownership of company stock and/or controlling positions on the company board of directors must publicize (most of) their trades in that stock. That information can usually be found on the company's investor relations website, or through the SEC website."
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How did I end up with a fraction of a share?
It's not that uncommon but it doesn't usually come from standard purchases. Investopedia explains: Definition of 'Fractional Share' A share of equity that is less than one full share. Fractional shares usually come about from stock splits, dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPs) and similar corporate actions. Normally, fractional shares cannot be acquired from the market. However, there is at least one investment firm that markets itself as offering fractional shares. Fractional investing makes more sense, since an investor's perspective is to invest a certain number of dollars into equity, not to buy a certain number of shares that closely mirror the dollar commitment.
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How often are preferred shareholders made whole after a company goes bankrupt?
"From the Times A Reader Q.&A. on G.M.’s Bankruptcy Q. I own G.M. preferred shares. Should I be looking to sell them, or hold on? I bought them at $25 a share when they were issued in late 2001. — Karen, Manhattan A. When a company files for bankruptcy, its various stock and bondholders essentially get in line. The first investors to be repaid are secured debt holders, then senior bond investors, followed by subordinated debt holders. Preferred shareholders are next, and lastly, holders of common stock. In a bankruptcy, preferred shares are usually worthless, much like shares of common stock. But in the case of G.M., there may be some good — or at least somewhat better — news. Most of G.M.’s preferred shares are actually senior notes or “quarterly interest bonds,” which means you will be treated as a bondholder, according to Marilyn Cohen, president of Envision Capital Management. So you will be able to exchange your preferreds for G.M. stock (bondholders will receive 10 percent of the new company’s stock). It’s not the best deal, but it beats the empty bag true preferred shareholders would have been left holding. Of course this is just one example, and you were hoping to get some larger picture. The article stated ""In a bankruptcy, preferred shares are usually worthless, much like shares of common stock"" which at least is a bit closer to that, if you accept usually as a statistic."
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Is 6% too high to trade stocks on margin?
"6% isn't ""too high"" in terms of market rates at the moment, however it's a very subjective question whether it's too high for you. The real question to determine is if paying 6%, can you make more than 6% return (to cover the costs plus your profit)? As for a rule of thumb, there's none I know of, however your best bet is to take the time to model it in Excel (not difficult). It's different for each portfolio or investment. Something with a high standard deviation of returns is already high risk, adding margin to it only makes it worse. So, long story short is that, ""it depends""."
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Borrowing share with a covered call for short?
No, if your stock is called away, the stock is sold at the agreed upon price. You cannot get it back at your original price. If you don't want your stock to be called, make sure you have the short call position closed by expiration if it is ITM. Also you could be at risk for early assignment if the option has little to no extrinsic value, although probably not. But when dividends are coming, make sure you close your short ITM options. If the dividend is worth more than the extrinsic value, you are pretty much guaranteed to be assigned. Been assigned that way too many times. Especially in ETFs where the dividends aren't dates are not always easy to find. It happens typically during triple witching. If you are assigned on your short option, you will be short stock and you will have to pay the dividend to the shareholder of your short stock. So if you have a covered call on, and you are assigned, your stock will be called away, and you will have to pay the dividend.
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When (if) I should consider cashing in (selling) shares to realize capital gains?
"The only general rule is ""If you would buy the stock at its current price, hold and possibly buy. If you wouldn't, sell and buy something you believe in more strongly."" Note that this rule applies no matter what the stock is doing. And that it leaves out the hard work of evaluating the stock and making those decisions. If you don't know how to do that evaluation to your own satisfaction, you probably shouldn't be buying individual stocks. Which is why I stick with index funds."
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A deferred capital gains tax similar to the real estate 1031 Exchange but for securities reinvestment?
Sale of a stock creates a capital gain. It can be offset with losses, up to $3000 more than the gains. It can be deferred when held within a retirement account. When you gift appreciated stock, the basis follows. So when I gifted my daughter's trust shares, there was still tax due upon sale. The kiddy tax helped reduce but not eliminate it. And there was no quotes around ownership. The money is gone, her account is for college. No 1031 exchange exists for stock.
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Does the premium of an option of a certain strike price increase at a slower rate from OTM to ITM as gamma affects delta?
If we assume constant volatility, gamma increases as the stock gets closer to the strike price. Thus, delta is increasing at a faster rate as the stock reaches closer to ITM because gamma is the derivative of delta. As the stock gets deeper ITM, the gamma will slow down as delta reaches 1 or -1 (depends if a call or a put). Thus, the value of the option will change depending upon the level of the delta. I am ignoring volatility and time for this description. See this diagram from Investopedia: Gamma
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How far into the future is a stock future? How do stock futures work?
Context is key here. Futures don't really have to do with a time in the future in this context. Futures are a capital market (futures market), just like Stocks are a market (stock market). Both capital markets have the ability to affect each other. Up until 30 years ago there was a separate use for the futures market, but in the days since they are MOSTLY used for stock derivatives (financial futures are the most widely traded contracts since 1980, hugely eclipsing the commodity futures that the market was designed for.) So there is overlap and one affect the other, I'm not going to go into too much detail here but basically the futures market trades 24 hours a day, 6.5 days of the week and the stock market trades 8-12 hours a day, 5 days a week. So when the stock market closes, the futures market is still running will react and effect the broad stock market. Hope that gets you started in your research
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How is stock price determined?
Yes, stock price is determined by the last trade price. There are always going to be people who have put in a price to buy a stock (called a bid price) and people who have put in a price to sell a stock (called an ask price). Based on your example, if the last trade price for the stock was $1.23, then you might have the following bid prices and ask prices: So if you put in a limit order to buy 100 shares at $100, you would buy the 40 shares at $1.23, the 15 shares at $1.24, and the 45 shares $1.25. The price of the stock would go up to $1.25. Conversely, if you put in a limit order to sell 100 shares at $0.01 (I don't think any broker would allow a sell price of $0.00), you would sell 30 shares at $1.22, 20 shares at $1.21, and 50 shares at $1.20. The price of the stock would go down to $1.20.
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What happens if a company I have stock in is bought out?
I've seen many buyouts in my own portfolio, including the company I worked for. There have been several different scenarios: The terms of the deal are subject to the deal -- frankly whatever makes sense to the buyer and that is accepted by the seller. So sometimes brokers charge reorganization fees. check into those for your broker. I've not seen one in a while, but my brokerage account is substantial, and often that's a perk they offer higher-value accounts. Also watch out for taxes. The transaction where my employer was bought by another publicly traded company -- we got bit because the IRS treated it as a taxable transaction, and all our RSUs were effectively sold and then repurchased. So we ended up with a big tax bill (capital gains) without any cash to offset the big tax bill. I suspect its because my old employer was a US based company, whereas the new company is not.
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Why the S&P futures prices are not reflecting the general bullish sentiment of the US stock market
This is a great question for understanding how futures work, first let's start with your assumptions The most interesting thing here is that neither of these things really matters for the price of the futures. This may seem odd as a futures contract sounds like you are betting on the future price of the index, but remember that the current price already includes the expectations of future earnings as well! There is actually a fairly simple formula for the price of a futures contract (note the link is for forward contracts which are very similar but slightly more simple to understand). Note, that if you are given the current price of the underlying the futures price depends essentially only on the interest rate and the dividends paid during the length of the futures contract. In this case the dividend rate for the S&P500 is higher than the prevailing interest rate so the futures price is lower than the current price. It is slightly more complicated than this as you can see from the formula, but that is essentially how it works. Note, this is why people use futures contracts to mimic other exposures. As the price of the future moves (pretty much) in lockstep with the underlying and sometimes using futures to hedge exposures can be cheaper than buying etfs or using swaps. Edit: Example of the effect of dividends on futures prices For simplicity, let's imagine we are looking at a futures position on a stock that has only one dividend (D) in the near term and that this dividend happens to be scheduled for the day before the futures' delivery date. To make it even more simple lets say the price of the stock is fairly constant around a price P and interest rates are near zero. After the dividend, we would expect the price of the stock to be P' ~ P - D as if you buy the stock after the dividend you wouldn't get that dividend but you still expect to get the rest of the value from additional future cash flows of the company. However, if we buy the futures contract we will eventually own the stock but only after the dividend happens. Since we don't get that dividend cash that the owners of the stock will get we certainly wouldn't want to pay as much as we would pay for the stock (P). We should instead pay about P' the (expected) value of owning the stock after that date. So, in the end, we expect the stock price in the future (P') to be the futures' price today (P') and that should make us feel a lot more comfortable about what we our buying. Neither owning the stock or future is really necessarily favorable in the end you are just buying slightly different future expected cash flows and should expect to pay slightly different prices.
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Accounting for splits in a stock price graph
One way that is common is to show the value over time of an initial investment, say $10,000. The advantage of this is that it doesn't show stock price at all, so handles splits well. It can also take into account dividend reinvestment. Fidelity uses this for their mutual funds, as can be seen here. Another option would be to compute the stock price as if the split didn't happen. So if a stock does a 2:1 split, you show double the actual price starting at that point.
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How can I find out which ETFs has holdings in a particular stock?
This ETFchannel.com page shows which ETFs hold Wells Fargo and you can search other stocks the get the same information on that site. This the same information for Google This even tells you what percentage of an ETF is a particular stock. Be warned that this site is not entirely free. You will be limited to 6 pages in 6 hours unless you pay for a subscription. Additionally ETFdb.com offers a similar tool.
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How to sell option with no volume
Volume @ 0 doesn't mean that there are no buyers and sellers, it just means that there hasn't been any trades done yet. What you need to look for are the bids and offers (for selling and buying, respectively). For further expiration and NTM or IT options there will almost always be a bid and an offer (but it may be very wide). Now, in case where there is 0 bid (no one is willing to buy), you may still have a chance if the option has some value in it. For that - you need your broker to try to shop it to market making firms. Now, depending on who your broker is, this may or may not be possible. Alternatively, if you have DMA (direct market access) to the options exchanges, you can try to put in an offer of your own and wait for someone to execute against you, however do not expect to be traded with unless your price is out of line with the cost. However, in wide markets, you can try Lampost options (they may give you price improvement) or try to offer very close to the bid. You may save yourself a penny or two and perhaps get a rebate if you are using BATSO or NASDAQO markets (if you have DMA and pass-through exchange fees).
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Is this trick enough to totally prevent bankrupcy in a case of a crash?
When you buy a stock, the worst case scenario is that it drops to 0. Therefore, the most you can lose when buying a stock is 100% of your investment. When you short a stock, however, there's no limit on how high the stock can go. If you short a stock at 10, and it goes up to 30, then you've lost 200% on your investment. Therefore shorting stocks is riskier than buying stocks, since you can lose more than 100% of your investment when shorting. because the price might go up, but it will never be as big of a change as a regular price drop i suppose... That is not true. Stocks can sometimes go up significantly (50-100% or more) in a very short amount of time on a positive news release (such as an earnings or a buyout announcement). A famous example occurred in 2008, when Volkswagen stock quintupled (went up 400%) in less than 2 days on some corporate news: Porsche, for some reason, wants to control Volkswagen, and by building up its stake has driven up the price. Hedge funds, figuring the share price would fall as soon as Porsche got control and stopped buying, sold a lot of VW shares short. Then last weekend, Porsche disclosed that it owned 42.6 percent of the stock and had acquired options for another 31.5 percent. It said it wanted to go to 75 percent. The result: instant short-squeeze. The German state of Lower Saxony owns a 20 percent stake in VW, which it said it would not sell. That left precious few shares available for anyone else. The shorts scrambled to cover, and the price leaped from about €200, or about $265, to above €1,000.
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What happens when a stock gets delisted?
When a delisting happens, the primary process involves, the firm or the entity, trying to buy everyone out so that they can take the firm private by delisting from the stock exchanges. As the firm wants to buy everyone out, the current owners of the equity have the upper hand. They wouldn't want to sell if they believe the firm has a brighter future. So to compensate the existing holders, the buyer needs to compensate the current holders of any future loss, so they pay a premium to buy them out. Hence the prices offered will be more than the current existing price. And in anticipation of a premium the stocks price rises on this speculation. The other scenario is if the current holder(s) decide no to sell their holdings and are small in number, dependent on exchange regulations, and the buyer manages to de-list the stock, the holders might loose out i.e. they have to find another buyer who wants to buy which becomes difficult as the liquidity for the stock is very minimal. if any stock is DE-listed and then we can not trade on it, In India if the promoters capital is more than 90%, he can get the stock de-listed. There is a process, he has to make an open offer at specified price to minority shareholders. The minority shareholder can refuse to sell. Once the stock is de-listed, it means it cannot be traded on a given exchange. However you can still sell / buy by directly finding a buyer / seller and it's difficult compared to a listed stock.
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What are support and resistance of a stock?
"Support and resistance points indicate price levels where there have been a large amount of trading activity, usually from institutions, that tend to stabilize the price of a stock. Support is a temporary FLOOR, where people have been buying in large quantities. That means there's a good chance that the stock won't go below this level in the near term. (But if it does, watch out.) Resistance is a temporary CEILING where people have been selling. When the stock price hits this level, people tend to sell, and push it back down. Until there are ""no more"" sellers at this level. Then the price could skyrocket if there is enough buying."
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Why ever use a market order?
"What you are saying is a very valid concern. After the flash crash many institutions in the US replaced ""true market orders"" (where tag 40=1 and has no price) with deep in the money limit orders under the hood, after the CFTC-SEC joint advisory commission raised concerns about the use of market orders in the case of large HFT traders, and concerns on the lack of liquidity that caused market orders that found no limit orders to execute on the other side of the trade, driving the prices of blue chip stocks into the pennies. We also applaud the CFTC requesting comment regarding whether it is appropriate to restrict large order execution design that results in disruptive trading. In particular, we believe there are questions whether it is ever appropriate to permit large order algorithms that employ unlimited use of market orders or that permit executions at prices which are a dramatic percentage below the present market price without a pause for human review So although you still see a market order on the front end, it is transformed to a very aggressive limit in the back end. However, doing this change manually, by selling at price 0 or buying at 9999 may backfire since it may trigger fat finger checks and prevent your order from reaching the market. For example BATS Exchange rejects orders that are priced too aggressively and don't comply with the range of valid prices. If you want your trade to execute right now and you are willing to take slippage in order to get fast execution, sending a market order is still the best alternative."
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What are “preferred” stocks? How are they different from normal (common) stocks?
It is just a different category of stock issued by a company that gives its owners different treatment when it comes to dividend payment and a few other financial transactions. Preferred stock holders get treated with some preference with regard to the company's profits and assets. For example, dividends are typically guaranteed to preferred stock holders whereas the leadership in the company can elect at any time not to pay dividends to common stockholders. In the event the company is liquidated, the preferred stockholders also get to be in line ahead of common stockholders when the assets are distributed.
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How might trading volume affect future share price?
There is no direct relationship between volume and stock price. High volume indicates how much stock is changing hands. That can be because people are enthusiastically buying OR enthusiastically selling... and their reasons for doing so may not agree with your own sense of the future value of the stock. Higher volume may mean that the price is more likely to change during the day, but it can be in either direction -- or in no direction at all if there isn't a general agreement on how to react to some piece of news. It's a possibly interesting datum, but it means nothing in isolation.
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How to trade at Athens Stock Exchange (ASE)
Saxo Bank offers direct access to Athens Stock Exchange. Interactive Brokers is your next best bet, and as you probably already noticed, they do not have a free platform. They are open to US and non-US citizens. Although they do not currently have direct exposure to individual companies on the Athens Stock Exchange, the various european exchanges they do provide direct market access for will give a lot of exposure. There are a few Greek companies that trade on non-Greek stock exchanges, if you want exposure. There are also Greek ETFs which bundle several companies together or try to replicate Greek company indices.
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Investment Options for 14-year old?
As you are 14, you cannot legally buy premium bonds yourself. Your parents could buy them and hold them for you, mind you. That said, I'm not a fan of premium bonds. They are a rather weird combination of a savings account and a lottery. Most likely, you'll receive far less than the standard interest rate you'd get from a savings account. Sure, they may pay off, but they probably won't. What I would suggest, given that you expect to need the money in five years, is simply place it in a savings account. Shop around for the best interest rate you can find. This article lists interest rates, though you'll want to confirm that it is up to date. There are other investment options. You could invest in a mutual fund which tracks the stock market or the bond market, for example. On average, that'll give you a higher rate of return. But there's more risk, and as you want the money in five years, I'd be uncomfortable recommending that at this time. If you were looking at investing for 25 years, that'd be a no-brainer. But it's a bit risky for 5 years. Your investment may go down, and that's not something I'd have been happy with when I was 14. There may be some other options specific to the UK which I don't know about. If so, hopefully someone else will chime in.
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What happens when the bid and ask are the same?
This question is impossible answer for all markets but there are 2 more possibilities in my experience:
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Is it better to miss the dividend and buy the undervalued stock?
The stock tends to drop by the amount of the dividend -- or if you prefer to think of it this way, the stock price has been pushed up by the amount of the dividend before it was paid out. Really, all this shift does is factor out the impending dividend's effect on the real purchase cost of the stock. As such it's pretty much irrelevant except that, of course, the dividend is short-term gain that you have to pay taxes on almost immediately. Which also tends to get figured into the price folks are willing to pay for the stock. Conclusion: no, there's no real opportunity here. There's a slight tax reason to avoid buying right before dividends are paid, but that's about it. Basic principle: If it's simple and obvious,the market has already accounted for it.
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Foolish to place orders before the market opens?
If you are in it for the long run and are not worried about intra day fluctuations and buying within + or - 1% you would be better off going for a market order as this will make sure you buy it on the day. If you use limit orders you risk missing out on the order if prices gap and start rising in the morning. Another option is to employ stop buy trigger orders (if offered by your broker). So you would have to sum up and decide which type of order would suit your strategy the best. Are you looking to buy the security because you are looking for long term growth and gains, or are you after getting the best price possible to help your short term gains?
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Taking partial capital loss purely for tax purposes
Note that the rules around wash sales vary depending on where you live. For the U.S., the wash sale rules say that you cannot buy a substantially identical stock or security within 30 days (before or after) your sale. So, you could sell your stock today to lock in the capital losses. However, you would then have to wait at least 30 days before purchasing it back. If you bought it back within 30 days, you would disqualify the capital loss event. The risk, of course, is that the stock's price goes up substantially while you are waiting for the wash sale period. It's up to you to determine if the risk outweighs the benefit of locking in your capital losses. Note that this applies regardless of whether you sell SOME or ALL of the stock. Or indeed, if we are talking about securities other than stocks.
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Funneling money from a Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA using Options: Is my method possible and tax legal?
"I am not a lawyer, but I can't think of a reason this is illegal (something that would be illegal would be to ""trade with yourself"" across the accounts to try to manipulate stock or option prices). I don't think you're ""funneling,"" you're doing ""asset location"" which is a standard tax planning strategy. http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=154126&t1=1303874170 discusses asset location. I'd be more concerned about whether it makes sense."
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Does wash sale apply if I buy stock on 2 two different dates and sell it later
Is wash rule applicable for this? No - because you made a gain on the sale. You paid $13,500 for the stock and sold it for $14,250. The wash rule prevents you from claiming a loss if you buy the same stock again within 30 days. You have no loss to claim, so the rule does not apply.
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Stock portfolio value & profit in foreign currency
I think this will do the trick:
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How does start-up equity end up paying off?
The details of how you can convert your 5% equity share to cash or stocks will be detailed in writing in the legal agreement you have already signed. If you do not have any signed written agreement, there is no 5%. Since 0% of anything is zero, you can expect to get $0 some time within the next few years. Lastly, if the person running the business, tells you that there is 5% equity for you, even though it is not in writing, that is extremely unlikely to be the case. This is because the Seller of the equity has no obligation whatsoever to pay you. In fact, they are obligated by their other agreements with actual shareholders not to dilute their equity without good cause. So, odds are, if your agreement is not in writing, not only will it not be honored, but it probably can't be honored.
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Investing thought experiment
The market cap always reflect the company's equity. Except that you cannot fix a stock price in a free market. A company with such profit pattern would have stock price behave like present value of a perpetuity (future income stream discounted by risk free rate) Since your assumption is unachievable, there is no point in determining the logic.
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If I donate depreciated stock to charity, can I deduct both the market value and the capital loss?
No. You should only donate appreciated stock. If you own a stock at a loss, you can only deduct the FMV (fair market value) when you donate. Instead, you should sell it, take the loss on your taxes, and donate the cash.
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Got a large cash sum, wanna buy stocks. Should I buy all at once, or spread it over time?
"When you hear advice to buy index funds, that usually comes with two additional pieces of investment discipline advice that are important: These two elements are important to give you relative predictability in your outcome 20 years from now. In this old blog post of mine I linked to Warren Buffett talking about this, also mentioned it in a comment on another answer: http://blog.ometer.com/2008/03/27/index-funds/ It's perfectly plausible to do poorly over 20 years if you buy 100% stocks at once, without dollar-cost averaging or rebalancing. It's very very very plausible to do poorly over 10 years, such as the last 10 in fact. Can you really say you know your financial situation in 20-30 years, and for sure won't need that money? Because predictability is important, I like buying a balanced fund and not ""pure stocks"": http://blog.ometer.com/2010/11/10/take-risks-in-life-for-savings-choose-a-balanced-fund/ (feel a little bad linking to my blog, but retyping all that into this answer seems dumb!) Here's another tip. You can go one step past dollar cost averaging and try value averaging: http://www.amazon.com/Value-Averaging-Strategy-Investment-Classics/dp/0470049774 However, chances are you aren't even going to be good about rebalancing if it's done ""by hand,"" so personally I would not do value averaging unless you can find either a fund or a financial advisor to do it for you automatically. (Finance Buff blog makes a case for a financial advisor, in case you like that more than my balanced fund suggestion: http://thefinancebuff.com/the-average-investor-should-use-an-investment-advisor-how-to-find-one.html) Like rebalancing, value averaging makes you buy more when you're depressed about the market and less when it's exciting. It's hard. (Dollar cost averaging is easily done by setting up automatic investment, of course, so you don't have to do it manually in the way you would with value averaging.) If you read the usual canonical books on index funds and efficient markets it's easy to remember the takeaway that nobody knows whether the market will go up or down, and yes you won't successfully time the market. But what you can do successfully is use an investment discipline with risk control: assume that the market will fluctuate, that both up and down are likely and possible, and optimize for predictability in light of that. Most importantly, optimize to take your emotions and behavior out of the picture. Some disciplines for example are: there are dozens out there, many of them snake oil, I think these I mentioned are valid. Anyway, you need some form of risk control, and putting all your money in stocks at once doesn't give you a lot of risk control. There's no real need to get creative. A balanced fund that uses index funds for equity and bond portions is a great choice."
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How do leveraged ETFs (index tracking) set intraday pricing?
Does the price only start the day based on the previous day's rebalancing? No, the tracker will open at the price according to the stock it is tracking. So for example, if the ETF closed at $10 but the tracked stock continued trading and was priced $15 when the ETF reopened the ETF will open at $15. (Example is for a non-leveraged ETF.)
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where to get stock price forecast
"First, stock prices forecasts are usually pretty subjective so in the following resources you will find differing opinions. The important thing is to read both positive and negative views and do some of your additional research and form your own opinion. To answer your question, some analysts don't provide price targets, some just say ""Buy"", ""Sell"", ""Hold"", and others actually give you a price target. Yahoo provides a good resource for collecting reports and giving you a price target. http://screener.finance.yahoo.com/reports.html"
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Stability of a Broker: What if your broker goes bankrupt? Could you lose equity in your account?
The Securities Investor Protection Corporation is roughly analogous to the FDIC for investments. There are some important differences like a lack of 100% guarantee you get all of your funds back. The SIPC understands you invested knowing there was some risk, and therefore you take that same risk in getting your money from a failed brokerage. However there is still a level of commitment and trust that lessen the risk of investing in the wrong place. Also, do not typo the acronym at your work computer. In the US (and perhaps elsewhere) it is a racist term, and you are likely to get some bad search results. http://www.sipc.org/how/brochure.cfm
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What Happens to Bank Stocks If Country Defaults
The prices seem very low even considering the risk? The prices are low because of the risk. Nothing happens to the banks if the sovereign defaults. However, the sovereign debt holders - lose some or all the money they lent to that sovereign. Incidentally, many banks invest in the treasury bonds of various countries, especially those they're located in. They also invest in other companies that rely on the government, or the currency. If that dependency is too high - the bank may fail. If the dependency is not high, or non-existent - the bank will survive. If the bank fails - yes, your shares will be wiped out, that's what happens with bankrupt companies. If you considering investing in banks in a country that you think may default - research them and see how much investments they have that will be affected by that default.
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How do straddles that involve selling options protect against early assignment?
Yes, that's the risk. If the stock is bouncing around a lot your options could get assigned. If it heads south you now are the proud owner of more of a falling stock. It's good that you're looking to understand the risks of an investment method. That's important no matter what the method is.
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Is foreign stock considered more risky than local stock and why?
Foreign stocks have two extra sources of risk attached to them; exchange rate and political. Exchange rate risk is obvious; if I buy a stock in a foreign currency and there is a currency movement that makes that investment worth less I lose money no matter what the stock does. This can be offset using exchange rate swaps. (This is ceteris paribus, of course; changes in exchange rate can give a comparative advantage to international and exporting companies that will improve the fundamentals and so increase the price of the stock relative to a local firm. The economics of the firms in particular are not explored in this answer as it would get too complicated and long if I did.) Political risk relates not only to the problems surrounding international politics such as a country deciding that foreign nationals may no longer own shares in their national industries or deciding to seize foreign nationals' assets as happens in some areas. Your home country may also decide to apply sanctions to the country in which you are invested thus making it impossible to get your money back even though the foreign country will allow you to redeem them or sell. Diplomatic relations and trade agreements tend to be difficult. There are further problems in lack of understanding of foreign countries' laws, tax code, customs etc. relating to investments and the necessity to find legal representation in a country you may never have visited if there are issues. There is also a hidden risk in that, as an individual investor, you are not likely to be reading the local financial news for that country regularly enough to spot company specific issues arising. By the time these issues get into international media its far too late as all of the local investors have sold out of their positions already. The risks are probably no different if you have the time to monitor international relations and the foreign country's news, and have FX swaps in place to counteract FX risk as the funds and investment banks do but as an individual investor the time required is not feasible.
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Advice for a college student interested in investment opportunities.
2.5 years is a short period in the stock market. That means there is a significant chance it will be lower in 2.5 years, whereas it is very likely to be higher over a longer time period like 5-10 years. So if you want the funds to grow for sure then consider an online savings account, where you might earn 1-2%. If you want to do stocks anyway, but don't have any idea what fund to buy, the safest default choice is to buy an index fund that tracks the S&P 500. Vanguard's VFINX is one example.
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Stock spread: wide vs. narrow?
The point is that the bid and ask prices dictate what you can buy and sell at (at market, at least), and the difference between the two, or spread, contributes implicitly to your gains or losses. For example, say your $1 stock actually had a bid of $0.90 and an ask of $1.10; i.e. say that $1 was the last price. You would have to buy the stock at the ask price of $1.10, but now you can only sell that stock at the bid price of $0.90. Thus, you would need to make at least that $0.20 spread before you can make a profit.
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Is Stock Trading legal for a student on F-1 Visa doing CPT in USA?
you dont need any permits or be inside the US to trade the exact same securities on US exchanges. you can literally move your bitcoin from a chinese exchange to us exchange in seconds. i don't see how you can possibly run into legal issues if anyone from outside the country can trade bitcoins on an exchange inside the country without any permit. a lot of these exchanges dont ask for ID or social security number anyways. none of it is government regulated. also trading anything is never a passive income. theres no such thing as an easy or obvious investment. there are always risks- and the actual risk is often deceivingly low
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Wash sales + restricted stock in USA: grant date or vesting date?
The vesting date. Look at publication 525, under stock options, where they talk about ESPP: Your basis is equal to the option price at the time you exercised your option and acquired the stock. The timing and amount of pay period deductions do not affect your basis.
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May 6, 2010 stock market decline/plunge: Why did it drop 9% in a few minutes?
"No one is quite sure what happened (yet). Speculation includes: The interesting thing is that Procter & Gamble stock got hammered, as did Accenture. Both of which are fairly stable companies, that didn't make any major announcements, and aren't really connected to the current financial instability in Greece. So, there is no reason for there stock prices to have gone crazy like that. This points to some kind of screw up, and not a regular market force. Apparently, the trades involved in this event are going to be canceled. Edit #1: One thing that can contribute to an event like this is automatic selling triggered by stop loss orders. Say someone at Citi makes a mistake and sells too much of a stock. That drives the stock price below a certain threshold. Computers that were pre-programmed to sell at that point start doing their job. Now the price goes even lower. More stop-loss orders get triggered. Things start to snowball. Since it's all done by computer these days something like this can happen in seconds. All the humans are left scratching their heads. (No idea if that's what actually happened.) Edit #2: IEEE Spectrum has a pretty concise article on the topic. It also includes some links to follow. Edit #3 (05/14/2010): Reuters is now reporting that a trader at Waddell & Reed triggered all of this, but not through any wrongdoing. Edit #4 (05/18/2010): Waddell & Reed claims they didn't do it. The House Financial Services Subcommittee investigated, but they couldn't find a ""smoking gun"". I think at this point, people have pretty much given up trying to figure out what happened. Edit #5 (07/14/2010): The SEC still has no idea. I'm giving up. :-)"
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Can I buy stocks directly from a public company?
"As far as I know, the answer to this is generally ""no."" The closest thing would be to identify the stock transfer company representing the company that you want to hold and buy through them. (I have held this way, but I don't know if it's available on all stocks.) This eliminates the broker, but there's still a ""middle man"" in the transfer company. Note this section from the Stock transfer agent Wikipedia article: A public company usually only designates one company to transfer its stock. Stock transfer agents also run annual meetings as inspector of elections, proxy voting, and special meetings of shareholders. They are considered the official keeper of the corporate shareholder records. The decision to have a single transfer company is a practical one, ensuring that there is one entity responsible for recording this data - Hence even if you could buy stock ""directly"" from the company that you want to own, it would likely still get routed through the transfer company for recording."
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What is the tax liability from an inheritance from a trust and reported on a K-1 form?
You don't need to submit a K-1 form to anyone, but you will need to transcribe various entries on the K-1 form that you will receive onto the appropriate lines on your tax return. Broadly speaking, assets received as a bequest from someone are not taxable income to you but any money that was received by your grandmother's estate between the time of death and the time of distribution of the assets (e.g. interest, mutual fund distributions paid in cash, etc) might be passed on to you in full instead of the estate paying income tax on this income and sending you only the remainder. If so, this other money would be taxable income to you. The good news is that if the estate trust distributions include stock, your basis for the stock is the value as of the date of death (nitpickers: I am aware that the estate is allowed to pick a different date for the valuation but I am trying to keep it simple here). That is, if the stock has appreciated, your grandmother never paid capital gains on those unrealized capital gains, and you don't have to pay tax on those capital gains either; your basis is the appreciated value and if and when you sell the stock, you pay tax only on the gain, if any, between the day that Grandma passed away and the day you sell the stock.
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What's the difference between stocks and shares?
For all practical purposes the words mean the same thing. Shares are just stock in a particular company whereas stock can refer to shares over many companies. Investopedia has a good explaination. If you are a financial journalist you might want to make sure you are using the right term at the right time, but otherwise they are synonyms.
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If you want to trade an equity that reflects changes in VIX, what is a good proxy for it?
"There is no good proxy for VIX, because it is a completely made-up value. Most listed options trade on an underlying security. I can therefore choose to buy either the stock, or a future or option on that stock. In this way, the future and option are derivatives in that they derive their value (in part) based on something else, in this case the stock price as of now. VIX is a different entity altogether. It is based on the volatility of the market, using ""market expectation of near term volatility conveyed by stock index option prices"". But the FAQ goes on to state that they are adding factors into the formula. So right away there is no one equity/stock that you can hold that will necessarily match the VIX in any significant way, because it is not directly based on stocks, but indirectly through other options and computations. In effect, therefore, the VIX in indeed only available through its options, and is not observable (tradable) in and of itself."
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What option-related strategies are better suited to increasing return potential?
"I've traded covered calls now and then. This is a recent trade. Bought 1000 shares of RSH (Radio Shack) and sold 10 calls. So, I own the stock at a cost of $6.05, but have to let it go for $7.50. There's a 50c dividend in November, so the call buyer will call it away even if the stock trades below the strike. So, I'm expecting this is a 10 month trade for a 24% return. This is one strategy where options clearly take down the risk (of course, I did not say 'remove', just lessens). The stock can be 10% lower a year out, and I'm still ahead by 8% plus the dividend if it's not canceled. Note - it's a rare case for a one year trade to return 20% or more at a flat stock price. More common is 10-12%. (I hope this example is acceptable as an example of this type of trade. If not, I can edit to ""XYZ corp"" to remove the stock name. (So if anyone comments, please do not repeat name in case I need to remove)"
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How should I report my RSUs in my tax return
Here's an article on it that might help: http://thefinancebuff.com/restricted-stock-units-rsu-sales-and.html One of the tricky things is that you probably have the value of the vested shares and withheld taxes already on your W-2. This confuses everyone including the IRS (they sent me one of those audits-by-mail one year, where the issue was they wanted to double-count stock compensation that was on both 1099-B and W-2; a quick letter explaining this and they were happy). The general idea is that when you first irrevocably own the stock (it vests) then that's income, because you're receiving something of value. So this goes on a W-2 and is taxed as income, not capital gains. Conceptually you've just spent however many dollars in income to buy stock, so that's your basis on the stock. For tax paid, if your employer withheld taxes, it should be included in your W-2. In that case you would not separately list it elsewhere.
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Dividend Yield
The S&P 500 is an index, you can't buy shares of an index, but you can find index funds to invest in. Each company in that fund that pays dividends will do so on their own schedule, and the fund you've invested in will either distribute dividends or accumulate them (re-invest), this is pre-defined, not something they'd decide quarter to quarter. If the fund distributes dividends, they will likely combine the dividends they receive and distribute to you quarterly. The value you've referenced represents the total annual dividend across the index, dividend yield for S&P500 is currently ~1.9%, so if you invested $10,000 a year ago in a fund that matched the S&P 500, you'd have ~$190 in dividend yield.
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Mutual Fund with Dividends
There are two independent sets of terms we need to define in order to answer your question. I am trying to understand the difference between Value, Blend, and Growth These are different categories of mutual funds: Value: discounted or undervalued stocks. This is often measured by a difference between the stock's price and the Net Asset Value (NEV). Growth: stocks that fund managers believe are poised for significant growth (increase in stock price and NEV). Blend: a blend of two categories of stocks. In this context it probably refers to a combination of growth and value stocks, but it just depends on the context. I want to receive dividend and Growth These are ways to receive earnings from a stock or fund. Dividend: a direct cash payment from owning a stock or a fund. Stocks and funds who pay out 100% of their profits don't have any money leftover to grow themselves and either stagnate or shrink. Growth: an increase manifesting itself in capital gains. If a stock or fund pays out zero dividends, then all profits are invested back into the company for fund, increasing its value. If you intend to automatically reinvest dividends, then receiving dividends is essentially the same as receiving profit through capital gains. If you intend to sell stocks or funds periodically to get some extra spending cash, then receiving profits through capital gains is essentially the same as dividends.
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Why do more floating shares mean less volatility for the stock?
More shares mean less volatility because it takes a larger number of trades, a larger number of shares per trade, or a combination of both to raise or lower the stock price. Institutional investors (mutual funds, pensions, hedge funds, other investment firms, etc) are the sorts of organizations with the large amounts of money needed to move a stock price one way or the other. But the more floating shares there are in a company, the harder it is for one or two firms to move a stock price. A company with fewer floating shares wouldn't require as many trades (or as many shares per trade) to see wider swings in price. When it comes to stock price, insider trading isn't the same as manipulation. In the (surprisingly few) cases of insider trading that are prosecuted, it tends to be an individual (or small group) with early access to information that the broader market doesn't have being able to buy or sell ahead of the broader market. Their individual sales are seldom if ever enough to noticeably move a stock price. They're locking in profit or limiting a loss. Manipulation might (but doesn't always) precede insider trading, if misinformation (or truth) is released for the purpose of creating a situation that can be profited from via a trade or trades.
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When does selling (writing) options count for tax purposes?
Generally speaking, you realize options gains or losses for (US) tax purposes when you close out the option position, or when it expires so in your example, if you're discussing an equity option, you'd realize the gain or loss next year, assuming you don't close it out prior to year end. But options tax treatment can get messy fast: Still, if you have no other stock or option positions in the underlying during or within 30 days of the establishment of the naked put, and assuming the option isn't assigned, you won't realize any gains or losses until the year in which the option is closed or expires.
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Break Even On Options Contracts
"Simple answer: Breakeven is when the security being traded reaches a price equal to the cost of the option plus the option's strike price, assuming you choose to exercise it. So for example, if you paid $1.00 for,say, a call option with a strike price of $19.00, breakeven would be when the security itself reaches $20.00. That being said, I can't imagine why you'd ""close out a position"" at the breakeven point. You wouldn't make or lose money doing that, so it wouldn't be rational. Now, as the option approaches expiration, you may make adjustments to the position to reflect shifts in momentum of the stock. So, if it looks as though the stock may not reach the option strike price, you could close out the position and take your lumps. But if the stock has momentum that will carry it past the strike price by expiration, you may choose to augment your position with additional contracts, although this would obviously mean the new contracts would be priced higher, which raises your dollar cost basis, and this may not make much sense. Another option in this scenario is that if the stock is going to surpass strike price, it might be a good opportunity to buy additional calls with either later expiration dates or with higher strike prices, depending on how much higher you speculate the stock will climb. I've managed to make some money doing this, buying options with strike prices just a dollar or two higher (or lower when playing puts), because the premiums were (in my opinion) underpriced to the potential peak of the stock by the expiration date. Sometimes the new options were actually slightly cheaper than my original positions, so my dollar cost basis overall dropped somewhat, improving my profit percentages."
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How much of my capital should I spend on subscribing to a stock research company?
"You should spend zero on your stock research company. If the management of the company actually had persistent skill in picking stocks, they would not be peddling their knowledge to the retail market for a few hundred dollars. They would rake in millions and billions by running a huge hedge fund and buy themselves a private island or something. Unfortunately for them, hedge fund investors are not as gullible as retail investors and are more likely to sue when they discover they have been lied to. Many stock ""research"" companies are trying to manipulate you into paying too high a price for stocks. They buy a small stock, recommend it, and then sell it at the artificially (and temporarily) high price. Others are simply recommending stocks pretty much at random. You could do that just as well as they can, and for free. Portfolio performance evaluation is a complex problem. The research company knows that its recommendations will ""make good money"" about half the time and that's enough to bring in a lot of uninformed people. To know whether your portfolio actually did well you need to know how much risk there was in the portfolio and how a competing ""dumb"" portfolio with similar characteristics fared over the same time period. And you need to repeat the experiment enough times (or long enough) to know the outcome wasn't luck. I can say confidently that your portfolio performance doesn't back up the claim that the research company has skill above and beyond luck. Much less $599 worth of skill. I can also say very confidently that there are no investors with a total of 20 thousand dollars to invest for whom purchasing stock recommendations is worth the cost, even if those recommendations do have some value. Real stock information is valuable only to large investors because the per-dollar value is low. Please do not give money to or otherwise support a semi-criminal ""stock research"" enterprise."
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Any advantage to exercising ISO's in company that is not yet public?
"Exercising an option early if you can't sell the underlying stock being purchased is generally not advisable. You're basically locking in the worst price you can possibly pay, plus you're losing the time value on your money (which is, admittedly fairly low right now, but still). Let's say you have a strike price of $50. I get that you believe the stock to be worth more than $50. Let's assume that that's probably, but not certainly right. Whether it's worth $51, $151, or $5,100 when your options are going to expire, you still get the profit of $1, $101, or $5,050 if you wait until expiration and exercise then. By exercising now, you're giving up two things: The interest on the money you pay to exercise from now until expiration. The guarantee that you can't lose anything. If you buy it now, you get all the upside above your strike, but have all the downside below it. If you buy it later (at expiration), you still have all the upside above your strike, but no downside - in the (assumed to be unlikely) event that it's worth less than the strike you can simply do nothing, instead of having something you bought at the strike that's worth less now and taking that loss. By exercising early, you take on that loss risk, and give up the interest (or ""carry"" on the money you spend to exercise) for no additional updside. It's possible that there are tax benefits, as other posters mention, but the odds that ""starting the clock"" for LTCG is worth as much as the ""optionality"", or loss protection, plus the ""carry"", or interest that you're giving up is fairly unlikely."
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What happens if a company you hold short merges with another company?
"I don't have anything definitive, but in general positions in a company are not affected materially by what is called a corporate action. ""Corp Actions"" can really be anything that affects the details of a stock. Common examples are a ticker change, or exchange change, IPO (ie a new ticker), doing a split, or merging with another ticker. All of these events do not change the total value of people's positions. If a stock splits, you might have more shares, but they are worth less per share. A merger is quite similar to a split. The old company's stock is converted two the new companies stock at some ratio (ie 10 shares become 1 share) and then converted 1-to-1 to the new symbol. Shorting a stock that splits is no different. You shorted 10 shares, but after the split those are now 100 shares, when you exit the position you have to deliver back 100 ""new"" shares, though dollar-for-dollar they are the same total value. I don't see why a merger would affect your short position. The only difference is you are now shorting a different company, so when you exit the position you'll have to deliver shares of the new company back to the brokerage where you ""borrowed"" the shares you shorted."
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Does the P/E ratio not apply to bond ETFs?
The simple answer is technically bonds don't have earnings, hence no P/E. What I think the OP is really asking how do I compare stock and bond ETFs. Some mature stocks exhibit very similar characteristics to bonds, so at the margin if you are considering investing between 2 such investments that provide stable income in the form of dividends, you might want to use the dividend/price ratio (D/P) of the stock and compare it to the dividend yield of the bond. If you go down to the basics, both the bond and the stock can be considered the present value of all future expected cashflows. The cash that accrues to the owner of the stock is future dividends and for the bond is the coupon payments. If a company were to pay out 100% of its earnings, then the dividend yield D/P would be conveniently E/P. For a company with P/E of 20 that paid out it's entire earnings, one would expect D/P = 1/20 = 5% This serves as a decent yard stick in the short term ~ 1 year to compare mature stock etfs with stable prospects vs bond funds since the former will have very little expected price growth (think utilities), hence they both compete on the cashflows they throw off to the investor. This comparison stops being useful for stock ETFs with higher growth prospects since expected future cashflows are much more volatile. This comparison is also not valid in the long term since bond ETFs are highly sensitive to the yield curve (interest rate risk) and they can move substantially from where they are now.
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What does pink-sheet mean related to stocks?
It's an over-the-counter stock quote system. Read all about it. Or visit it.
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Dealing with event driven market volatility
If you're worried about volatility, and you're in mostly long positions, you should be looking to diversify your portfolio (meaning, buying some stocks that will do better in a bear market) if it's not already diverse, but you shouldn't be looking to abandon your positions, unless you anticipate a short-term need for cash. Other than that, you may want to hold off on the short-term positions for a while if you're concerned about volatility, though many traders see volatility as a great time to make money (as there is more movement, there's more opportunity to make money from mispriced stocks in both directions). Unless you think the market will be permanently down due to these reasons, anyway, but I don't see any reason to believe that yet. Even World War Two wasn't enough to permanently hurt the market, after all! Remember that everyone in the market knows what you do. If there were a sure thing that the market was going to crash, it already would have. Conservative positions tend to involve holding onto a well diversified portfolio rather than simply holding onto cash, unless the investor is very conservative (in which case the portfolio should be cash anyway). The fact that you say this is your rainy day fund does make me a little curious, though; typically rainy day funds are better in cash (and not invested) since you might hit that rainy day and need cash quickly (in which case you could take significant losses if the time isn't right).
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Tax implications of restricted stock units
RSU are taxed when vested, based on their value at that point, as salary. If you don't sell to cover, you need to pay the taxes, if you sell to cover - you sell the portion that is worth the taxes (brokers do that automatically, and remit the taxes on your behalf). Once paid your taxes, it becomes a regular stock position - short term gains if you sell within a year after vesting, long term if you wait for more than a year. The consideration whether to wait or sell is as with any other investment, them being previously restricted has no meaning. You calculate the gain for each position, so the fact that you have more than one position is not a problem. The RSU income and the taxes paid will appear on your W2, so when the broker reports proceeds, you can show the basis and thus calculate the gain. See this question for some useful answers on how to report the RSU sale on your taxes.
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How to hedge a long stock position that does not have options
If there are no traded options in a company you can get your broker to write OTC options but this may not be possible given some restrictions on accounts. Going short on futures may also be an option. You can also open a downside CFD (contract for difference) on the stock but will have to have margin posted against it so will have to hold cash (or possibly liquid assets if your AUM is large enough) to cover the margin which is unutilized cash in the portfolio that needs to be factored into any portfolio calculations as a cost. Diversifying into uncorrelated stock or shorting correlated (but low div yield) stock would also have the same effect. stop loss orders would probably not be appropriate as it is not the price of the stock that you are concerned with but mitigating all price changes and just receiving the dividend on the stock. warning: in a crash (almost) all stocks become suddenly correlated so be aware that might cause you a short term loss. CFDs are complex and require a degree of sophistication before you can trade them well but as you seem to understand options they should not be too hard to understand.
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What happens to public shareholders when a public stock goes private?
"I can see two possibilities. Either a deal is struck that someone (the company itself, or a large owner) buys out the remaining shares. This is the scenario @mbhunter is talking about, so I won't go too deeply into it, but it simply means that you get money in your bank account for the shares in question the same as if you were to sell them for that price (in turn possibly triggering tax effects, etc.). I imagine that this is by far the most common approach. The other possibility is that the stock is simply de-listed from a public stock exchange, and not re-listed elsewhere. In this case, you will still have the stock, and it will represent the same thing (a portion of the company), but you will lose out on most of the ""market"" part of ""stock market"". That is, the shares will still represent a monetary value, you will have the same right to a portion of the company's profits as you do now, etc., but you will not have the benefit of the market setting a price per share so current valuation will be harder. Should you wish to buy or sell stock, you will have to find someone yourself who is interested in striking a deal with you at a price point that you feel comfortable with."
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Are there any caveats to withdrawing funds from brokerage?
Assuming a USA taxable account: Withdrawing funds from a brokerage account has nothing to do with taxes. Taxes are owed on the profit when you sell a stock, no matter what you do with the funds. Taxes are owed on any dividends the stock produces, no matter what you do with the dividend. The brokerage sends you a form 1099 each year that shows the amounts of dividends and profits. You have to figure out the taxes from that.
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Can I donate short-stock to charity?
No. There is no asset associated with your short position, so there's nothing to gift. The short position in the stock is purely a liability. When you note that you have a profit in the position, what you mean is that the cash you made when you shorted the stock is more than enough to cover the short position. The only asset in this picture, then, is the cash you made when you entered the short position.
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Online stock screener to find stocks that are negatively correlated to another stock/index?
Finviz can be screened by beta which is an index of correlation. Finviz covers all major North American exchanges and some others.
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(United Kingdom) Multiple Stock ISAs?
It is a very good idea to spread your ISAs over more than one stock broker. However now that a lot of stock brokers charge an admin fee it can get expensive if you use too many. There is no need to tell your last year’s ISA provider that you are using a different one, however you MUST ONLY pay into one ISA provider in each tax year.
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How risky are penny stocks?
"Penny stocks are only appealing to the brokers who sell the penny stocks and the companies selling ""penny stock signals!"". Generally penny stocks provide abysmal returns to the average investor (you or me). In ""The Missing Risk Premium"", Falkenstein does a quick overview on average returns to penny stock investors citing the following paper ""Do Investors Overpay for Stocks with Lottery-Like Payoffs? An Examination of the Returns on OTC Stocks"". Over the 2000 to 2009 time period, average investors lost nearly half their investment. A comparable investment in the S&P over this period would have been flat see here. There is a good table in the book/paper showing that the average annual return for stocks priced at either a penny or ten cents range from -10 percent (for medium volume) to -30% to -40% for low or high volume. A different paper, ""Too Good to Ignore? A Primer on Listed Penny Stocks"" that cites the one above finds that listed, as opposed to OTC ""Pink Sheet"" penny stocks"", have better returns, but provide no premium for the additional risk and low liquidity. The best advice here is that there is no ""quick win"" in penny stocks. These act more like lottery tickets and are not appropriate for the average investor. Stear clear!"
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What does “a stock pays a dividend of 3%” mean?
It means a 3% return on the value of the stock. If a stock has a $10 share price, the dividend would be $0.30. Normally though, the dividends are announced as a fixed amount per share, because the share price fluctuates. If a percentage were announced, then the final cost would not be known as the share priced could change radically before the dividend date.
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When writing a covered call, what's the difference between a “net debit” and a “net credit”?
"When you enter into a multi-legged trade where one is a buy and one is a sell, the limit is expressed as either: The gist is that you don't care what each individual piece costs; you only care what the cost of the bundle is. When you put on a buy-write, you are buying stock and selling a (covered) call against that stock. That trade will always cost money. Putting on a buy-write will always be done at a net debit. This is because is is normally impossible for a call to be worth more than its underlying stock price. There are a few possible reasons there would be a""net credit"" option for what's described as a ""buy-write"":"
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Does an option trading below parity always indicate an arbitrage opportunity?
"Probably but not necessarily. Your question could also be posed regarding cash & carry for commodities in contango: If I can take delivery on the gold now, short the gold next year and make delivery then, paying the storage fees, is this an arbitrage opportunity? It is in the sense that you know your delivery and the money you will make, but it's not in the sense that until delivery (or execution in the options case) you are still on the hook for the margins due from price fluctuations. Additionally you need to consider what ROI you will make from the trade. Even though it's ""guaranteed"" it may be less than what you can earn from other ""zero risk"" opportunities."
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When do I need to return short stock to the lender
"If the owner of the stock wants it back, they ""call"" it back. There are no guarantees of how long you can keep it for your short, or the cost involved to hold it. Usually, everyone knows about a particular set-up (e.g. a warrant or convertible bond mispricing) that is attractive for arbitrage. This causes the associated stock to be in high demand thus expensive to borrow for shorting, or impossible to find for any price at all."
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Why are there hidden bids and offers in the US stock market for the more illiquid stocks?
When you place a bid between the bid/ask spread, that means you are raising the bid (or lowering the ask, if you are selling). The NBBO (national best bid and offer) is now changed because of your action, and yes, certain kinds of orders may be set to react to that (a higher bid or lower ask triggering them), also many algorithms (that haven't already queued an order simply waiting for a trigger, like in a stop limit) read the bid and ask and are programmed to then place an order at that point.
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Premium classification when selling covered calls in a traditional IRA?
If you hold stock in a traditional IRA and sell a covered call against that stock, the premium received for writing that call belongs to the IRA just as would any other gain, dividend, or interest. It is not a contribution but simply adds to the balance in the IRA. The nature of the gain (capital or ordinary) is not relevant since all parts of the IRA balance are treated the same when funds are (eventually) withdrawn.
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Who gets the dividend when a stock is bought/sold around the ex-dividend date? [duplicate]
Your understanding is incorrect. The date of record is when you have to own the stock by. The ex-dividend date is calculated so that transaction before that date settles in time to get you listed as owner by the date of record. If you buy the stock before the ex-dividend date, you get the dividend. If you buy it on or after the ex-dividend date, the seller gets the dividend.
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Are investor's preference for dividends justified?
"This question is predicated on the assumption that investors prefer dividends, as this depends on who you're speaking to. Some investors prefer growth stocks (some which don't pay dividends), so in this case, we're covering the percent of investors who like dividend paying stocks. It depends on who you ask and it also depends on how self-aware they are because some people may give reasons that make little financial sense. The two major benefits that I hear are fundamentally psychological: Dividends are like mini-paychecks. Since people get a dopamine jolt from receiving a paycheck, I would predict the same holds true for receiving dividends. More than likely, the brain feels a reward when getting dividends; even if the dividend stock performs lower than a growth stock for a decade, the experience of receiving dividends may feel more rewarding (plus, depending on the institution, they may get a report or see the tax information for the year, and that also feels good). Some value investors don't reinvest dividends, as they believe the price of the stock matters (stocks are either cheap or expensive and automatic reinvestment to these investors implies that the price of a stock doesn't matter), so dividends allow them to rebuild their cash after a buy. They can either buy more shares, if the stock is cheap, or keep the cash if the stock is expensive. Think about Warren Buffett here: he purchased $3 billion worth of shares of Wells Fargo at approximately $8-12 a share in 2009 (from my memory, as people were shocked that be bought into a bank when no one liked banks). Consider how much money he makes from dividends off that purchase alone and if he were to currently believe Wells Fargo was overpriced, he could keep the cash and buy something else he believes is cheaper. In these cases, dividends automatically build cash cushions post buying and many value investors believe that one should always have cash on hand. This second point is a little tricky because it can involve risk assessment: some investors believe that high dividend paying stocks, like MO, won't experience the huge declines of indexes like the SPY. MO routed the SPY in 2009 (29% vs. 19%) and these investors believe that's because it's yield was too desired (it feels safer to them - the index side would argue ""but what happens in the long run?""). The problem I have with this argument (which is frequent) is that it doesn't hold true for every high yield stock, though some high yield stocks do show strong resistance levels during bear markets."
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How do you get your Canadian stock information?
"I only follow the news of stocks I already own. I use the GlobeInvest Watchlist http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/my-watchlist/ each Friday night. In the drop-down views choose ALL NEWS I believe that there is a strong ""grass is greaner .."" effect from always looking at what other stock are doing - leading to switching just before your first stock takes off. It is only when I sell some position that I go looking at other possibilities."
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Am I doing the math for this covered call/long put strategy correctly? What risks do I run with this strategy?
You own the stock at $29.42 At $40, the stocks is called at $26. You can't add the call premium, as it's already accounted for. The trade is biased towards being bearish on the stock. (I edited and added the graph the evening I answered) Not the pretiest graph, but you get the idea. With that $29.42 cost, you are in the money till about $30, then go negative until the most you lose is $3.42.
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What are the pros and cons of investing in a closed-end fund?
Pro: - Faces less redemption pressure and hence the Fund Manager can focus more on long term gains rather than immediate gains. - Works well in emerging markets. - Less churn out in case the market falls sharply, there by making more money in long run. Cons: - No additional money to invest/take advantage of market situation. - Less liquid for investor as he is locked in for a period.
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Is it possible to make money off of a private company?
Yes, but only if they're looking for investors. You would need to contact them directly. Unless you're looking to invest a significant sum, they may not be interested in speaking with you. (Think at least 6 figures, maybe 7 depending on their size and needs). This is otherwise known as being a Venture Capitalist. Some companies don't want additional investors because the capital isn't yet needed and they don't want to give up shares in the profit/control. Alternatively, you could try and figure out which investment groups already have a stake in the company you're interested in. If those companies are publicly traded, you could buy stocks for their company with the expectation that their stock price will increase if the company you know of does well in the long run.
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What's the difference between Buy and Sell price on the stock exchange [duplicate]
The same as when you are buying a car. If a dealer quotes 10k and you quote 8k. 8k is the buy price and 10k is the sell price. Somebody might quote 8.5k and another dealer might quote 9.5k. The the new price that you see on your screen is 8.5k(Best buy price) and 9.5k(Best sell price). When the buyer and seller agree to an amount, the car(In your case stock) is traded.
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Questrade - What happens if I buy U.S. stock with Canadian money?
I personally spoke with a Questrade agent about my question. To make a long story short: in a margin account, you are automatically issued a loan when buying U.S. stock with a Canadian money. Whereas, in a registered account (e.g. RRSP), the amount is converted on your behalf to cover the debit balance. Me: What happens if I open an account and I place an order for U.S. stocks with Canadian money? Is the amount converted at the time of transfer? How does that work? Agent: In a margin account, you are automatically issued a loan for a currency you do not have, however, if you have enough buying power, it will go through. The interest on the overnight balance is calculated daily and is charged on a monthly basis. We do not convert funds automatically in a margin account because you can have a debit cash balance. Agent: In a registered account, the Canada Revenue Agency does not allow a debit balance and therefore, we must convert your funds on your behalf to cover the debit balance if possible. We convert automatically overnight for a registered account. Agent: For example, if you buy U.S. equity you will need USD to buy it, and if you only have CAD, we will loan you USD to cover for that transaction. For example, if you had only $100 CAD and then wanted to buy U.S. stock worth $100 USD, then we will loan you $100 USD to purchase the stock. In a margin account we will not convert the funds automatically. Therefore, you will remain to have a $100 CAD credit and a $100 USD debit balance (or a loan) in your account. Me: I see, it means the longer I keep the stock, the higher interest will be? Agent: Well, yes, however, in a registered account there will be not be any interest since we convert your funds, but in a margin account, there will be interest until the debit balance is covered, or you can manually convert your funds by contacting us.
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Choose online stock trading companies
Lower fees are always better, everything else equal. A lower fee makes your transaction overall a better deal, all else equal. Other transactions costs (like the SEC fee on sales) are mostly the same across brokers and there is unlikely to be any difference in execution quality either. When comparing brokers be sure to consider the other issues: To me, most of these are minor issues. For that reason, I'd say let transaction cost be your guide. I hear a lot of talk about the quality of the interface. If you just want to buy or sell a stock, they are all pretty easy. Some brokers have better tools for monitoring the market or looking at technical indicators, if you are into that.
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How much percent of my salary should I use to invest in company stock?
You're talking about ESPP? For ESPP it makes sense to utilize the most the company allows, i.e.: in your case - 15% of the paycheck (if you can afford deferring that much, I assume you can). When the stocks are purchased, I would sell them immediately, not hold. This way you have ~10% premium as your income (pretty much guaranteed, unless the stock falls significantly on the very same day), and almost no exposure. This sums up to be a nice 1.5% yearly guaranteed bonus, on top of any other compensation. As to keeping the stocks, this depends on how much you believe in your company and expect the stocks to appreciate. Being employed and dependent on the company with your salary, I'd avoid investing in your company, as you're invested in it deeply as it is.
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Tracking Gold and Silver (or any other commodity investment) in Quicken 2010?
"You don't need to use a real stock like GLD. You can just create a ""stock"" called something like ""1 oz Gold"" and buy and sell them as if they were shares. It won't auto-update the price like GLD, but that's not a big deal to update manually once a month or so. I prefer to have accurate data that is correct at a particular point in time to having data that is 2-3% off, or that requires entering the ounces as 10x reality. YMMV. This is very similar to how you track US Savings Bonds in Quicken (and might be described in the help under that topic.)"
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In what ways is IEX different than a typical dark pool or a typical exchange?
You've said what's different in your question. There's 330 microseconds of network latency between IEX and anywhere else, so HFTs can't get information about trades in progress on IEX and use it to jump in ahead of those traders on other exchanges. All exchanges should have artificially induced latency of this kind so that if a trade is submitted simultaneously to all exchanges it reaches the furthest away one before a response can be received from the closest one, thus preventing HFT techniques.
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What else besides fees should I consider in rebalancing my fund portfolio's asset allocation?
Taxes Based on the numbers you quoted (-$360) it doesn't appear that you would have a taxable event if you sell all the shares in the account. If you only sell some of the shares, to fund the new account, you should specify which shares you want to sell. If you sell only the shares that you bought when share prices were high, then every share you sell could be considered a loss. This will increase your losses. These losses can be deducted from your taxes, though there are limits. Fees Make sure that you understand the fee structure. Some fund families look at the balance of all your accounts to determine your fee level, others treat each fund separately. Procedure If you were able to get the 10K into the new account in the next few months I would advise not selling the shares. Because it will be 6 to 18 months before you are able to contribute the new funds then rebalancing by selling shares makes more sense. It gets you to your goal quicker. All the funds you mentioned have low expense ratios, I wouldn't move funds just to chase a the lowest expense ratio. I would look at the steps necessary to get the mix you want in the next few weeks, and then what will be needed moving forward. If the 60/40 or 40/60 split makes you comfortable pick one of them. If you want to be able to control the balance via rebalancing or changing your contribution percentage, then go with two funds.
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Optimal balence of 401K and charitable savings
Two things I would recommend doing: I would save a minimum of 15% into retirement. By young I will assume that you are under 30. 15K/year + company match will grow into a sick amount of money by the time you are in your 60s. So you have a net worth that is north of 5 million. What kind of charitable giving can you do then? Answer: What ever you want! Also it could be quite a bit more then that. Get a will. It will cost a little bit of money, but for someone like you it is important to have your wishes known.
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What ways are there to invest in stocks, options, indexes, etc, and where should one start (what funds)?
I take the route of the tortoise. I subscribe to the adage that you invest in an excellent index fund like VFINX and forget about day trading and trying to make short term gains. Just like I would do at a casino I do gamble a bit for fun. Using etrade you can purchase some Vanguard or a billion of other things. I purchased some Apple, Google, Verizon, and Ford (when it was at 1.3) and all of those have been good investments. However, I don't invest the majority of my money in to individual stocks. I just do this with some 'play' money. After maxing out 401k, etc. I put away my 6 months of safety net in a money mark and put the rest in Vanguard.
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Using Loan to Invest - Paying Monthly Installments with Monthly Income
The best strategy? Skip the loan. Find a way to invest for a low starting amount via a retirement account (such as a 401K or IRA in the United States) or non-retirement account. Use this money to buy individual stocks or funds. Every month put money from your regular income into this investment account. Then buy more stocks or sell if the conditions change based on what the market is doing, not to meet a loan payment. This helps you because if the price fluctuates you will buy more shares if the price is down; and you will buy fewer shares when the price is up. It also allows you to skip worrying about how to repay the loan. It also means that you not have to pull more money out of savings to make the final loan payments if it doesn't make as much money as you plan. Regarding your math. This is a better understanding of the money flow than the earlier question.
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More money towards down payment versus long-term investments
There are two components to any non-trivial financial decision: Assuming that all things remain equal, borrowing money at a low rate while investing for a higher return is a no-brainer. The problem is, all things do not remain equal. For example: I think that you need to assess your position and preferences. I'd err on the side of being in less debt.
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Which mutual funds is Dave Ramsey talking about in The Total Money Makeover? [duplicate]
See the Moneychimp site. From 1934 to 2006, the S&P returned an 'average' 12.81%. But the CAGR was 11.26%. I wrote an article Average Return vs Compound Annual Growth to address this issue. Interesting that over time only a few funds have managed to get anywhere near this return, but the low cost indexer can get the long term CAGR minus .05% or so, if they wish.
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Trading US stocks from India
I believe I have to pay taxes in US since it is a US broker. No, not at all. The fact that the broker is a US broker has nothing to do with your tax liabilities. You should update the banks and the broker with your change of status submitting form W8-BEN to them. Consult a tax professional proficient with Indo-US tax treaty as to what you should put in part II. The broker might withhold some of your income and remit it as taxes to the IRS based on what you put in W8-BEN and the type of income, but you can have it refunded (if it exceeds your liability) by submitting a tax return (form 1040-NR). You do have to pay tax in India, based on the Indian tax law, for your profits in the US. Consult with an Indian tax accountant on that. If I'm not mistaken, there are also currency transfer restrictions in India that you should be aware of.
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Why can I see/trade VIX but not S&P/TSX 60 VIX?
S&P/TSX 60 VIX (CAD) is an equation and as the implied volatility of two close to the money TSX 60 options change, the output changes. This is why the intra-day price fluctuates on a graph like a traded product. Although VIXC can't be traded, it can still be used as an important signal for traders. The excerpt is from slide 12, more information can be found here. https://www.m-x.ca/f_publications_en/vixc_presentation_en.pdf Futures (stage 2) Options, ETFs, OTC Products (stage 3) have not been implemented.
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Any difficulties in doing deceased relative's taxes?
There are two different tax returns you'll be doing: one is for her, until the day of her death. The other is for the estate. The personal one you could probably do on your own, it's nothing different from the one for a living person, except for the cut-off date in the middle of the year. The estate tax return may be a bit more nuanced, since it is a trust return and not an individual return, and is done under a different set of rules. I'd suggest talking to a tax professional who'd help you. Your estate executioner should be doing the estate tax return (or hiring someone to do it). Sorry for your loss.
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What percentage of my money should I invest outside my country?
Your definition of 'outside your country' might need some redefinition, as there are three different things going on here . . . Your financial adviser appears to be highlighting the currency risk associated with point three. However, consider these risk scenarios . . . A) Your country enters a period of severe financial difficulty, and money markets shut down. Your brokerage becomes insolvent, and your investments are lost. In this scenario the fact of whether your investments were in an overseas index such as the S&P, or were purchased from an account denominated in a different currency, would be irrelevant. The only thing that would have mitigated this scenario is an account with an overseas broker. B) Your country's stock market enters a sustained and deep bear market, decimating the value of shares in its companies. In this scenario the fact of whether your investments were made in from a brokerage overseas, or were purchased from an account denominated in a different currency, would be irrelevant. The only thing that would have mitigate this scenario is investment in shares and indices outside your home country. Your adviser has a good point; as long as you intend to enjoy your retirement in your home country then it might be advisable to remove currency risk by holding an account in Rupees. However, you might like to consider reducing the other forms of risk by holding non-Indian securities to create a globally diversified portfolio, and also placing some of your capital in an account with a broker outside your home country (this may be very difficult to do in practice).