"What is actually a halal investment? Your definition of halal investment is loose and subject to interpretation. On one hand, nothing is fixed in the financial world. You might get a 10 Year Germany Bund with a fixed coupon rate of 1%, but the real rate of return of this investment is far from fixed. It depends on the market environment, the inflation, etc. (Also, you can trade this investment on the secondary market at any time.) Moreover, the country can default. For example, nothing is ""fixed"" if you hold the Argentina bonds. You might think a saving account in the bank is a fixed investment. But again, what about the inflation? And if you talk with the account holders in Cyprus, you will understand there is no such thing that you are ""guaranteed to profit a fixed amount each month or year"". So, from this point of view, everything is ""halal"", because nothing is fixed and the risk of losing the principle is alway there.  On the other hand, if you assume that investing a government bond and having a saving account is not halal by definition, you will end up with a situation that every investment is not halal. Suppose you invest in a company. What does the company do with your money? Sure, they will use some of your money to buy equipments, hire new people, and so on. But they will always save some money as cash reserves to meet the short-term and emergency funding needs. Those cash reserves are usually in the form of highly liquid investment, such as short-term bonds, money market funds, savings in a bank account, etc. Because those investments are not halal per definition, is your investment in the company still halal? So in the end, you might just do whatever you want depending on your interpretation."


but it feels like this is being done on purpose to artificially inflate the sales price. Yes. Is there anything unethical or illegal with 2 listing agents disclosing details of the contracts, and using that as leverage for the sellers NOT to come down in price?   No. They're working for the sellers and in the sellers best interests.


There are legitimate multi currency mutual funds/efts. But I don't think their rate of return will produce the extra money you're looking for any faster than any other kind of investment with comparable risks. To make money fast, you have to accept nontrivial risk of losing money fast, which isn't what you seem to have in mind.


Some context - Ben Wu, aka Merlini, is one of the most well known figures in the Dota 2 community. He was one of the top professional players in Dota 2's predecessor, DotA, and is now a highly respected commentator and instructor. His success is definitely something that would be very difficult for most people to replicate.


I think older Americans are definitely in the buy American camp, but they're a dying breed.   My grandpa spent the better part of his life actively avoiding any Asian products. He was a WWII vet who just couldn't support any Asian company. Swore he'd never do it.   His last car purchase? Hyundai. Their improved reliability and warranties sold him. He's since changed his purchasing behavior, but only after far too many shitty American products, including cars.   Excluding American truck buyers, I think the American car love is a generational thing. American automakers shouldn't assume that national pride will save them, because the younger generation doesn't care about invisible lines that divide countries.   Besides, many Toyotas are now more American than American branded cars. It's silly to group them by brand today.


"They weren't supposed to buy gift cards, and the coupon had a limit on it.  These people bought gift cards and photocopied the coupon to get as much as $5,000 in free Target gift cards.  That can't happen if you play by the rules.  But I don't care, I wasn't being 100% dictionary-definition literal with my use of the word ""cheating."""


My personal gold/metals target is 5.0% of my retirement portfolio. Right now I'm underweight because of the run up in gold/metals prices. (I haven't been selling, but as I add to retirement accounts, I haven't been buying gold so it is going below the 5% mark.) I arrived at this number after reading a lot of different sample portfolio allocations, and some books. Some people recommend what I consider crazy allocations: 25-50% in gold. From what I could figure out in terms of modern portfolio theory, holding some metal reduces your overall risk because it generally has a low correlation to equity markets. The problem with gold is that it is a lousy investment. It doesn't produce any income, and only has costs (storage, insurance, commissions to buy/sell, management of ETF if that's what you're using, etc). The only thing going for it is that it can be a hedge during tough times. In this case, when you rebalance, your gold will be high, you'll sell it, and buy the stocks that are down. (In theory -- assuming you stick to disciplined rebalancing.) So for me, 5% seemed to be enough to shave off a little overall risk without wasting too much expense on a hedge. (I don't go over this, and like I said, now I'm underweighted.)


"I think the real answer to your question here is diversification.  You have some fear of having your money in the market, and rightfully so, having all your money in one stock, or even one type of mutual fund is risky as all get out, and you could lose a lot of your money in such a stock-market based undiversified investment.  However, the same logic works in your rental property.  If you lose your tennant, and are unable to find a new one right away, or if you have some very rare problem that insurance doesn't cover, your property could become very much not a ""break even"" investment very quickly.  In reality, there isn't any single investment you can make that has no risk.  Your assets need to be balanced between many different market-investments, that includes bonds, US stocks, European stocks, cash, etc.  Also investing in mutual funds instead of individual stocks greatly reduces your risk. Another thing to consider is the benefits of paying down debt.  While investments have a risk of not performing, if you pay off a loan with interest payments, you definitely will save the money you would have paid in interest.   To be specific, I'd recommend the following plan -"


Inflation will hurt your landlord, but it won't hurt you. In either case, you have to pay 7200, regardless of how much inflation has increased over two years.  However, they are not equivalent to you. If you take the monthly payment, then you can potentially come out ahead. If you were to take the 7200 and put it in a savings account and just pay monthly then you'll be earning interest that you wouldn't get if you paid up front.  There's a whole lot of other investment options you could go with too, but that's another question. The risk here is that if you go through financial hardship you may be tempted to draw on that 7200 early and come up short for rent one month.


"Investing the money is only wise if the return on the investment outpaces your highest interest debt. Otherwise, you are making less than is going out. Given that you are in your late 50's, High risk investments are probably a poor idea.   If you're truly worried about having enough to retire, I would take 15% of that money and put it toward your emergency fund. Then the rest I would use to pay down your highest interest credit line.  You are short on funds right now so I would avoid using the HELOC. Your HELOC is available now, but if times get tight, the bank can decide to freeze your credit line. Instead, if you need a line of credit, look into a personal line of credit. The interest rate wont be as good as your HELOC but it's more stable.  If you haven't already, I would pickup ""The Richest Man in Babylon"". Read the lessons in it and see if you can use the tools it provides to tighten your situation up. The lessons mostly apply to people in the first half of life, but they are fundamentals regardless. Good Luck! (Information on the HELOC was stolen from Jasper's answer here... HELOC with no first mortgage (for liquidity--no plans to spend it) )"


"Another aspect is decision makers must CONSTANTLY re-evaluate not only the current climate, but the future.   I'm not sure if anyone noticed but the economy and consumer confidence is in the toilet. If business owners arent careful it very well could collapse and in the end if it does fail there is nobody else responsible but themselves.  So in times of success, yes the business owners reap profit, but in tough times so too do they have to take full responsibility and consequences of reality. Salary employees have no such liability, they go to work at 9am and leave at 5pm and while most want increased responsbility because that usually yields increased competition, most have no interest in taking true responsibility for the company's health.   As the sole principal of the company it is wholly his choice what direction and decisions to make for the company. I guarantee you his decision will not be based on vengence or grudge but rather weighing incentives to continue, and being an older gentlemen decide it's no longer worth it and retire.   I've personally see many smaller companies do this in the past 10 years. ""Why go through the stress? I've got cash. I'm going to sell or close the company and retire."""


"> You ARE naive in that you are concerned about employees who have already choosen for the most part their career fates.  You call me ""naïve"" for being concerned for my fellow man?  How is that ""[naïve](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/naive)""?    Read what I wrote.  I don't disagree with one word of your predictions or your statements about the economy.  These people are absolutely fucked.  I have never said otherwise.  _It simply makes me sad that all these humans will suffer._  That doesn't make me naïve - that makes me a decent human being.  The fact that you are willing to call me names simply because I express concern for these people speaks for itself.  The fact that I've been downvoted heavily for saying it speaks badly of the compassion of the people reading this subreddit."


> You believe there are innate human needs that can be known objectively...  I don't understand how that fits in with anything I wrote.    > I believe that human needs are inherently subjective...  Aside from things like food, water, and air, I agree.  My point is that companies manipulate people to profit themselves sometimes at the expense of the common good.  The fact that not everyone likes M&Ms does not prevent them from doing so.  Do you disagree with this point?


Yeah history shows us lower taxes of stock helped the economy soooooo much. Just ask bush and his surplus he turned to a deficit when he lowered taxes, including the taxes capital gains.   Bitch, when I cash my paycheck it's going into the bank, who will take my 50k i got from taxing Donald trump more because now I'm a federal employee, removing 50k from the stock market into the economy.  You act like it would be some disastrous effect to tax the stock market more. Then maybe people wouldn't be pricing companies 10 years out because they have so much money they don't know what to do with it.


Fair enough. Many different programs to collect forecasts from various populations have been done, and are in fact still currently being run, so I have no info as to how or why what you're doing is any different. This kills a lot of my interest.  My gut feeling is this is some soft social science / liberal arts approach to forecasting. Given no evidence otherwise I'm not really interested but good luck I guess.


"Clear malice?  lol   The article isn't even about ""the market"" it is about the economy.  The article is about how GDP growth is not looking that great.  The stock market can go up for reasons that have nothing to do with a good economy.  If investors believe Trump will cut corporate taxes, stocks should rise, because an investor will make more money when the company pays less in taxes.  Stock prices have gone up, but the economy isn't looking great."


I take it the premise of the question is that we're assuming the person isn't worried about the morals. He's a criminal out for a quick buck. And I guess we're assuming that wherever you go, they wouldn't arrest you and extradite you back to the U.S. As others have noted, you can't just walk into a bank the day you graduate high school or get out of prison or whatever and get a credit line of $100,000. You have to build up to that with an income and a pattern of responsible behavior over a period of many years. I don't have the statistics handy but I'd guess most people never reach a credit limit on credit cards of $100,000. Maybe many people could get that on a home equity line of credit, but again, you'd have to build up that equity in your house first, and that would take many years. Then, while $100,000 sounds like a lot of money, how long could you really live on that? Even in a country with low cost of living, it's not like you could live in luxury for the rest of your life. If you can get that kind of credit limit, you probably are used to living on a healthy income. Sure, you could get a similar lifestyle for less in some other countries, but not for THAT much less. If you know a place where for $10,000 a year you can live a life that would cost $100,000 per year in the U.S., I'd like to know about it. Even living a relatively frugal life, I doubt the money would last more than 4 or 5 years. And then what are you going to do? If you come back to the U.S. you'd presumably be promptly arrested. You could get a job in your new country, but you could have done that without first stealing $100,000. Frankly, if you're the sort of person who can get a $100,000 credit limit, you probably can live a lot better in the U.S. by continuing to work and play by the rules than you could by stealing $100,000 and fleeing to Haiti or Eritrea. You might say, okay, $100,000 isn't really enough. What if I could get a $1 million credit limit? But if you have the income and credit rating to get a $1 million credit limit, you probably are making at least several hundred thousand per year, probably a million or more, and again, you're better off to continue to play by the rules. The only way that I see that a scam like this would really work is if you could get a credit limit way out of proportion to any income you could earn legitimately. Like somehow if you could convince the bank to give you a credit limit of $1 million even though you only make $15,000 a year. But that would be a scam in itself. That's why I think the only time you do hear of people trying something like this is when they USED to make a lot of money but have lost it. Like someone has a multi-million dollar business that goes broke, he now has nothing, so before the bank figures it out he maxes out all his credit and runs off.


An operating margin will not compare with ROE. If a company has even a small margin on a large turnover and has a comparative lower shareholder equity, it ROE will be much higher. One ratio alone can not analyse a company. You need a full set of ratios and figures.


"The debt isn't ""paid off"" until you've brought the balance back to zero. If you pay less than the full amount, some goes to pay down the balance and some goes to paying interest on the balance, and you're left with a debt on the account (which you add to if you continue using the card or reduce when you make a payment to the card.) Note that the ""grace period"" in which you can pay off recent charges without paying interest is often available only when you have paid off the card in full... so carrying a balance costs you money on new charges immediately. Check your statements and plan paperwork to see if this applies to you; if it does that's another reason to pay off this debt as quickly as possible. Not to mention that credit card interest rates tend to be moderately obscene."


and I need to upgrade my current home to a larger, longer-term property Would selling your current home give you (at least) a 20% DP on the new home? Take additional cash out of the refinance of the first home to accelerate saving Dittoing D Stanley, that makes no sense. Purchase and move to a second property of greater cost and value to first You'll need to find the new house at the same time you're selling the existing home, and write the new-home purchase contract in such a way that you can back out in case the purchaser of your home backs out.


"The Investment Entertainment Pricing Theory (INEPT) has this bit to note: The returns of small growth stocks are ridiculously low—just 2.18   percent per year since 1927 (versus 17.47 percent for small value,   10.06 percent for large growth, and 13.99 percent for large value). Where the S & P 500 would be a blend of large-cap growth and value so does that meet your ""beat the market over the long term"" as 1927-1999 would be long for most people."


I vaguely remember a bit in Transmetropolitan where a mom saves up for years in order to buy her child cellulose-digesting bacteria, so he won't have to be hungry ever again.  As much as I think that shouldn't be necessary, I also find it hard to consider the possibility a bad thing.


"You'd need to know the delta and the theta of the option. You can either calculate them yourself using a model like Black-Scholes (assuming you have a market price and can imply a volatility, and know the other factors that go into the model) or, you can see if your broker quotes ""greeks"" as well (mine does). The delta is the sensitivity (rate of change in value) to the underlying stock price, and the theta is the sensitivity to time passing (usually expressed in $/day).  So if your option has a delta of .5 and a theta of -.04, when one day passes and the underlying stock goes up $3, the option will gain roughly $1.50 due to the underlying stock price and lose $0.04 due to time passing."


The way you ask this is interesting, it implies (quite correctly) that for many, an annual bill for house insurance, property tax, etc, can turn into an emergency. My answer to the true emergency is a breakage that can't be foreseen (although you have to know the furnace isn't going to last forever) or a medical bill that's not covered (our dental is limited and the Mrs root canal can be $1000 out of pocket)


$1 more an hour = $160 a month...a few matching expenses and it probably increases payroll less than $200 an employee a month. Does anyone really believe that there is no money in personal care/health care? For evey 5 employees it is $1K more a month. That kind of money is next to insignificant in the industry, and the bosses probably spent more on that on food on the company card.


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


The Euro will collapse because Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece will have to default on their debt. In order to keep up with current payments they have to take emergency loans at the same time that their economies are in recession and demands on social programs are increasing. There is simply no way that they can cut enough spending and raise enough revenue to balance their budgets. That is not opinion, it is arithmetic.   If they cannot pay their loans they will either voluntarily leave the Euro, or they will be forced out.   Next comes France who also has a large and growing budget deficit and a large public debt. It is unsustainable. That which is unsustainable will end.   The last reason that the Euro will fail and that it will be soon is Germany. Up to now, all the bailouts of Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain have come predominantly from Germany. In order to float the Eurobonds that some idiots think might save Europe, the German people have to authorize their government to participate and thereby take on another mountain of debt. The German people will not vote for that authorization.  Is that enough reasons? Because there are more. Lots more. Read [Mike Shedlock](http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com)


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/06/a-closer-look-at-who-does-and-doesnt-pay-u-s-income-tax/) reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Nearly all income tiers above $100,000 paid higher shares of total income tax in 2015 than they did in 2000.  > Effective tax rates - calculated as the total income tax owed divided by adjusted gross income - also rise with income.  > In 2013, the 3.6 million corporations that reported net income on their returns owed corporate income tax equal to 15.2% of their total pretax profits after all credits were applied, according to our analysis of IRS data.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/74vkkn/who_pays_us_income_tax_and_how_much/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~223924 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **tax**^#1 **income**^#2 **taxes**^#3 **rate**^#4 **deduction**^#5"


"Document how you came to have the stuff in the first place. First to defend against potential government inquiry; and second to establish that you held the asset more than one year, so you qualify for long-term capital gains rate.  I wouldn't sell it privately all at once, if you can avoid it.   If you can prove you held it more than a year,  you should pay the long-term capital gains tax rate, which is fairly low.  You'll keep most of it.  A huge windfall often goes very badly. People don't change their financial habits, burn through their winnings shockingly fast, overspend it, and wind up deep in debt.  At the end of the crazy train, their lives end up worse.   That wasn't your question, but you'll do better if you're on guard for that, with good planning and a desire to invest it in things which give you deferred income in the future. That's the cooler thing, when your investments mean you don't have to go to work! I don't mean donate ALL of it to charity. But feel free.  If you hold a security more than one year, and donate it to charity, you get a tax deduction for the appreciated value (even though the security didn't actually cost you that). (link) Do not convert the BTC to cash then donate the cash. Donate it as BTC.  Your tax deduction works against your highest tax bracket.  If you are paying in a 28% tax bracket (your next $100 of income has $28 tax), then for every $100 of charitable donation, you get $28 back on Federal. It does the same to state tax, and you also avoid the 10-15% capital gains tax because you didn't sell the securities.  Do your 1040 both ways and note the difference.***** Your charitable deduction of appreciated securities is capped at 30% of AGI.  Any excess will carryover and becomes a tax deduction for the next year, and it can carryover for several years. **  Use a donor-advised fund. If you have are donating more than $5000, you don't need to search for a charity that will take Bitcoin, and you also don't need to pick a charity now.  Instead, open a special type of giving account called a Donor-Advised Fund.  The DAF, itself, is a charity. It specializes in accepting complex donations and liquidating them into cash.  The cash credits to your giving account.  You take the tax deduction in the year you give to the DAF.  Then, when you want to give to a charity, you tell the DAF to donate on your behalf***.   You can tell them to give on your behalf anonymously, or merely conceal your address so you don't get the endless charity junk mail.   The DAF lets you hold the money in index funds, so your ""charity nest egg"" can grow with the market.  Mine has more than doubled thanks to the market.  This money is no longer yours at this point; you can't give it back to yourself, only to licensed charities. The Fidelity Donor Advised Fund makes a big thing of taking Bitcoin, and I really like them. **** I love my DAF, and it has been a charitable-giving workhorse.  It turns you into a philanthropist, and that changes you life in ways I cannot describe. Certainly makes me more level-headed about money.   Lottery winner syndrome is just not a risk for me (partly because I'm now on the board of charities, and oversee an endowment.)  Donating generally will reduce suspicion (criminals don't do that), but donating to a DAF even moreso.  Since the DAF would have to return ill-gotten gains, they're involved.  Their lawyers will back you up.  The prosecutor is up against a billion dollar corporation instead of just you.  With Fidelity particularly, Bitcoin is a crusade for them, and their lawyers know how to defend Bitcoin.  A Fidelity DAF is a good play for that reason alone IMO.  ** The gory details: Presumably you are donating to regular charities or a Donor Advised Fund, and these are ""50% limit organizations"". Since it's capital gains, you have a 30% limit. If your donation is more than 30% of AGI, or if you have carryover from last year, you use Worksheet 2 in Publication 526. You plug your donations into line 4, then the worksheet grinds through all the math and shows what part you deduct this year and what part you carryover to the next year.  *** I specifically asked managers at two DAFs whether they were OK with someone donating a complex asset to the DAF, and immediately giving the entire cash amount to a charity.  The DAF doesn't get any fees if you do that.  They said not only are they OK with it, most of their donors do exactly that and most DAF accounts are empty.  They make it on the 0.6% a year custodial fee on the other accounts, and charitable giving to them.    Mind you, you can only donate to 501C3 type charities, what IRS calls ""50% limit organizations"".  This actually protects you from donating to organizations who lie about their status.  **** I'm not with Fidelity, but I am a satisfied DAF customer.  The DAF funds its overhead by deducting 0.6% per year from your giving account. If you invest the funds in a mutual fund within the DAF, that investment pays the 0.08% to 1.5% expense ratio of the fund.   I can live with that.  ***** I just Excel'd the value of donating $100 of appreciated security instead of taking it as capital gains income.  28% Fed tax, 15% Fed cap gains, 8% state tax on both.  Take the $100 as income, pay $23 in cap gains tax.  Donate $100 in securities, the $23 tax goes away since you didn't sell it. Really.  The $100 charitable deduction offsets $100 in income, also saving you $36 in regular income tax.  Net tax savings $59.  However you lost the $100!  So you are net $41 poorer.  It costs you $41 to donate $100 to charity.  This gets better in higher brackets."


I'm not disputing that. I just said in answer to the guy pointing out that indonesian people earn less that this price might be higher than what the locals pay. Often hospitals will have higher prices for foreigners with insurance etc. So I was actually strengthening your point.


Most of stock trading occurs on what is called a secondary market. For example, Microsoft is traded on NASDAQ, which is a stock exchange. An analogy that can be made is that of selling a used car. When you sell a used car to a third person, the maker of your car is unaffected by this transaction and the same goes for stock trading. Still within the same analogy, when the car is first sold, money goes directly to the maker (actually more complicated than that but good enough for our purposes). In the case of stock trading, this is called an Initial Public Offering (IPO) / Seasoned Public Offering (SPO), for most purposes. What this means is that a drop of value on a secondary market does not directly affect earning potential. Let me add some nuance to this. Say this drop from 20$ to 10$ is permanent and this company needs to finance itself through equity (stock) in the future. It is likely that it would not be able to obtain as much financing in this matter and would either 1) have to rely more on debt and raise its cost of capital or 2) obtain less financing overall. This could potentially affect earnings through less cash available from financing. One last note: in any case, financing does not affect earnings except through cost of capital (i.e. interest paid) because it is neither revenue nor expense. Financing obtained from debt increases assets (cash) and liabilities (debt) and financing obtained from stock issuance increases assets (cash) and shareholder equity.


It's explained in the article that you need a critical mass to reach profitability. Not sure what you're arguing here.   Edit: I'm sorry. I got this confused with [another article](https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/05/31/uberpool-sf-buzzfeed-documents-burn-rate/amp/&ved=0ahUKEwjI8IqTuKDUAhUByoMKHT7zCHsQFggwMAQ&usg=AFQjCNFMBLxrbnKD1QDka1w0Jm99Xs6OFg&sig2=-efzgIxdqrDmb0j7oAiPyw) I had just read on Uber. Sorry for the attitude.


True, that Colleges remove the lowest common denominator of ability: students who get F in classes.  If you have a degree, you are probably above average in your mental abilities.  But when it comes to practical knowledge, personality needed for work and in the workplace, work ethics, etc, they are not very beneficial. Actually, all those topics, practical knowledge, personality, work ethics, etc are self-taught or skills you you are born with. Cannot be taught.


There are a few loan programs that grant exceptions to bankruptcy requirements in the event of extenuating circumstances that can be proven to be outside of your control (i.e. massive medical bills that you used bankruptcy to settle, etc.) however, in order to make the case for this exemption, you would need to make a strong case for your solvency, shown the ability to re-establish your credit reputation since the discharge of your bankruptcy, and would almost certainly have to go through a bank that offers manual underwriting. Additionally, if you are Native American, the HUD-184 program is a great option for your situation as it allows for a wide latitude in terms of underwriter discretion and is always manually underwritten as there is no automated underwriting system developed for the loan program. There are several great lenders that offer nationwide financing (as long as you're in a HUD-184 eligible area) and would be a great potential solution if you meet the qualifying parameter of being Native American.


Recessions are prolonged by less spending and wages being 'sticky' downward. My currency, the 'wallark', allows a company to pay its workers in it's own scrip instead of dollars which they can use to purchase its goods, thus reducing it's labor costs and allowing prices to fall faster. While scrip in the past purposely devalued to discourage hoarding, the wallark hold's it's purchasing power. The difference is, a worker can only use it to purchase their company's good *on the date the wallark was earned or before*.  In other words, each good is labeled with a date it was put on display for sale, if  a worker earns scrip on that same day, they can trade the scrip for that good, or any good that was on the shelves on that day it was earned *or before that date*. Any good that comes onto market after the date that particular wallark was earned cannot be purchased with that wallark(which is dated), and must be purchased either with dollars or with wallark that was earned on that good's date or after. This incentivizes spending without creating inflation, and allows costs to fall which helps businesses during rough economic times.  Please feel free to read it, and comment on my site! Any feedback is welcome!


Who are the enforcers? That sounds like a government.  So we have to wait until someone gets murdered at a house before we then ostracize that house from society? That's seems horribly inefficient. A bad company could just change their address and name over and over to avoid being ostracized.   And how is a company's brand going to be hurt when it's private security company disputes every crime that company commits? Why should a company care about its brand so long as its making tons of money (think about Comcast, for example)?


"I have an MScF (Undergrad Math/Econ) and I currently work in algo trading, I started off on the buy side and then went off on my own after I got a large enough bonus for seed capital,.... :)  Quantitative Finance is not a ""small field"" within it there are subfields (there are much more subfields that these).  Econometrics/Statistical/Research methods, time series analysis, statistics, stochastic calculus, data mining  Asset Management/Trading: Building testing and implementing models, usually you have an idea, test it and implement it, requires a lot of good time series skills, statistical skills and programming and be good at research.  Modelling/Pricing/Risk, building better pricing models, coming up with elegant solutions, so a strong knowledge of stochastic calc, Differential Equations, Partial Differential Equations, Monte Carlo Simulations, etc  12 Months will not make you an expert in any of the above. You may learn enough to understand it. Quant Finance is something you learn by doing, yes you need to understand the theory but its just theory until you start to implement it.   Finally if you do an MFin/MscF/MFE make sure there is a THESIS otherwise it will be tough to do a PhD after.  If you want a taste, grab some R/Matlab/Whatever and try and program some common SSRN papers.."


Make sure to check the language describing the 'discount'. The company may be matching your contribution by 5% instead of a discount.  You will likely be taxed on the match as compensation and your benefit would net to less than 5%.   The next risk is that you've increased your exposure if your company does poorly.  In the worst case scenario you could lose your wages to a layoff and your portfolio to a falling share price.  Investing in other companies will diversify this risk. As for benefits, you get the 5% (less taxes) for free which isn't a bad thing in my book. Just don't put everything you own into the stock.  It should be part of your overall investing strategy.


"So the end is food, and the means is abuse?  Or is the ""means"" raising an animal?  Abuse is superfluous, so it can't be part of the means.    And by using dogs and bears I am *illustrating* my argument (have you somehow never encountered this before?), not changing it. My argument is the same: **raising an animal for food or otherwise by no means gives you the right to abuse it**, whether it's a turkey, a cow, a dog or a cat.  Do turkeys hold some kind of special abuse-friendly status for you?  I mean, you've already conceded that you feel the same way towards dogs and bears, so I don't see why it matters if you think it's changing the argument or not."


Printing money doesn't mean that their wealth increases. It just devalues the money they already have. So it will just take more money to buy goods from another country. Printing money will also lead to over inflation which has its own set of problems such as:


Where did I say we treat all crimes equivalently?  Didn't.  But I sure as hell will say fraud is fraud and it doesn't matter if you steal pennies a bunch of times to make a million or you steal it all at once.       The crimes ARE accurately measured in the article.  The $3.7 trillion is not a 'wrong' number nor is it a lie.


>[**Как заработать деньги без вложений. Пассивный доход! Лучший Интернет заработок 2017 [2:36]**](http://youtu.be/KhoVXuOgCeo)  >>Друзья, в этом видео, вы узнаете, какие проекты в скаме а какие платят. Так же, есть проект, в котором можно заработать без вложений  > [*^Финансовый ^Вектор*](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAOABF2yT1SjVqI7RK9aIUg) ^in ^People ^& ^Blogs  >*^5 ^views ^since ^Oct ^2017*  [^bot ^info](/r/youtubefactsbot/wiki/index)


Yeah, it's a weird way to run a business, and a weird way to evangelize too.    But if he doesn't share their views, neither the employer nor employee would have been happy with the situation.    I think owners of small businesses should be able to hire based on any criteria they want, even if that means they only want to hire punk rockers, atheists, Amish people, whatever.  If it's a company of 10 people who all have to deal with each other everyday, they should be able to form a group of whatever kind of people they want.   In reality, small businesses do hire based on whatever kinds of people they want to have around.  It's just that most of them are smart enough to be subtle about it.


The matching funds are free money, so it is a very good idea to take that money off the table.  Look at it as free 100% return: you deposit $1000, your employer matches that $1000, you now have $2000 in your 401(k).  (Obviously, I'm keeping things simple.  Vesting schedules mean that the employer match isn't yours to keep immediately, but rather after some time; usually in chunks.) Beyond the employer match, you need to consider what is available for investment in a 401(k).  Typically, your options are more limited then in an IRA.  The cost of the 401(k) should be considered, as it isn't trivial for most.  (The specifics will of course vary, but in large IRA accounts are cheaper.) So, it's about the opportunity costs.  Up to the employer match, it doesn't matter as much that your investment choices are more limited in a 401(k), because you're getting 100% return just on the matching funds.  Once that is exhausted, you have more opportunity for returns, due to having more options available to you, by going with an account that provides more choices. The overall principle here is that you have to look at the whole picture.  This is similar to the notion that you should pay-down your high interest debt before investing, because from the perspective of investing the interest you're paying represent a loss, or negative return on investment, since money is going out of your accounts.  Specific to your question, you have to consider the various types of investment vehicles available to you.  It is not just about 401(k) and IRA accounts.  You may also consider a straight brokerage account, a savings account, CDs, etc.  The costs and returns that you can typically expect are your guides through the available choices.


"Cutting workers instead of creating jobs.... that sounds logical--the epitome of a healthier economy!  If Mr. Billionaire-Whiner can't handle losing one or two billion of his multiple billions, he should just quit (looks due past his retiring age anyway) and give the company to someone who can run it without being a pussy.  Way for David Siegel to obliterate First Amendment rights.    ""Over the past four years I have had to stop building my dream house, cut back on all of my expenses, and take my kids out of private schools simply to keep this company strong and to keep you employed.""  Hahaha oh wow, seriously??  I feel bad for people who have to work with a CEO who's that much of a public dick.  Hey David, ever wonder what your EMPLOYEES have to sacrifice to keep *their* jobs??? Y'know, your **employees** right?  The people who keep your fucking company afloat???  Without them, you wouldn't have your billions!  If you think you're so well-off without your workers, why don't you fire them all and run the company yourself?  That way you could keep all that you earn.  Go ahead.  Let's see what happens.  No dream house when your current house is probably a million-dollar mansion?  Boo-fucking-hoo.  Excuse me as I pull out my tiniest violin...."


"I will give a slightly different answer which is actually an addendum to JoeTaxpayer's (soon-to-be-edited) answer. Do NOT go to your financial advisor and ask him ""How do I go about transferring my Roth IRA to ....""? where .... is whichever broker or mutual fund family that you have chosen from the list that Joe has suggested.  Instead, go to the website of the new group (or call their toll-free number) and tell them ""I want to open a Roth IRA account with you and fund it by transferring all the money in my Roth IRA from First Clearing."" Your new Roth IRA custodian will take care of all the paperwork and get the money transferred over at no cost to you except possibly fielding a weepy call from your current financial advisor because he had just ordered his new Lamborghini and now will have difficulty making payments on his auto loan. ""Why are you leaving me? After all the years we have had together?"" You will need to choose some place to put the money, and I suggest that you use their S&P 500 Index Fund,  not the S&P 500 ETF, just the standard vanilla S&P 500 Index Mutual Fund. This recommendation is almost heresy in this forum, but it is better to pay the extra 0.01% fee that the Fund charges over and above the ETF until you become a little more savvy and are ready to branch out into individual stocks (which is when you really need a brokerage account). Revelation: I have never made the transition and invest only in mutual funds which does not require a brokerage account. After doing all this, pay no attention whatsoever to your Roth IRA investment or how the S&P 500 Index is doing for the  next 20 years. This will help avoid the temptation of taking all your money out just because the Index went down a little. Everybody is told ""Buy Low, Sell High"" but far too many folks end up doing exactly the opposite: buying because the stock market is up and selling when it starts going down."


If the cards are tied to a specific vendor, they will work only at that vendor. If they're generic cards just charged with a specific amount of money, they should work at any vendor who accepts that card network... though there may be specific exceptions.


Thank you for your service and sorry to hear about your experience.  I have a number of family and friends who had varying levels of civilian career success upon leaving.  Some good, some bad. They all came out stronger-willed, confident, some with college (that was mostly paid for) and with other transferable skills that made them stand our from their civilian counterparts.


"> You mean, like how the lower classes all over the world - billions of people - have been lifted out of poverty by countries adopting economic liberalizations and rollback of government intervention?  1) [You have it backward](https://niskanencenter.org/blog/quality-government-not-size-key-freedom-prosperity/).  2) [Looking at income and liberalizations/interventions is way too myopic](http://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995).  > They DO NOT have the right to have the government steal some of my money because they didn't plan properly.  Ah yes, there is the core Republican narrative that all people are autonomous, independent beings with total freewill and the tools to function normally. Therefore it is not only good but morally required for people to bear the full brunt of their irresponsible behavior.  The older I get, the more I realize how misguided this view is. We are very much products of our environment doing the best we can with what we have.  Your attitude at best maintains inequality and at worst punishes the victim.  > That infrastructure is already paid for. His success creates no additional burden or obligation.  ""We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.""  > In fact, the healthcare market would grow so rapidly...  If you say so."


There are several differences in these professionals and where you require them are also completely different areas. If you are looking to add that aesthetic appeal to your home, with things like furnishing colours, wall patterns, windows treatments, etc., in that case, a decorator would be useful  and they will design your home in such a way that it’ll not just showcase your trendy lifestyle, but will also add to overall functionality.


You cannot contribute directly to that 401k account if you no longer work at the sponsoring company - you have to be on their payroll.  You can, however, roll the 401k over into an IRA, and contribute to the IRA. Note that in both cases, you are only allowed to contribute from earned income (which includes all the taxable income and wages you get from working or from running your own business). As long as you are employed (and have made more than $5k this year) you should have no problem. I am not certain whether contributing your $5k to a roth IRA would help you achieve your tax goals, someone else here certainly can advise.


Years ago I mailed my personal tax return one day after the due date, and my check was deposited as normal, and I never heard anything about it. As an employer, I once sent in my employee's withheld federal taxes one day after the due date, and I later received a letter stating my penalty for being late worked out to be around $600. The letter stated that since this was my first time being late they would waive the fee. In both cases, they could have charged me a late fee if they wanted to.


"The debt collection agency needs to see a copy of the notice from the bank that the $300 charge is a disputed and fraudulent charge. Also require them to provide proof. To reduce your stress, you should contact a lawyer to handle the debt collection agency.  Disputing the information on your credit report is exactly the way to ""fix"" that issue. All they need to see is the bank letter stating that the charges were fraudulent. The credit reports should show that item as disputed for at least a month if not remove it entirely. The bank should be able to provide with copies although you may have to pay a research charge if the information is old enough. I recommend talking to your local branch manager to get what you need."


I assume the same criteria apply for this as your previous question. You want to physically transfer in excess of 50,000 USD multiple times a week and you want the transportation mechanism to be instant or very quick. I don't believe there is any option that won't raise serious red flags with the government entities you cross the boundaries of. Even a cheque, which a person in the comments of OP's question suggests, wouldn't be sufficient due to government regulation requiring banks to put holds on such large amounts.


Businesses are free to decide what payment methods they accept for their goods and services. Businesses sometimes advertise what credit cards they accept by posting some stickers at their door. When your credit card isn't among them and you don't have enough cash with you, ask about your card before you order. If a business doesn't accept your credit card, your best recourse is to take your business elsewhere. When you already ate there and got into an awkward situation because you assumed that they would accept your card, you might also want to write an online review of the place and warn others to bring cash for their visit (but please be fair in the review. When the food and service are decent, a restaurant doesn't deserve a one star rating just because they don't take credit cards). Note that businesses have good reasons to not accept credit cards. It often means additional cost for them in form of: But there is also a more shady reason. Taking payment in cash means that there is no electronic trail of the transaction. That makes it far easier for an establishment to misreport their income. They might under-report it to evade taxes or over-report it to launder money (both are illegal, of course).


Once you make up your mind to go for AV hire, you will have to shortlist the names of companies. In addition to that, you will also have to check out the services available in AV Hire. Right from projection, sound optimization, lighting, recording, stage layouts, computer program management and others, they will offer a plethora of services.


I understand that ITM have little time value, so they will have small time decay(theta), but why OTM has a lesser theta than ATM? The Time value represents uncertainty.  That uncertainty decreases the farther away from ATM you get (in either direction).  At-the-money, there is roughly a 50% chance that the option expires worthless. As you get deeper in-the-money, the change that is expires worthless decreases, so there is less uncertainty (there is more certainty that the option will pay off).  As you go deeper OTM, the probability that the option expires worthless increases, so there is also less uncertainty. At the TTM decreases, the uncertainty (theta) decreases as well, since there is less time for the option to cross the strike from either direction.  Similarly, as volatility decreases, theta decreases, since low-volatility stocks have a less change of crossing the strike.


In some case the customer wants the name to be cryptic or misleading. They don't want to advertise the true nature of the business they visited. In other cases the transaction may be reported through another business. A few years ago the local PTA was having a silent auction as a fundraiser. A local business allowed the PTA to use their credit card reader to process transactions over a certain amount. Of course when the credit card statement arrived it looked like you spent $500 at the florist. I have seen PayPal listed when donating to some small charities.  I have noted another case where confusion can occur. I used a debit card to buy a soda from a vending machine: the name and location were the name of the vending machine company and the location of their main office. It didn't say  soda machine city A. It said Joe's vending company city B. In most cases the business and the credit card company want to make it easy to identify the transactions to keep the cost of research and charge backs to a minimum.


Well, they are doing some of this now already by examining several factors of quality of life, including availability of goods and services, price point and general satisfaction of a geographical population. Really, though, it sounds like a thought process that forgives if you choose not to keep up with the Jones.


If the IRS has your money (the withholding you mentioned), and you do not owe the IRS any/all of it, you have to file a return to get it back.  No return, no refund.


I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:  - [/r/stocks_picks] [GE misses on earnings and pares back expectations](https://np.reddit.com/r/Stocks_Picks/comments/77zo93/ge_misses_on_earnings_and_pares_back_expectations/)  - [/r/talkbusiness] [GE misses on earnings and pares back expectations](https://np.reddit.com/r/talkbusiness/comments/77zr0f/ge_misses_on_earnings_and_pares_back_expectations/)  [](#footer)*^(If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.) ^\([Info](/r/TotesMessenger) ^/ ^[Contact](/message/compose?to=/r/TotesMessenger))*  [](#bot)


You are being a scumbag steve. While you are in Korea and not Japan, little shits like you  are what cause foreigners to get bad treatment by cellphone carriers, landlords, money loaning organizations, etc over here.  That is what happens in Japan and I'm sure it's pretty much the same across the sea in Korea. You hurt not just the company but other people.   Of course you can't judge all foreigners by what one shitty foreigner does, but this is what happens in homogeneous countries such as South Korea and Japan.


Yep, you have it pretty much right.   The volume is the number of shares traded that day. The ticker is giving you the number of shares bought at that price in a given transaction, the arrow meaning whether the stock is up or down on the day at that price.   Institutional can also refer to pensions, mutuals funds, corporates; generally any shareholder that isn't an individual person.


A lot of these answers are really weak. The expected value is pretty much the answer.  You have to also though, especially as many many millions of tickets are purchased--make part of the valuation the odds of the jackpot being split x ways. So about 1 in 290--> the jackpot needs to be a take-home pot of $580 million for the $2 ticket. Assume the average # of winners is about 1.5 so half the time you're going to split the pot, bringing the valuation needed for the same jackpot to be $870 million. It's actually somewhat not common to have split jackpots because the odds are very bad + many people pick 'favourite numbers'.


Another way of explaining the puzzling balance: Right after a particular bill is paid, you have $0 saved to pay that bill the next time.  Just before the bill is next due, you wisely have the whole amount saved;  that's the purpose of the whole process.  So, for that bill, on average over time, you'll have one-half that upcoming bill in the account. But the same argument holds for every one of the upcoming bills.  So, for a large number of bills, with varying sizes and times between occurrence, the average amount in the account will be approximately one-half of the total amount of all the bills that you're saving for.


Home owners are much aware about their assets and their protector. We are talking about home which is the reliable shelter for everyone. If the home get worst constructed, it won’t able to meet your anticipation. This is the place where a private certifier is needed to ensure, how much your home is secure and capable to withstand various threats.


It seems my final sentence construction wasn't abundantly clear - self-driving cars will signal the demise of the taxi industry. Uber already have very strong links with Google and are discussing self-driving cars.  Uber will likely be the delivery system that Google use for their self-driving vehicle fleets.


It is safe to say that you are new to the guideline of a glass bubbler? You should simply envision a bong in a littler size. Glass bubblers are made to have a stem that keeps running down the length of the murmuring chamber. This opens up into a dish that is situated notwithstanding the bubbler. These glass bubblers are unfathomably conservative in size and make it simple to smoke using only one hand. The bubbler is with the end goal that smoke could be taken in from one opening. As to auto mechanics of the bubbler go, it gets on an indistinguishable lines from a glass pipe, with the main refinement being that there are littler chambers on the inside. You can likewise search for glass smoking pipe for sale on web.


$1000 is not that much, and I think the best you can do with them is keeping them in a high-yield savings account (look at the online savings accounts that give 1% and more, not the regular bank savings accounts which are worthless). If you need money all of a sudden (for a school book, or rent, or bills, or some other emergency expense), you don't want to deal with selling stocks or funds (which may be at loss) or breaking into your CD's. It is usually considered a good practice to keep cash that would keep you afloat for 5-6 months in savings or some cash equivalent, as an emergency fund.


I’ve seen a bunch of government rfp’s. They almost all have requirements for cobol and mainframe. When the requirements aren’t filled due to skill shortage they close them. Then just open them again later hoping to not have to modernize.   I wish entries had the gumption to just go through the pain. Yes it will hurt and be expensive. But you get to survive. Otherwise things will get old and break. Then there will be no one to fix it.


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Equal-weight ETFs remove the large cap bias found in most popular indexes. What results behaves very much like a small-cap or mid-cap index. Observe RSP vs IJR over a 5 year period: IJR (iShares S&P SmallCap 600 ETF) vs RSP (Rydex S&P Equal Weight ETF)  I'm not sure if equal-weighting is worth the reduced efficiency. Mid-cap and small-cap funds have lower expenses (%0.20 for IJR vs %0.40 for RSP) and appear to do better over the long run. We don't know if that pattern will continue, but expense is one of the strongest long-term predictors of performance.


GTA PROMOTIONAL is one of the largest factory suppliers of promotional products in the Greater Toronto Area. The Best part is that designing your artwork is simple and fast. Our lab is built with you as a primary concern, We present to you a variety of T-shirts, embroidery, sports bottles, screen print, patches, bags, coffee mugs, pens, pen drives and other attire items, and substantially more all at tremendously low costs and we continue to improve the steps to make transferring or designing on the web a breeze.


Are you searching the Internet for properties to rent? Here at Knights Estate Agents, we can make that endeavour a lot easier. We feature a long list of rentable properties on our website that you can easily sort using our search tool. These properties also have informative details and high-quality images so you can have an idea of where you will be residing soon. Look for properties today at https://knightsproperty.co.uk/.


"> I was saying a lot of people dont understand that. They see they spent X at Chilis (processing) and assume it to be fact. I don't understand why you're having such a difficult time with this concept.   And the solution -- keeping an ACCURATE and independent checkbook register (rather than relying on an ""online balance"") is still the same.  >Also comparing swiping a debit card as credit to writing a check (in terms of when they show up on your account) is a terrible comparison.  Nope. It's the same thing.  You're still talking about a discrepancy between what has been processed, versus what you have ACTUALLY spent.  >And calling me ignorant because I don't need the help writing down where my money is at or goes is pretty ironic.  Well, if you're having problems with overdrafts (as you claimed you had) then rather obviously you DO need help (or at least you need to own up to where the problem lies -- your faulty ""memory"" of what you spent)."


Should voters care? What is the scenario in which this debt actually becomes a problem? It seems to me that the money from this debt is largely going into the pockets of US Citizens, so less debt would mean less prosperity for Americans. What are the arguments against this assumption?


>No, it's not. The bank can't just jack up prices when they've got competitors, after all.  Yeah, you don't understand how this stuff works. The cost of changing banks is so high most people just grumble and eat it. It took a *massive* national campaign to switch to Credit Unions and *still* only 250K people did.   >Again, if the bank has even one competitor who didn't suffer as much or any damage, customers aren't just going to suck it up.  Again, wrong.   >I'm not remotely an anarchist  No wonder you seem to be somewhat more reasonable than most of them I've spoken to.   >Brute force supports the existing regime. That's basically it.  And the *image* that this is legitimate is what allows them to wield force without retribution.


From a stats perspective, a sample of 100 should be more than enough to grab a normalized distribution. While the tail end (less than 1 percent) might not have granularity, the article is supposed to capture the experience of the majority of candidates, which a sample of 100 should do fine. That said, knowing plenty of Amazonians, some  love it, some don't. The article probably has bias in the people who chose to respond, but the sample size is fine.


>Look most of the time you can manage it sure.  It is managed all the time. Even in the hypothetical crisis, it is still being managed.  >But without the lender of last resort(central bank) bank runs would happen and failures would be common, like in 19th century.  One of the principal reasons for a lender of last resort. However, the system functions perfectly well without a lender of last resort unless there is also a hardening of the interbank market.  >The only way to stabilise fractional reserve banking  It is not the only way. It is the best way in many respects. We could also change the terms and conditions of deposits such that all deposits require notice or have fixed term etc etc. This is without even considering what can be achieved with derivative instruments.  >can abuse its power  It can also not abuse its power. See the Bundesbank of West Germany, or the central banks of Australia or New Zealand. Even the Federal Reserve Banks are actually not terrible in the global scale of central banks.  >excess credit expansion causing economic bubbles  Economic bubbles occur independently of the presence of a central bank. See the 'Tulip Madess'.


Say what you want about their prices but I still go there twice a month because:  * The marbling on their beef is significantly better than what I can get at Safeway  * Their cheese selection is far better in variety and quality, and their employees are much more knowledgeable than Safeway  * They actually have a cured meats section. I love me calabrese salami with a nice malbec.  95% of my grocery shopping is done at Safeway (can't beat $2/lb chicken), but the 5% when I'm feeling fancy it's pretty hard to beat Whole Foods.


Women have to be represented in the global economy or it'll cost the world a shit ton of $ later on. There's a bunch of underbanked women around the world due to laws and Everex allows them to get microloans and/or execute deals in a micro finance fashion.


The answer to question 1 is yes, you can always reduce your loan when you remortgage by introducing additional funds. There is some possibility a (relatively) small charge might be applicable for managing the marginally more complex transfer, but it shouldn't be too much.. The answer to question 2 is NONE of your over payment amounts would have gone on interest, but you MIGHT incur penalty charges. Interest is only charged on the outstanding loan amount (i.e. £100K initially, reducing to £85K over 2 years in your example) at the interest rate determined by your mortgage agreement - there is no 'paying off interest' as such. Over payments are essentially all capital payments, reducing the principal/loan amount, so no additional interest would be paid if you opted for over payments. If you used your £10K to made the over payments throughout the 2 year fixed period you would in fact have paid LESS interest by the end of the 2 years, because you would be reducing the loan amount at a quicker rate, and thus the interest you pay each month (based on the lower outstanding loan at that time) would be lower. BUT... over payments might have attracted over payment penalties (typically a percentage of the amount you pay) and these penalties often mean it's not worth doing. Most fixed term mortgages have such penalties, but it depends on the agreement, and many mortgages also allow you to make over payments up to a certain amount each year before you get hit. Edit (additional suggestion): If the example you provide is one based on what you expect might happen to you over the next couple of years, something you could CONSIDER is an offset mortgage. Here your £10K that you accumulate reduces your interest through the 2 years, but you keep it in savings where you can access it if you need to. Accessing it will then cause a corresponding rise in interest payments, but to no higher level than you would have been paying if you had nothing in the savings in the first place. You usually pay a slightly higher interest rate for these sort of mortgage, so it's impossible to know if it would be more economical, and how appropriate it would be for you in other respects depends on many factors.


I'm assuming you mean 4-6% annually over 10-15 years.  If you mean 4%-6% total return over 10 years then this question is easy just find your local country's 10Y bond and that should likely cover it (though barely if you are German). So 4%-6% annually is not a big stretch but it does require some risk and at least a bit of work.  A fire-and-forget good mix would include (using index mutual funds or etfs) Some internet research and a one-time meeting with a financial adviser who is paid by you (not paid on commission) should help you set the right balance of these index funds and be a good check on what I'm advising. If you are willing to do a tiny bit more work it's well worth starting with a heavier weight on the riskier stocks and ex-European funds (more currency risk) and then every 2-3 years slowly move into safer stocks and Euro-based funds.  With that tiny amount of extra work there you can make it much more likely that you will end within your 4-6% range while taking significantly less risk overall.


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.


"More to the point, once you've gone through the trouble to accumulate a hoard of dollar balances, what *else* are you going to do with it?  If you're not going to buy goods and services for sale in dollars, you may as well shift some of those dollar balances into an interest-bearing account, which is what ""buying US debt"" is."


"You're talking about modern portfolio theory. The wiki article goes into the math. Here's the gist: Modern portfolio theory (MPT) is a theory of finance that attempts to maximize portfolio expected return for a given amount of portfolio risk, or equivalently minimize risk for a given level of expected return, by carefully choosing the proportions of various assets. At the most basic level, you either a) pick a level of risk (standard deviation of your whole portfolio) that you're ok with and find the maximum return you can achieve while not exceeding your risk level, or b) pick a level of expected return that you want and minimize risk (again, the standard deviation of your portfolio). You don't maximize both moments at once. The techniques behind actually solving them in all but the most trivial cases (portfolios of two or three assets are trivial cases) are basically quadratic programming because to be realistic, you might have a portfolio that a) doesn't allow short sales for all instruments, and/or b) has some securities that can't be held in fractional amounts (like ETF's or bonds). Then there isn't a closed form solution and you need computational techniques like mixed integer quadratic programming Plenty of firms and people use these techniques, even in their most basic form. Also your terms are a bit strange: It has correlation table p11, p12, ... pij, pnn for i and j running from 1 to n This is usually called the covariance matrix. I want to maximize 2 variables. Namely the expected return and the additive inverse of the standard deviation of the mixed investments. Like I said above you don't maximize two moments (return and inverse of risk). I realize that you're trying to minimize risk by maximizing ""negative risk"" so to speak but since risk and return are inherently a tradeoff you can't achieve the best of both worlds. Maybe I should point out that although the above sounds nice, and, theoretically, it's sound, as one of the comments points out, it's harder to apply in practice. For example it's easy to calculate a covariance matrix between the returns of two or more assets, but in the simplest case of modern portfolio theory, the assumption is that those covariances don't change over your time horizon. Also coming up with a realistic measure of your level of risk can be tricky. For example you may be ok with a standard deviation of 20% in the positive direction but only be ok with a standard deviation of 5% in the negative direction. Basically in your head, the distribution of returns you want probably has negative skewness:  because on the whole you want more positive returns than negative returns. Like I said this can get complicated because then you start minimizing other forms of risk like value at risk, for example, and then modern portfolio theory doesn't necessarily give you closed form solutions anymore. Any actively managed fund that applies this in practice (since obviously a completely passive fund will just replicate the index and not try to minimize risk or anything like that) will probably be using something like the above, or at least something that's more complicated than the basic undergrad portfolio optimization that I talked about above. We'll quickly get beyond what I know at this rate, so maybe I should stop there."


"Here are some things to consider if you want to employ a covered call strategy for consistent returns. The discussion also applies to written puts, as they're functionally equivalent. Write covered calls only on fairly valued stock. If the stock is distinctly undervalued, just buy it. By writing the call, you cap the gains that it will achieve as the stock price gravitates to intrinsic value. If the stock is overvalued, sell it, or just stay away. As the owner of a covered call position, you have full exposure to the downside of the stock. The premium received is normally way too small to protect against much of a drop in price. The ideal candidate doesn't change in price much over the life of the position. Yes, this is low volatility, which brings low option premiums. As a seller you want high premiums. But this can't be judged in a vacuum. No matter how high the volatility in absolute terms, as a seller you're betting the market has overpriced volatility. If volatility is high, so premiums are fat, but the market is correct, then the very real risk of the stock dropping over the life of the position offsets the premium received. One thing to look at is current implied volatility for the at-the-money (ATM), near-month call. Compare it to the two-year historical volatility (Morningstar has this conveniently displayed). Moving away from pure volatility, consider writing calls about three months out, just slightly out of the money. The premium is all time value, and the time value decay accelerates in the final few months. (In theory, a series of one-month options would be higher time value, but there are frictional costs, and no guarantee that today's ""good deal"" will be repeatable twelve time per year.) When comparing various strikes and expirations, compare time value per day. To compare the same statistic across multiple companies, use time value per day as a percent of capital at risk. CaR is the price of the stock less the premium received. If you already own the stock, track it as if you just bought it for this strategy, so use the price on the day you wrote the call. Along with time value per day, compare the simple annualized percent return, again, on capital at risk, measuring the return if a) the stock is called away, and b) the stock remains unchanged. I usually concentrate more on the second scenario, as we get the capital gain on the stock regardless, without the option strategy. Ideally, you can also calculate the probability (based on implied volatility) of the stock achieving these price points by expiration. Measuring returns at many possible stock prices, you can develop an overall expected return. I won't go into further detail, as it seems outside the scope here. Finally, I usually target a minimum of 25% annualized if the stock remains unchanged. You can, of course, adjust this up or down depending on your risk tolerance. I consider this to be conservative."


I don't know how you're not understanding where you're in the wrong here. I really don't. You've already admitted that the things I said about not everyone having equal opportunity are correct. Yet here you are, still pretending that that didn't happen, still dead set in your views that everyone should just find a better job that pays them more money.  You've said that you agree that not everyone can just up and get a better job, but yet you still are spouting nonsense saying that they should. You have yet to mention what happens to those who  CAN'T do that (whom you have already admitted exist).   I don't know if you have a reading comprehension issue or what your deal is, but you really need to just go away. What have you said that isn't factually correct? How about EVERYTHING that you've said? None of your opinion is based even a little bit in reality.


Just buy a FTSE-100 tracker. It's cheap and easy, and will hedge you pretty well, as the FTSE-100 is dominated by big mining and oil companies who do most of their business in currencies other than sterling.


From watching the hearings and reading the papers, it appears that JPMs London Office entered into a hedge-like position that was meant to hedge against a worldwide economic downturn. As far as I know, JPM corporate found this position on their own (probably alerted by the huge mark-to-market losses) and it was not found by some outside manager.  That position itself was a hedge that turned out not to be a very good hedge, and upon this finding it was determined that JPM needed to exit this hedge. Unfortunately, the position had lost a substantial amount even by this point. This, according to Dimon, was because this particular group had been very successful in previous years and was not subject to the same regulations as most other groups.  JPM has been very quiet about the details, because they don't need the position getting any more out of control than it already is. I assume some market participants have a good idea on what it is exactly, given its size, but I do not.   It is not really like LTCM, which was not hedging and were supposed to be taking arbitrage positions in the market. It is also unlike LTCM is myriad ways (being 1 major position, $8B is not the same to JPM as to LTCM, JPM will almost 100% take the full loss, etc).  I would recommend watching [this](http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/306502-102). Dimon clearly thinks the position was very unwise, and they are unwinding it, but details will be in short supply until JPM gets out of the position.


">with the help of its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Caterpillar had devised a way to shift billions in profit to Switzerland to avoid U.S. taxes.  it seems like the system is broken  edit:  whats the fucking point of having an ""auditor"" if this is how its played in the big leagues?  or is ""auditor"" the new inside-joke sarcastic term for ""co conspirator"" and I'm just slow on the draw here"


You do. They're in your digital wallet which can be on your phone, computer, thumb drive, on cloud storage or wherever you want to keep it. Multiple backups. There are many videos on Youtube that will explain how it all works.


ok if you haven't rolled in the 401k assets yet, you're fine and should put them into a traditional.  if your earnings + roth conversions will put you at or below your anticipated tax bracket during retirement, then the roth conversion might make sense.  in some cases, employers will give you a roth 401k option, but you are right that it's not the default.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2017/09/29/Uncertainty-Financial-Frictions-and-Nominal-Rigidities-A-Quantitative-Investigation-45246) reduced by 49%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.  > Are uncertainty shocks a major source of business cycle fluctuations? This paper studies the effect of a mean preserving shock to the variance of aggregate total factor productivity and to the dispersion of entrepreneurs&#039; idiosyncratic productivity in a financial accelerator DSGE model with sticky prices.  > While surprise increases in micro uncertainty have a larger impact on output than macro uncertainty, these account for a small share of output volatility.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/73blr1/imfuncertainty_financial_frictions_and_nominal/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~219247 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **uncertainty**^#1 **IMF**^#2 **shock**^#3 **paper**^#4 **view**^#5"


"The biggest problem with the company was that they had really good employees for a long time who were passionate about their jobs, but they then made progressing through the company awful in certain regions. For instance, at one point, if you wanted to become an assistant manager of your department, you had to agree to a rotation within your metro stores for what was basically a two dollar raise. You might start at a store two miles from your home, and then end up 30 miles from home. Then, six months later, be 40 miles away. So, a lot of people who were intelligent, looked at that and said ""Yeah, I can just stay here and make two dollars less. I live down the street.""  But, the worst part was: their employees were able to make the shitty systems work most of the time. So they were never viewed as shitty, despite the fact that their employees routinely told them of their shittiness and how awful they were to use.  Then they laid off the several thousand people (they used some very interesting calculations to come up with their 1500 person layoff figure a while back) who were responsible for keeping the ship afloat, and put all those duties on the backs of other people.  Disclosure: I was out before the layoffs. Left of my own free will, and still like the people I worked with. I left because I looked at moving up and was like: NOPE. These people are morons."


Not at all.  If your background is similar to mine, a manufacturing engineer, we'll have common ground.  If your in finance or management or printing or services sector I'll tell you my story at bit more detailed.    Relax, I am not going to attack you personally or something like that.  Look at it this way, if we really get to know each other this will some much more to hate on then the simple ad hominem attacks.


Try using technical analysis, look at the charts and look for stocks that are uptrending. The dfinition of an uptrend being higher highs and higher lows. Use a stochastic indicator and buy on the dips down when the stochastic is in the oversold position (below 20) and and crossing over about to turn back upwards. Or you can also use the stochastic to trade shares that have been ranging between two prices (say between $10 and $12) for a while. As the price approaches the $10 support and the stochastic is in oversold, you would buy as the price rebounds off the $10 support and the stochastic crosses and starts rebounding back up. As the price starts reaching the resistance at $12 (with stocastic in overbought at above 80) you would look to sell and take profits. If you were able to do short selling in the competition, you could short sell at this point in time and make profits on the way up as well as on the way down. There are many more techniques you could use to set up trade opportunities using technical analysis, so it may be a subject you could research further before the comptition begins. Good luck.


Deciding the business valuation Minneapolis isn’t an easy task and this requires a perfect graph. While you have decided on the values you need to avoid the following four don’ts that will save you from suffering any loss in the selling process. Click below:


If there was no question of improvements to the property, the problem would be simple. Each person invests whatever amount. Calculate the percentage of each person's investment out of the entire investment, and that's what share each one owns. Like: A puts in $10,000 for the deposit and pays $5,000 toward the mortgage over the next however many years. B puts in $5,000 toward the deposit but pays $7,000 of the mortgage. C puts in $15,000 but pays only $1,000 of the mortgage payments. So total investments: A - $15,000, B - $12,000, C - $16,000. Total - $43,000. So A's share of the house is 15,000/43,000 = 34.9%. Etc. If you then sell it you pay off any outstanding debt, and then everybody gets their share of what's left. But once you start making improvements, there is no simple formula. Suppose you put down new flooring in the dining room. You pay $500 for materials and put in 20 hours of labor. Presumably you have now added something more than $500 to your share, but how much more? How much are the hours worth? What if someone damages the house -- puts a hole in the all or something -- and then fixes it. Does the time and effort they put into fixing it add to their investment, or did that just cancel out the damage they did? What if one person does a lot to keep the house in generally good condition in small snippets of time, like cleaning furnace filters and polishing the floors, while another does nothing and lets their share get run down and dirty? It gets very complicated. Theoretically you could come up with a rate at which you value your work -- like say every hour spent maintaining the house is worth $10 or $20 or whatever. But who's going to keep track of it over the course of potentially many years? And what if one person does a small number of big, easily quantifiable jobs, while another does many small, hard-to-count jobs? Like if A mops the floor every week for 2 years, is that worth more or less than B installing 3 ceiling fans, a door, and 2 windows? You could go around and around on this sort of thing.


My parents hooked up at a highschool party when they were 17. I was born because they most definitely were not careful.  That being said, when my mother met my stepdad when I was 3, we lived with him in his mom's house. He had just started as a cop and we were very poor for a very long time. The reason we were so poor was because my dad was investing the majority of his money. Investing in stocks, his pension anything he could. He worked graveyards for years. He eventually got a new job and when he retires in a few years, his pension and a handful of really good investments is going to net him just over a million dollars. So this whole article is kinda bullshit to me.


"What folks here don't get is it's generally in the industries interest to not mislead. As you may have noticed, folks don't like being mislead. Yes, it happens, but the large majority of companies consider it in their interests to label clearly.  Are you aware that General Foods is strongly lobbying to mandate GMO labeling? Or that the pork industry is making a strong (hopefully successful) effort to change the rules about ""natural"" nitrites so that they're labeled like any other nitrite? I'm guessing you're not, and instead are just making unfounded assumptions."


"Let's talk interest rates on your junk bonds. Even after all that the US has been through (and is still going through), the United States dollar is widely regarded as one of the safest safe havens for your money. As such it serves as a de facto baseline against which all other investments can be measured, the bar everyone has to pass: if you could earn 4% on a 5-year US Treasury bond, or earn 4% on anything else over the next 5 years, you pick the Treasury bond. In many ways this means that the interest rate on a Treasury bond is the closest single measure we have to the price of money all by itself. If someone is loaning you money, they could be loaning it to the Treasury instead; they are losing out by making this loan to you, and must charge you at least this rate just to break even. But most people/governments/countries aren't as credit-worthy as the US Treasury. A few are (the US treasury isn't magical, after all, just really good at what it does), but generally they are not. There is a possibility when loaning money to these entities that you will not get your money back. That is risk. All entities have some risk (even the US treasury!), and some have more than others; ""junk bonds"" have a somewhat elevated level of this risk. Now, you don't just take a risk on for free (unless you're being charitable or something, but I hope you can find better beneficiaries of charity than the average junk bond). You need to be compensated for that risk. Lenders will demand compensation commensurate with that risk - or they will just walk away without making any loans or buying any bonds because it's not worth it. The difference between the interest rate on a US Treasury bond and the interest rate on another bond, such as a junk bond, is the risk premium - the cost of carrying that risk. Therefore you can see that the interest rate on a junk bond is the price of money plus the risk premium. Now, the Federal Reserve adjusts the price of money from time to time, by buying and selling US Treasury bonds until the price is something they like. This means that one component of interest rate on a junk bond is the interest rate on the US Treasury bond, and it is effectively controlled by the Federal Reserve (through that layer of indirection). The other component of the interest rate on a junk bond is the risk premium. It's not generally possible to know in advance whether or not some company will actually default. People have to guess, and decide how comfortable they are taking that risk. This means that risk is more expensive (and interest rates are higher) when they think the companies in question are going through some hard times, and risk will also be more expensive when people decide that they can't take as many risks (perhaps they've already lost some money and need to take additional steps to protect the rest). It's definitely very hard for an individual to decide what the risk on a particular bond is. The good news is that you generally don't have to. There are a bunch of rich jerks, hedge funds, retirement funds, insurance companies, and other investment entities out there who spend all day looking at things like bonds, trying to estimate the risk. Their willingness to exploit minuscule differences between the interest rate on a bond and the real risk means that the average bond on the market will be fairly priced, according to what all those people think. Plenty of them can still be wrong, mind you (cf. mortgage-backed securities) but in the general case the price of any security reflects all the information everyone in the world has on it on average, so if you're wrong you're in good company. When you buy a nice diversified bond fund, you have access to a bunch of bonds at a pretty-standard price.  So that's interest rates for you. But you asked about prices. As it turns out, they're the same thing! - just expressed slightly differently.  One way or another a bond is essentially meant to be a stream of payments worth a certain amount in the end - this is why you'll hear them referred to sometimes as a ""fixed-income security"". The interest rate is essentially the difference between the price you pay now, and the value you receive later, except expressed as a rate. Technically, you could structure the bonds differently (e.g. does the bond pay little bits of interest as you go along, or just pay one big lump sum in the end?) but you can use Math to convert between these two situations, and figure out how much money is worth which when, so it doesn't really matter. Anyway. This means that rising interest rates means lower bond prices on bonds you already own (and falling interest rates means higher bond prices). So if the Federal Reserve increases interest rates, the face value of your bond funds will fall. Also, if people think that the companies issuing the bonds are too risky, the face value of those bonds will also fall. (You were probably expecting the latter effect, though.) Mind you, you will still get the same amount of future money out of them as you would otherwise: that's why they're fixed-income securities. However, a higher interest rate means ""I can get more money in the future for less money now"", and so people will be willing to pay you less for your bond in the present. This is known as interest rate risk. It is higher on longer term bonds, because those have more time to earn interest."


Payroll is undeniably one of the most important part of any business and it very important that you have a timely payroll every month. To avoid the hassle of payroll processing, it is best to get the service outsourced. We,DHpayroll, will be more than happy to offer you our expert services.


The fund prospectus is a good place to start.


Imo this subject is about as black & white as slavery. Hmm what does society think... Is it okay to own slaves? Well what if you treat them well, then its alright then, right? Then how about an extremely expensive health care system that hurts more people than it helps, thats ok because it helps a few people, right? Shame on our narcissistic leaders.


A few days ago they launched Fannie Mae Guaranteed Multifamily Structures (link) but who knows?  It's a penny stock now. Google Finance is pretty good at marking news right on the chart for a particular stock.  That's how I tracked that piece of news down.  Can't say that it precipitated a lot of people buying the stock, but Google Finance isn't a bad place to start looking.


Your money management technique is a very personal choice. Each person's system will be a little different. For us, we don't believe in debt so we operate on a cash basis for everything with the exception of our house. We keep our expenses to roughly 75% of our after tax income. The rest we save and invest. And we are paying extra on our mortgage to get the house paid off asap. Each person will divide their 75% differently based on your consumption preferences.  The same goes for the 25% savings and investing.  You need to set some goals and save accordingly.


If you want to prove the actual tax liability you have in the US - you have to file a tax return. If the Romanian government believes you that the withholding is your actual tax - fine, but that would be a lie. Withholding is not a tax. The American payers must withhold from foreigners enough to have transferred more than the actual tax the foreigners would have paid. The standard withholding is 30%, but the actual tax on dividends varies. In case the tax treaty limits the tax on dividends - the withholding is usually up to the maximum of the tax allowed by the treaty. But allowed doesn't mean that would be the actual tax. In many cases it is not. So if you want to claim the US tax paid as a credit towards your Romanian tax - you'll need to file a tax return in the US, calculate the actual tax liability and that would be the amount of credit you can claim. The difference between that amount and the amount withheld by the payer will be refunded to you by the IRS. You don't have to file a US tax return, that is true. But the withholding is not the tax, the actual tax liability may have been less, and the Romanian tax authority may deny your credit, in whole or in part, based on the fact that you haven't filed a US tax return and as such have no proof of your actual tax paid. You had some experience with the UK tax treaty, and you think all the treaties are the same. That may be a reasonable line of thought, but it is incorrect. Treaties are not the same. More importantly, even if the treaty is the same - the tax law is not. While in the UK the tax on dividends may be flat and from the first pound - in the US it is neither flat nor from the first dollar. Thus, while in the UK you may have been used to paying tax at source and that's it - in the US it doesn't work that way at all.


Please explain how does this hurt the consumer? If anything, I'd say Amazon has a solid track record of *empowering* consumers. They absolutely are bad news for some very stubbornly offline-only mom & pops, but not for consumers.


"Yeah, exactly. The difference is that Ferrari is making money.  EDIT: to clarify...  - Ferrari sells a niche product to a boutique customer-base willing to pay a premium in terms of both price and purchasing difficulty for exclusive, super-premium cars that are manufactured to artisan standards with little or no regard for cost-efficiency or price-to-value ratio, etc. People buying Ferrari are not looking for a ""sensible deal"", they are people who can afford to pay for something special, rare, and uncompromising. Tesla is in a similar market-position.   - Ferrari actually makes money selling their cars. They do a low-volume boutique business, and charge prices that reflect a low volume of artisan-made specialty product. I am sure that certain special-order customers have to wait some time for delivery, but I drive by a Ferrari dealership every day on my way to work that has maybe 50 Ferraris sitting in a lot, that you can drive off with same-day, if you want. You can literally drive up, test-drive, and buy one tomorrow (if you have the scratch).   OTOH...  - Teslas are cheaper than Ferraris, but they are still deep into the super-premium price category. They are well outside the ""value-proposition"" customer-base. They are also (perhaps even more than Ferrari), in a market segment without meaningful competition. There are several super-premium 2-seaters in the $100-200k price range, but I suspect most Tesla shoppers are not mostly comparing them against Porsches or Vipers or Benzes. The all-electric supercar market is not a highly competitive one.   - There is massive demand for Teslas, as is evidenced by the extremely thin used market, the year-plus-long wait list, and all that in the face of extremely customer-unfriendly sales/distribution and almost zero marketing... That is, people are waiting up in 18-month long lines to buy cars that they can't inspect at a local dealership, have no way to test-drive, and often have never even seen in person, and they are putting down cash deposits to do so, in amounts that could buy some pretty nice sports cars for the deposit alone. Moreover, it's not like Tesla buyers are going to change their minds and get a Chevy Volt or Honda Insight instead (although they might get both).   This is any startups wet-dream:  - You have a product that is not only already in production, but that you have been shipping for several years-- you *know* the tooling, manufacturing, support, and delivery costs, because you have actually been *doing it* for *years.*  - You not only have no issues whatsoever with regards to building a customer-base, you already have paying customers and genuine orders *already booked* through 2014, more than you can keep up with.  - You have a product with massive demand and almost non-existent price-pressure. You've got orders booked over a year out at asking price with virtually zero marketing or advertising, most customers buying site-unseen purely based on concept and reputation, and your customers are paying super-premium prices with no direct competitor alternative.   This is a goldmine. This is the kind of thing that business-school textbooks tell you never happens. Rational-market theory says it's impossible to have a big-ticket product offering with essentially unlimited demand and zero meaningful competition.   Moreover, this is happening in an environment where the business is not only receiving direct gov't subsidies, but where borrowing costs are close to negative in real dollars. A going concern with booked orders and guaranteed revenue through 2014 should, if anything, be *borrowing from banks to buy back equity*, not selling equity to raise capital.   If Tesla needs to raise capital, then something is seriously wrong with the underlying business. As in, wrong enough that its current sales are not only un-profitable, but that currently-booked future sales will continue to be un-profitable for the foreseeable future (otherwise they could just borrow).   You can plead ""startup"" when you have a small customer base but a great concept. You can plead ""startup"" when you first start shipping product in small quantities at low prices. But you can't plead ""startup"" when you have been shipping a product for years, and when you have customer-orders booked years out, at full asking price, with no meaningful price or product-competition."